Matthew 4: 12-25 Darkness shattering, light following, Disciples
I was washing dishes Friday night,
[Yeah, I do that sort of thing]
And everything suddenly
Went dark.
Our electric power,
Along with the electric power
of a few neighbors,
Went out.
You know what the first thing I did was?
I started
Looking
for the nearest
Light.
I knew where a flash light was,
And went right over to where I thought it was.
Of course, I knocked the little flashlight off the counter
And had to feel around for it on the floor, for a little while,
But eventually,
I had
light.
And with that first light
In my hand,
I went for even more light,
Then more light,
Till we’d rounded up the other flashlights,
Lit the candles,
And turned on the gas fireplace.
Which was a good idea,
Since the power was off
Till almost midnight.
Well, I’m sure you’ve had
Similar experiences.
You know what it is
To be in darkness
And search for
Light.
But, it isn’t just
A home
Without electric power,
Or a street
When a transformer goes,
That gets
Dark,
Very
Dark.
In the gospel of Matthew,
It is a whole land,
An entire people,
Who
Sat
In
Darkness,
Waiting
For the
Light.
This is not the kind of darkness
That falls
When a light switch is flipped.
The people, all of them,
Dwell in the shadows
Of death.
This, clearly,
Is no easy darkness.
Indeed, from the beginning
Of Matthew’s story of Jesus,
we have already seen
the shadows of darkness
And death
At work.
It’s darkness falling
when the children (of Bethlehem)
Are easily killed, at the say-so of a powerful man.
And mothers weep and wail.
It’s darkness falling
when a young family led by Joseph,
Is forced to leave their home in the night.
It’s darkness falling
when people turn away from God
And the purposes of God
And turn toward sin.
It’s darkness falling
when the devil - (before Jesus no less!)
Claims ownership over the world
And all its splendor.
It’s darkness falling
when God’s prophet,
John the Baptist,
is imprisoned.
And an attempt is made
To silence God’s word.
It’s darkness falling
In the land of Zebulon and Naphtali
When people lived in poverty,
Struggling to survive
The brutality of the day,
While some ruled in luxury.
It’s darkness falling
When people live with
“various diseases and pain”
Without relief,
Without help.
For just the first four chapters of Matthew,
That’s a lot of shadows!
That’s a lot of darkness!
It’s too much.
But, as I consider the kind
Of dark and shadowy things
That happen in the opening chapters of Matthew,
And find those same things happening
In our world, in our time,
in our land, among too many people,
Children killed,
9 year olds murdered,
Legs of an infant broken,
Families forced from their homes,
Foreclosed, suddenly homeless,
The word of God silenced,
those who speak it persecuted:
arrested, bombed,
In Egypt, in Iran, In Pakistan,
And people in pain,
Physically, emotionally, spiritually,
And many people openly turned
Against the purposes and will of God
It seems that there is also
Too much darkness
In our time,
Too.
We grope about,
Lost and confused,
Among the shadows.
We sit in the darkness,
Like the people
Of Capernaum,
Of Zebulon and Naphtali.
But, it is to those
Who sit in darkness,
Who dwell in darkness,
Who live, night and day, in darkness,
That the gospel is bold to proclaim:
A light, a great light, dawns,
And a new morning begins.
Because of Jesus.
It seems
John the Baptist
Has been
Arrested.
So, Jesus
Moves from Nazareth
To Capernau,
By way of the Sea of Galilee.
Let this in no way
Be taken as a kind of escape for Jesus,
Or as a desire on his part
To get away from the risks.
In fact,
Capernaum
Was even bigger, busier place
than Nazareth,
And there, Jesus would have access
to more people.
So, rather than getting away,
Jesus is chosen that very public place,
That place of darkness,
To begin shining
His light.
In doing so,
Jesus fulfills the scriptures.
He’s making it clear,
The Word of God
Lives in him.
And in fact, Jesus lives his life,
Turned completely, totally to
The will and purposes of God.
