Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 22, 2023 – Isaiah 8:23-9:3; 1 Corinthians 1:10-13; Matthew 4:12-23

So, when Chloe wrote to Paul and told him what was going on in their parish over in Corinth, he said, “I hear that there are rivalries among you.” Rivalries. Factions. Divisions. There are always going to be factions in every community. In our nation, in our state, in our town and village, among all Christians, in any particular branch of Christianity, and every local community of that branch of Christianity. It is inevitable that there are factions. 

I told you to listen carefully to the way in which Galilee is described, both by the Prophet Isaiah, and when Matthew quotes the Prophet Isaiah. It’s “Galilee of the Gentiles, where the people who live in darkness have seen a great light.” Why are they living in darkness? And what is the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, for goodness sake? 

The word geopolitical is one of those sociological words that causes us to go (imitates snoring). Geopolitical. But the politics caused by geography and the way in which politics affects geography is a very important part of every place and every time. And it was so in the time of Jesus. Zebulon and Naphtali were two of the twelve sons of Jacob, the people on whom the promise God made to Abraham, to make you a people as numerous as the stars in the sky and sands of the seashore, descended. They were among the refugees that Moses led out of Egypt. Some of those people were the descendants of Zebulon, some were the descendants of Naphtali. When they finally got to the so-called Promised Land, that land was divvied up among the descendants of the twelve sons. And the place where the descendants of Zebulon and the descendants of Naphtali got, was on the east side of the Sea of Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee was up in the very northern part of today’s land of Israel. And, where Jesus was born, or I should say where Jesus grew up, in Nazareth, is twenty miles from the Sea of Galilee and twenty-five miles from the Mediterranean Sea. It would have taken Jesus and his family three days to walk from Nazareth to Capernaum. But it says in today’s gospel that Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum by the Sea to make its headquarters. So, Jesus, as a grown man, made that twenty mile journey and set himself up in a seaport town in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali. 

Now, you have to understand what that meant when Jesus was alive. The people down in Judea, where the temple was in Jerusalem, looked down their noses at people who lived in Galilee, and considered them to be bad Jews because they had a great deal of interaction between themselves and unclean people, the Gentiles. Right at the top of the Sea of Galilee, along its northern shore, was non-Israelite territory. It belonged at that time to Syria. And it had been concurred, years ago, by the Assyrians, cousins of the Syrians. And, whenever there is a conquest, eventually people inter-marry. And so, they were impure Jews, living in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali, in Galilee of the Gentiles. That’s why it was called that. Because, once you inter-marry, according to pious Jews, once you inter-marry, you’re no longer a good Jew and you are in danger of becoming a Gentile, a pagan.  And so, they looked down their noses at people who lived in Galilee, including Jesus.

On the other hand, the Sea of Galilee was right along the most important trade route from India to Rome. Now picture this. Almost all the goods traveling one way or the other, at one point stopped for the night right along the Sea of Galilee, probably in the town of Capernaum. Which meant that that was a very important place for trade. For making money. And, as you know, at all times in history, money trumps everything else. Not only that, but Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, was part of the breadbasket of the entire country. It was the most fertile part of the entire land of Israel. And everybody - from the Galileans to the Samaritans to the Judeans - everybody was dependent for their fruits and vegetables and, most importantly, for their wheat on Nazareth. On the place where the unclean Jews lived. And so, there was kind of a go-along-to-get-along attitude along with great prejudice and nastiness between the two groups. That’s why I asked you to listen carefully to the way St. Matthew described it in his gospel. 

Later on in the gospel, Jesus is going to say to a whole group of people, “I have come only, only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But it’s not true. Jesus is both saying the truth and telling a lie because of what happens in today’s story. Listen to the most important parts of the story.

In the very middle, St. Matthew says that Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That’s the message He was coming to bring. Was He only bringing it for Jews, or not. Listen to the end of the story. “He went all around Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people.” This is chapter four. Way ahead, in chapter nine, St. Matthew is going to use exactly the same words that I just read. Exactly the same words.

Now, we were told when we write we should never repeat ourselves. So, why did Matthew repeat himself perfectly? Because he’s made a sandwich of his story. The beginning of the sandwich is today’s story. He starts his message by saying, “You have got to change. Repent. You have got to change your attitude.” Then what happens next? He gives the first of his five speeches. We call it the Sermon on the Mount. It goes on for three chapters long. But there are five sermons in Matthew’s gospel. That’s how Matthew divides his gospel. After each of Jesus’ sermons, there are things Jesus does and stories Jesus tells that show how Jesus’ sermon should be lived out in life.  So, after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to perform a whole bunch of miraculous cures. But all the people he cures are outsiders. They’re not necessarily Gentiles, because He says his mission is only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But they are heretical Jews. Jews who are dealing with Romans. They are people who are ritually unclean, because they have leprosy or some other disease that has an external manifestation where there is bleeding and icky stuff. He cures someone who lives in a Gentile home. Someone who is a servant of a Roman centurion.  He cures someone who’s crazy. He never cures a pious Jew. He spends all of his curing time curing people who are on the margins. People who are part of factions that He is not supposed to like if he is going to be a good Jew. So, what he does is, he takes all of the teaching that he gave on the Sermon on the Mount, and he acts it out in his life.

Matthew tells this story to another whole bunch of people forty years later who are divided into factions. There are a whole bunch of Christians who don’t like each other. There are Jewish Christians, who feel that their heritage is being insulted and ignored. After all, Jesus was born a Jew, and now they’re expected to break the bread of Eucharist with Gentiles.  And there are Gentile Christians, who are insulted that these other people don’t like them. And they don’t like them very much either. These people who are expected to gather together for Mass and Holy Communion every week. Matthew’s task is the same as Jesus’ task. To go out to the hinter lands and deal with the factions. And so, he places, right in the beginning of his story, Jesus’ basic message. “Reform your life and believe in the Good News.  Change your attitude and listen to what I’m saying.”

There are always going to be factions - in our families, in our parishes, in our communities, in our nation.  But we don’t have to contribute to the factionalism. We can change the way we think. And, though we can’t change the way we feel, we can change the way we show our feelings.