In Matthew’s timeline, Jesus has just returned from his time of temptation in the wilderness. We’ll get to that in about a month. In the meantime, John had been taken to prison: he would never emerge alive. This is what happens to prophets, as Jesus reminds us (Mt 23). Jeremiah had been imprisoned a long while. Zechariah—not the one who wrote the book—had been killed by the altar in the (23:35). None of this is lost upon Jesus, nor should it be lost upon us.

Jesus returns to Galilee, but he doesn’t stay in Nazareth. He relocates about twenty miles to the northeast, to Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It’s not clear why he goes there. It may be that he knows Capernaum is the place to call his first followers. It may be, as he says when he does return to Nazareth, that a prophet is not welcome in his own place (Mk 6:4).

Nazareth, Capernaum, Galilee—we know these names, but our knowledge might not extend much beyond that. We’re liable to overlook the impact Alexander the Great had in that region, some three hundred years earlier. When his Greek armies came and then remained, they transplanted into Judea Greek culture, religion, and values. There were Jews who opposed this. There were Jews who saw something attractive in Greek ways and thought, a welcome alternative to what they had known before. Most probably fell somewhere between. Add the Romans some sixty years before the birth of Christ, and what you find at the time of Jesus was a very diverse, mixed population, a mixed population that preferred not to mix. Romans had little use for Jews. Jews had no great love for Romans. By the time of Jesus, the Promised Land had been under the influence of pagan culture and pagan religion for some three centuries.

But that’s not quite accurate. The land into which God sent His Son, the power of the Word of God, that land had been under the influence of pagan culture and pagan religion for thousands of years. The Jews upon arriving there had, since that time, always been struggling with a faithful response, struggled with faithful living in a land saturated with pagan ways, ways that might have seemed harmless, might even have seemed good after years and generations. God’s people were always being called to respond to this constant presence, this ongoing threat to their faith and their faithful walk with their God.

Jesus does not begin at the center. He begins on the fringe. He’s not doing anything the right way! He didn’t come like God; he doesn’t look like God. He doesn’t begin his ministry from the place of purity, power, and presence: the Temple in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was where the important things happened, where the important people lived. We hear talk in some branches of the news media about the peculiar attitude of people who live and work in Washington, D.C. I’m not saying it’s true or accurate, but it is one version of the story out there. By this account, they are the important people, they know it and aren’t going to let the rest of us forget it. They run the show, and no outsider with notions is about to change that. No one important could arise outside the hub of power, the peak of prestige. Those who hold power mean to keep it.

This is why John the Baptist, raving out there in the wilderness along the Jordan, is a problem for the religious authorities. They see John is important, the common people think he is, and the religious authorities don’t know what to do. The political authorities make life easier when they arrest John and remove him from the scene. The accepted power pattern is reaffirmed. The religious authorities breathe a sigh of relief.

Then there’s Jesus, this outsider, this pretender to religious authority, off there far away from power, off there among the powerless, among that mixture of peoples, that grab-bag of Jews, from the very strict to the very relaxed, from those who sought purity and righteousness in separation to those for whom religion was more ceremonial than vital: they’d show up, go through the motions, but once they were done it was back to what really mattered. They had done their obligation. They didn’t owe God anything more.

What is Jesus saying? Repent. That’s a bit hard? Isn’t that a bit judgmental? Repent. Stop. Turn around. Get off that path. That’s what John was saying. Jesus’ message is no different from John’s? Some conjecture that Jesus was a disciple of John. I can understand how people could reason that way: the message is the same. There is a difference, though, and John pointed it out: Jesus has precedence. Jesus is not proclaiming John’s message. John is proclaiming Jesus’ message. John came to prepare the way. The message is the same message; the difference is the one who proclaims it.

Yet this is not clear to anyone, at that time. There’s nothing noteworthy about Jesus. He doesn’t come like God, doesn’t look like God. He doesn’t act like God. Thank God he doesn’t act like God, because, you know, we just hate people that act like God.

