Light dawns over Galilee

Isaiah 9.1b-4 In Galilee of the nations the people have seen a great light.

1 Corinthians 1.10-13,17  ‘I appeal to you that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you.’ 

Matthew 4.12-23 ‘Jesus went to Capernaum so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.’

The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
    on them has light shined.

Isaiah 9.4

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Light dawns over Galilee and from the shadows, one preaches, ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’.

And he calls.

Calls fishermen first, to re-direct what they catch, to draw others to the light and be bearers of light, to witness to the One True Light who has come into the world.

Jesus, hearing the news of the death of John the Baptist, and coming straight from his own battle with Satan in the wilderness following his baptism at the hands of John, ‘withdrew’, we read ‘into Galilee’,

Galilee is the land which he knows best, and from Nazareth (where he grew up) he goes to live in Capernaum.

But this withdrawal is not an escape to a comfortable place, Capernaum-on-Sea.

The Greek word for this withdrawal is anachoreo from which the English word ‘anchorite’ comes.

The word ‘anchorite’ is not well known.

An anchorite is a hermit, someone who lives a solitary life - Dame Julian of Norwich was one.

The anchorite is anchored not in the ways of the world - the competition, the hurry, the jostling – but anchored in something deeper, in the depths of God.

It was to Galilee that Jesus withdrew, not to escape but to begin to fulfil his mission and purpose.

Echoing the prophecy of Isaiah, he withdraws so as to redeem.

Capernaum, in the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, adjacent to Galilee, is not chosen accidentally.

If you know Genesis well, or Joseph and his Tecnicolor Dreamcoat you'll know these names. 

They're brothers, Joseph's brothers, sons of Jacob, who formed the 12 Tribes of Israel

And these northern territories – Zebulun and Naphtali - named after the two brothers, were the first to fall to Assyrian conquest, and thus were in darkness.

Now they are the first to experience the dawn of restoration through Jesus: a reconquest by the power of light.

Zebulun and Napthali are not the Judean heartlands, they are the peripheries, they are where Jesus centres his mission and his proclamation - echoing John the Baptist - of the kingdom of heaven, calling for repentance.

Zebulun and Napthali, first oppressed, are in the vanguard of the great reversal brought by Christ the Light.

And the prophet Isaiah – in our first reading - speaks of the ‘Galilee of the Nations’, of the Gentiles: this abundant region, Galilee, luscious green and teeming with fish, is a sign of the gathering in of all nations, just as fish are gathered in a net (see where this is going?).

The Covenant God established with Israel is now being extended, even to the shadowlands of the Gentiles.

The kingdom of the Messiah stretches beyond Judea, where John the Baptist ministered, to invite and draw in all people.

The hinge of this is the call, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

Turn and face the light!

And it's to brothers he moves first, brothers who are fishermen.

In the very act of casting a net he calls Simon Peter and his brother, Andrew. As they mend their nets he calls the brothers, James and John.

The twelve tribes are no longer the brothers Zebulun and Naphtali, or Judah and Benjamin, but the twelve apostles, starting with brothers, but by no means ending with them.

The immediacy of their response is striking and almost implausible.

Remember, though, Andrew had been a follower of John the Baptist, as probably had John, the Beloved Disciple. The ground had been prepared in Andrew’s life, ready for Christ the Sower to come.

Andrew, we read in St John’s Gospel was with John the Baptist when he said of Jesus, ‘Behold, Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.’ (John 1.29)

Jesus’ call came to responsive ears and hearts.

Themselves drawn in, they would accompany him to draw others in.

And Jesus’ mission continued, as he went ‘throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.’ (Matthew 4.23)

Herein is the light.

And that light breaks into the darkness of human experience today.

The concept of the fractal is helpful here.

A fractal is a small piece of a larger whole but that shares its pattern and is totally complete.

The larger whole is that Jesus came into the world as the ‘light that shines in the darkness’ and illuminates the world.

And that ‘big picture’ operates in the particular circumstances of your life too, as a fractal.

It’s what your baptism is all about.

What Jesus did in Galilee, bringing the light, revealing the Kingdom in healing and restoration, he is doing in you.

Let that light shine, let it grow in you and spill out of you.

In the dark corners of our lives may the light shine; and may we in turn, like Peter and Andrew, James and John, and all the saints through the ages, be lights shining to the glory of God the Father.

The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
    on them has light shined.

Thanks be to God for the light to enlighten all hearts!

Christ's Baptism; My baptism

Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 ‘Behold my servant, in whom my soul delights’

Acts 10:34-38 ‘God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit’

Matthew 3:13-17 ‘When Jesus was baptised he saw the Spirit of God coming to rest on him’.

