Sometimes I go on long hikes.
One time I went on an 11 day solo hike. It was on a trail that I had wanted to hike for 20 years and I finally did it.
I came limping up out of the woods at the end of that hike, into an almost empty park in the rain.
It was quiet, kind of anticlimactic, hardly anyone was there, but in my mind I could see a parade, and a band, and people yelling and cheering.
I was so happy to have finally finished, my spirit soared, though my body was pretty worn out.
Fulfillment.
You know how sometimes when you cook all day for a special meal, and you sit down to enjoy the fruit of your labor and thought, with long awaited company and it is so good. You eat till you are filled and then push the chair back, loosen the belt up a notch and sit quietly.
Fulfilled or rather filled full.
Mathew’s Gospel talks of scripture being fulfilled, much more so than Mark, Luke or John.
Matthew is twenty eight chapters long and it has sixty one direct quotations from the Old Testament and 294 allusions to Old Testament sources. And ten of those quotations explicitly state that the life of Jesus fulfills the scripture.
We hear one of those fulfillment quotations today.
“So that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles-the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned”
And Jesus begins his ministry.
Jesus fulfills what Isaiah wrote, Jesus fills full what Isaiah wrote, Jesus fills the scripture with fullness.
Now we see what light is, now we see what death and darkness were.
Jesus is that light.
Matthew has this deep and driving since of purpose under every action and word that Jesus makes, everywhere Jesus goes the world is fulfilled, the world is filled full of completion, like he is the final missing piece, or the long awaited visitor that we have been preparing for and expecting.
God’s glory permeates and shines forth from every fiber and particle of creation, but we don’t see it until Jesus walks up, revealing the world to be so much more than we thought.
We live not in a cast away and forgotten existence, rather we live in the very stuff that God shines through, the very stuff that God cherishes, the very stuff that God’s Kingdom is made of, that is where we live, and Jesus fulfills that purpose, fills full this waiting expectant world, a great light is seen.
There is something about Jesus, his very person, that is the fulfillment of all that is.
Matthew wants us to live and move in the world with that same sense of purpose and fulfillment, that Jesus is opening up the world to God’s kingdom right now, today, and that we are part of that glory shining forth, part of that whole other world that holds up and fills all things that we see easily miss.
Fulfilled.
Filled full.
Proclaiming the news that is good, that God’s kingdom has come near, curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
Light for those in the dark.
Life for those in death.
The cure for every disease and sickness.
This is what the fullness of God’s Kingdom looks like, this is what Jesus shows, this is who Jesus is, and when we see these things happening we the glory of God shining forth.
No wonder Peter, Andrew, James and John dropped their nets, dropped everything at a word and followed this man.
Now they cast out their nets and pulling up from the deeps, not fish but the very image of God, glory in every particle and fiber, a whole world filled full with holiness.