One of the retired ministers in our congregation bet me that I won’t be able to finish my series of sermons on the Twelve Apostles.  The reason is because we know so very little about some of them, especially these last four.  In the case of the one we are considering this morning, we only know one word.  But that one word speaks volumes.  The Gospel says that he was a “Zealot.” Luke refers to him as “Simon who was called the Zealot.” (Luke 6:15) The designation is important, because there are at least nine individuals named Simon in the New Testament.  It can get confusing. 

Luke calls him “zelotes,” which means “the Zealot.” Matthew and Mark complicate things by calling him “Simon the Cananaean.” (Matthew 10:4, Mark 3:18) At first, we might think that is a geographic designation, for we…