The Kingdom is the Gospel
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 9:1-4 | Psalm 27:1, 5-13 | 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 | Matthew 4:12-23
I took a capstone course for my undergraduate degree called “Christ and Culture,” a title borrowed (I suspect “tongue-in-cheek”) from Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous book of the same title. Early in the class - perhaps even the first day - we were asked, “What is the Gospel?” The question was meant to generate some reflection on the content of the Gospel, the “good news.” The responses were varied, but they generally reflected the same understanding: The Gospel is the good news that Christ was crucified and raised so that we might be forgiven of our sins and enjoy eternal life with God.
The professor seemed to expect this kind of answer, and he asked why, if that is the Gospel, does Jesus proclaim the Gospel at the beginning of his ministry in Galilee? Presumably, Jesus has not already been crucified and resurrected at this point in his ministry, so that likely isn’t the content of the Gospel Jesus is proclaiming. If not, what is the Gospel Jesus proclaims at the beginning of his ministry?
Matthew begins this ministry in chapter 4 after the temptations in the wilderness, and Mark begins this ministry in the first chapter, cutting straight to the chase. But in both of these accounts, Jesus bears this same message at the beginning of his ministry: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The content of the Gospel is this proclamation of the imminent Kingdom of God in the face of empire and its symptoms.
I am often fascinated by the geographical details in the stories. Warren Carter spends considerable time on the place of Jesus’ ministry in this passage, noting that Jesus’ “withdrawal” to Galilee is not, in fact, a “retreat.” Certainly, he moves north, away from the capital city and the halls of power, but the identification of Jesus’ location as “Galilee of the Gentiles” maintains the reality that Jesus does not leave occupied land. It is colonized, just as it was in Isaiah’s time, by an occupying force: Rome.
But the naming of a place or person is significant. Whether it is the Gulf of Mexico, Aotearoa, Zimbabwe, or Zebulun and Naphtali, the name we give indicates the stories we prioritize and the storytellers we authorize. Carter points out Matthew’s simple, subversive act of naming the land “Zebulun” and “Naphtali.” He writes, “The nomenclature locates Jesus in the promised land, which God gave to the people and over which God has sovereignty. It is a daring reminder of God’s sovereignty in the face of Roman claims on Galilee and the presence of Roman client rulers like Herod.”1 The naming of the place of Jesus’ ministry and the recollection of Isaiah’s prophecy is itself a subversive act and sets the tone for the Gospel Jesus will proclaim in the midst of hostile Roman occupation and colluders.
The proclamation of God’s imminent Kingdom is a threat to the present kingdom and its beneficiaries. It is also a recognition of the darkness of colonization and occupation, wherein your entire life and well-being is subject to the plans and desires of an outside force. We need to look no further than the modern-day Palestinians who have been subject to such growing occupation, control, hostility, and genocidal threat for decades, even as we inhabit modern-day Rome.
Just as Jesus withdraws to the occupied margins of his own country, the people he begins to call are similarly marginal and disinherited. Fishermen are not particularly respectable, and they are certainly far from the center of power in their social hierarchy. Moreover, their occupation bears its own marks of occupation, as the land and its wealth was understood to belong to Caesar. Carter explains,
“Their identity as fishermen means involvement in the imperial economic and political monopoly. Fish were claimed as revenue for the empire. ‘...[E]very rare and beautiful thing in the wide ocean belongs to the imperial treasury” (Juvenal, Sat 4.51-55)...they have purchased a lease or a contract with Rome’s agents that allows them to fish and obligates them to supply a certain quantity of fish. They pay taxes on the catch and transportation.”2
The contrast between Matthew’s naming of the land and Jesus’ proclamation of the Gospel of God’s Kingdom on the one hand, and the Empire’s assumption of its own sovereignty on the other, presents an immediate tension in Jesus’ mission and ministry. John’s arrest sets this tone at the outset of our reading, and the tension builds as we begin to see Jesus’ ministry as a defiant insistence on the sovereignty of God in the midst of a competing, hostile empire.
When Jesus calls the first disciples, he tells them they will “fish for people.” This is a strange metaphor, even if it is spoken to fishermen. But I wonder, given the imperial claim on the wealth of the land and sea, if Jesus is not suggesting that, despite its best efforts, the empire cannot make a claim on the people. It will certainly try, and empires have continued the attempt into the present hour. But the community Jesus begins to build around his proclamation and ministry will be the kind of people who resist the exploitative and extractive efforts of once and future empires for the better Word of the Kingdom of God - a Word that shines light on the dignity of every human being and manifests the possibility of realizing our humanity revealed in the one who makes us citizens of his Kingdom.
We who seek first this Kingdom and its righteousness are no longer allegiant to the claims and stories of the empires of this world. The stories we tell, the names we give to the gifts of this world, are informed only by our allegiance to the inbreaking Kingdom of God. Despite every claim to power in this world, we speak and act in accordance with the power of God revealed in the grace and mercy of the Crucified. Before him, every empire has fallen, every government has shut down, and every principality and power in creation has been overthrown.
Carter, Warren. Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading. Orbis Books. Maryknoll, 2000. 114.
Ibid., 121.