Sunday, January 26, 2014

Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1-9 (10-14)
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-25

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

God promised that the Messiah would come out of the area known as Zebulun and Naphtali. Matthew recognized the connection when he quoted Isaiah. During this season of Epiphany we are reminded that Jesus came to bring the message of hope to all the nations. He came to be a light in the darkness. He came to bring peace between peoples.

Zebulun was the tenth son of Jacob, the sixth son of his wife Leah. He became one of the twelve tribes of Israel, the tribe that eventually settled to the east of the Sea of Galilee. The name Zebulun has two possible meanings. It can mean “gift.” Leah saw Zebulun as a gift, particularly in her sadness over Jacob’s rejection. It can also mean “honor,” and it stems from the idea that Leah hoped that her sixth child would finally bring her the honor due to her from her husband. The people from the tribe of Zebulun were known to be scribes and they are remembered for their sacrificial willingness to fight for Israel.

Naphtali was the sixth son of Jacob, the second son of Rachel’s servant Bilhah. The tribe of Naphtali settled north of Zebulun, also just to the east of the Sea of Galilee. His name came out of Rachel’s grief over her own barrenness, “with great wrestlings have I wrestled my sister.” When blessing his sons, Jacob said of Naphtali, “Naphtali is a doe set free that bears beautiful fawns.” Naphtali had an independent spirit, set apart by geography and topography as it was from the rest of Israel. The people from the tribe of Naphtali were fighters, and like Zebulun they gave their lives sacrificially for the sake of the whole nation.

The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali settled in the region that came to be known as Galilee. Both these tribes were conquered by the Assyrians, exiled and lost forever. While some people claim to be from the lost tribes, the exile and the intermingling of foreigners with those left behind makes it unlikely that there are still people who can truly trace their roots back to Jacob’s offspring. Perhaps this is what made it a place of darkness. It was a place where Gentiles and Jews lived side by side. Galilee was set apart from the rest of Israel, and they lived their faith as they were able, different than those in Jerusalem.

Isaiah writes, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” During this season of Epiphany, we think about Christ as the light in so many ways, and we identify with Christ as He reached out to the entire world. Our texts for this week show us how God remembers and fulfills His promises in extraordinary ways. Why did Jesus go to Galilee when there were so many opportunities in Jerusalem to teach and transform God’s people? Was He afraid after hearing about John’s arrest? Or was He simply fulfilling the promise, beginning His ministry of light in a place of darkness? See, we would expect the Messiah to focus His attention on the place of power, calling out to the people in authority. How much more can someone get done by going to Washington than they can get done meeting with people on the street corners of a small town? Shouldn’t Jesus have gone directly to Jerusalem and convinced the priests and other Jewish leaders that He was exactly the answer to their prayers?

But Jesus didn’t go to Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, according to today’s Gospel passage, the first thing Jesus did after His baptism and the temptation in the wilderness was move to Capernaum. It was called “the region and shadow of death” due partly because of the number of foreigners. It is there, where God did not shine so brightly as the marble walls of the Temple and the glittering jewels of the priests, that the Light who is Christ could be best seen. It is from there that Jesus fulfilled the promise found in Isaiah.

Jesus didn’t go to Jerusalem and He didn’t call the priests or other Jewish leaders to follow Him. Instead, He saw two brothers working their fish nets on the Sea of Galilee. He called to them and they left their nets without a second thought. His words, “Come ye after me, and I will make you fishers of men” evoked an unusual and immediate response. Can you imagine dropping your work and following someone with no notice? In our day we would think it is irresponsible to do such a thing. Jesus found two other fishermen, James and John, and called them to join Him. They left their boat behind—again an irresponsible thing to do, yet they did so seemingly without thought or concern.

I can say with little doubt that the people in Jerusalem probably would not have followed Jesus with such immediacy. Why leave cushy positions in the Temple where everything they needed was readily available for a life that was unknown with a guy they didn’t understand? Why follow this rising star that didn’t shine the way they thought He should shine? See, it is hard to see the light in a place where the people think the light is shining. The people of Jerusalem looked to the priests and the leaders to teach them about God, to lead them in faithful lives, but the leaders had their own agendas. They were shining a light, but was it the light God promised? Would we leave our cushy (or our not so cushy, but secure) lives to follow someone into the unknown?

The idea that light shines in our darkness is a little scary, too. Which of us really wants to see what’s hidden in the deepest parts of our beings? We all have those little secrets, the sins of our past that we don’t want revealed. We especially don’t want them to be seen by God.

A few years ago I read a story about a man whose home was burglarized. The thieves managed to take his safe. You might think a safe is a good place to keep your valuables because they can’t open it without the combination. But if thieves can carry it, they’ll take it; there are dozens of ways to open locked safes. They don’t care if the safe is damaged, they are looking for the valuable contents inside. Unfortunately for the thieves, the man they robbed was a child pornographer; the safe contained a series of DVDs and videotapes of the man with underage girls. He thought he was safe when he went to the police to report the robbery, but his secret was revealed when the safe was opened. He was arrested and his life was ruined.

