Underdogs were among the first Christian believers. Paul reminded the readers of this when he wrote his first letter to the Christian believers in Corinth. Few of them, he wrote, were wise, powerful or noble. God selected human beings with little to offer other than their weaknesses, to offset admiration of worldly rank or standing. This goes against common sense. It also goes against a strategy that targets high-ranking or wealthy people in order to win converts and build up the Church. God’s work is not to be advanced in that way.
The history of the Church has been unfortunate in this respect. Church leaders have often succumbed to the temptation to become accomplices of those in power. From the days of Constantine European society has been shaped by feudalism with a Christian style. Bishops and barons have lorded it over a populace accustomed to deference.
This became topsy-turvy in the late eighteenth century. A nobody by the name of William Carey got together with his friends to set off an unprecedented campaign to deliver the Gospel to a wider world. A shoe-maker by trade, he went off to India, gained a command of 30 languages and immersed himself in a civilisation that had flourished while the inhabitants of these islands were painting themselves blue and shouting abuse at passing boats in the English Channel. Carey took on the painstaking task of learning to be a missionary. First the Baptist Missionary Society came into being, then the Church Missionary Society. Other agencies followed. Christianity spread like wildfire.
I remember seeing a sign in Kenya saying ‘Christian shoe-repairer’. Lovers as we are of a market economy and some form of democracy, we are not sure we approve of this kind of publicity. But we should approve God’s method of using nobodies in the service of the Gospel – repentant nobodies, believing nobodies, obedient nobodies, enthusiastic nobodies. There is an interesting sidelight in Acts 8.1 about this. Luke tells us that violent persecution led to all Christian believers being scattered over the county districts of Judaea and Samaria, all that is, except for the apostles. In the forefront of the campaign were the nobodies.
Nobodies have a special place in the Church’s year. Simon and Jude, about whom we know next to nothing, were in Jesus’ team. They have a day in the Church calendar. What better day for anybody to be born than on St Simon and St Jude’s day. I ask you.
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