January 22, 2022 + Rev. Dr. Brooke Petersen + Matthew 4:12-23 + Third Sunday After Epiphany
Today is January 22nd, about three weeks into this new year 2023. I imagine many of you, like me, started 2023 with some aspirations for what this year might look like, perhaps you wanted to spend some more time joyfully moving your body, or getting outside to breathe fresh air everyday, or you wanted to commit to reading through a set number of books this year, or spend more time with your phone hidden away in some part of your house. The new year often feels like a fresh start, and with the close memories of COVID lockdowns and uncertainty about how the world might look this year, next year, or anytime in the future, I think a lot of us are looking for something fresh. Something new to set our sights on to remind us that the days don’t have to stretch before us one as same as the other. We can change, even if we don’t know how the world will. We can be different, we can do hard things.
Except, of course, even the New York Times reported this week that by the end of January most of us will forget that fresh start, and most of us will drop those intentions before we start February. We will set intentions for all we want to do, and most of us won’t do them for much longer than a few weeks. And, honestly, despite how sometimes our faith can get roped into the story of how we can commit to becoming a different kind of people, it is a pretty big stretch to find anything in our scriptures that suggests that you need 23 goals for 2023. Despite the way it is sometimes co-opted by culture, the stories of our faith aren’t wellness goals or places for resolution. But, if you listened closely to the story from the gospel of Matthew for today, I think you might recognize that it offers us a small glimpse into what it might feel like to focus less on the things we might do and more on what our lives might become.
If you read the gospel too fast, hoping, of course, to get to the good stuff, you might just miss the connection all the way back to the reading from Isaiah today. For Matthew, this is sort of like the place of a footnote, the kind of thing that takes up a minor place on the page, but might have some pretty enlightening information if you will just slow down and check it out. The writer of the gospel of Matthew just loves referencing texts like this one from Isaiah, moments of prophecy that confirm that Jesus Christ really is the one that the people have been waiting for. You can usually get a sense that the writer of Matthew is on one of these kicks as soon as you read something like, “so that what had been spoken through, insert prophet here, might be fulfilled.”
And what exactly is that for today? Well, it is somewhat obscure reference to two little places in the ancient world, Zebulun and Naphtali. Zebulun and Naphtali, not quite the places one would normally seek to find on a map. These are actually the homelands of two tribes of Israel, named after two sons of Jacob. Both of these tiny territories were violently occupied by a long list of Assyrian kings, shuffled back and forth and eventually taken into captivity. They were not the homes of the rich or powerful, Zebulun and Naphtali were the places where you lived and were owned by those more powerful than you. In Isaiah, this prophecy is a reminder to the people that the rulers and the powers that have kept them under their thumb are not the true rulers of their fledgling nations- the only ruler with ultimate power is God. The one who will restore them, who will shine in their darkness is none other than their God.
But it seems to be quite a long time before Jesus ends up making a place for himself in Zebulun and Naphtali, about 700 years since Isaiah prophesied that light was going to start shining in what only seemed to be darkness. 700 years of regular life that unfolded after Isaiah prophesied that the world would look different, and that God was doing something even if it seemed lost in the shadows. And even now, as the passage unfolds, we know that Jesus is in Capernum, a land also occupied by Roman authorities, and throughout his ministry we hear again and again a reminder that it is not the authoritarian rulers at the center of the story, because God is doing something new, breaking the chains of injustice and calling the people to freedom and liberation.
Our text begins with this reference to Zebulun and Naphtali, but that isn’t the only orientation we might notice. Because this passage comes on the heels of Jesus being driven out into the wilderness after his baptism where he was hungry and tired while he was tempted for 40 days. And as he leaves that wilderness place, we hear that John the Baptist, his cousin and friend, has been taken by the son of Herod and thrown into prison. The same John the Baptist who was there at his baptism, who proclaimed the ministry of Jesus, who told the people who Jesus was going to be, that he was making a way for them, and that his would be a story of liberation for all people, this John the Baptist is as good as dead, because over and over again now and 700 years in the past, when the rulers feel the threat of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom, the empire always strikes back.
