Original Airdate: January 22, 2023
Isaiah 8:23—9:3 | 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17 | Matthew 4:12-23

Almighty, everliving God, direct our actions according to your good pleasure that, in the name of your Beloved Son, we might be found in good works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever, amen.

Every time we begin this ordinary time, we go through the life of Jesus, the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and there’s a wonderful way of trying to pay attention to the radical difference between the old and the new. And it’s so important that that be the focus of the beginning of your awareness of who Jesus really is to recognize that so much of what we normally grow up believing in, in terms of authority, in terms of seeking wisdom ⎯ we grow up naturally leaning upon other people to tell us what we should do. That’s our parents or anybody in authority. So for the first years of our existence, until, let’s say, we get into our, I don't know, teenage years now, 18, 17, 16, you start believing that you have a right to make your own decisions, and there’s a tension in you, from obedience, authority over you, to an inner authority. And so as we’re looking at this wonderful set of readings, you’re going to be invited with me to journey into this transition place, from old to new, and one of the ways it’s described in this set of readings is from darkness to light.

The darkness that’s in the first reading is really an interesting one, because it’s talking about a kind of something that we’re dealing with that causes anguish and gloom and darkness, and yet when we see, even in the Old Testament, those things overcoming the Jewish people ⎯ they were stiff-necked. They weren’t very easy to deal with, and God found himself at times very angry and even at one time wanted to destroy them all because they didn’t obey him. They kept going back to their own ways, but here in Isaiah, he’s foretelling something that’s going to come. It’s going to be something like a light, and so the darkness that you’re in is going to seem not so dark. It’s going to have light in it, and the light will bring about abundant joy as people rejoice when everything is working for them, when their crops have been beautifully grown during the time that they have no control over how it grows because of the weather and they’re just filled with delight that something has worked. So there’s this image of something being broken, taken away from the people in the New Testament, and I love the way this passage ends, where it says, “The yoke that burdened them, the pole of their shoulder, the rod of their taskmaster you’ve smashed.” How’s that for a word to change. Smashed the way it was, and all of those three images, the yoke, the pole, the rod, they’re all about being burdened by something created for you by an authority over you. And that’s really basically what the Old Testament is about, and unfortunately it’s a lot about the way people think about religion even today. “Why do I need this burden on me? Why don’t I be free? Why can’t I be free? Why can’t I do what I want to do?” And it’s so interesting that that sounds so selfish and self-centered, but the truth is that’s exactly what God has placed in you and me, a desire not to be controlled by an outer authority but to come to a place where the inner authority is what does the work, our choices, what we think, what we do.

So here’s Paul, in the second reading, talking very clearly about the fact that, “Look, I see something that’s happening that isn’t the intention of God. You all seem to be going in different directions.” And when you go in different directions, it’s not just that everybody agrees, “It’s okay. You go in that one. You go in this one.” But they’re rivalries. “You should be with me. You should be doing this. You should have this.” And it’s so interesting that all of that is a very interesting way of imagining, again, the way religion turns into something that’s my way or the highway. If you were Jewish, that’s what you should be. If you’re a Christian, you should be Christian. If you’re a Muslim, you should be Muslim or follow Islam. It’s really a divided kind of world, and yet even in the Vatican Council, the beauty of that council was that every religion that teaches the truth is a means of salvation. So it’s not about everybody having to be one religion. It’s everybody has to be on the same page when it comes to who God is and what he does for you and for me and the work that we are engaged in together, and that work that every religion should draw us into is the participation in this extraordinary work of the evolution of consciousness, to be able to see the truth so clearly, so beautifully that the darkness that sin creates, the darkness that is created by addiction to things that control us and all of that is to be destroyed by this beautiful coming of God into the world. And his coming into the world, as you well know, is more than his coming into a human form at one time in history, but that action of God becoming human is something so powerful about what it is that religion promises. All religions promise a union, a communion with God. What’s different about some of the religions is they might have a different emphasis on who God is, and I often think it’s so interesting that it’s also about a religion that makes a clear distinction between the Old Testament and New Testament, not that the Old Testament is wrong. It is a beautiful, beautiful religion and a beautiful message, but Jesus had instore for us a radically different message. And it’s not that the Jewish religion doesn’t lead one to the same closeness to God, which is what Christianity and every religion calls us to, but it’s not ⎯ it's this wonderful thing about Jesus being the model, and the model could be just also the maturity of the Jewish faith. It’s becoming so connected to God that you are in his way of living and his plan for you, and that plan is just marvelous.

In the gospel, we listen to it, as Jesus is revealed to us, and he’s revealed as light. And isn’t it interesting, when you look at creation, the first thing that God created was light, day and night? And it’s true. In the Old Testament and New Testament, there is still going to be always light and darkness, truth and error, reality and illusion, and yet in the Old Testament, it seemed that it was taught in a way that frightened people into complete submission to rules and regulations, because the darkness had great power to overtake them, and they had to have something that kept them out of it. But now we’re told that the darkness has been destroyed. There still is problems. There still will be darkness, but it’s never going to overtake you. And when you realize that, you realize that then, if it’s never going to win, then every battle with it is going to be some kind of achievement, some kind of growth, and that’s exactly what Jesus means when he says repent. Repent is a change of heart. It’s regret. It’s looking back on those things you did years ago and saying, “What was I thinking? That was crazy. I was so full of myself,” or, “I was so doubting myself,” or, “I was so angry at other people for what they had.” I don't know. Whatever it would be, you grow out of those things. That’s called repentance, and the thing that’s interesting about the way Jesus says it in the gospel verses, the way that John the Baptist would say it is John the Baptist called for repentance, but Jesus says, “Repent. The kingdom is at hand.” The thing that you want, the thing that you long for, the peace that comes from an inner authority living within you, guiding you and directing you, not because you have to, not because you’re made to, not because you’re going to be punished if you don’t, but it simply makes sense. And you want to do it, and you see the fruits of doing it. That’s called the kingdom, and it’s supposed to be now.

So then we end this set of readings with something happening, and that’s Jesus calling his disciples. And he’s saying, “Just come after me.” Notice he doesn’t say, “Do what I say.” He doesn’t say, “Come and I’ll tell you what to do.” No. “Come after me. Dwell with me.” “Come see where I live,” is another thing he said to some of the disciples that he invited to follow him, and so what it is is that Jesus is not anything like the temple and the law and the demands and the inflicting of punishment if one does not do what they’re told. It’s another world from that, and the image of that change is, again, mentioned in this particular gospel by the fact that, when he called someone, they immediately left their work and their father. And I don't know if this is, in any way, shape, the intention of the gospel, but it just struck me that their work, or I’d say, the work of the Old Testament was following the law. The work of the New Testament is experiencing God inside of you, guiding you, enabling you to make the decisions that bring the most life and love to you and the people that you care about. And then leaving their father is, in a way, leaving everything the father had taught them. That’s not what it means literally, but I’m just playing with it, saying could that be leaving the work of the Old Testament, leaving ...

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