Jesus, the Apostle

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"
Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
- The Gospel According to Mark, Chapter 1

In his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul says that Jesus gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to the church for the equipping of his people for "works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." Implicit in the analogy is that Christ, as the head of the body (the source from which all the rest grows), is the fullness of the roles of apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. So, it goes to reason that we would be able to see these roles active in the ministry of Jesus during his first 33 years of redemptive activity.

Someone recently commented to me that those with apostolic calling and gifting are normally pretty busy, under constant demands from others to be and do for them. It's evident that Jesus' life was no different. "Everyone is looking for you!" seems to be a consistent refrain in Jesus' life. Though I might have seen it as a scratch that causes the record to keep playing the same part of the song over and over, Jesus embraced his chorus much better than I.

That being said, it's instructive to see how Jesus, as the chief apostle, handled the constant draw on his time. First, after a full day of casting out demons and healing the sick, Jesus got up early in the morning to find a solitary place to pray. I've often had those plans in the back of my mind, to get up early, before everyone else, just me and God, a cup of coffee, a journal and my Bible. But, rarely does it happen like I imagine, not usually because I get interrupted, but because I never make it up in time! It is encouraging to think of our Lord, as a man, breaking through the weariness and grogginess of the morning to find a solitary place to pray before the day gets crazy. As many have noted, Martin Luther said that he had so much to do during the day that he must spend at least three hours a day in prayer beforehand!

Of course, when "found out" by his disciples (Peter taking the lead, of course, which reminds of the "let us build tabernacles" situation later on...), did Jesus tell them to go away because he was praying? Did he drop everything and go back to all the people according to their requests? Nope. He bolted! He said, "Let's get out of here!" So, secondly, Jesus stuck to his apostolic (and prophetic) mission. If he was only acting as a shepherd, evangelist, or teacher, it would have made sense just to stay there and care for the flock, teach them about the kingdom, and bring more people into his care. But, Jesus just left them there and went to another village! He knew that there would be a time for more shepherding, evangelizing, and teaching, but it was not the time for him. He had a mission to accomplish, that being proclaiming the kingdom in word and deed and accomplishing the initial stage of it through his crucified life and death. His vision was not first for individual villages but for the entire nation of Israel, thereby accomplishing his mission for the entire world.

Another thing that I recently was told about people that are apostolic, is that in their busyness, they frequently appreciate and respond to those who "don't take 'no' for an answer." You can see that when Jesus goes to the next village, and a leprous man comes to him and begs him, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." So, Jesus, indignant on account of the man's believing that Jesus might not be willing to heal him of his leprosy, said, in my paraphrase, "Of course I am willing! Be healed!" Then, in another apostolic move in keeping with his clandestine mission to proclaim an alternative messianic kingdom than what people were expecting, he told the former leper to keep quiet about his healing so that he, Jesus, could keep traveling from village to village without too much trouble and commotion. Of course, that didn't happen, and, as it says, after that "Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere." It seems that even Jesus still had trouble aligning people to his plan of how he wanted his mission to develop!

It seems, just from a cursory reading of this section of Mark, that Jesus fulfilled the role of shepherd, evangelist, and teacher as he went from town to town caring for people through healing and the like, gathering them together, and teaching them about the kingdom, but it was his apostolic (and possibly his prophetic) mission that kept him going from village to village rather than staying in one place. Like Robert Coleman demonstrates in his book The Master Plan of Evangelism, the entire time he was raising up the twelve disciples, primarily, to extend and establish through all the five roles the Gospel of the kingdom. Those disciples, and theirs that followed, were the ones that continued to expand, extend, and establish in a way that even Jesus could not have done on his own as one man. How good it was for him to go away and send the Helper!