It's a lot, everything that leads up to the main movement of our story from Matthew’s gospel. There is a reference to a 700 year old prophesy, and a reminder that the kingdom of God comes at a cost. There is fulfillment of a dream and grief at the loss of a prophet and friend. And with this in the background, we hear that Jesus goes down to the Sea of Galilee, and there, Jesus sees Simon and his brother Andrew fishing, because, of course, they are fisherman, and once he issues the call, they immediately drop their nets and follow him. Then, they wander a bit further down the beach and come upon James, his brother John, and their father Zebedee and immediately, they drop their nets and follow. We don’t know what else they left behind- if they left mothers and siblings, and partners and children, all we know is that they got up, with this one question and left. They leave behind fishing in order to travel with Jesus as he teaches and heals. They leave behind their social nets, their safety nets, all the nets that they have found and made for themselves in order to do this new thing. The passage moves from things that take 700 years, to people who hear one word and drop everything to turn around and do something different. Well, almost everyone, of course. Because, even as Simon and Andrew, James and John sign on to this fishing of people project, Zebedee is left behind in the boat.
I wonder about Zebedee, if he was always like this, if he was a waiter. A watcher, a thinker. If he was one of long term projects. I wonder if he didn’t follow because he was tired, or he had other things on his mind, or if he thought his sons would return soon. I wonder if he was amazed or dismayed, confused or uncertain. I wonder if he wasn’t a person of dramatic transformation, if he was one who was slow to change, or if what he most knew was that God was doing something, always had been doing something among his people, and if he heard Jesus calling his sons and knew, despite how hard it might be, that his call was to stay back, to keep fishing, and to make sure nothing was going to stand in their way.
Perhaps when the new year dawns and we start to make our plans and set our intentions and imagine that this year things might be different, it is really because what we most want to feel is that all of this, what happens here, what happens in our families, what happens in our work and in our neighborhoods has a point. That it isn’t just the turning of wheel day after day. We want our work and our lives to have meaning. We want to be called in our boats to something extraordinary, or at last to know as we wait behind that we have a purpose. That our days matter to something bigger than ourselves.
But hear this, when we read this passage from the gospel of Matthew, this is our reminder that we are already called, in a variety of different ways, dramatic and not. We are already called to something bigger and wider than we can even begin to imagine. Intentions and goals often tell us what we might do, but God tells us, right here, what we might be, in dramatic and everyday ways, who we might be in the world, and that, my friends, is an entirely different vision of how our lives might be oriented.
Because God calls these people out of their regular lives, out of their day to day work, and calls them to orient their lives around relationships. This isn’t about a list of what they would do, but rather who they would become, fishers of people, healing the sick, proclaiming the good news, to care for the world and the people in it that God so desperately loves. And that calling, that calling is for you, too. Because just as God called out to James and John, Andrew and Simon, just as God called Zebedee, God also calls to you in your baptism, calls to you in this regular life, and invites you to orient your lives around loving the world and the people in it, to shine light into places of darkness, to proclaim freedom where people feel lost and afraid, to care for those who aren’t sure that they are worthy of care, to be the presence of God in a world that all too often feels loveless and scary.
Remember Zebulun and Nephtali? And that 700 years between the word of Isaiah and the fulfillment, according to Matthew of that prophesy? I imagine, that every one of those 700 years was filled with ordinary yet extraordinary people, like you, like me, called into relationships that built one on the other until this very moment. Sometimes we are called out of the boat and sometimes we still tend the nets inside, but in each of those places, God is doing this slow, beautiful thing. Filling the world with love through you. Giving ordinary days glimpses of holiness because you are here, becoming the answer to prayers and prophesies.
You, in your ordinary life, in your 2023 life are called to be shaped this way, your life matters in that it is woven into this story of what God is doing in the world, what is unfolding around us, even if it feels yet unclear. You in your ordinary life are called to this extraordinary purpose, even if that extraordinary still involves tending the boat while the drama happens off-screen. You, in your friendships and your families, are a part of this kingdom come near. God, who created all of this, created you as a vision of grace when it is most needed, of love where it is most unclear, of hope when it feels most hopeless, you are the sign that God is still doing something, that even if the costs are high or the waiting feels too long, that the story is not yet over. Because God is here. In you. In who you are and who you will become. Amen, and thanks be to God.