3rd Sunday after the Epiphany
Texts: Matthew 4:12-23;
1 Cor 1:10-18; Isa 9:1-4
YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZoA3POW_b5Q
REPENTING THE FAILURE TO PREACH THE
ANTI-NATIONALIST POLITICS OF GOD’S REIGN
Renee Good. Alex Pretti. Gunned down in the streets of Minneapolis by federal agents. The federal government’s response, before any investigation, has been to immediately blame the victim and to spin a narrative of what happened that is, frankly, contradicted by video evidence. Renee Good and Alex Pretti are gone forever, leaving behind grieving family and friends — and millions of grieving fellow citizens, like you and I. I spent yesterday heartsick about the terror our own government is causing, asking myself, What is happening to this country we love?
Yet, if we truly want answers to that question — What is happening to this country we love? — then I think we need do what Jesus calls us to do in today’s Gospel Reading: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repent. If we live in dark times, so did the peoples of the First Century, living under the oppression of the Roman Empire. Matthew tells the story of God’s salvation through Jesus with that kind of darkness present throughout. He tells the story of Jesus’ birth against the backdrop of Herod slaughtering all the male infants in Bethlehem. He tells the story of Jesus’ baptism and the descending of God’s Spirit on him against the backdrop of the Spirit then driving Jesus into the wilderness, where he is tempted by Satan during forty days of prayer. Now, he tells the story of Jesus beginning his ministry, calling his first disciples, by once again setting the scene of the darkness of the times.
He recalls Isaiah’s prophecy about Galilee — the land of two of the ancient tribes of Israel, Zebulun and Naphtali — they have fallen under gentile control. The Syrians are coming down from the north. The people who sit in darkness are about to see a great light. Eight hundred years later, as Jesus is beginning his ministry in that same land of Zebulun and Naphtali, the darkness of gentile control remains. This time the Romans.
Two thousand years later, here we are again. I found myself yesterday sitting in a very dark place. It’s a different land geographically, not the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, but we might say the land of the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee. That’s the thing going on here in Matthew, naming the ancient tribes which used to be on the land. And it’s still a land under the darkness of “gentile” control. The Greek word translated as “gentile” is ethnē, which can also be translated as “nations.” For the people of Israel, it was simply a way of saying that things still aren’t under the influence of God’s reign. It’s under the control of other human beings, the gentiles, those other nations. In short, we might say that its under the dark shadow of nationalistic control, the typical human way of reigning in which those who rule make sure the scales of justice are tipped in their favor. Friends of those in power may do just fine. Everyone else, not so much.
Remember once again that at the time of Jesus the Israelite people, descended from the twelve tribes of Jacob, have been indigenous people for centuries. Two of those ancient tribes had been Zebulun and Naphtali, the place where Jesus is beginning his ministry in Galilee. Matthew’s reference to the two ancient tribes is a way of reminding us that Jesus is an indigenous person living under imperial, nationalistic oppression. But he comes bearing the light of God’s reign coming into the world through him. It was good news of God’s reign entering into the darkness of even the worst of human reigns.
So, if we are to follow as disciples beginning with repentance today, let’s aim to do so by first acknowledging that we have been those other people who took control of someone else’s land. Here in Southeast Wisconsin, we live on the land of the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee. We have stolen their land. Repentance, I think, needs to begin there. And then perhaps we can begin to understand what is happening to our country. We are a nation of immigrants who came to this land with high ideals, striving for being a place where all people are created equal and are given equal opportunity to succeed. It’s in our charter, our Declaration of Independence. It’s our greatest ideal, worth striving for. We might even say that it’s the kind of equality resonant with the values of God’s reign. But, when we are honest with ourselves, when we repent, we must confess that we failed that mission from the very start. We labeled the indigenous people as savages and denied them protection under our Constitution. We enslaved peoples taken from their lands in Africa and defined them as 3/5 of a person. If we are to understand the good news which Jesus brings, then we need to be very clear that God’s reign can never abide with people left out on the margins. That cannot happen.
