Drop your Nets

This morning we hear that soon after John is arrested, Jesus sets off to Galilee. He doesn’t do this to avoid confrontation. I mean, we know that ultimately he will confront those who refuse to recognize him and so hang him on a Cross. We also know that he has a mission to accomplish before that final confrontation occurs. And it needs to start in Galilee, apparently. Why?

Because this is part of God’s promise unveiled in the Words of his Prophets, as we heard this morning in our reading from Isaiah: “But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. 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.” 

God’s promise unfolds in a way that overturns everything the world expects of an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing, God; going to Galilee first - into the valley of death, and darkness; a place without knowledge of God - being present, teaching and calling people there first. Why there? Why not to a place where he might more easily gather followers more quickly? If we look through the Scriptures, again and again we hear the answer: he goes to the margins first. The people who need protection, comfort and peace most desperately - who know that they do - and so who are open to receiving it.

We hear Jesus’s own words echoed throughout all the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments: “I have come not to the healthy but to the sick;” those who recognize they are sinners and so who seek to be healed; blessed are those who are humble in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. That’s what we hear everywhere we turn in Scripture: blessed are those who seek first the kingdom of God, for in seeking, they open up and allow themselves to receive God’s mercy, forgiveness and so grace.

Jesus goes to those in the darkest places - not just geographic locations, or marginalized groups - but into the dark places of our souls where we hide our shame, our fear, our grief, our frustration, our longing, our isolation, our doubt, and our desire to be desired, to be loved, to be known. He goes to these places because it is precisely where we are most vulnerable and when we are most vulnerable, that we can no longer hold on to our own vice grip like presumption that we have power and control over our own lives. It’s here that we might be willing to let go and allow God in.

So it’s just here that Jesus comes and fulfills what God says from the beginning, and what is told again through the law and prophets. Remember from the book of Genesis, what God promises to Abraham: “I will make your descendants even greater than the stars in the heavens, I will extend my kingdom beyond your own ancestors.” And so Jesus - in Matthew’s lineage at the beginning of the Gospel, an adoptive descendent of Abraham - begins fulfilling God’s promise right here in what was often considered a gentile stronghold: gentile inclusion. And he goes right for the heart; right into the heart of darkness, into the depths of ignorance of God and its consequences where the average person is made a political tool to be used and discarded by the political and economic powers that dominate the day. 

This ingathering of gentiles takes place not by Israel’s own righteous witness, and not by their literal DNA or blood line, for of course Jesus is not born by human sexual intercourse, but by an act of pure grace; of divine love: this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and so sent his Son into the world - born of a willing and courageous virgin - to be an eternal atonement for human sin.  

His first main act of gathering establishes who this Jesus truly is: the one promised by God, the one baptised by John, upon whom the Spirit descends and the Father speaks, the one who is God himself, come to speak, to teach, to heal, to laugh with, to struggle with, to break bread with, to walk with, even to die with, his brothers and sisters. And in doing so, to reconcile people to himself. 

News of this stunning manifestation of God’s promise come into the world as this man Jesus spreads, and so we hear that as soon as he calls them, Peter and Simon, then James and John immediately drop their fishing nets and follow him. Repent, let go of clinging to the illusion that you know best; that you have God’s capacity to know and see and do what is good and right and just on your gut feel. Let go and seek the infusion of God’s grace not as a one time thing, but over a lifetime of following his life as it unfolds in the Scriptures and draws this whole world we live in through its very characters and events.

No matter where you’re at right now - whether you’re struggling, content and happy, or somewhere in between these things - Jesus is there; a light shining in the darkness of our ignorance and our suffering; a beacon drawing us out of ourselves, out of our own renderings of this world and of our place in it, and into the very life of God. Will you drop the net of your presumptions to follow where it is that God is leading you? AMEN