January 26 2014
Is 8:23-9:3; 1 Cor 1:10-13, 17; Matt 4:12-23
In today’s Gospel story, Matthew tells us about the beginning of Jesus’ career as an itinerant rabbi in Galilee. It occurs after the baptism by John and the testing in the desert and just before the summary of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. It sums up his preaching, which repeated the message of John the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
If I had been standing there in Galilee listening to him, how would I have understood that? Nowadays, “repent” usually means begging forgiveness for being a miserable sinner. But I’m not a miserable sinner. I may be no saint, but I try to behave myself. The word “repent” in Hebrew and Greek—and I assume in Jesus’ Aramaic—is closely related to the word for “turn,” as in “turn around.” Whatever you’re doing now, stop, turn around; look at things a new way, change your attitude. The Sermon on the Mount will get into specifics.
So I should turn around, look at things differently, because the “kingdom of heaven” is at hand. What is the kingdom of heaven? Mark and Luke both call it the “kingdom of God”; scholars tell us that Matthew said heaven because, as a devout Jew, he avoided using the word “God.” Heaven is where we imagine God reigning, with angels devoted to doing his will. The word we translate as “kingdom” actually means “reign,” “dominion,” or “rule.” (“Kingdom” seemed like a good translation during the time of European monarchies.) So I would have heard Jesus saying that God’s reign is at hand—almost here, breaking in, just starting, within reach.
And I would have wondered what it would be like when God himself was the Boss on earth. Of course everyone would do his will, just as the angels do in heaven. I could imagine that he would make sure we all had enough to eat and that the Romans wouldn’t push us around any more.
Since then many people have tried to imagine the kingdom of heaven. In the first century, many people thought that Jesus would return momentarily and rule as a monarch in God’s place. The bad guys would be punished, and all the good guys would live forever. You would want to repent, in order to be included with the good guys.
In the modern world, we no longer accept social structures as a given; we realize that societies and governments are shaped by people. Revolutions and democracy—and civil wars and anarchy—are ways that we change the form of society, for good or ill. If people can shape society, it is our duty to create a good kind of society rather than a bad kind. The kingdom of heaven, in one view, is a really good society that we bring about by our actions under God’s guidance. This view also requires repentance of a sort. At the least, we have to know what a good society is like. In this country, the desire to shape society according to God’s will has led to the anti-slavery, temperance, and civil rights movements, as well as to various religious and government programs to help the poor, the sick, and the old. It has also led to prohibition, the war on drugs, and vicious ideological disputes.
But as I listen to Jesus preaching in Capernaum, I don’t hear him saying that Caesar should feed the poor and outlaw slavery. I hear him telling me to repent, to change my way of thinking. Yes, as a citizen today I have to do my part to move society in what I think is the right direction. But mostly I have to change myself.
It’s not enough to behave well or to be politically correct. I have to cleanse my heart of anger and my thoughts of judgment. I have to be as solicitous of my neighbor’s welfare as my own. I have to be attentive to what God wants me to do, and I have to do it. I have to let God rule me.
None of this is rocket science. Nor was it novel teaching in Jesus’ day. It’s all in the scriptures that Jesus knew. But we have to do it now. The kingdom will be realized only when we all repent—change our lives—and God reigns in our hearts as he reigned in Jesus’ heart. The kingdom is breaking in now. We are needed to make it happen.
In closing, I’d like to share with you a free translation of the Our Father that brings out its original character as a prayer for the coming of God’s rule on earth:
Our father in heaven,
Come, vindicate your name!
Bring about your reign,
Let your will be done on earth
The way it is in heaven.
Give us enough to eat for one more day,
And write off the debts we’ve built up in the past,
As we write off the debts other people owe us.
And do not put us to the test
But rescue us from Evil. Amen.