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It is hard to think, in the depths of winter, of hot summer days and the refreshment that a splash in water can bring.

If only it was hot enough to splash in a paddling pool or diving into a swimming pool: so refreshing and cooling in the heat of the day.

Today’s gospel takes us to a river, running through the wilderness, a stream of refreshment in a hot and barren place.

That river, the Jordan, is a real river, and it is a spiritual place too, a place where we can go this morning, and daily, for refreshment and life.

The Baptism of Jesus Christ is, to paraphrase St Gregory the Great, is a kind of river, which is both shallow and deep, where both the child can paddle, and the adult can dive.

Gregory says that of the scriptures, and it is true of what we have here, that the mystery revealed at the Baptism of the Lord, the mystery of Jesus Christ, is deep enough that the most devout and skilled among us can never reach the bottom, and shallow enough that the simplest among us can enjoy it too.

That is a beautiful thing.

The mystery of Christ both satisfies and gives us the taste for more.

St Augustine in his Confessions put it beautifully:

I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. Confessions X.27

So let’s can paddle in some important points about Jesus’ baptism, and then, with appetite whetted, go deeper.

First, Christ’s baptism is the ‘big reveal’, the debut appearance.

John the Baptist had been talking to the crowds out in the wilderness at length about the One who is to come, the One whose sandals he is not worthy to untie, the One who he proclaimed ‘the Lamb of God’ who takes away the sins of the world.

The crowds had come from all Judea to see and hear John, but he directed them away from himself to the One Who Is: and now, as He rises from the waters, the heavens open Jesus is revealed; revealed as the Divine Son of the Father, with whom the Father is well pleased. (Matthew 3.17).

Second, his public ministry is inaugurated.

From the time the Holy Family returned to Nazareth until his Baptism we know next to nothing of Jesus’ life.

We can only assume that he was preparing for his public ministry.

And his baptism is the inauguration of that public ministry.

Peter puts it very straightforwardly in our second lesson:

you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. (Acts 10.37-38)

So, the Baptism begins his ministry in which ‘the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.’ (Matthew 11.5)

Thirdly Jesus’ baptism gives pattern for Christian baptism, for you and me being baptised.

The baptised have had their sins washed away; been reborn; been enlightened and liberated from all that holds them back from the Vision of God.

Just as Peter describes the salvation of those who are oppressed by the devil, so the prophet Isaiah foresees the time when the Saviour will ‘bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.’ (Isaiah 42.7).

The waters of baptism enable that liberation from darkness to light.

There’s some paddling: Christ’s Baptism as the ‘big reveal’; the inauguration of his ministry; and the pattern for Christian baptism.

And what of diving a bit deeper?

Jesus says to Peter ‘put out into the deep and let your nets down for a catch.’ (Luke 5.4)

To go deeper, I want to introduce you to St Gregory Nazianzen, Archbishop of Constantinople,  who lived in the fourth century.

Going out in the deep with him, from a sermon of his, we will draw quite a catch of his insights into the Lord’s Baptism.

Gregory connects Christ’s baptism with our own, and how we share Christ’s resurrection:  

Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptized; let us also go down with him, and rise with him.

But he also addresses the tricky question that if Jesus is the Sinless One, why should he be baptised like us?

John is baptizing when Jesus draws near. Perhaps he comes to sanctify his baptizer; certainly he comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters. He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; he who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through the Spirit and water.

So, in Christ’s baptism we see that Creation itself is being renewed on a cosmic scale and a personal scale: as St Paul tells us, ‘if anyone is in Christ [that person] is a new creation.’ (2 Corinthians 5.17)

Gregory spots how the waters of the Jordan echo the waters of the Creation, at which Jesus is present, and he makes the connection between the dove that signalled to Noah that the deluge of the Flood was ended, and the appearance of the Holy Spirit as a dove over Jesus.

Now there is no rainbow in the sky, but the very heavens are opened.

Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens, like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The Spirit comes to him as to an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like the dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honour to the body that is one with God.

And there’s more that Gregory draws from the Baptism of the Lord, but perhaps the big question remains: what does this mean for me, as I try to live out my life as a Christian, in this New Year, here and now in Croydon, amongst the people with whom I share my life in family, workplace, school and church.

Here’s Gregory’s answer: and it’s as good for twenty-first century as when he wrote it in the fourth!  

Today let us do honour to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of [people], for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all [humanity], lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven. You are to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now you have received – though not in its fullness – a ray of its splendour, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.