Isaiah 9.1-4, 1st Corinthians 1.10-18; Matthew 4.12-23
Can you imagine doing what Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John, do in today’s gospel? Without a second thought these four fishermen drop everything to follow Jesus. They leave behind work, home, and family to become Jesus’ disciples.
There are any number of adventure books and movies inviting us to imagine what life would be like if we left everything behind and set out on a quest—Tolkien’s book “The Hobbit,” for example. Imagine tossing on your backpack, setting out on the open road with a band of dwarves and a king-in-waiting, all while fighting giants and battling dragons. Many of us like stories about unknown adventures and sleeping rough. But, if we’re honest, many of us also like to have an entire two-week vacation planned down to the minute and take our own pillows with us when we check into hotels. We like predictability and the comfort a warm home on a frigid day.
What do you think of the idea that Jesus might call you from the ways you’ve set for yourself and have you follow where he leads, to have the habits of our life changed by the direction and purpose of his life?
Because Peter and Andrew, James and John follow with no apparent hesitation, it’s easy to turn them into heroes of sorts. Only I’m not sure that’s the case. I have a hunch we’re looking in the wrong direction if we focus our attention on them and see them as role models we’re meant to emulate. I’m not sure these fishermen are the main characters.
Stories in the Bible are, first and foremost, stories about God and God’s work in the world and in our lives. So instead of focusing on those first disciples and making today’s gospel reading about the courage they had to follow, focus on Jesus who calls them. And then notice what changes. Then you see how today’s gospel is about God at work among ordinary people, making something of them; God at work among us ordinary people, making something of us—not a quest of our own but the mission of Jesus in Jesus to bring light to places of darkness and to call us to follow, to be people of light and live as people of light.
Darkness is where Jesus’ ministry begins. After his baptism by John, after his temptation in the wilderness, the inaugural act of Jesus’ ministry is not to go to places of power but to people in need, sharing and bearing the pain, sin, and suffering of the world. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”
The Gospel of Matthew sees the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as fulfilling today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah. There, Isaiah speaks of the circumstances in his own dark world. Of that world—Isaiah’s world—Old Testament scholar and commentator Walter Brueggeman says that it was a “society in disarray.” Political leadership was shaky; people were frightened. Economic injustice, military threat, and spiritual disorientation were all part of the gloom and anguish Isaiah describes. Institutions that were supposed to seek the well-being of all people were instead protecting privilege and ignoring the vulnerable. Arrogance, anxiety, and false promises overshadowed the nation. In that world—Isaiah’s world and ours (if it applies)—God is determined to act. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
‘Great light’ is the promise of God’s faithfulness, not human ingenuity; God’s dependability in present challenge and human failure. Isaiah’s promise of God’s light shining in human darkness is filled full of meaning and given full expression in Jesus as he brings light to places of darkness—is light in darkness—and calls Peter and Andrew, James and John, and you and me not only to welcome his light and follow it; but to live as people of light. God’s hope in dark times. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
This work, light in darkness, is especially timely. It’s been the theme of an increasing number of articles I’ve come across, articles with titles like, ‘How Christians Can Bear Gospel Witness in an Anxious Age,’ What does it mean to be a person of faith and hope when fist-pumping and hand-wringing and violence are pervasive?
It begins with a focus on God and how God works in the world. At the start of Jesus’ ministry he says, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” This kingdom of heaven, this life of heaven, isn’t merely something to wait for until after death. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray for God’s kingdom to be known among us now. “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” We’re praying for the life and values of God’s world to be known in our world because God’s kingdom has come to earth in Jesus’ life and teaching, his death and resurrection. Jesus outlines the shape and purpose of this kingdom when, in the Sermon on the Mount, he blesses the poor and hungry, peacemakers and the persecuted—them, and not their opposites.
Our Lord brings a vastly different kingdom, with vastly different values, from the kingdoms of the world where might makes right. Eugene Peterson’s translation of the gospels has Jesus say in one place, “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around, how quickly a little power goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant.” This is what it means to be people of light in darkness.
For Christians to bear gospel witness in an anxious age means, among other things, that we will not be defined by our political allegiances but by Jesus at the center. The dividing lines we so easily drawn around who we are, where we belong, or where take our stand, give way to our common life in Christ. This is what Paul is talking about in today’s second reading as he diagnoses emerging divisions within the church of Corinth. People are taking a stand with one leader or another—I belong to Paul, I belong to Apollos, I belong to Cephas—at the expense of their unity in Christ. This is not merely personal preferences but competing visions of authority, wisdom, and power, making those things the center of our life. We belong to Christ.
Yet holding Christ at the center of our life is a challenge. It was a challenge among Jesus’ first disciples, too. They weren’t all from the fishing industry like Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John. They were a diverse bunch. And that diversity extended into their politics. Among Jesus’ first twelve disciples there was another Simon, Simon the Zealot, and Matthew, a tax-collector. Those details about Simon and Matthew—one a zealot, the other a tax collector—are significant because tax-collectors worked for the Roman government whose military occupied the streets of Judea, while Zealots sought to overthrow that same government. No political divide was as great then, though we might imagine some now. Yet Christ brought them together around the kingdom of heaven and its values made present in him—the kingdom of heaven and no other.
That’s why we continue to pray, “your kingdom come” so that the values of the kingdom of heaven are welcomed by us and lived out among us. Paul wants the church in Corinth, and us with them, to see that human systems—philosophical, cultural, or political—that use power to secure advantage and divide people one from another are upended by God’s wisdom on the cross. Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility among people, Paul says in another place. This is God’s work in the world. Christ has broken down the walls of hostility, though human capacity for building up hostility is chronic. For Christians to bear witness in an anxious age, for Christians to be a light shining in all darkness, is to follow where our Lord leads and stand side-by-side with him and the values of the kingdom of heaven at the center of our life.
In today’s gospel we see the power of Jesus to walk up to four fishermen and create disciples, giving them life and purpose for his work in the world: fishing for people, drawing others together in the life he gives. The temptation, in a world of gloom and anguish, is either to withdraw from it into our warm homes or to mirror the polarization of it. But neither will do. The light of Christ does not deny the darkness of the world, but it tells us the darkness is not the final word, will not be the final word and, in God’s time, its days are numbered.
‘Great light’ is the promise of God’s faithfulness, not human ingenuity; God’s dependability in present challenge and human failure. God is at work among the disciples and us; making something of them, making something of us. Jesus shares and bears the pain and sin and suffering to the world, bringing light to places of darkness. And he calls followers to be people of light and live as people of light, to bless the people he blessed with light in their darkness: caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger, reaching out to prisoners; engaging in work for the well-being of our communities; praying for our leaders; having the habits of our life changed by the direction and purpose of Jesus’ life. And if, or when, we stake a claim on life and values different than the kingdom of God made present in Jesus, to repent just as he calls us to in the gospel and to begin again.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Here is what it looks like to be disciples of Jesus in daily life, of the Spirit changing the shape and pattern of our life to mirror the shape and pattern of Jesus’ life as we bear witness to the gospel—even in an anxious age—and follow.
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