Epiphany 3 Year A "The Landscape of Love"

January 26, 2020

Earlier this month, a response to a clue on the game show “Jeopardy!” caused quite the controversy. The category was “Where’s that church?” The clue worth $200 was "Built in the 300s A.D., the Church of the Nativity." The first contestant to buzz in answered, “What is Palestine?” and Alex Trebek, the show’s host, gave a decisive “No” and that player lost $200 from her score. The next player to buzz in answered, “What is Israel?” and he was rewarded the $200 for what Alex said was the correct answer. With that, the geopolitical debate started. Because The Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe is Jesus’ birthplace, is located in Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem in the Palestinian-administered city of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The “right” and “wrong” answers to this question fueled debate and outrage by many. Clearly, geography matters, and the geo-political context matters . . . but not just for game shows.
I’d never thought too much about this until Bunker and I met, at college in Tennessee. He was from New Jersey and I was from Texas. Having never even been to New Jersey, but shaped by the not-so-subtle “superiority” of Texas culture and attitude, I was appalled at the idea that Bunker and I could get married and actually have children with New Jersey on their birth certificates! As a Texan, New Jersey was an anathema, sight unseen or not. And yet, today, I am formed by this beautiful Garden State, and have 3 beautiful children with New Jersey on their birth certificates.
A philosopher [José Ortega y Gassett] once famously said, “Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are.” There is a deep truth to this. Place matters.
All of this being said, it is true too, for our Gospel today. It is tempting to read the Gospels and focus only on Jesus’ words or actions, as opposed to the locations. But Matthew wants us to notice the geo-political and the geo-theological context made by Jesus’ movements. So, when he tells us that Jesus left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, we should pause, get out an atlas, and figure out what these seemingly non-descript areas mean. Yet, it’s not enough to just look at a map of first-century Palestine. Instead we need to look at a map from 700 years earlier and notice that these two Northern tribes were conquered by Assyria. In other words, Zebulun and Naphtali have not been on the lips of God’s people for a very, very long time.
So, why does Matthew mention these places? Hardly a map mistake. No, this is cartography of promise, 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 shadow of death, light has dawned. Just a mention of these two tribes and Matthew’s audience knows that in Jesus, God is up to what God does best -- making good on God’s promises to God’s people.
Location matters to God. And in Jesus, the world is changed because God has changed locations. God is no longer in the heavens. No longer behind the curtain. No longer contained in the temple. God is out there. And as Matthew tells us, God in Jesus preaches his first sermon, picking up exactly where John the Baptist left off, saying, “Turn around, change your life: the kingdom of heaven is coming!” But he says these words some eighty miles up in Galilee. Jesus then moves out of his backwater hometown of Nazareth and settles in at an equally out-of-the-way place called Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. He has taken himself far away from Jerusalem, from Judea, and from all things religious. Essentially, Jesus begins his ministry, his preaching, his teaching, his healing, out in the sticks. You see, the nearness of God’s kingdom of shalom has already been announced in the vicinity of Jerusalem. So Jesus makes a point to proclaim the nearness of the kingdom to others. Jesus has come to this world for the sake of this world–for all of it. There are no unimportant places.
Place matters. Every place. Every person in every place. Whether you’re in Israel or Palestine. Texas. Tennessee. Or New Jersey. Australia. Puerto Rico. China. Every place where the Spirit comes into a person’s heart is holy ground.
Padraig O’Tuama, Irish poet and theologian hones in on this by speaking to the particularity of the place where you and I sit, while also pulling back the lens to see the places where every other person sits. He writes, “Neither I nor the poets I love found the keys to the kingdom of prayer and we cannot force God to stumble over us where we sit. But I know that it’s a good idea to sit anyway. So every morning I sit, I kneel, waiting, making friends with the habit of listening, hoping that I’m being listened to. There, I greet God. I say hello to my chaos, my unmade decisions, my unmade bed, my desire and my trouble. I say hello to distraction and privilege, I greet the day and I greet my beloved and bewildering Jesus. I greet my untold stories, my unfolding story, my own love, my own body. I greet the things I think will happen and I say hello to everything I do not know about the day. [Here is where Padraig makes the shift to thinking about the world outside himself.]I greet my own small world and I hope that I can meet the bigger world that day. I greet my story and hope that I can hear other stories during the long day ahead. I greet God, and I greet the God who is more God than the God I greet. / Hello to you all, I say, as the sun rises above the chimneys of North Belfast. / Hello.”
Place matters to God. Every person in every place. Our goal should be to keep proclaiming and living out this kingdom until the knowledge of God covers the earth the way the waters cover the seas.
Amen.
*This sermon is based on the Matthew 4 textual notes by Scott Hoezee, “Center for Excellence in Preaching.”