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Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
It would seem that it should good without saying that if Jesus prayed before big decisions and important events then we ought to do the same. But here we have Jesus himself spending an entire night in prayer whereas we are pleased with ourselves if we remember to mumble a quick plea of 'Please help' and then proceed to more or less figure things out for ourselves. It is emphatically better to make such plea than to not do anything, and God does indeed honor such prayers. But there are times when we are called to more. If Jesus could spend an entire night with the Father discussing the merits and potential of the twelve, of the consequence his call would be for them, and the future it would entail, so too might we learn to allot enough time for some real dialog in prayer before our own important choices.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles
Like a new Moses Jesus came down from the mountain, as the supreme judge of Israel. He himself was in fact the one appointed to judge the living and the dead (see Acts 17:31). He called twelve men to himself, the firstfruits of the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel. These twelve who would themselves would be given a share of his own royal authority and would sit on twelve thrones judging those twelve tribes (see Matthew 19:28). David sang of these thrones, "There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David" (see Psalm 122:5). This authority took an elevated in spiritual form in the Church. As the restored Israel the Church was superior to the merely secular authority of the world. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, took it for granted that all Christians, not merely the hierarchy, would share in some measure in this royal role.
Do you not know that the holy ones will judge the world?
If the world is to be judged by you,
are you unqualified for the lowest law courts?
Do you not know that we will judge angels?
We are meant, then, to rejoice in the successors of the twelve who still sit on their cathedra thrones and bring the just judgments of God to the world. But we ourselves must learn to honorably discharge our own measure of this responsibility. We may be tempted to shirk from it and let society take over for us, as the Corinthians apparently were tempted. But society does not necessarily share our goals. We are qualified in ways that society is not if we find our qualification to settle our disputes in the wisdom that we receive from time in prayer, following the example of Jesus himself. When Jesus is our model our own judgments and resolutions of disputes look less like they do in the secular world, in which each fights for what is his own, and in which the powerful are favored. Instead, they begin to look more like an application on the Sermon on the Mount.
Why not rather let yourselves be cheated?
Instead, you inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers.
Wise judgment realizes the priority of the Kingdom over worldly concerns and will not let greed or selfishness stand in the way of love. Our individual and specific judgments are always meant to issue consequentially from the fact of the victory of Jesus and his cross is the one way to salvation. Choosing to honor his ways does in fact proclaim that victory. As a corollary they therefore condemn and make us turn away from all paths opposed to that truth. We even thereby share in the condemnation of the angels who, together with the Devil, opposed that victory.
Do you not know that we will judge angels?
Let us learn from the example of Jesus himself who established judges for the nations by spending time in prayer. When our own judgments come from our own time in prayer they will no longer be ours alone. As a consequence our lives will resemble less and less the secular conflicts of power and privilege and begin to resemble more and more the promised peace and unity of the Kingdom of God.
That is what some of you used to be;
but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified,
you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and in the Spirit of our God.
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