Text: Matthew 4:12-23 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Jesus Begins His Ministry in Galilee
12 Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee; 13 and leaving Nazareth he went and dwelt in Caper′na-um by the sea, in the territory of Zeb′ulun and Naph′tali, 14 that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
15 “The land of Zeb′ulun and the land of Naph′tali,
toward 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 preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Jesus Calls the First Disciples
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 fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zeb′edee and John his brother, in the boat with Zeb′edee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
Jesus Ministers to Crowds of People
23 And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
“Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
With these words, Jesus kicks off his earthly ministry. The starting gun has been fired! The three-year marathon that ends on Golgotha has begun!
I sometimes only half-jokingly say to people that, to me, the art of writing a sermon is that I spend the first half painting myself into a corner and the second half finding a way back out. This week, that problem is compounded by needing to include a brief follow up from last week’s sermon.
Last Sunday, we talked about how Jesus taught his followers a new way of thinking about God. The Old Testament view of God – at least as it has been generally understood – is that of a stern, occasionally even harsh, God. This was the God whose commands always seemed to have an implied and unspoken “or else” behind them. As this verse of a poem I found puts it:
There is a line by us unseen;
It crosses every path.
It is the boundary between
God’s patience and His wrath.[1]
Yet Jesus, as I have always understood Him and His words, tells us that God is even more, even primarily, a God who wants the best for His creation, especially His people, as a Daddy, an ‘Abba, loves his children; and that this is the kind of relationship Jesus invites us – fervently desires us – to have with God.
Regarding the name “Abba,” however, it turns out that I have to issue a correction. As I was scouring the Internet simply to find the word Abba in Hebrew characters, I stumbled across articles stating that the word Abba was not, after all, a word for ‘daddy’ in Jesus’ day; the idea that it was is the product of the fertile imagination of the German theologian Joachim Jeremias, and first saw the light of day in his 1971 book New Testament Theology. However, just to make things really interesting, these articles note that Abba is a word for ‘daddy’ in modern Hebrew. Nonetheless, these articles do emphasize the deeply intimate relationship Jesus enjoyed with his heavenly Father (by whatever name he called him), so the point remains valid that Jesus did and does want us to have that kind of relationship with God.
Thus did Jesus teach His followers. This has been a cornerstone of Christian thought from the beginning. Yet today, the pendulum seems to have swung back the other way. Jesus’ very first words as he begins his mission to Earth seem to lower the boom on us. He calls upon His hearers to “repent.”
“Wait a minute!” you might be thinking. “What’s so bad about that?”
We moderns might just shrug our shoulders and say, “so what?” That word – repent – might seem fairly mild; after all, it’s a word we’ve all heard hundreds, if not thousands, of times throughout our lives. But that little six-letter word is a barrel of dynamite, because, just as dynamite blows up everything around it when it explodes, that word “repent,” when taken to heart, blows up our lives and sets in motion a restructuring which we cannot predict or control. Repentance is serious business.
And that serious business of repentance was the centerpiece of Jesus’ ministry. Everything else – everything else – flowed from that. Achieving that warm and wonderful relationship with Abba (אבא)[2] is simply not possible without a previous “turning around” – which is literally what the words translated as “repent” mean[3] – of one’s attitudes, outlooks, and behaviors.
And here is where I see the connection between the atoning death of Jesus – both Victim and Victor – on the cross and His call to us to make the essential choice between life and death: The gift has been given. The invitation has been issued. But a response is required of us. We need to bring something to the table. And that is an attitude of repentance.
There are times in every person’s life when the comfortable and familiar customs and habits of the past no longer help to get through the day. We may be able to fool those around us, but we can no longer fool the person whose face stares back at us from the bathroom mirror. We’ve all heard of the infamous “mid-life crisis,” and maybe some of you have experienced one. The rose-colored glasses have fallen to the floor and shattered into a thousand useless fragments. The familiar clutter of daily existence no longer shields us. The cold, stark facts of reality can no longer be denied or put off. A change must be made: “Repent.” “Turn from your ways.” “Make the changes to your life that you need to make.” “Make them – make them now, so that you might live.”
