Third Sunday after Epiphany Year A

Third Sunday after Epiphany Year A

Transcribed from a sermon given on

January 23, 2011

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

I don’t know about you, but I when I was growing up I had this image of the fisherman that Jesus called as being these kind of poor, ignorant fishermen who lived in a real back water part of the world. That they fished in little tiny boats like I’d go fishing in on the weekend and did not have much money or any connection with people. But that is not the way it was.

One of the things that I remember best when I was in the Holy land is when we went to Capernaum. I learned that Capernaum was at the time of Christ was a thriving community. it was right on a major trade route. If you had gone to Capernaum in Jesus’ day and gone to the bazaar where all the shops were you would have of course heard Hebrew, and you would have heard Greek, you would have heard Latin, you would have heard Egyptian, you would have heard Persian, you would have probably heard some of the languages from India. This is because if you were going to get from Lebanon, which is north of Palestine, to Egypt the way to get there was the road that lead by the west side of the sea of Galilee right by Capernaum. And remember this was during the Roman Empire when the roads were relatively good and relatively safe. There was trade between Egypt and India, and most of it went right by Capernaum.

Being on that kind of a trade route meant Capernaum was also a place of intellectual fervor. When you go there and you see the excavations of the town, and they have only excavated part of the town, there is a very large synagogue. Now they are not sure whether this particular synagogue was there when Jesus was alive, but it does date back to the first century. In that synagogue there was a great amount of study of the Law, of the Torah. Some people suggest that most of the Talmud, which is the book that kept the Jewish people together after the destruction of the Temple, was written in Capernaum. So the reason Jesus chose Capernaum as his home base was because it was an exciting place. It was a place of scholars and teachers and things going on.

Capernaum was on Western the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is call a sea, but actually it is a fresh water lake. It’s probably not even as big as lake Tahoe because on a clear day you can kind of see the hills on the far side of it.  Right across the lake was what was called the Decapolis. Now Decapolis means ten cities. So there were ten gentile cities right across the lake. And at the southern tip of the sea of Galilee was Tiberius, which was a major Roman center. So this was a vibrant, interesting, complex area with lots of different peoples of lots of different backgrounds.

Jerusalem on the other had was kind of a back water. None of the trade routes went through Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s only real claim to fame was having the temple. It was very Jewish and very sure that only if you were purely Jewish were you in the right relationship with God. While Galilee had all these gentiles and pagans, a variety of peoples. And certainly there was some intermarriage. That’s why it was referred to as Galilee of the gentiles. Its darkness was not that it was a backwater, its darkness was that it wasn’t pure.

This is the environment in which Jesus calls these fishermen. These fishermen that Jesus called owned their own boats so they weren’t poverty stricken. They were clearly middle class. They had their own businesses. They were doing pretty well. And the fact that James and John could leave their father in the boat meant that they obviously had hired workers that were helping his father out, otherwise they couldn’t have left. So they came from families that were clearly middle class. Also Jewish men of that time all learned how to read because they needed to be able to read in the synagogue. Very few people learned how to write, but they learned how to read. And they probably knew the Hebrew scriptures pretty well. They weren’t ignorant men. They weren’t poor men.

And we know that Peter was married. We know that because of one of the first things that happens after Jesus comes to Capernaum. He goes to Peter’s house. If you ever go visit Capernaum there is a spot that is Peter’s house, where you can see where the rooms were. And there was a church that was built around it. Now there is a church that is built over top of it. It is a very odd situation but you can see where the house was. So he went to Peter’s house and Peter’s mother-in-law was sick. Jesus healed Peter’s Mother-in-law which means that Peter was married. He was a married middle class man of that time. Probably respected in the community.

It is a different image of the disciples than what I was raised with. I don’t know where I got the image of them being poor. I don’t know whether it was in Sunday school or whether it was the children’s books we had or it was the movies or what, but that was the image that I had. When you go over there you realize that it was more complicated than that.

Now Matthew chooses to pick from Isaiah the passage about Galilee, “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” Now remember that Isaiah wrote many years before Jesus. Isaiah was centered in Jerusalem so Galilee was seen as a gentile and that would have been the darkness. The darkness was not ignorance; the darkness was the lack of the pure Judaism.