I doubt that any of our sins are as bad as that man, but sin is sin. The things we do that go against God’s Word hurt others in ways we might not ever realized. Most of all, our sin hurts our relationship with our God. He knows. He doesn’t need to open a safe to see our deepest secrets, He can see our hearts. It is a little scary to think that having God in our midst will shine light on those hidden things. I’m sure there were many in Galilee that didn’t want Jesus preaching to them. They’d rather live life by their own rules. They aren’t much different than you and me.

When we dwell in His love, the light shines on even our darkest secrets. There may be things we would rather stay hidden, but when we hide those things and reject the truth that we are sinners, then we will end up living in fear of discovery. The joy comes, however, in the reality that even though the hidden things are revealed in Christ, they are also forgiven and we are transformed. In the light that destroys darkness, we can confidently follow Jesus without fear.

See, the second part of the reading from Isaiah says, “For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, thou hast broken as in the day of Midian.” Christ came not to burden us under our sin but to set us free from it. Isaiah talks about Midian because that is where Gideon, with a very small army, defeated those who were trying to destroy the tribes of Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali. Gideon didn’t win that war, God did. It wasn’t the handful of soldiers who saved God’s people, but it was God. The same is true of the One who was the Messiah. It wasn’t the band of crazy people Jesus invited to follow Him, but it was God who shined the light into the darkest place.

We might not want to drop everything to follow Jesus, but we can do so without fear. We make all sorts of excuses. We can’t speak with charisma. We don’t know the scriptures well enough. We are imperfect. We are just ordinary people. But who were the disciples? Were they charismatic? Were they well versed in God’s Word? Were they perfect? No, they were none of those things. Most of they, they were just ordinary men. They were fishermen. They were probably dirty and calloused from hard work when they left to follow Jesus, with a smell that wouldn’t draw a crowd. I’m sure they were not genteel, with language that would shock your grandmother. They may have been faithful Jews, but did they attend the Sabbath services or did they sneak in another chance to catch fish?

Jesus didn’t call the ones who thought they were divinely called to shine the light to the people; He called those who were living in the shadow of death. He calls us out of darkness into His light, too. Unfortunately, we live in a time in which death is everywhere. Of course, we have the reality of death. People get sick and they die. People have accidents and they die. This is natural. It is part of our human condition. But we focus so much on death. Watch the first ten minutes of news tonight and you’ll see stores about the violence in our cities and around the world. Television shows are full of death. I love to watch N.C.I.S., but at the beginning of nearly every episode one of us says, “There’s the dead body. There’s always a dead body.” We say this as if it is no big deal. The most popular books, movies, television shows deal with death and darkness: zombies, vampires, drugs, witchcraft. The most popular videogames allow kids to shoot strangers from around the world, killing them over and over again. Even when we laugh we say, “You’re killing me!” We don’t mean it, but the words of death and darkness dwell on our lips. We need the Light, which is Christ, more than ever.

Jesus chose those fishermen and then sent them into the world to do the job they knew in a new light. He chose you, too. You don’t have to be someone special. You don’t have to do anything spectacular. You have been called into the light so that the light can shine through you, too. It won’t be easy; the revelation of our hidden things can hurt. It can hurt us, and it can hurt those we love. We will suffer the consequences of our past failures. But we can follow Jesus knowing that by His grace we have been forgiven.

The point of our texts this week is to remember that it isn’t about us anyway; it is always about God. He is the One who does the work. He is the One who shines. He is the One who forgives. He calls us to join Him in the work, using our gifts and our resources for His purpose. Unfortunately, we don’t always remember that it is about Jesus. We think highly of ourselves, a lot more like those priests and Jewish leaders than the humble fishermen on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

We run into trouble when we make ourselves the focus, we end up dividing the church like what was happening to the Church in Corinth. Some of the followers were focusing on the evangelist from whom they had heard the Gospel, rather than focusing on the message. They were loyal to Paul or Apollos or Peter rather than loyal to Jesus Christ. There were some very real differences between them. Paul preached to the Gentiles, to the non-Jews. They were gathered around his message because it met them in their experience and understanding. Peter took the message to the Jewish community. He preached to them in a way that helped them juxtapose their heritage and faith to this new understanding of God. Apollos preached the Gospel with a baptism of repentance like John, which is a message with which many people identify.

These men preached to their audience and their audience was drawn by the message they preached. What Paul was writing to the Corinthians, however, is that there was not three different messages. There is only the Gospel. Though they spoke about Jesus in different ways, they were of one mind in Christ. Paul, who is among the greatest of the evangelists and preachers, did not want anyone ‘following him.’ He was nothing; it was the message that mattered. He was calling the people in Corinth to a life following Christ, not man.

I think it is interesting that Paul makes a big deal about not baptizing many people. His point with this statement is that it is not Paul who baptizes, and it is not in his name that anyone is baptized. God does the work of grace that is found at our font and it is in His name that we are baptized. It is in Jesus Christ that we will find hope, peace and grace.

The psalmist writes, “One thing have I asked of Jehovah, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of Jehovah, and to inquire in his temple.” This is what it means to die—to humble ourselves before God. Peter, Andrew, James and John walked away from a life of security to face the unknown with Jesus. God calls us too, inviting us to die to our old life and walk with Christ through the valley of the shadow of death, so that His light might shine through our lives and His grace be experienced by those who still dwell in darkness.