
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Matthew 4.12-17
At that time, when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth he went and dwelt in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward 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.” From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Let us start with a question: why did Jesus wait until after St John the Baptist was arrested before He began to preach? There had already been many public incidents that proclaimed that our Lord was the long promised and eagerly awaited Messiah before Herod compounded the already sinful behaviour of taking as his wife the woman who had been married to his brother by arresting the holy man who spoke out against his unlawful action. There was, for example, the Theophany which took place at His baptism by John in the Jordan, where the voice of the Father was heard, proclaiming Him to be His Beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit hovered above Him in the form of a dove. Also, we know from St John’s Gospel that He had already begun to gather a group of followers around Him, inspired by the Baptist’s words that He was the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. And, of course, shortly after that we read in St John’s Gospel of the miracle that took place at the wedding feast in Cana, where He turned water into wine.
So, there had already been quite an amount of public activity. Why, so, had our Lord delayed His preaching? Well, the Father’s tell us that He did not desire to publicly undermine John’s preaching with His own. John, as we know, had come to prepare the way for the Lord. Had Christ begun preaching at the same time, it would have seemed as if they were in competition with each other. A split might well have formed, with some continuing as followers of John and others moving to become followers of Jesus.
How gracious of our Lord, God made flesh, to have such consideration for a human being. But also, how pragmatic of Him to take care not to undermine the ministry of St John in any way. John had come to prepare the way for Him, to smooth the path for Him. Clearly, then, it would make no sense for Him to interfere with the work John was doing on His behalf by giving the impression that He was setting Himself up as a rival to the work that John was doing.
So, our Lord waited until John could preach no more, prevented from doing so by the evil men of this world, men who prefer satisfying their own lusts than following God’s law. Then, and only then, our Lord began His preaching. And we must note well the first word He used: Repent. A word that John the Baptist himself used when he was preaching and preparing the way for the Lord, for as we read elsewhere in the Gospels, John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Repentance, therefore, is of great importance and we must have no doubt about what it means to repent. First, we must understand what it is we are repenting of, and that is sin. The Greek word used for sin in the Gospels is hamartia, which means to miss the mark or target. The target we are supposed to be aiming for is obeying God’s law. And when we sin, we have not only missed the target but done so deliberately, either because we have wilfully decided to ignore God’s law, or because we have been careless in some way.
The Greek word used in the Gospels for repentance is metanoia, which means to have a change of heart or to turn away from something. To repent, then, means more than to be sorry for what we have done, to regret that we did something wrong and then cheerfully move on. It means to absolutely reject the sin we have committed, to literally turn away from it, understanding that it is sin, an offense against God, fully resolved never to commit that sin again, and to throw ourselves upon God’s mercy, pleading not only for His forgiveness, but for His help so that we may not sin again.
The sting in the tail to this is that we cannot repent unless we accept that sin is sin. Sadly, we live in a world where it often seems that the only thing regarded as sin is to name sin as a sin. This means that we must lead our lives as an example to those who think this way, showing them by our actions what it is to lead a life in accordance with God’s law; and to pray unceasingly for them that they may know His law and repent while time remains. For calling people to repentance was important enough for God to send St John the Baptist into the world to prepare the way for His Son; and important enough for His Son to begin His preaching by calling upon all God’s children to repent. Amen.
Amen.
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