That image of darkness, that people in darkness have see a great light, let’s think about that for a moment. Imagine that there was a large cave and people went and lived in there, but it was completely dark. We won’t talk about how they managed to live, but they did find ways in which to live there for many generations while there was no light. They learned how to get along by feeling and sounds and so forth, but there was this sense that there was something missing, at least for some of the people. And every now and then one of the younger people might stray a little further out and see, having his or her eyes perceive something in the distance, but not quite sure what that was. And they had a myth in the culture of light, of a way to see in which you could know where something was without touching it. But it was just a myth. Except for the few people who got a little bit of a sense of what it might possibly be.

Then one day someone comes in carrying a lantern. Suddenly the whole cave is lit up. Now those who believed the myth and those who had strayed far enough out that they had seen a little bit of light were excited by it. What a wonder, what a wonderful thing to have this whole new world open up. But of course there were other ones who have had some power, who were afraid that with the light people would see what was going on. Some people might have hidden things that nobody could see when there was darkness, but suddenly, when there was light they could see all the stuff was being hoarded back here in the corner. So they had a mixed reaction to this person who came in with the light.

To some of the people he said, “Come and follow me.” Then he showed them how to get to the entrance of the cave. And he showed them the world in which there was bright light and sunshine. Even though it was a little overwhelming and hurt their eyes, they came to enjoy the feeling of light on their faces and of seeing one another. A whole new world opened up to them and they wanted to just stay and bask in the sunlight. But instead he said, “Look, let me show you how to make lanterns yourself and now take these lanterns back in and lead other people out to the light so that they can know about it too. And teach them about lanterns so that they can go back in and bring more and more people to the light.”

Now of course the darkness that Isaiah was talking about and the darkness that Matthew was talking about, was not the lack of physical light. It is not that kind of darkness because of course the sun shines in Galilee. It was a different kind of darkness. It was a spiritual darkness. That darkness in which you feel there is no purpose in life. The darkness you might feel when your life is getting up in the morning, having a cup of coffee, going to work, doing your work, coming home, having dinner, going to bed and then getting up the next morning and there is nothing else in the world. It is the darkness of feeling alone and unloved and uncared about. It is the darkness of guilt, and fear. It is the darkness of grief and loss. It is the darkness of addiction. It is the darkness that keeps you from knowing that spiritual light, that thing you’ve heard about, that myth that some people talk about that there is something more. That inner sense that there’s got to be more to life than just this. That there is something missing.

Most of us here today have had glimpses of the light. It might have been a sunset over the ocean where everything was so perfect that you know that there is something more. Or it might be in a relationship where the love between the two people let’s you know that that love comes from something greater than ourselves. Or it might be being at the birth of a child and the wonder of a new life. We get little glimpses of the light in our lives and there is a sense that there has got to be more, there has got to be more.

Then Jesus comes into our lives and Jesus is that light, that “more” that we have been longing for. Those glimpses we got is right here. So the the disciples saw by the sea of Galilee that here was a person walking along who carried and manifested that which was the deepest longing of their souls. He manifested the love of God in a way that people could see.

That love of God is like light in the sense that we look around and light is everywhere. The only reason we can see shadows is because there is light, but even in the shadows there is light. The light is all around us, heals us. What Jesus showed us was that in which we live and have our being. That God which is love and loves us like a bright light, that loves us completely, that gives us meaning and purpose and hope even in the dark times.

Jesus walked in the world and manifested that in a way that was extraordinarily attractive so there were those who followed him. What he did was he taught them and he showed them the light. And then he said “Now that you have seen the light, now that you have experienced it, it is your job to go out and lead other people to the light.” You can’t just bask in it. You have to go back and share it with other people. So if you have experienced that light of Christ, if you feel drawn to become a disciple, to follow that light, to let that light fill you and change you and empower you and give you peace and joy, then the next step is to share that light with others. It becomes a natural thing because the more we let that light in to come and fill us and transform us the more we are that light in the world. People see it in our smile, our forgiveness, our compassion and the way we hold ourselves.

That we have to be willing to tell people what is it, what is it that makes us different? To be open to sharing that gift of knowing the light, of living in the light, of experiencing the light all the time. To be willing to share that with other people. And invite them to come and follow Christ.