From beginning to end, Matthew will tell the story of a lowly indigenous people being taught what God’s reign is all about. It begins with the mother of the Messiah singing a song about equality, about the mighty being brought down from the thrones and the lowly lifted up. It’s about the Messiah’s family becoming refugees in Egypt and then Nazareth because of the imperialistic terror of King Herod. We’ll see the politics of God’s reign from the first thing Jesus teaches us to the last. The first thing Jesus teaches we’ll read next week, in fact, the Beatitudes, the proclamation that those who are blessed in God’s reign are those who are typically left out in human reigns. The poor, the mourning, the meek, the peacemakers. We’ll see it along the way with Jesus’ healing those on the margins. And the last thing Jesus teaches will be on the Reign of Christ Sunday, this November, closing out the lectionary year of Matthew’s Gospel. That last teaching is the familiar judgment of the nations (ethnē) in Matthew 25, where Jesus gives us the blueprint to a successful reign. Human reigns incessantly cater to the powerful, those already in power, to the deference of the weak.
God’s politics are the opposite: if any nation is to be successful, they must lovingly care for the most vulnerable, the least in God’s human family. That’s where we will always meet the Risen Jesus. The Crucified Messiah, the one who let himself be cast out of the typical human reign, can now be found in the hungry and the thirsty, in the immigrant and those who are naked, in the sick and the imprisoned. “I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
That’s where we find Jesus today. That was the bright light for me yesterday. The good people of Minnesota are finding Jesus right now in the brown people being terrorized by ICE. Teachers who are bring food and assignments to their students who are forced to stay home because they’re afraid. Bringing food to their neighbors who can’t come out of their homes because they’re terrified. ICE represents the darkness in which we sit until enough of us act according to the light. Until enough of us answer the call to discipleship and learn the politics of God’s reign through Jesus and act accordingly.
So, yes, I think this is very much a time for repentance so that we may open ourselves more fully to the politics of God’s reign come into this world through Jesus. As Lutherans, for example, we have tried to make the Gospel to center on other things. I’ve been wrestling with this recently as our synod has begun a study on religion and politics from the Lutheran perspective. We keep trying to go back to this five hundred year-old theology centered on Justification by grace through faith. Not that Justification by grace through faith is all bad. But it’s not the center of the Gospel! Especially the one we see so clearly today. (“The good news of the kingdom.”)
Today, repentance means confessing that it’s taking the center of the Gospel from the wrong person, in the first place! Paul was a great apostle to the Messiah Jesus, but he wasn’t the Messiah! Even Paul himself says so in today’s Second Reading, when he asks, “Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Was Paul crucified for you?” The Messiah Jesus couldn’t be more clear about what’s at the heart of the Gospel is than in today’s Gospel Reading. The Gospel is all about the good news of God’s reign coming into the world through Jesus. It’s not chiefly about the good news of going to heaven someday. It’s about heaven coming to this earth and making our lives better right now. About being called to work towards making our lives better right now. And so we who are called as disciples can learn and begin to practice a whole new set of politics, God’s politics, the politics which are suitable to God’s reign coming into the world.
In fact, let me close by putting it this way: for me as a Lutheran pastor, my repentance these past fifty years (that I’ve talked with you about for two years) has meant that I’ve not paid enough attention to politics. If the Gospel is fundamentally about God’s reign coming into the world through Jesus the Messiah, then the Gospel must fundamentally be about politics. It is about the vast difference between God’s politics of love, which bring healing and unity, that we learn through Jesus in the face of the usual human politics that for centuries have revolved around nationalistic thinking. Thinking that our group is better than the others and so we have the right and duty to rule over everyone else. This is the darkness in which we sit today, as we hear Jesus’ good news in the land of the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee. Let us repent, for God’s reign has come into this world through Jesus. Let us answer his call to be disciples who learn and put into practice God’s politics of love — truly a light for dark times. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, January 25, 2026
YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZoA3POW_b5Q
