ThirdSundayafterEpiphanyA, Sullivan Park Care Center,
January 26, 2014 by Sr Annette Fricke, OP
The sequence of events is just a bit
muddy as one of my companions pointed out.
John’s gospel is not the same and that was the gospel reading last
Sunday. This Sunday, we switch back to
Matthew. Matthew, unlike John, tells the
story of a temptation in the wilderness after baptism. Matthew seems to further
test and purify Jesus prior to ministry, bringing forth from many temptations,
a pure, strong human, ready for anything that may come. It is not unlike the rituals of some Native
American tribes who do this sort of thing with young men as a rite of passage
into manhood in which you must prove yourself.
In the same way, the ancient liturgy of the church follows this notion
of a prayer for purity before God prior to the prayer of confession. This is
also implied in the Catholic rite where just prior to communion the people say,
“Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be
healed.”
Each of the
gospel writers had something slightly different in mind when they made the
decision to write about Jesus. Just as
the gospel of John talks about Jesus as the light of the world, the writer of
Matthew is also interested in presenting his gospel in relationship to Old
Testament prophecy. In fact, he uses a
passage from the Old Testament that we read today, “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.”
Matthew is not so concerned about who Jesus is as much as what Jesus
does and teaches. Matthew identifies
Jesus as the one who brings light and life to people sitting in darkness.
The Roman
government had certainly put a cloud of darkness on all who would practice
their religion. The Romans wanted strict
adherence and allegiance to the emperor of the Roman Empire only. Those who did not obey the emperor were
actually called atheists because in their minds, the emperor was the only
god. The government was so strong that
you can see why Judaism longed for a Messiah who would set them free from its
bondage. The people only partially
comprehended what Jesus was all about and following Jesus came at different
times in Jesus’ ministry. It began with
John the Baptist.
We take up
the narrative again with the occasion of the imprisonment of John the Baptist. One ministry squelched; another begins. John the Baptist has been imprisoned, so
Jesus follows the pattern presented by John the Baptist. He calls for repentance, “Repent for the
kingdom of heaven has come near.” What
should I do with my life? The same thing that John the Baptist taught; With God’s
help, I should turn it completely around. Someone even greater than John the
Baptist is here, telling people the same thing.
It is Jesus and he wants me to live fully into his kingdom. John the Baptist is no longer on the
scene, but the ministry he began is now being taken over by Jesus and Jesus
says that we should repent.
We should
repent because it prepares us for ministry to and for others. It helps us to get outside of ourselves and
our own ruminations, our own preoccupation with our problems in life. We all have our struggles, but we die spiritually
if we stay in them or disengage from those around us, not connecting with
others.
Barbara
Brown Taylor describes it this way, “The wisdom of the Desert Fathers includes
the wisdom that the hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor
as the self--to encounter another human being not as someone you can use,
change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince, or control, but simply as someone
who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it. All you
have to do is recognize another you ‘out there’--your ‘other self’ in the
world--for whom you may care as instinctively as you care for yourself. To
become that person, even for a moment, is to understand what it means to die to
your ‘self.’ This can be as frightening as it is liberating. It may be the only
real spiritual discipline there is."
To begin his
ministry, John the Baptist chose the desert. Similarly, Jesus’ ministry does
not begin in Jerusalem or any other large Jewish city. We are told that Jesus goes to Capernaum,
which is a small agricultural and fishing town.
He simply was strolling around the Sea of Galilee, saw a bunch of men
out fishing, and invited them to follow him.
This is not an earthly king with all the pomp and circumstance of one
who lives in high places and sits on a throne for consultation with his
underlings. He didn’t call the disciples
to be his subjects. We hear nothing of Jesus asking the disciples to call him,
“Your royal highness.” Rather, Jesus comes to them as a normal, average person
and calls these average persons of the society of his day to be his disciples. They
are ordinary people doing ordinary things, living their lives as providers for
their families in the humble occupation of fishing, probably in that time what
we would now call a blue collar job. He does not use lofty words; he calls them
with simple words that anyone can understand. It is likely that the attraction
of the first disciples to Jesus had something to do with knowing that they were
on the bottom rungs of society. They
were thinking, “Here is a leader who will help us to overthrow the oppressive
Roman Government.” Think about Israel
and Judah’s prophets in the past. This
is what they were about. They sought government
and religious freedom, even the Gentiles did because the government oppressed
all the people through taxation. That
was the initial attraction to Jesus. He
ignored what they were likely thinking and said to them in plain language, “Follow
me.” “Follow me and I will make you fish
for people.” In other words, “I will
teach you how to make disciples.”
Jesus had a
new idea, a dream of what life could be.
He did not go to the rich and the elite.
“As a Jew in Roman-controlled territory, Jesus locates himself among the
marginal, with the poor not the wealthy, with the rural peasants not the urban
elite, with the ruled not the rulers, with the powerless and exploited not the
powerful, with those who resist imperial demands not enforce them. He continues
the gospel’s preference for the apparently small and insignificant places and
people who, nevertheless, are central for God’s purposes.”[i]
You, despite
where you feel you are among the people of this earth, are central to God’s
purposes. You may feel that you are
totally ignored, insulted, abused, used, forced to comply with all the needs
and wants of the nursing staff and the upper rankings of this facility. You may feel that all the pills, shots and
testing of your bodily fluids are for unfounded or made up reasons. You may feel that all the testing and prodding,
the needles, wipes, and showers have no real purpose. You may, like Jesus’ first disciples, feel
oppressed by the institution or the government.
And, you may be right. Jesus came
for you. Jesus came to set you free from
that oppression, perhaps not quite in the same sense in which you hope. Jesus came that we all may be one, regardless
of class distinction or other social stratum or status. Jesus came that we might have dignity as the
sons and daughters of God who live with equal status in his kingdom which is
here and now. Now is the time to work
for justice and healing for all people. Amen.
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