ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
FOURTH SUNDAY OF EPIPHANY, 2008
The Sermon preached by the Vicar at High Mass
The readings were Isaiah 9.1-4, 1 Corinthians 1.10-18, Matthew 4.12-23
A couple of Sundays ago, we were worshipping not here but in the Church of St. Helena in Larnaca in Cyprus. Cyprus; that island on the boundary between two worlds, the Greek and Christian, the Turkish and Muslim. The principal church of Larnaca is dedicated to St. Lazarus, the one whom Jesus raised from the dead. Cypriot tradition believes him to have ended his days there as bishop. Lazarus's second burial place is in the crypt of the church. As we could not be at Con Tweed's funeral, it seemed the right place to light a candle and pray for her. Outside the town, on the airport road, there is a mosque which is the fourth holy places of the Muslim world because it is the burial place of the aunt of the prophet Mohammed. She, the guide book told us, had died when she fell off her horse while taking part in a plundering raid!
The signs of the conflict between these two worlds, two cultures, two faiths, are obvious in an island which has been partitioned since the more recent Turkish invasion in the 1970s. People go to look wistfully across the Green line at their old homes. In one of those ironies of history, the British army finds itself sharing an island with Argentine soldiers who are there with the UN to help keep the peace between Greek and Turk. Their bases are kept a tactful distance apart.
Our Gospel today takes us to another place where cultures meet and sometimes clash.
"When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake, the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken of by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 'Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles - the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.'"
Matthew tells of the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. It begins after the arrest of John the Baptist; an event which foreshadows the eventual fate of Jesus - the same word "Handed over" will later be used of the arrest of Jesus.
Matthew tells us that Jesus withdraws from Judea to Capernaum in Galilee which he makes his base. Nazareth, also in Galilee, had of course been his home. If you were here on the Sunday after Christmas, you may recall the gospel for that day which followed the Holy Family into Egypt and then to Nazareth. If you have a good memory for sermons, you might even recall me speaking about Matthew's theological geography.
Matthew's Gospel is in many ways the most Jewish of the four, Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses, who will in the chapters which succeed this morning's passage sit down on the mountain and teach the new Law of the Sermon on the Mount. He will say that he has been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Yet at the very beginning of the Gospel, Gentile sages come to worship the child born to be king and its very end the apostles are commissioned by the risen Christ to go out and make disciples of all the nations.
Matthew writes for a community which has experienced the Gentile mission become a reality which has transformed the Church from a Jewish sect into a potentially universal community; one in which Jews are already a minority. He writes to help his readers come to terms with that and embrace it. To achieve this, he sets out to show that this had been God's plan from the beginning; foreshadowed in the birth and ministry of Jesus and even in the Old Testament. So he has Jesus carry out the early part of his ministry in the border region "Galilee of the Gentiles" - so-called because of its mixed population, part Jewish, part Gentile. A region where Jews could not but be reminded of the divisions and disasters which had befallen them. Zebulun and Naphtali were two of the lost tribes of the northern kingdom. They had been the first to be overrun by the invading armies from Babylon, be deported and disappear from history; leaving only the memory of loss.
The prophet Isaiah, speaking later to the people of the southern kingdom of Judah, now facing the tide of invasion, proclaims a message of hope and restoration which speaks of God's action in those lost lands of deep darkness. Matthew uses this passage to demonstrate that the ministry of Jesus, and the subsequent mission of the Church, springs from the purposes of God.
"From that time Jesus began to proclaim, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near you.'"
Matthew gives us a summary of the ministry of Jesus and the impact it and his person is meant to have on those who hear and encounter it. Repentance is not simply a feeling sorry for our sins; it means a radical change of our whole lives, a literal turning about. Because he will have lot more to say about this in the rest of the gospel, this is only a sort of headline, a pointer, and he moves swiftly on to the call of the first disciples.
Many of us are so used to hearing this story that we hardly notice what is distinctive about it. Although Jesus was often called Rabbi, and Matthew sees him as the new and greater Moses who fulfils the Law and the Prophets, he was not a rabbi in the professional sense. Nor was his relationship with his disciples the same as that of a rabbi with his pupils. The custom was that students of the Law would seek out famous rabbis to study at their feet. Our fishermen were not in that category at all. They were carrying out the daily tasks of their livelihood, with not thought of abandoning them for a career of religious study. They were not earnest seekers after knowledge. It is Jesus who takes the initiative not them. He seeks them out, not they him. It is he who radically redefines their lifework to be not catching fish but people. They are called not to be religious professionals in the life of Israel, but to share in Jesus' mission to the world. Repentance for them means responding to the call of Jesus and leaving their old life behind for one which they could not have imagined.
Such an idea runs as counter to our culture as it must have done to theirs. We live in an age of consumer-choice - although how real our choices are is a serious question. When we think of faith, we often speak of people as "seekers". People choose whether to believe or not and if they choose to believe, the form of that belief is their choice too. What Matthew points to is an understanding of the mission of Jesus and the Church which is not simply a good cause we might choose to support, a voluntary society we might join, but one to which we are called by God. We may think that we are here because we like it. All Saints suits us. Like the factious and fractious Corinthians, we might choose Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or if we think ourselves above such things, Christ, as if he is our property rather than we his.
The theological truth is that we are here because God has called us to be. He has called us not just for our own benefit but that we might be fishers of people; his messengers to the people of many nations who have come to our city; to this Galilee of the Gentiles.
"Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Jesus calls the fishermen to "follow". This is more than a physical instruction. To follow Jesus is to be his disciple, to learn from him, to be taught in his ways that we might live his life. That is what we are called to do, just as much as the fishermen. That following, the discipleship, that apprenticeship, is seen in the gospel, and it is to be replicated in our lives and discipleship as we seek to follow Jesus. We can see it focused in our gathering Sunday by Sunday as those who are called by God to be his people, who are taught and shaped by his Word, fed and empowered in his sacrament, so that we go out to love and serve the Lord, to make disciples of all nations.