Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
26th January 2014, 11.00am
Matthew 4:12-23 Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. 13 He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14 so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 15 "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles-- 16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned." 17 From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." 18 ¶ As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. 23 ¶ Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
Isaiah 9:1-7 But there will be no gloom for those who were
in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and
the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of
the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. 2 The people who walked in
darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
on them light has shined. 3
You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before
you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. 4 For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken
as on the day of Midian. 5
For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 6
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
Peace. 7 His authority shall
grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and
his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with
righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of
hosts will do this.
I’d
like to begin this morning with a confession.
Well, perhaps not so much a
confession as an admission
- after all, I’m not
sure that I need to feel particularly guilty about this.
But
anyway, I think I should tell you…
that the subject of Geography has
never been my strong point.
I
managed only a D-grade in my geography GCSE,
and I have one of the worst senses
of direction and place that I’ve ever met.
I
would, quite literally, be lost without my sat-nav,
and when I was at university and
shared a house with geographer,
I
might, on occasions, have asked him
how his ‘degree in
colouring’ was coming along.
But
those of you who are more geographically inclined than I am
may be pleased to hear that I’ve had
a change of heart, if not of ability,
and so I’d like to start by showing
you a map:
On
the left, we have a map of Israel,
showing its division into tribal
groupings
as described in the book
of Joshua
following the conquest of the land
at the end of the
wilderness wanderings.
Whether
or not this was ever a genuine political reality isn’t too important,
what matters is that it entered into
the Jewish mind-set as a reality,
and has informed the geo-politics of
the region for the last 3,000 years.
The
map on the right is a close-up of the area around the sea of Galilee,
showing the tribal areas of Zebulun
and Naphthali.
The
ancient town labelled Kinneret, on the northern shore of the lake,
is quite close to the first century
town of Capernaum
where
according to our reading from Matthew’s gospel
Jesus made his home.
I’ll
leave these maps up,
as they help provide a sense of
location
for the events we’re going to be
looking at this morning.
I
also ought to warn you that the sermon will involve,
not just references to geography,
but also some time
travel.
Because
in order to understand what’s going on in Matthew’s gospel,
we’re going to have to turn the
clock back six hundred years,
to the time just before
the Babylonian invasion of Israel,
when the prophet Isaiah was writing
the first part of his book.
This
is because when Matthew describes Jesus moving to Capernaum
following the arrest of
John the Baptist,
he does so using a quotation from
the book of Isaiah.
Matthew
says that Jesus made his home in Capernaum by the sea,
in the territory of Zebulun and
Naphtali,
‘so that what had been spoken through
the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled’ (v.13).
Clearly,
for Matthew, there is a parallel to be found
between the events of the time of
Isaiah,
and the events of Jesus own time.[1]
So
let’s go back to Israel of the seventh century,
back to the time of our Isaiah
reading,
and
see what was going on there,
in order to see how it might shed
light
on what Matthew thought was going on
with Jesus.
The
section of Isaiah which we call chapters 7 to 9
is a block of text where the prophet
is addressing King Ahaz of Judah.
By
this time, the kingdom of Israel had been split in two,
with Judah forming the southern
kingdom
and
the northern tribes including Manasseh and Ephraim
forming the northern kingdom.
Ahaz
was king of the south,
but he had a problem.
You
see, the Assyrians had conquered the northern kingdom,
and had taken possession of the land
from Galilee
all the way down to Ephraim.
Ahaz,
quite sensibly, thought that Judah might be next on their hit-list,
and so he and his subjects were
quite literally shaking with fear (7.1-2).
Isaiah,
however, tries to set Ahaz’ mind at rest,
and tells that God has said that the
Assyrian imperial threat is doomed (7.3-9).
After
a bit of an argument,
God gives Ahaz a sign,
and
tells him through Isaiah that a child has been conceived
whose name will be ‘Emmanuel’ -
which means, as we all know, ‘God is with us’.
Isaiah
tells Ahaz that the child is a sign that King David’s royal line will continue,
and that the northern imperial
powers are doomed.
So,
Isaiah chapters 7-9 addresses a context of pronounced imperial threat,
and here we begin to get our clue
as to why Matthew saw this as a
parallel situation to that of his own readers.
Perhaps
located in Antioch in Syria,
Matthew’s original readers of his
gospel
were a small, marginal
Christian community,
who knew daily the political,
socio-economic,
legal, religious, and
cultural reality
of Roman imperial power
and presence
And
as with Isaiah’s child called Emmanuel,
so Jesus, the Emmanuel of Matthew’s
gospel,
is to be understood as a sign of
resistance to imperial power.
So
far in Matthew’s story, Jesus has been consistently presented
in opposition to the
forces of empire:
In chapter 1, he is named Emmanuel
in fulfilment of Isaiah,
in chapter 2, Jesus escapes from the
Roman vassal king and tyrant Herod the Great
by fleeing to Egypt,
another site of Jewish oppression.
in chapter 3 Jesus is baptised in
opposition to the powers of Rome,
and in chapter 4 he is tempted by
the devil
who offers him his prize
possession of the Roman empire.
