A sermon preached at Holy Cross Cathedral Geraldton 31 January 2021
I once advertised I would speak on the subject, “What’s So Great About Jesus?” I was surprised by the number of people who turned up—some unusual people. They had misunderstood my intention and thought I was going to argue that Jesus wasn’t special—just another man who for reasons ended up with a following. If you are a Buddhist you venerate Gautama, the Buddha. If you are a Muslim, you honour and obey your prophet, Muhammad. Christians worship Jesus. Secularists honour Charles Darwin. Other movements have their special person, whether or not they worship them. The anthropologists who dominate our universities today and form the thinking of future generation of teachers, see this as a common human tendency, and resist any thought that Jesus might be anything more than human: special perhaps, but not unique.
Christians think differently, and although some in the church have given way to the modern way of thinking, there are still people and churches which think they have very good reasons to worship Jesus, and don’t think their beliefs are outdated, or pre-scientific myths. Rather, they recognize the prevailing worldview for what it is, a mixture of truth, falsehood, propaganda and bullying—like the Islamic movement of a previous age, which did see Jesus as special, but not “God from God,” as our Creed has it.
So, why do Christians see Jesus as more than special, as a man from God, a unique man, a man whose ultimate identity lies beyond the human race in God himself: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made”, as our Creed says.
We have been exploring Matthew’s introduction to the Jesus’ story. This morning we look at how he relates the opening of his public ministry. The first thing I want us to observe is that there was a definite beginning in time to Jesus’ mission. I am corresponding at the moment with someone who is troubled by what I have said for the last two weeks, that Jesus was commissioned as God’s Messiah on the occasion of his baptism. “Surely Jesus was always the Messiah,” he says, and points to the Christmas story. He has a point. What I want to point out today is what all four Gospels make clear, that Jesus began his public ministry because of something that happened at the time he was baptized, and at a certain time and place. The time was “after John was arrested;” the place was Galilee. As Matthew puts it: “Now when Jesus heard that John had been delivered up, he returned to Galilee …” and, if I can jump to verse 17: “… from that time he began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
While John was carrying out his revival mission Jesus seems to have worked alongside him, but when John was removed from the scene things changed: Jesus began to announce the arrival of the kingdom, the emphasis changed from judgement to salvation, he no longer baptized, and he and his disciples gave up fasting. On another occasion Jesus explained, “the law and the prophets were until John; since then the kingdom of God is announced and everyone forces in.” (Luke 16.16)
How are we to understand this? Jesus seems to indicate that a revolution has taken place and is underway. The clue lies in the word “gospel” (euaggelion) in verse 23: “Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues and heralding the gospel of the kingdom.” For Jews “gospel” was a loaded term.
When God abandoned them and their land was destroyed, when they were almost wiped out, and the remnant was sent into exile in Babylon, they would most certainly have vanished from history like the Moabites and Ammonites and just about every other ancient people. They would not have survived as a people, if it hadn’t been for the prophets, who foretold a time when God would return to them in mercy and reestablish their kingdom. This was what Matthew calls “the kingdom of heaven” and Mark, the “kingdom of God.” It did not mean a kingdom in heaven, but a kingdom on earth that heaven (God) would rule over through his chosen man, the Messiah. God promised through the prophet Isaiah that when that time came, he (God) would make a special announcement through a special person called “the gospeller.” “Get up into a high mountain, Zion— proclaimer of the gospel; lift up your voice with a shout …Say to the towns of Judah, behold your God. The Lord God comes with might, and his arm—that’s the Messiah—his arm rules for him … He tends his flock like a shepherd; he gathers the lambs in his arms …” This is curious, because here in Isaiah 40 the gospeller is a woman. Isaiah Mother Jerusalem announcing the return of God to the other towns of Judah. But in Isaiah 61 it is the Messiah himself who is anointed—commissioned—as the gospeller, to announce the gospel to poor, suffering Israel: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me. To gospel the poor he has sent me. To bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives … to announce the year of the Lord’s salvation.” If you miss this, Jesus will always be a mystery to you: after John’s arrest, Jesus began to announce this special message in Galilee, that God had returned to rescue and rule his people. This is what Matthew calls “the gospel of the kingdom.” This is what Jesus was doing when he stood in the synagogue of Nazareth and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has sent me to announce the gospel to the poor …” This is what Mark is talking about when he says, “After John was arrested Jesus came into Galilee announcing the gospel of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel.”. This is why people got so excited, because if it was true, it meant the beginning of the promised new world.
Last week I drew your attention to an old Jewish sermon called “The Light of Messiah.” Some Jews believed that when the Messiah came it would be obvious because light would stream out of him. That was not so with Jesus. His appearance was much of a muchness with everyone else. Only at the transfiguration did three of his disciples witness his heavenly appearance.
But notice how Matthew describes the start of Jesus’ mission as the coming of light to the dark lands of the north:
Land of Zebulon and land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.
He is quoting Isaiah chapter 9 which has a story behind it. At the creation the universe was dark and God’s first word brought light, and separated it forever from the darkness. Then when Israel was in Egypt there was a plague of darkness, but in the region where the Hebrews lived there was light. So, light began to be associated with the presence of God. When the Jews were sent into exile it was like going away from God’s light into lands of darkness. Galilee in the north of Israel was the first part of the country to be overrun by the Assyrian army and ceased to be part of the promised land for many hundreds of years: it was seen by Jews as a dark place. But one day Messiah would come and the light would shine. Matthew sees the beginning of Jesus’ mission as the coming of this light.
