Living the Kingdom of God – Matthew 4:12-23

A text – Matthew 4:12-23

¹² Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. ¹³ He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴ so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

¹⁵ “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by 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 proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

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 fishers. ¹⁹ And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” ²⁰ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹ As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. ²² Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

²³ Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

A reflection:

(I’m using kingdom in the title and the reflection for this passage because our Bible text uses it, but not to say God is a typical male ruler – a king – one could substitute the word reign instead, maybe…)

In Matthew’s gospel we first learn Jesus’s lineage, then meet his father and mother, see the Magi come to worship him from another land, then see Herod the Great so angry and power-protecting that he orders all infants killed in Bethlehem, resulting in the holy family disappearing into Egypt for a time. Jesus, it seems, did not have an ordinary infancy. When the time was right, the family moved north once again. When Jesus began his ministry, he came from Nazareth to the wilderness to Galilee and mades his home in Capernaum, a Roman town.

I don’t know about you, but when I was in Sunday School I never knew the fraught state of the world Jesus came into at his incarnation. I never realized the diversity of people he encountered (even at the time of his birth!) and the movement he experienced from region to region. It takes his words out of the clean vacuum of “Bible verses” I was used to, with no outer historical context, and places both his words and his deeds into a complex world of politics and immigration and movement of all sorts. He lives and proclaims God’s kingdom. Jesus heals people and preaches amid the swirl of human movement and suffering and joy. He lives in fraught times. Just like you and me.

And he builds a cohort of disciples – extremely different from one another, including fishermen, a zealot, a tax collector – people who might never be seen together but for whom Jesus was the glue holding them together. And as this group developed, our passage tells us, Jesus went throughout all of the region teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the coming near of the Kingdom of God. He did more than proclaim – he cured every disease and sickness among the people, one person at a time. He brought the kingdom visibly near. He lived the kingdom of God into the world. That is what he calls us to do every day – proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of God and live it into being in our little circles of life. One bit of the Kingdom every day to the many and varied people we meet. What would that look like for you? For me?

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for your Son, Jesus, who came to demonstrate your Kingdom among us. Help us to remember our calling to live your Kingdom among our friends, neighbors, coworkers, and the strangers we encounter each day. Amen.