And in doing so,
His life
And light
Shatter the darkness
And defeat the power
Of death.
Now, at this point in the gospel,
We don’t know all that ways
And all the places
And all the people
That his death defeating,
Darkness shattering,
Light is gonna shine
We don’t know - yet,
How it will keep shining
on a cross,
Or how it will burst through
And empty a tomb,
That will happen.
But we can
Even from this far into the story,
Already see where
The light is penetrating
The darkness.
The light shines
in the darkness,
As Jesus calls people
To turn away from their sins,
To repent and turn toward
The purposes of God.
Suddenly, people don’t have to
Sit where they sat,
Or keep on stumbling in the shadows!
The light of Jesus is showing them
It’s really possible to GO another way,
And to live another way.
The light shines
In the darkness,
As Jesus tells people,
The Kingdom of Heaven,
God’s kingdom,
where God’s rules
And God’s ways,
And God’s will,
Are done on earth,
That’s near at hand.
The devil might claim
The kingdoms of this “world,”
But the kingdom of heaven --
it’s even closer
Than they ever imagined.
It’s on its way.
It has … arrived!
People don’t have to live
In the devil’s domain.
With its darkness,
With its death.
Not anymore.
God’s reign
Had begun!
It was light,
shining in the darkness
Whenever Jesus went into the synagogues
And taught and preached
That good news
To the people.
It was light,
Shining in the darkness,
Whenever Jesus healed the people
And set them free -
Free indeed
Free from their captivity,
Free from their bondage to the demons,
To sickness
To pain,
To the power
of death.
In Jesus,
Light rose upon the people,
Just as that birth star rose
in the eastern night, at his birth.
And wherever Jesus went,
Wherever his light shined,
The people came to him --
People from Galilee,
The Ten Cities,
Jerusalem, Judea,
And people from beyond the Jordan,
They were on him,
Like bugs on a porch light
At night!
They wanted to hear his teaching, his preaching.
They wanted his healing.
They wanted
Jesus.
Well, Where else
Were you going to go
When you’re sitting in darkness?
Dwelling in the shadows?
You go to the light.
You find the light.
And Jesus,
God’s son, Emmanuel,
Jesus
The one who’d save his people,
From their sins,
Jesus
With his good news
About the kingdom of heaven,
With his call to repentance,
With his healing
Was
That
Light!!
You know
that light shined in the darkness so bright,
That no darkness,
can dim it,
And no darkness
Can ever, ever,
put it
Out.
Once Jesus shattered the darkness,
It was shattered
for good.
So, I’m telling you,
That light of Jesus still shines.
And if this world,
If this land,
If this people,
If you and I,
Want to find a way
OUT
Of the messy,
deadly darkness
We’re
Groping around in,
Stumbling in,
Sitting in,
We
Need
Jesus.
We need
To turn from the darkness,
Where people turn against the purposes of God,
Silence His Word,
Where people are in pain,
Emotionally, spiritually, physically,
Toward Jesus’ Light.
That happens
To four men
Four fisher men,
in this story.
While they’re working,
Jesus goes to them,
Calls to them,
“Come to me … Follow me,”
And they
Turn and follow him.
They’re not just part of the crowd
Surrounding Jesus.
They’re his disciples.
One day,
Jesus will ask these fisherman
Not just to “fish for people”
But to let
THEIR light shine
In the darkness, too.
In fact, Jesus, the one through whom
The light of a new dawn begin to shine,
Will tell his followers,
“YOU are
The LIGHT of the World.“
And through the disciples of Jesus,
The light of the world
The light of Jesus
Does still shine.
Which means,
That light
Can Shine through us,
That light
Can be ours,
Even if where we are
And where we start,
Is very dark indeed.
Let us,
Like four fisherman
Of long ago,
We too can
Answer the call
To follow Jesus.
And let us today
begin a journey with Jesus,
One step at a time,
One step at a time,
Out of the darkness
Out of the darkness
And into the light
Until the darkness shattering,
Death defeating
light shines on
Through us.
