Move on!

Matthew 4:12-17

When Jesus got word that John had been arrested, he returned to Galilee. 13 He moved from his hometown, Nazareth, to the lakeside village Capernaum, nestled at the base of the Zebulun and Naphtali hills. 14 This move completed Isaiah's sermon: 15 "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, road to the sea, over Jordan, Galilee, crossroads for the nations. 16 People sitting out their lives in the dark saw a huge light; Sitting in that dark, dark country of death, they watched the sun come up." 17 This Isaiah- prophesied sermon came to life in Galilee the moment Jesus started preaching. He picked up where John left off: "Change your life. God's kingdom is here."

23 From there he went all over Galilee. He used synagogues for meeting places and taught people the truth of God. God's kingdom was his theme, that beginning right now they were under God's government, a good government! He also healed people of their diseases and of the bad effects of their bad lives. 24 Word got around the entire Roman province of Syria. People brought anybody with an ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical. Jesus healed them, one and all. 25 More and more people came, the momentum gathering. Besides those from Galilee, crowds came from the "Ten Towns" across the lake, others up from Jerusalem and Judea, still others from across the Jordan.

Food for thought!

Bad things do happen to good people! Before very long disaster came to John. He was arrested, imprisoned and killed by Herod the king. His crime was that he had publicly denounced Herod for seducing his brother's wife, and making her his own wife, after he had put away the wife he had. John's courage brought him first imprisonment and then death. 

Bad as this might be, for Jesus, John's death marked the time he had to go forth to his task. John was cousin of Jesus. And when John died, Jesus did not nurse the wounds for ever; he immediately moved on. Some of us, whenever we get wounded or disappointed in our expectations with someone, or when we lose one of our dear ones, or our business endeavour has failed, we fail to go beyond the hurt or disappointment; we nurse our wounds for too long, too much. This is not what Jesus did. The gospel says, "When Jesus got word that John had been arrested, he returned to Galilee. ...He picked up where John left off: "Change your life. God's kingdom is here."

Let us note what he did first of all. He left Nazareth his birth place, and he took up residence in the town of Capernaum. There was a kind of symbolic finality in that move. In that moment Jesus left his home never again to return to live in it. It is as if he shut the door that lay behind him before he opened the door that stood in front of him. It was the clean cut between the old and the new. One chapter was ended and another had begun. Into life there are these moments of decision. It is always better to meet them with an even surgical cut than to vacillate undecided between two courses of action.

There's another symbolism in this. They killed John, but they did not and could not kill John's message; the messenger died but his message went on. This is why Jesus picked up where John left off: "Change your life. God's kingdom is here." It means what Jesus said, (Mat 24:35) "Sky and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away." In other words, Johns come and go, but John's message never goes away. The messengers come and go, the message endures for ever.