Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the all-embracing love of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.

The work of John the baptist comes to an end, and then the ministry of Jesus begins. The one preparing the way has completed his mission, and the Messiah comes into focus.

But what does he do? He moves away from home:

He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.

Matthew explains this move of Jesus from Nazareth to Capernaum as a fulfillment of Isaiah (9:1-2). Nazareth was in the ancient Zebulun and Capernaum in Naphtali—both are part of Galilee.

"This is all rather astonishing. Shouldn't the Messiah begin and end his work in Jerusalem? Why Capernaum? Why the land of the Gentiles?" (Jensen, "Preaching Matthew's Gospel", p. 68). This is also the place of the final call of Jesus to his disciples—to make disciples of all nations! We, like him, are to be light to the Gentiles, the nations, those who are not us.

We are told that Jesus "made his home" in Capernaum. When I toured the Holy Land several years ago, the guide told us that Jesus spent more time in Capernaum than in Nazareth; it was a place he loved, and where he found the succor of friend and hearth. It appears that Jesus' trip to Capernaum was not just a missionary trip, but to establish Capernaum as his home base.

William Carter (Matthew and the Margins) writes about this move:

Jesus left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, a small agricultural and fishing village (population around one thousand) on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. He does not move to the larger cities, Tiberias (built to honor and named after the emperor Tiberias) or Sepphoris, the centers of imperial political, economic, social, and cultural power in Galilee, which maintain the elite's interests and control over the surrounding villages through taxation. As a Jew in Roman-controlled territory, Jesus locates himself among the marginal, with the poor not the wealthy, with the rural peasants not the urban elite, with the ruled not the rulers, with the powerless and exploited not the powerful, with those who resist imperial demands not enforce them. He continues the gospel's preference for the apparently small and insignificant places and people who, nevertheless, are central for God's purposes (2:5-6, 22-23; 3:1). [pp. 113-114]

There, among the marginal, the poor, the powerless, the exploited, and the resisters of the realm, Jesus states his message:

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

This powerful prophetic announcement, as you can tell from my title, grabbed my attention. It is borrowed by Matthew, we believe, from Mark, and it is the quintessential statement of Jesus. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Or, as Mark has it, "the kingdom of God."

So, I ask you, and myself. Do you believe it? Is this the Word of God that is written upon your hearts? Is this what you are so filled with knowing that it overflows into every aspect of your life and conversation?

I won't presume to answer those questions for you, but they are the ones being asked of us as we sit under this inaugural proclamation of our Lord, Jesus Christ (in a week of inaugurations).

My sneaking suspicion, however, it that what is inaccurately called today the "civil religion" of America, has so invaded our senses that there is scarcely room for the swelling joy of letting the words of Jesus soak into our souls. A secular, and nearly world-pervasive, set of principles, steeped in histories and myths of "getting ahead" and "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps" and all sorts of consumerism, individualism, racism, and empiricism sullies our spirits. The cataract roar is so loud that the trickling still small voice of God is drowned.

As I reflected on this mighty sentence from the lips of Jesus—"Repent, for God's kingdom is near."—I recalled the work of a group of clergy I was a part of during my last few years in Indianapolis. We engaged in a study on urban sprawl and its connections to the witness of the Church.

That context leads me to ask the kinds of questions I asked of you a few moments ago. It leads me to search my own thoughts for evidence of the nearness of God's rule and my heart for evidence of repentance and belief.

We—several members and the clergy of the six churches involved—discussed biblical ideas that call us as Christians to be concerned about even matters like sprawl. What are its causes?—population growth; racist government policy; expanding per capita land use; growing home size; acculturation that fosters concerns about safety, education, and green space; greed; expectations; minimal legal and geographical barriers; and so on. What religious principles might guide us?—stewardship of creation, justice, reconciliation, sin, hope, love. Where might hope be found?—thinking more in terms of the metropolis and less about the so-called urban/suburban divide, fostering different attitudes and values, debunking myths like the one that wrongly asserts that suburbs require less public funding, and taking public policy initiatives.

As you can see, this matter of sprawl is an exceedingly complex issue. It touches upon our "civil religion", our history, and on the intransigent problems of racism, ghettoization, economic injustice, and environmental destruction.

It makes me uncertain about whether or not to have hope that anything can be done about this cluster of challenges to the civic and Christian spirit. I wonder about whether I and we can claim a robust faith in Jesus' proclamation to us this morning: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

But as I think again, perhaps there are ways in which the kingdom of heaven is coming near.

You see, implicit in Jesus' message is both gift and call. The kingdom coming near is the gift—he proclaims it as fact, not as something we have to work for. And that is blessing enough in the face of difficult matter like sprawl—or, by the way, any thing that may be hard in your life at this moment. The call is to repentance: "Repent, for God's kingdom is near."

For me, and I hope for others, part of what happens when hard issues get discussed is that I experience repentance. I begin to see more clearly what has gotten us to where we are, and it always has a lot to do with sin. And that leads me to contrition—to heart-felt sorrow for my complicity in the sinful state of things. And that brings me to repentance.

Let me get at that in a way that I hope with be helpful to you.

Repentance properly understood is an "I can't" experience rather than an "I can" experience. If repentance is promising God, "I can do better," then we are trying to keep ourselves in control of our lives. If we can do better, we don't need a gracious God, only a patient One who will wait long enough for us to do better. When we come before God confessing, "I can't do better," then we are dying to self. We are giving up control of our lives. We are throwing our sinful lives on the mercy of God. We are inviting God to do what we can't do ourselves—namely to raise the dead—to change and recreate us.

Note that the command, "Repent" is in the present tense—"Keep on repenting!" "Continually be repentant!" It isn't like a door we pass through once that gets us into the kingdom. Repentance is the ongoing lifestyle of the people in the kingdom. It is the path of the Christian life as we seek to become more like the Christ we worship. (This thought is inspired by Brian Stoffregen)

So, repentance is our Christian calling. And with it, we honor, experience, and apprehend more fully the kingdom of heaven. As we repent, the kingdom comes near. The more we repent, turning away from sin and towards God, the more the kingdom comes. Let me repeat: We do not make it come, but it comes as a gift as we respond to God's calling.

That, at least for me, is a wonderfully renewing, if not new, insight. It is, of course, always new, because each act of repentance brings us back again to saying "I can't" and hearing God's "I can." We enter anew into the ruling power that emanates from heaven, even as that power enters us in the forms of grace and forgiveness. The kingdom, indeed, comes near, for there is no place nearer or dearer than the heart.

Now we come full circle. Early on, I spoke of Jesus going to Capernaum, where he inaugurates his mission among the outcast. Hear again a few of the words of Isaiah that Matthew quotes:

the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.

When we move into an awareness of our sinfulness, we become the people who sit in darkness. We are cast back upon God's grace, and we who sit in the region and shadow of death experienced the dawning of light. The light of grace. The light of forgiveness. The light of community. The light of hope. The light of the extra interest and energy for life that comes with joining a handful of other folks in exploring what it means not to be limited by our current roles and to be willing to expand the search for meaning. The light of the abiding reality we call God's kingdom.

Jesus manifests God's salvation by ushering in the kingdom—transforming personal misery, announcing God's empire, forming an alternative community, and anticipating the future establishment of God's reign in full. We can overcome, and we are overcoming, the ways of the world. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. — Amen.