The message is the same. Repent. Time to change direction. Jesus says many things, and we love so many of the things Jesus says (though we’re not totally crazy about some of the things he says). The one thing Jesus is saying in everything he says is this: repent. There may be a moment of repentance, a time and place of decision. Repentance is much more. Repentance is a way of life, a changed life, a desire for a changed life, an intention to seek and live and learn a changed life: a God-directed life in place of a sin-serving life.

We aren’t perfected as disciples, as we know so well. Our growth and learning, our perfection continues. We don’t accomplish it. God accomplishes it in us through the Holy Spirit, that Spirit that is fully upon and fully with, fully in Jesus, like a deep reservoir of mercy, a waterfall of grace, like a feast of joy, like the unimagined vastness of love.

Well, have you tried proclaiming the message: repent? How did that go? You had about as much luck as Jesus, as much success as John, locked away in prison. The message is always the same message, one message: repent, turn around, change your mind. The message is spoken in different ways. How can we speak it so that people hear? How can we speak it so that people respond, Yes?

Jesus is there in Capernaum. He sees two men, brothers beside the water, casting their nets. How long had it been like this? Presumably all their life: from the age they were old enough to stand in the water and hold a net. Were they content? Are you content with your Monday through Friday life? Maybe they had never really thought about it. Maybe there was really no reason to. This was life. It always had been. It always would be. They might tell you there was nothing wrong with their life: life was alright and all. I have to wonder, though, and I suspect they would wonder—not that it mattered, not that it did them any good—but they would wonder every now and again if this was all there was: casting a net by the water, hoping, praying sometimes, to catch something.

Feet in the sand, feeling the water pulling the sand around your feet, as though it was going somewhere, cast the net, wait, pull in. Check net. Repeat. Most of the time, the net was empty, except for weeds and debris that you’d have to clean out: mucky, slimy work. Sometimes there would be a fish; sometimes it would be one to keep. Sometimes, you’d sit at the end of the day with the others, listen again to stories and legends of the time when there was something more than a fish, something wonderful, even beautiful, mysterious, rare, possible.

          Jesus comes to the two, standing there along that shifting shore. “Come, follow me [. . .] and I will send you out to fish for people” (4:19). And they go with him. That’s it? It’s that simple? We’re missing something, right? Something has been left out: some questions, some doubts, some disbelief. Oh, those are there, and they remain there, always there, the questions, the disbelief. The two go with him, anyway. They go, still. Not everyone does. Is it that there was just something about Jesus? No. He didn’t look like God. He didn’t come like God . . . except that, one day, there he was where the water meets the land, and he spoke to Peter and Andrew. He didn’t talk like God. He just said repent in different ways, and he called people to come, to go with him, to be with him.

What was he offering? Peter and Andrew had the sense, the feeling in that hidden place inside, that what he was offering was better than what they had, better than the prospect of anything they were likely to have, standing there on the shore. They had that feeling just like when they sat and listened to the stories and legends about the time when there was something more than a fish, something wonderful, beautiful, mysterious, rare, possible.

Most of all, what they heard in what Jesus said, what they felt as he said it to them, was now is the time: time to go, time to decide, time to change.

Jesus calls two more, sitting in the boat with their father, cleaning muck and slime out of the nets. They, too, go, leaving their father there in the boat. How did he feel about that, watching his boys walk off? Maybe he was just mystified. Maybe, as he watched them walk away, he smiled, sang a prayer to God, and looked at the play of the light upon the water.

There’s something greater here, beloved. John said so. Something greater than us, higher, deeper, more powerful, more gentle, purer, more loving. A higher purpose, a noble calling. A holy call, wonderful, beautiful, mysterious, rare, possible. Those four, newly walking alongside Jesus, did not know who this man was, where he was going, or what would happen along the way, but they had a whispering in their hearts, this sense in their souls, that, whoever and whatever this man is, he’s going to bring about a huge change. O Lord, bring about Your change. Change us, that this world might be changed. Use us, Lord, to be part of Your way of bringing change to others, standing there, repeating, wondering.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.