FINDINGS II


 

Epiphany III - A - January 23, 2011

Matthew 4: 12-23
 


 

Harry T. Cook

Matthew 4: 12-23
 

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he [left the desert place whence he had gone after his baptism in the River Jordan] and withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea [of Galilee] in the territory named for Zebulon and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: "Land of Zebulon, 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 of death's shadow the light has dawned." From that time forward, Jesus began to proclaim, "Change your mind and your ways, for the rule of heaven has come near." As he walked by the sea, he saw two men who were brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea. They were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will have you fishing for people." Immediately they dropped their nets and followed him. As he went on, he saw two other men, also brothers, James and John, sons of Zebedee in a boat with their father mending nets. Jesus called them. Immediately they left the boat with their father in it and followed Jesus. He went throughout Galilee teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the good news of a benign governance and curing every disease and every sickness that existed among the people. (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

 


 

RUBRIC
 

The aircraft has been taxi-ing for three chapters, but its take-off now seems imminent with the calling of co-workers to share in Jesus' preaching and recruitment program. The end of whatever Jesus' subordination to the Baptizer may have been probably came with the arrest of the latter. The progression is that Jesus came to Judea - John's sphere of influence and where he submitted to baptism and presumably became part of the Baptizer's following. Then John found himself in trouble, and Jesus went home - though not ultimately to Nazareth, according to Matthew, but to Capernaum, which was on the northern shore of the Galilean sea about 25-30 miles northeast of Nazareth. Matthew uses that removal to good purpose as a "fulfillment" of Isaiah 9: 1-2 - Capernaum lying, as it does, within the legendary boundaries of Zebulon and Naphtali. Yet by the first century C.E. the area was largely occupied by non-Jews. Mark locates the beginning of Jesus' public career in Capernaum. Luke has Jesus in Capernaum early on.

 

 

WORKSHOP

 

As the Matthean text at hand says, it was in Capernaum that Jesus first began to speak publicly about the need for change in mind and direction (repentance) on the part of his hearers because the "rule of heaven" ("heaven" here being a substitute for "God" as "adonai" is used as the acceptable substitute for the tetragrammaton) is proximate temporally if not spatially. That governance or rule called for doing the business of life differently and will be spelled out in what the English Bible calls "the Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew ch. 5,6 and 7).

 

Jesus gave the impression that he wanted company and colleagues to share in his self-appointed work, but what Matthew wanted us to believe about the calling of Peter and Andrew and later of the Brothers Zebedee is unclear. We do not know what it was Matthew wanted his readers to understand about what he imagined Jesus seeing in them. For one thing, the economic class from which the Jesus of the synoptic gospels is thought to have sprung would have been lower down the ranking than that of the fisherman class, who probably owned their own boats, nets and other gear -- they being entrepreneurs. Maybe in Matthew's imagination Peter & Co. were the first century's version of chamber of commerce or Rotary Club members -- community leaders who could bring along a larger following.

 

There is no explanation of what Matthew meant about the men leaving their nets and boats and going with Jesus. Did they leave for good? Did they continue their small-business enterprise? Did they sell out or simply walk away from it? Had they known Jesus prior to that fateful encounter? Was Jesus so charismatic that he could and did command their full attention and loyalty for the long term then and there? The named disciples are hardly mentioned for the next several chapters as Matthew begins to account for Jesus' work in the Galilee.

 

Of that work Matthew says that it consisted in teaching in the synagogues (in the first third of the first century the word "synagogue" would have referred to an assemblage of Jews and their hangers-on and not necessarily to a building of any sort) where he proclaimed (the Greek, kārussōn, suggests the act and behavior of a herald delivering a "to whom it may concern" message) the good news of a benign and salvific governance (as opposed to that of Rome) while healing disease and infirmity. Matthew would naturally have wanted to connect the memory of Jesus to local synagogues so as to legitimate in the eyes of late first century communities the evolution of what had been Jesus' innovative message -- members of such communities evidently wavering back and forth over the line between continuing post-Temple Judaism and Jesus Judaism.

 

What was the "good news" that Jesus proclaimed? Several commentators favor the idea that, while being grounded in the tradition of Israel, Jesus had argued for a less fettered approach to being faithful in the way that Paul distinguished between the letter and the spirit of Torah. The ethic Jesus will articulate in ch. 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew is law-like (see 5:17) but will go beyond the burden of the law to the freedom of living under its governance can bring. (See 5:38-42.)


 

HOMILETIC COMMENTARY

 

So it is said that Jesus taught and preached in the synagogues and healed people who were unwhole. His teaching and preaching of liberty under the "benign and salvific governance," Matthew would have us believe, was made manifest in the wholeness his presence somehow imparted to the sick. And when we remember that sickness was as often as not understood in those times as punishment or the result of demon possession, we can appreciate that "the good news of the governance" was the inclusion and embrace of the outcast.

 

To synagogue Jews of the late first century, the Jesus Jew or the Gentile was the outcast or at least the outsider -- the one around whom a circle was drawn to shut him out, "heretic, rebel, a thing to flout."* Jesus seemed to be saying that the idea was to master the wit to win and to draw a circle to take them in. It was a mission under that benign and salvific governance to which Matthew's Jesus called his disciples -- a point that would be well taken by any homilist or study class leader with respect to discussing the relevance of the text to the work of a contemporary Christian congregation.

 

* The quotation and subsequent reference here is to the poem "Outwitted" by Edwin Markham. It appears as the first entry in his 1915 volume The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems, Doubleday, Page & Co.


 


 


� Copyright 2011, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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