We tend to think of these changes as outward changes, changes in behavior, but, as John Piper tells us, they are actually “the inner change that gives rise to new God-centered, Christ-exalting behavior…The first demand of Jesus’ public ministry was, ‘Repent.’ He spoke this command indiscriminately to all who would listen. It was a call for radical inward change toward God and man.
“Two things show us that repentance is an internal change of mind and heart rather than mere sorrow for sin or mere improvement of behavior. First, the meaning of the Greek word behind the English “repent” (metanoeo) points in this direction. It has two parts: meta and noeo. The second part (noeo) refers to the mind and its thoughts and perceptions and dispositions and purposes. The first part (meta) is a prefix that regularly means movement or change.1 So the basic meaning of repent is to experience a change of the mind’s perceptions and dispositions and purposes…This means that repenting is what happens inside of us that leads to the fruits of new behavior. Repentance is not the new deeds, but the inward change that bears the fruit of new deeds. Jesus is demanding that we experience this inward change.”[4]
Inward change. Hmmm.
One issue for me is: If, as I was taught to believe, Jesus came to redeem human life and to make it holy, and if we have, through baptism, been “washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb,” and become part of God’s elect, what “inward change” is necessary? Haven’t we already received it? What more, if anything, can we do?
Quite a lot, as it turns out. Although the act of Jesus did redeem us once and for all, the Apostle Paul’s words in Romans 12:2 should serve as a motto: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
So you could say that repentance is, at least in part, a renewal. So often we think of “repentance” as the deliberate throwing off of bad things we do or think; but adding renewal into the mix helps to recast repentance into something less hard, less scary, less negative.
One of the things we might consider repenting of is something we never think about – repenting of the attitude so many of carry around with us that what we do every day is actually unimportant to God, and of the feeling we might harbor deep down inside that we don’t matter to God – and this in spite of all that we profess and all that we have come to affirm, including everything we’ve just been talking about regarding who Jesus is to us and what he did for us and why.
In the world we live in, it’s very easy for us to get the idea that we don’t count. It seems to happen too often that some other person – a co-worker, a friend, even a casual acquaintance – gets the good job, the kudos, the credit. Someone else seems to always be blessed with the good looks, the good fortune, and the happiness – however you measure it – that ought to come to you. Madison Avenue earns billions of dollars a year telling us that, unless we buy that after shave or perfume, to wear those clothes, or drive that car, we don’t measure up.
Whether or not any of your suspicions are actually true doesn’t matter as much as your perception that they’re true. The resentment begins to fester inside of you, and it builds, and builds, and builds…
This might seem like a lame bit of pop psychology, but what is one of the main sources of the need for repentance, if not the notion that, somehow, in some way, we don’t measure up? Adam and Eve got the idea that God hadn’t given them “enough,” so they ate that fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and things pretty much went downhill from there. This is the how the forerunners of our faith explained the coming of evil and sin into our world – and it begins with that sense of insufficiency. And all bad things that plague the world start with it.
But Jesus gives us the antidote: “Repent.” Don’t follow that hissing whisper of the serpent. Recognize that God loves you just the way you are. Let that help you achieve that experience of change which helps you bear the fruit of new deeds.
Believe that you count.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] https://tbcpdx.org/LDC_sermon_notes/Sermons%20on%20Romans/LDC%20-%20Banished%20by%20God%20Rom.%201.18-32%20-%208.1.1999_ocr.pdf
[2]Refer to: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/factchecker-does-abba-mean-daddy, http://aramaicnt.org/2009/06/21/abba-isnt-daddy-the-traditional-aramaic-fathers-day-discussion/
[3] Greek: μετανοέω, Hebrew: שׁוּב
[4] Piper, John, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/thoughts-on-jesus-demand-to-repent