Light from the Margins

Years ago, I co-led a Youth Group at the church where I grew up. We took the youth to Crieff Hills Retreat Centre, the conference centre for the Presbyterian Church in Canada, for a weekend retreat. A place where I now serve as the convenor of the board. On the first night we arranged a night walk. There are lots of skiing trails at Crieff, we took a rope and ran it along the trees. Then when the sun had set, we had the youth walk, one at a time, along the trail. The only light they had were the stars in the sky and the light of the moon reflecting off the snow.

At the end of the walk the youth were partnered into groups of two and given an unlit candle. The instructions there were given were to find Bryan the other co-leader of the group. His candle was lit. They were to search for the light in the darkness. When they found him, the youth would light their candle making the light that much brighter.

Now things didn’t go off as perfectly as planned. The kids had a much more difficult time finding Bryan than we anticipated. That’s when something remarkable happened. Bryan started singing. He was a member of the choir and had a remarkable tenor range. The combination of the light and his singing guided the youth to Bryan, and it wasn’t long before all the candles were lit. The light was shining and singing out of the darkness.

It was a wonderful evening that brought the community that was the youth group closer together. They began alone in complete darkness and ended together in the light.

We often come to scripture looking for comfort, looking for a simple brightness to scatter the shadows of our week. And today, we encounter a beautiful, ancient promise: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”

But before we can truly encounter this people who see a great light, we have to sit with them in the thick darkness. There is an inherent contradiction in this image, isn’t there? A place that is dark, by definition, lacks light. A place that is light, by definition, lacks darkness. Yet, life and specifically the life of faith is rarely so binary.

In his gospel Matthew is telling us that the light doesn’t just appear out of nowhere; it shines most brilliantly from the places we least expect it.

Geography as Theology

It is often said that in real estate, the three most important things are “location, location, location.” For Matthew, the same is true for the Gospel. It is not just that things happen, but where they happen, that tells us what they mean.

Matthew uses geography to shape his story. In today’s reading, there is a lot of movement. We are told Jesus withdraws. He leaves his home. He moves to Capernaum, a small village that, frankly, wasn’t of much importance at the time.

But if you look at a map of Israel and Judea around the time of Jesus and do a little sleuthing you’ll notice something interesting. Capernaum is in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. To modern ears, those are just hard-to-pronounce names from a dusty history book. But to the people of Jesus’ time, those names carried the weight of generational trauma. These were the tribes in the north that faced the brunt of the Assyrian invasions 700 years earlier. They were the first to fall, the first to be crushed.

When Isaiah wrote of Galilee of the Gentiles or Galilee of the Nations he wasn’t describing a cosmopolitan hub of cultural diversity. He was describing a land under the boot of a foreign empire. It was called Galilee of the Gentiles because of oppression and occupation.

Jesus starting his public ministry by coming through the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali is symbolic of the light that Isaiah spoke of. Jesus becomes the physical manifestation of God’s saving grace which has been promised to the people. This is the point that Matthew is driving home to his audience he is making a specific point. He is telling us that the liberation of God does not begin in the halls of power or the safety of the sanctuary. It begins in the occupied territories. It begins in the places that have known the most darkness.

Jesus isn’t dealing with violence from Babylon or Assyria. It is the Roman Empire which has been oppressing the people of Israel for years. In this light Matthew is drawing a direct parallel to the plight of the ancient Israelites through to the time of Jesus. As Matthew presents things, Jesus will lead the people from darkness to light. He also represents the end to the power of death that is employed by Rome. That darkness and death are not the manner that we should be operating in.

The Baton is Passed

There is a shadow hanging over this text that we might miss if we read too quickly. The text says Jesus began his ministry when he heard that John the Baptist had been arrested.

The Greek word used there for arrested is literally handed over. It is a heavy word. It is the same word that will be used later to describe Jesus’ own betrayal he too will be handed over.

Jesus appears to be withdrawing to avoid immediate conflict, moving away from where John was operating. But while he changes his location, he does not change the message. In fact, it is only now, when John is silenced, that Jesus takes up the exact same call.

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Eugene Park, a scholar of the New Testament, reminds us that for Matthew, “Kingdom of Heaven” is synonymous with “Kingdom of God.” In the Jewish worldview, this wasn’t just about going to heaven when you die. It derived from the concept of malkhut Yahweh, the rule of God. It was a vision of a theocratic political order where justice and impartiality reigned, as if God were the one directly ruling the land.

So, here is Jesus, standing in the shadow of John’s arrest, standing in the shadow of the Roman Empire, standing on the soil of former Assyrian conquest, proclaiming a new government of peace in the face of an oppressive regime.

Fishing for a Revolution

And then, Jesus walks by the sea.

We have likely heard this story a thousand times. “Come, follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” We often treat this as a nice metaphor for a membership drive, a call to start a spiritual revival or to get people to join our church.

But theologian and scholar Andrew McGowan, suggests we look deeper. He writes that Jesus is starting his ministry in “a place of exile and occupation.” He warns us against the “glib subheadings” in our Bibles that call this “The Call of the First Disciples.” McGowan argues that Matthew, following Isaiah, is presenting this “as a campaign against occupying forces rather than a program of spiritual renewal.”

Think back to the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah says: “…I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors. I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them…” (Jeremiah 16:16).

In the prophetic tradition, fishing wasn’t about catching souls for the afterlife; it was about restoration. It was about bringing people back to the land and the life that was stolen from them by empire.

When Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, James, and John, he isn’t asking them to leave their jobs to join a church. He is inviting them to join a movement of liberation. He is asking them to participate in the restoration of their people.

He Chooses Us

There is one final, beautiful detail in this passage.

Jesus was perfectly capable of completing his ministry on his own. He is, after all, the one who brings the light. He didn’t need Peter’s nets or John’s boat. He didn’t need their confusion, their doubts, or their eventual failures.

And yet, he chooses to include them.

He walks along the shore and says, “Join me.” He includes them, and he includes us in this work.

God does not fix the world for us but works through us. We are called to be people who stand in the “Galilees” of our own time, the places of poverty, exclusion, and oppression and proclaim that a different world is possible. A different outcome can be reached.

We are called to be fishers of justice, hooking our neighbors out of the sea of despair and pulling them onto the solid ground of community and care.

John and Jesus stood firmly in the prophetic tradition of Israel, speaking truth to power. Today, the invitation is to stand with them.

The light has dawned. Not in the palace, but in the struggle. May we have the courage to drop our nets and walk toward it.

I am reminded of the words of Howard Thurman.

When the song of the angels is stilled

when the star in the sky is gone

when the kings and princes are home

when the shepherds are back with their flocks

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost

to heal the broken

to feed the hungry

to release the prisoner

to rebuild the nations

to bring peace among the people

to make music in the heart.

May it always be so.

Amen.