Sermon - 3d Sunday After Epiphany (1/26/2020)
Is. 9:1-4; Ps. 27:1, 4-9; 1 Cor. 1:10-18; Mt. 4:12-23
Every year on Christmas Eve, we read the prophecy from the ninth chapter of the book of Isaiah, starting with verse two: “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. . . . 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.” The child that will grow up to be a king who brings justice for the poor and, most importantly, peace. “The yoke of their burden, you have broken. The boots of the trampling warriors and all the garments stained with blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.” It is, almost every year at Christmas, no matter where we are and no matter what is going on, a prophecy of great comfort: This child will bring justice and peace.
But today, we read this prophecy starting not with the second verse, but with the first verse. Where Isaiah says that his prophecy, at least when it was first spoken, was not directed toward just any people who walked in darkness, but a very specific people. Isaiah did not initially have in mind just any land of deep darkness, but a particular land that was at that moment, a bit more than 700 years before the birth of Jesus, living in deep darkness. the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, which Isaiah called “Galilee of the Gentiles.”
Now, the “land of Zebulun” and the “land of Naphtali” probably doesn’t mean anything to you, and I must confess that when I started preparing for this Sunday’s sermon, I couldn’t have told you where those places were, so I went on Google and looked for a map. And that map turned out to be quite illuminating, so I put one in the bulletin this week next to the gospel reading, on page 8. This is a map of the territory of each of the 12 tribes of Israel during the time of Isaiah, and you can see right at the top: Asher, then Zebulun, then Naphtali. And the little lake that you see on the eastern border of Naphtali is the Sea of Galilee.
Now, by the time of Jesus, more than 700 years had gone by since the time of Isaiah. There had been conquests and exiles and the old boundaries of the 12 tribes had been obsolete for centuries. But Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up, would have been in the southwest corner of what was once the territory of Naphtali. And according to today’s gospel reading, after John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus left that area and returned home to Galilee, where he began his public activity in a small fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, called Capernum. Which is also in the land of Naphtali.
So Matthew, who as you know is always looking for Old Testament stories that illuminate the story of Jesus, draws the connection between the beginning of the public activity of Jesus in Capernaum to the prophecy of the ninth chapter of Isaiah: “He left Nazareth and 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: ‘Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—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.’”
But is it just a coincidence, or perhaps divine providence, that the specific land that Isaiah had in mind in his Christmas Eve prophecy is the very same land where Jesus grew up and began his public activity? Possibly, but one of the things that we’ve been seeing this year in our readings from the gospel of Matthew is that there’s often a deeper significance to the Old Testament references that Matthew makes. And that turns out to be the case here.
And to see that we need to ask, why is it that in the time of Isaiah the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali was a place of deep darkness and gloom? Well, you can see the problem immediately if you take a look at the map again. In the time of Isaiah there was tremendous anxiety and dread about a specific threat of war: an invasion from the pagan empires to the northeast. And you can see on the map that the hostile armies from the north would attack first in Naphtali, and then in Zebulun. So these were the places on high alert, where the threat of invasion and the reality of violence was an everyday matter. In chapter 8 of Isaiah, right before this prophecy, this is made explicit. The people in Zebulun and Naphtali were constantly vulnerable to war.
They would plant their crops each spring, not knowing who might come through and set the fields on fire that year. Not knowing if some army would pass through, living off the land, taking all their crops before the harvest. Not knowing if some raiding party would come and kidnap their children and take them as slaves. (You may remember the story of Naaman the Syrian general, who was cured of leprosy by the Israelite prophet Elisha, how his wife had an enslaved Jewish girl who gave him the idea of going to Elisha for healing – that girl was probably captured from this area in one of these raids.) And this was not just a one-time threat, but something that went on year after year, decade after decade. The people of Naphtali and Zebulun were traumatized people.
I think we can all relate, in our own ways, to what that experience must have been like. Most of us are old enough to remember the days and weeks after 9/11, when every sound of planes overhead or loud bang produced great anxiety and stress. Some of us have been to places that have experienced war for decades, in Iraq or Afghanistan, or even closer to home in communities where it’s not uncommon for teenagers to speak of two, three, four, six classmates or friends who have been killed by gun violence. And there are many other kinds of experiences that produce that constant sense of never being safe. It can take many forms, and I suspect that many of us can name experiences like that in our own lives.
Living with that kind of stress takes a toll on people, and on communities. Isaiah says that the people of Naphtali and Zebulun had turned inward, preoccupied with the past, trying to communicate with their deceased ancestors who lived back when, it seems, life was better, hoping that connecting with the past would somehow make Naphtali great again. And Isaiah tells the people that trying to cope with trauma in this way does not work, it produces great distress and hunger, it leads people to curse the king who fails to save them and to curse God. “They will turn their faces upward, or they will look to the earth,” Isaiah says at the very end of chapter 8, “but they will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.”
“But,” Isaiah continues, as we turn to chapter 9 and the beginning of our reading today. “But there will be no gloom for those in anguish. Yes, in the former time, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali were suffering, but now God will make the people of the Sea of Galilee glorious.” God will send a righteous king who will bring peace forever, who will completely destroy what binds and oppresses you. So, Isaiah says, don’t try to bring back an imagined past, that just leads to conflict and bitterness and gloom. Look instead to what God is about to do and the deliverance that God is about to bring – it is better than you can imagine, it is healing and peace for traumatized people.
This is how Matthew wants us to see the beginning of the public life of Jesus: as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s promise that God will do something new and make possible a peace and a deliverance that is beyond what we can imagine. As the fulfillment of Isaiah’s word spoken to a people cracking under the pressures of life, turning in on themselves in an endless cycle of bitterness and despair: Don’t think that you can bring back what you imagine to be the good old days by your own efforts, but look to the utterly new and completely different peace that only God can bring.
And so, Matthew says, Jesus began to proclaim that God’s kingdom had come near and that people needed to change their way of thinking and see how God’s peace was finally becoming present. Matthew then tells us that Jesus called his first disciples, the fishermen who abandoned their nets to follow him. Matthew leaves out so many of the details of this story that the other evangelists include – he tells of no miraculous catch of fish, or of Peter saying “Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man.” No, the only details Matthew includes is that the new disciples left their fathers, left their fishing boats, left behind their old lives and embraced the new thing that Jesus was doing – exactly what Isaiah had told the war-weary peoples of Galilee to do seven centuries before. And Jesus went from town to town, Matthew says, “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” Jesus went to the traumatized people, told them that the peace of God is now here, and then delivered them from their traumas.
What a word this is for us! For a traumatized people turned in on itself, wishing we could make ourselves great again, cursing our leaders and not looking to God, spiralling down in a seemingly endless cycle of bitterness and deep gloom. For this people in particular, Isaiah says, Jesus says: God’s kingdom of peace is nearer than you can imagine, change your minds and your hearts and learn to see it, let go of the past and embrace the future that God is opening up to you right now, see every disease cured and every sickness healed, feel the rod of your oppressor snapped and broken, live the life that God created you for and be safe in God’s hands. Know the gift of God that will never let you be the same again. Hear the call once given to the traumatized people of ancient Naphtali and Zebulun, the call once heard by fishermen and the sick and troubled people of Galilee, the call to see the presence of God in our midst and never be the same.
(Followed by the hymn of the day, referenced in the last paragraph: Will You Come And Follow Me?)