Text: Matthew 4:12-23
Date: January 22, 2023
Event: The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year A
Matthew 4:12-23 (EHV)
When Jesus heard that John was put in prison, he withdrew into Galilee. 13He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali. 14He did this to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
15Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
along the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
16the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light,
and on those dwelling in the region and the shadow of death a light has dawned.
17From that time, Jesus began to preach: “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven is near.”
18As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, since they were fishermen. 19He said to them, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
20They immediately left their nets and followed him. 21Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. Jesus called them. 22Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
23Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people.
The Light Has Dawned
This time of year, I find it really, really difficult to get out of bed while it’s still dark. And that’s not great because the sun rises so late that probably you need to be out of bed to before it’s light out in order to be properly ready for the day. But, one of the things I really do like is just feeling the transition from darkness to light that you get as the sun rises.
The darkness is a bit scary. One of our goals with our recent work around campus is to bring better light to more areas around the church and parsonage. The new lights shine better and more evenly around the parking lot, there are now more fixtures outside the Fellowship Hall for brighter light, and even the paths between the church and parsonage will be getting new lights to make that path better lit. Darkness is scary because you just don’t know what’s there. Will there be a branch or a rock you might trip over? Is a raccoon waiting to jump you for your food scraps you’re taking to the compost bin? You just don’t know.
But that transition from darkness to light is an epiphany itself. You can suddenly see what was hidden. The pathway that just moments before may have been perilous is now trivial. And even if the temperature doesn’t actually rise, there is a feeling of warmth that comes from the sun beginning to shine where it had previously been dark and cold.
All of our readings for this morning use this light/dark comparison to describe the coming of the Savior into the world. We’ll focus our attention primarily on God’s words in Matthew’s Gospel, but all the readings tie together to describe the coming of Jesus as light shining in darkness. And we can see that not only historically as the Light of the World began to clearly shine at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, but we will see it personally as the light of God’s love shines on us and changes us from darkness-dwellers to those who love God’s light and love to walk about in that light.
Matthew gives us a little bit of context for when these events take place: When Jesus heard that John was put in prison, he withdrew into Galilee. This is still very early in Jesus’ ministry, but we should run down a few things that have already happened. Jesus has already been baptized by John the Baptist, as we celebrated last week. John has already directly pointed to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John has already been clear that Jesus must increase while John himself must decrease. And many of John’s disciples have begun listening to Jesus as a teacher, if not yet formally following him full time as his disciples.
I’m very grateful that we are largely done with those compact florescent lightbulbs. The most annoying thing about them was that they needed to warm up. So you would turn on a light, and as opposed to the older incandescent bulbs or the newer LED bulbs, the CFL bulbs would start out dim and then slowly but surely get brighter until it reached full brightness. And as annoying as that was to me in practice, it actually serves as a good picture of what’s going on here with Jesus. If we focus on the light shining, the bulb has been turned on, but Jesus’ brightness is slowly but surely growing.
Jesus relocates from Nazareth to Capernaum. Nazareth was not too far from Capernaum, but Capernaum was right on the Sea of Galilee whereas Nazareth was set in from the sea quite a ways. Capernaum was more directly on trade routes and would have put Jesus in contact with more people than sleepy Nazareth might have. This would serve as home base for most of Jesus’ ministry, in accord with what we had read from Isaiah, that the the region of Galilee, warts of which were given to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali as their inheritance and home, where both Nazareth and Capernaum were, would be where this light would shine.
And we’re told that this light begins to shine primarily in the message that Jesus proclaimed: “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven is near.” Jesus’ message is very similar to what John had been preaching. Jesus picks up the baton from his forerunner to continue and expounds on the work that John had been doing.
We should take a moment to make sure we understand what repentance is. Repentance is a change of attitude about sin. Instead of loving sin or seeking after sin or just being indifferent toward it, someone who is repentant has sorrow over their sin but also trusts that God has forgiven it. Repentance is never doubtful or scared. Repentance is always pointing to God’s forgiveness as the solution to sin and as the motivation to turn away from it. Repentance is the attitude of a thankful heart knowing that it has been forgiven, wanting to express its thanks to God.
John and Jesus’ message was an encouragement toward repentance because it represents a “walking toward the light.” Walking the path of sin is stumbling around in the dark. Living by principles that put you at odds with God will only end in disaster eternally, but probably even in the short-term as well. So Jesus calls to those listening to him to abandon the path of sin and journey on God’s path. Walk toward the light, a path illuminated by the assurance of God’s free and full forgiveness. Jesus, as the one who would make this forgiveness a reality by his life and death in our place, was uniquely positioned to be able to make this call to the light because it was a call to himself.
Sometimes we don’t want to heed that call, though. Maybe a particular sin really has its claws in us. Maybe we like stumbling around in the darkness. Maybe we feel freedom in doing what we want to do regardless of what God says is good and right. And so we hear calls for repentance and we think, “Maybe later…” and we see Jesus shining as the beacon of forgiveness and we avert our eyes and try to ignore him so that we can live as we want to live.
The disciples called to full-time service with Jesus in the midst of this reading can really serve as role models for us. They left not just sin, but the lives they knew behind. The nets and boats and family stay where they were and Peter, Andrew, James, and John go to follow Jesus. They saw the light, they heard his call, and they followed him.
Can we do the same? Can we dedicate ourselves to our Savior to the same degree? Likely, God is not calling us to leave behind life as we know it to follow him. But he does call on us to leave behind sin. And he doesn’t call us to live a good life to be forgiven of past offenses; he calls on us to live a good life because we’ve been forgiven. A bright light that you don’t want to look at still shines. The sun will still be there no matter how buried under the blankets you make yourself. So, too, even when we are staring in the direction of the darkness of sin, Jesus still calls to us with reminders of forgiveness, forgiveness that leads us to repentance.
God has called you out of the darkness and into his light. You and I were those dwelling in the region and the shadow of death, but over us the light of God’s mercy has dawned. My brothers and sisters, let’s not get wrapped up in what we want to do when it is contrary to God’s will for us. Let us follow this light that has dawned over us. Let us repent of our sins—whatever they may be—and follow our Savior. Let us follow the light that has shined in our hearts and removed our sins.
That’s the epiphany we’ve been given, to see that the promised Light has arrived and has rescued us. Let’s follow his love and forgiveness out of the darkness of sin as we journey through this life. And let us ever be looking forward to that eternal life that he has given us—a life with no darkness at all—where we will be surrounded by the light of our Savior’s love forever.
Lord Jesus, keep us in your care now and until you bring us to that glorious light of our true, eternal home. Amen.
