The Gospel is always lived out in occupied territory.
We return to Matthew’s Gospel this week.
Somehow Jesus has survived to adulthood despite King Herod’s plotting.
He has been anointed by the Spirit, led up to the wilderness to be tempted and assaulted by the devil, the angels have ministered to him in his recovery from that encounter and now he is ready to begin.
Jesus, the new King, comes back out of the wilderness and the first thing he finds is that the empire of this world is after him again and John the Baptist has been arrested. Jesus has to move his base of operation.
Jesus then begins the counter offensive against the empire of this world, proclaiming the arrival of a new kingdom, the kingdom of heaven and he begins to gather his first recruits.
Jesus calls his first disciples and they immediately drop everything, they opt out of family and the imperial economy that it supports.
They now fish for people, pulling them up out of a fallen world.
They are no longer faithful worker bees supporting the Emperor. The empire of this world begins to shrink as more and more opt out.
A new king and a new kingdom begins to reclaim the world.
This new kingdom brings freedom and heeling rather than the working poverty and debt slavery that the old empire uses to hold so many captive.
In Matthew’s Gospel the covert operation of the Christmas story leaps ahead to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, reclaiming, stealing back God’s world.
How are each of us called out of the empire of this world and into this new kingdom?
How have we been called?
When did our conversion begin?
How have we come to follow Christ?
What is our ministry in God’s stealing back his creation?
The beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Matthew’s Gospel carries a deep sense of God’s plan coming to fruition, that God’s purpose and hope and dream for creation will come true and that Jesus is that fulfillment of divine purpose, Jesus is the good news living in occupied territory.
Will we trust in God’s goodness and God’s mission?
Will we go fishing and cast nets to reclaim our lives from all the lies that enslave us?
Will we live with forgiveness, and love and foolish generosity?
Will we bring good news and healing?
It comes down to the question, will we follow Jesus?
Matthew’s Gospel forces us to ask over and over, “Who is the King in my life?”
Jesus or the empire of this world?
The next question that is implied is much more specific. How do I follow Jesus in occupied territory? How do I do that? How do we do that? What does the way of Jesus look like in the year 2014?
Those questions are where the way of faith is lived out, it is where the life of the Church and of this parish is found, it is the way of wisdom and discernment, of good company, of hard work and great celebrating and practiced hope in the face of uncertainty.
Let’s go fishing.