Matthew 4:12-23
The other day I told Laura that in this grey, damp, dark, long winter season it’s just hard some days to find any motivation. I mean, let’s face it….the Seahawks are out of the playoffs, pitchers and catchers haven’t reported yet, we can’t plant anything (but we can look through seed catalogues), and even when we have a day off, our best companion is likely a good book, or a beloved person, and a cup of tea…and sweatpants. There are also seasons in life when it is hard to find motivation for reasons other than the weather. Times when we feel burned out. Or just burned. Times when we don’t sense a clear path forward. Times when a big project has reached its completion. Or the relationship has ended. Or we have retired unexpectedly. Or we’re just plain tired. Or we can’t, for whatever reason, find hope. In our Gospel reading from Matthew today, Jesus has every reason to lose hope. To watch his motivation fly out the window. Because here’s what’s been happening to him in the Gospel of Matthew. He’s been baptized by his cousin John, followed by 40 days in the wilderness during which he was tempted with all of things that would appeal to anyone who was human. And then the angels came and tended to him. And that’s where our reading for today picks up: “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he went back to Galilee.” It almost seems like a throw-a-way detail. But this is the very reason that Jesus returns from the wilderness, where angels are tending to him, and comes back to an active and purposeful ministry. John, his cousin….John who lept in Elizabeth’s womb when faced with a pregnant Mary….John who foretold the coming Messiah….John who baptized him in the Jordan River….had been arrested.
In Jesus’ time, an arrest by the empire did not bode well. Jesus knew this. John had been arrested for speaking against the empire, for pointing out the flaws of the king. And with his imprisonment, this message of justice and love, that he had been preaching, would be silenced unless Jesus took on the task. So, for the next 22 chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is hard at work.
He begins, in today’s reading, by taking up John’s refrain: Change your hearts and minds….repent….for the kindom of heaven is at hand.
He calls disciples….followers…helpers for the work at hand. Local folks with humble jobs. He calls them to leave their work and their families….their friends and their communities….and follow him.
Then, the text says , he sets out to preach, to teach, and to heal.
Because John is in prison.
Even though John is in prison.
I have to tell you that, for as many times as I have preached on this text…and for as many times as I’ve focused on the way that the disciples leave all they have to follow Jesus….this is somehow the first time I’ve been captured by the news of John’s imprisonment as the catalyst for the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It was the spark to the match. And yet, it must have burned in the heart of the Messiah.
We are being asked to live with and endure a lot as a society in these days. In a world that has become polarized at an alarming rate of speed, we are asked to declare our allegiances without the opportunity for conversation. We are being reminded, appropriately so, that the sins of previous generations still cast a long shadow and will continue to do so until we do what John and Jesus both preached and turn around and repent for our systemic complicity and our silence in the face of it all.
We are reminded, with each new day of the price we pay for allowing guns to be freely accessed. Our elders choose between medicine and food. And inexplicably we are somehow ok with entire neighborhoods of people living on and underneath our streets.
These are just some of the challenges we face as community. We each know, deep without our hearts and spirits, the challenges we face as individuals; those things that keep us awake at night. The promises broken, to us or by us. The regret for things done and left undone. The relationships severed. The child in trouble. The cousin in jail.
It makes me wonder how Jesus could pick up and just carry on. How he could get himself down to the shore and call out to those fisher folk to follow him. How he could muster up the energy to preach and teach and heal when his beloved cousin was in jail.
In this wondering, this text began to offer itself up. It began to open up the possibility that Jesus might have both set out on this very public, very busy, very determined ministry AND still held the pain he felt for John in his heart.
Because this could have easily turned into a sermon that admonished us to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and get out there and win over the world. To follow the example of Jesus and teach, preach, and heal.
But this is the same Jesus who wept at the grave of his friend. This is the same Jesus who defended Mary as she poured out the last of her most expensive perfume onto his hair and feet. This was the same Jesus who encouraged every outcast he met, telling them that they were God’s beloved children. This is Jesus who is known when he speaks our name.
I believe that Jesus carried his cousin John with him in every task we read about throughout those next 22 chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. I believe that every time Jesus retreated in prayer his prayers included the well being of his cousin. I believe that Jesus went about his work with some piece of his heart sitting in a jail cell.
Beloved people of God, in this story, in this detail of this story, we are offered this gift, this lesson, this example….we do not have to choose between vulnerability and courage; we do not have to choose between being “fine” and terrible; we do not have to choose between heartbreak and action. These are false dichotomies We can be bearers of grace in the world even as our hearts are breaking. Even as we bear heavy burdens. Even as we wonder what will happen next.
For far too long we have been told that following Jesus is easy and that to do it right we must be happy clappy Christians. Whoever told us that clearly had not read the Gospels. Almost no one makes it out alive. And the stories are not stories of successful conquering heroes and kings. They are stories of hurting, bruised, wounded people. People who carry around the scars of what life has dealt them even as they go about their business. When conquering kings and religious leaders DO show up in these stories they are almost always the villains.
John’s story does not end well. Jesus knew that it wouldn’t. And so he walked around doing the work he’d been called to do with a heart that ached for his cousin. Oh, the text doesn’t tell us that, but we know him well enough to know that it’s true. He wouldn’t have just forgotten about John and carried on.
Here is what we learn from this one verse, this one detail that we so quickly pass over: Jesus loved John enough to leave the angels who were tending to him and return to Galilee. Jesus loved John enough to take up the work that John had been doing, which was preparing the way for him, for Jesus. So, in our own pain, in our own struggles, in our own sadness, we don’t have to hide our own fears. We don’t have to choose to be either brave or vulnerable. Being vulnerable is one of the bravest things we can do. And today, in this reading, and in this way, Jesus shows us how.
Thanks be to God and let the Church say…Amen.