And that raises a question: if the light to which he refers was not a visible radiance, what was it?
Listen to verse 23:
He went around all of the Galilee teaching in their synagogues, and announcing the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.
There are three things here that demand attention. The Jews at this time were depressed. There were a lot of things that were wrong. As well as sickness and poverty, which are always a threat, there was mental illness. You never knew who would be affected and when and how. What a worry that must have been. And then there was demon-possession. They believed in evil spirits and sometimes these invaded a person’s mind, and that could cause all sorts of disorders: deafness, epilepsy, inability to speak, personality disorders. Rome controlled the country; the High Priests who ruled Judaea under the Romans were corrupt, and Herod in Galilee was worse. And then there was everyone’s everyday sins and disappointments, and over it all the shadow of death. In every way they felt themselves still divorced from God and under his judgement. As Isaiah said, “Justice is far from us … we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness but we walk in gloom. We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes.” If you have ever been through a time of deep depression you will know what this is all about. And now Jesus is announcing the end of all that. Just the hope and the expectation which his message aroused was like the coming of light. And also, he taught. When you have struggled to understand something for a long time, and finally … you see the light—that is what it is like. Those who have let Jesus lead them into knowing God have experienced this. But Jesus did more than “gospel” and teach. He healed. Listen to Matthew’s description:
So, his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and torments, the demon-possessed, insane people, and paraplegics and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judaea, and from beyond the Jordan.
If you were one of these people who was healed, or a career, you would feel like you had stepped out of darkness into light. Especially was this so for the blind who received their sight, and those Jesus brought back from the dead. If the scourge of sickness and mental illness were lifted today, would it not be like night turning to day?
I began with the question whether Jesus was one of a kind, or unique. There has been no one in the history of the world who did anything like Jesus did, and no period of history which has ever witnessed anything like happened then. When Jesus announced the arrival of the kingdom, he didn’t just talk, he acted, and nothing like it had ever been seen or has been since.
People try to explain away his miracle working. They say he had a strong psychological effect on people. That may be true, but doesn’t explain what we read about in the Gospels. Nor do you get anywhere by saying he was a great teacher and his later followers made up the stories of his miracles. One non-Christian historian says you can’t explain the crowds that followed Jesus without his healing. He thinks Jesus was a magician—a strange conclusion for a modern to reach, though it is how the unbelieving Jews of Jesus’ own time explained him away. They never denied his miracles, but said he did them with the help of the Devil.
People feared magicians. They thought that if someone had magical powers they would use them for personal gain—they would hurt their enemies. In Africa you don’t anger a sanghoma! But Jesus never used the power he undoubtedly had to harm anyone, only to heal and to help. There was a time when he was rejected and insulted by the people of a Samaritan village. His followers wanted to call fire down on them from heaven. They asked Jesus for permission. Did they really think that if Jesus gave the OK, they really could “napalm” that community? Clearly they did! They had seen so many evidences of his power, and even done miracles themselves under his authority. But Jesus rebuked them and went on to another village. When they crucified him and challenged him to do something about it—even then he did not retaliate, but prayed for their forgiveness. The great miracle there is that he stayed on the cross when he knew he could come down.
Jesus’ own explanation makes the most sense: “If I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” For a while then in Galilee about AD 28, 29 wherever Jesus went the promised kingdom of God showed its beautiful face.
There has been no one like Jesus in the history of the world—no time like this. As the story goes on—it is a strange story—culminating in his victory over death, you realize that something has changed in the world. The kingdom did not come in the way expected—there are reasons for that—but come it did, and one day Jesus promises it will come in its fulness. The light is shining now, and one day the night of suffering will be gone and the true light will shine forever.
The Buddha was a philosopher seeking enlightenment. If you are his follower you will spend your life in search of a mind that is untroubled by the sufferings around you. Your hope will be that one day you may rise above all suffering and be free. Muhammad was a soldier. He called his followers to action. If you follow him you commit to holy war until the kingdom is established here on earth. There are various kinds of Secularists: Marxists, humanists, ordinary people who are too busy trying to build their own “kingdom” to have any time for God. Secularists believe only in what they can see and experience here in this world. If you are a Secularist you may be struggling for a better world, or a better life for yourself. Buddha and Muhammad both taught, and made predictions about the future, but there it ended. Jesus announced the kingdom and taught, but not only that, he brought the kingdom, for a while, and came alive after they killed him. That is why we believe in him. He was unique and is alive.
There is one part of the reading I have overlooked. Jesus came to where four fishermen were going about their business as they always had. “Follow me,” he said. And they did and started a new life. A little later he came into the office of a man named Matthew, who was about his usual task of collecting taxes for the government. “Follow me,” Jesus said, and he did too. To him it seemed he walked into the light, and here in his Gospel we have his account of it. Jesus is still inviting people into his kingdom. How many of us, when we found Jesus, have felt Isaiah’s words must have been meant for us: “Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” He is calling you to follow him too.