John
the Baptist has just been arrested
for his opposition to another Roman
vassal ruler, Herod Antipas.
And
so Jesus withdraws to settle in Capernaum
in Roman-controlled Galilee.
This
isn’t a retreat to safety – Herod Antipas is the ruler of Galilee
Rather, it’s Jesus symbolically
challenging Herod’s Roman-derived power
by going into his
territory to begin proclaiming a different empire
– which he
calls the Kingdom of Heaven.
This
area around Capernaum,
where Jesus made his home,
was very much part of the Jewish
heartland.
It’s
population was Jewish,
and its religion was Judaism.
Which
is why it’s slightly strange that Matthew calls it
‘Galilee of the Gentiles’
Because
it isn’t gentile territory at all,
it’s thoroughly Jewish.
Of
course, the clue is to be found in Isaiah,
because Matthew is quoting Isaiah at
this point,
And
Isaiah calls this area of Zebulun and Naphtali ‘Galilee of the nations’ (9.1)
What
Isaiah means by this
is that Galilee has been ‘occupied’
by the nations;
it’s
a land under the power of, and possessed by,
the Gentile imperialist power of
Assyria.
A
better translation might be to call it not ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’
but ‘Galilee under the Gentiles’.
In
Isaiah’s time it was occupied by the Assyrians,
and in Matthew’s time it was
occupied by the Romans,
It was
still, very much, ‘Galilee under the Gentiles’
So,
when Jesus moved to Capernaum,
in the land of Naphtali, in Galilee
under the Gentiles,
he was still in the
promised land,
but he was in the part of it that
historically
had been thought of as
‘occupied territory’.
The
fact that this area to the north of Galilee
remains disputed territory to our
present day,
gives
us some idea of the political tension inherent
in Jesus, the Jew, moving in to
occupy land
to which Gentiles had
laid claim.
And
Matthew’s naming of Zebulun and Naphtali in his quoting from Isaiah,
is, for those in the know, a clear signal
of God’s sovereignty
that contests and
challenges:
firstly, any Roman claims on
Galilee,
secondly, the presence
of Roman client rulers like Herod
and thirdly, the Roman imperial
theology
which was based on the
worship of Jupiter, the head of the Roman pantheon.
This
is Jesus going head-to-head
with full might and ideology of the
Roman empire.
And
having located Jesus in Capernaum,
Matthew has Jesus echo exactly the
challenge of John the Baptist,
as
Jesus begins to proclaim,
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
has come near’ (4.17)
In
many ways, the concept of the ‘kingdom of heaven’
is the root metaphor and the central
symbol
of Jesus teaching and work in
Matthew’s gospel.
We
need to remember not to think of the kingdom of heaven
as a pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die
reward for a good life
- that’s actually more a
Graeco-Roman idea
than it is a Jewish or Christian one.
Rather,
the kingdom of heaven is God’s eternal rule over all creation,
it is what Tom Wright describes as
‘God’s space’
where full reality exists, close by
our ordinary, ‘earthly’ reality,
interlocking with it and
breaking in upon it.[2]
Jesus
proclaims that the kingdom of heaven is at hand,
and in doing so overtly challenges
the earthly imperial kingdom of
Roman power.
Jesus
proclamation of God’s kingdom
is described by Matthew, again using
the language of Isaiah,
as
being like a great light
dawning
on those who live in darkness,
in the
region and shadow of death.
‘Darkness’
in the Jewish tradition
symbolised that which is contrary to
God’s life-giving purposes.
From
the disordered dark chaos of the void,
before God brought life and light to
the cosmos (Gen 1.2),
to
the Jewish experiences of the oppressive empires
of Egyptian slavery (Ex. 10.21, 22,
14.20),
Babylonian exile (Isa
42.7, 47.5, 49.9),
and Assyrian
conquest (Isa 8.22-9.2).
And
it is this final one,
the Assyrian occupation of the
northern territory in the time of Isaiah,
that
sets the scene for the imagery of darkness,
that we find in our readings this
morning.
By
contrast, ‘light’ is a symbol in the Hebrew Bible for the righteous,
for those who fear the Lord,
those who deal in
justice,
those who
give to the poor.
Darkness
and light, in the Jewish tradition, are not spiritualised terms,
rather they denote concrete
realities
in the experience of the nation of
Israel.
They
speak of political, social, economic, and religious structures,
which can either be aligned to the
darkness of the imperial empires,
whose actions are
contrary to God’s purposes,
or they can be aligned to the light
of God’s kingdom,
when they enable human
behaviour that is God-focussed,
leading to the creation
of his empire of justice and righteousness.
For
Isaiah, in his day, the darkness was the Assyrian empire,
that exercised its rule in Galilee.
For
Matthew, it is Rome’s empire exercising its rule
over the same region.
