One thing that has struck me about Jesus in Luke’s gospel is just how provocative he is. Since his ministry began in chapter 4, Jesus has named himself as the center of God’s redemptive movement (Luke 4:16-21), claimed authority to forgive sins (Luke 5:22-26), argued that he is bringing in a new era in God’s work (Luke 5:33-39), and named himself Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5). More than these, he has also shared table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners and adopted the title Son of Man, which may well refer to an extraordinary figure in Daniel 7:13-14. In all of this, Jesus displays a surety about who he is even as he upends expectations about the kingdom he represents.
In today’s passage, Jesus carries all of this a step further by naming apostles from the group of disciples who follow him. Naming the twelve is once again a provocative act because it brings to mind another grouping of twelve: the twelve tribes of Israel. In the same way that God chose the twelve tribes for his special purposes, so also is Jesus choosing twelve men for his. NT Wright likens this to Jesus picking an “Israel team” to serve as “the nucleus, the centre and starting-point, for what God was now going to do. They were the core of God’s renewed Israel.”1 In choosing the twelve, Jesus grounds his movement beyond himself by appointing specially empowered emissaries (a.k.a. apostles). He also implicitly argues that God’s work in Israel will now flow through the community he is founding. If all of this sounds bold, it is. Jesus is utterly confident in who he is and what he is called to do as he enacts his divine vocation.
All this in mind, it is important to note Jesus’ prayer life. Earlier, we saw him turn down a perfectly good opportunity to stay in Capernaum after time alone (presumably in prayer). Today, we see him once again in prayer before the pivotal moment of choosing the twelve apostles. And, we learned in Luke 5:16 that Jesus made a habit of seeking out time for solitary prayer. In the midst of a ministry that required near constant boldness, Jesus anchored himself in prayer. We who follow him can (1) accept his provocative claims and build our lives around them and (2) anchor ourselves in prayer as we follow him in the Way.
Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 71.