And
for both Isaiah and Matthew,
the language of darkness speaks of
human actions,
through the structures
of empire,
that reject God’s call for a
transformed society,
and oppose the call to
repentance that the prophets bring.
So
John the Baptist, the prophet who challenged Herod to change,
and proclaimed repentance and the
dawning kingdom of God,
found
himself arrested and executed.
It’s
no coincidence that Jesus echoed the exact words of John’s call to repentance,
and did so by going to the heart of
the Roman occupied territory
to
live in the midst of the Roman imperial structures
that
were dominating the land
in
opposition to God’s will for his people.
Jesus
takes upon himself the mantle of the recently deceased John,
and embarks on his own mission
to oppose and expose the
darkness of the imperial powers
that were dominating the
world.
And
the message of Matthew’s gospel
is that the darkness does not get
the final word.
Darkness
in the biblical tradition is always subject to God’s power (Isa 45.7):
light, an image of God’s life and
saving power (Ps 27.1) dawns,
and rescues people from
darkness,
whether it be the political
oppression of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon or Rome,
or the personal
experience of misery, depression, hunger or affliction.
Light,
for Matthew as for Isaiah, means God’s reign
of justice, righteousness, and peace,
which breaks the ‘rod of
the oppressor’ (Isa 11.4-7).
So,
Matthew’s use of Isaiah’s imagery of light
coming to those who live
in darkness,
to describe Jesus going to live in
Capernaum
in Galilee under the
Gentiles,
is
him offering a strongly politicised
theological understanding of Jesus’
mission.
The
way Matthew sees it,
Jesus mission is a mission to
overthrow the imperial powers
that
dominate the world
and to shine the light of the
inbreaking kingdom of heaven
in
the midst of those who live
in
the deep darkness of oppression.
In
an interesting first century parallel,
the imperial poets Statius and
Martial
used imagery of light to praise the
Roman Emperor Domitian,
who may have been the emperor at the
time Matthew was written.
But
the ‘light’ of Matthew 4.16 is not the light
of the presence of the Roman emperor
who ‘rules’ Galilee through his
puppet king Herod.
Roman
rule, the way Matthew sees it, is part of the problem,
it is the ‘darkness’ and the ‘shadow
of death’
under which ‘Galilee of the
Gentiles’ now suffers.
Jesus’
goes to Galilee as the one commissioned at his baptism to make God known,
as the one whose task is to
transform darkness into light.
And
so, having moved to Galilee under the Gentiles,
the stage is well and truly set for
the next phase of Jesus ministry
of bringing light into
the imperial darkness of the world,
and his public ministry is about to
begin.
So
Matthew tells us of Jesus calling his first disciples,
not just to follow him in terms of
personal discipleship,
but
to follow him in his mission
to expose and ultimately overthrow
the darkness of human imperialism
that has manifested
itself down the millennia
as Egypt, Babylon,
Assyria, Rome and so many other guises
through to the
political and ideological empires of our own day.
Wherever
humans construct their empires of darkness,
wherever we create powers that
oppress the earth and exploit its people,
Jesus
does the same thing as he did in Northern Israel,
he moves into the heart of the
empire,
to bring the light of his
proclamation of the in-breaking kingdom of heaven.
And
he still calls followers to join him,
he still calls ordinary people,
drawn from among those
who live under the empire,
to leave their old lives,
and
to join him and follow him
in his ongoing mission
to transform the world
by bearing faithful witness
to the reality of the
alternative kingdom of heaven.
Today,
we have celebrated as Graham was baptised,
and we have heard and witnessed him
making his public commitment
to revolutionary people
of Christ.
The
kingdom of heaven continues to break in upon us,
even as we live in the midst of
empire.
It
may not be Rome, or Assyria, but the empires of our own day,
the empires of nationalism, of global
capital, of religious ideology,
are every bit as real, and every bit
as oppressive.
And
we ordinary people, who live in the midst of the empires of this world,
need to hear the good news
that it was in Galilee
under the Gentiles,
that
Jesus proclaimed the good news of God’s empire.
It
was as a light shining in a land of darkness,
that the kingdom of heaven started
to become reality.
Through
his ministry, people were healed of their woundedness,
and the controlling powers that
blighted their lives were cast out.
The
empire was resisted
and those who were oppressed were
brought to liberation.
The
mission of Jesus, which began in Capernaum, in Galilee under the Gentiles,
runs through the gospel to the cross
and through resurrection
to our own day.
It
was, and still is, a mission of subversive teaching and action,
which consistently challenges all
idolatrous imperial claims.
And
along the way, beginning with James, and John, and Andrew, and Peter,
Jesus continues to create a
community
with distinctive socioeconomic
practices
that
recognises and anticipates
the full establishment of God’s
kingdom.
When
we pray, ‘your kingdom come, on earth, as it is in heaven’
we join ourselves to the kingdom of
heaven, which is at hand,
and we play our part in Jesus
mission of liberation for all.
This
is gospel, this is good news,
because the people who sat in
darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region
and shadow of death,
light has dawned.
