January 25, 2026
Epiphany 3
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, CT
Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1,5-13; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23
In our Tuesday morning bible study, we have been making our way through a book called “The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently.” Whether it’s the account of creation from the first chapter of Genesis or one of the many prophecies of Isaiah, we have been wrestling with the difference between how weread these texts and how Jews understand them.
This past Tuesday, we had the story of Jonah and what the “sign of Jonah” is when referred to by Jesus. The book of Jonah is only four short chapters, and it has to be read as comedy with Jonah as a stand-in for all of us. When God calls Jonah and tells him to go prophesy repentance to the people of Israel’s hated enemy in Nineveh, not only does Jonah not go, he hops on a ship to a destination as far away as he could go.
My road to ordination was something like that. I couldn’t even utter the thought that maybe I was called to ordained ministry for years. When I finally did, it took another nine years before I was ordained a priest, which means that from start to finish, it took me 19 years from that first whispered invitation in the depths of my heart to having a bishop lay hands on my head. 19 years.
As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-22)
Immediately. Not the next day or two weeks later or nineteen years later. Immediately.
I can’t help wondering what they thought they were getting themselves into. Maybe they were just young men looking for adventure. Maybe they had no intention of taking over dad’s fishing business and were a little tired of that backbreaking work. The way Matthew tells the story, this is the first encounter these four have had with Jesus. Was he that charismatic that he could just say “come” and they went?
And what about Jesus? Why was he interested in gathering a bunch of nobodies around him as he launches his ministry proclaiming God’s reign? Paul would later write, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). It does sound like foolishness until you’ve got nothing else to hold onto. That’s why Jesus went to the nobodies. In fact, he still does.
At the end of the last chapter, the part we read two weeks ago, Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River and named God’s beloved. He is then led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, fasting for forty days which we will read when we get to Lent. When he returns, undoubtedly weak, disoriented, emaciated, the first thing he hears is that John, his cousin, has been arrested. And he knows he can’t stay where he is. John is the leader of a movement in opposition to the Roman Empire and its local henchman, Herod Antipas.
So, after six weeks in the wilderness, Jesus does not get to go home to relax and recuperate. He has to be on the move, heading to the shores of Galilee, right in the midst of Herod’s oppression, not withdrawing but entering the belly of the beast, and there he says to anyone who will listen, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). Repent. Turn around. Return to the Lord your God and give up the ways of empire, the practices that trample on the poor and abuse those on the margins.
In this context, it makes sense that Jesus would not go to the powerful. He goes to those very people who are most vulnerable to the abuses of those on the top of the economic and power-structure heap. This is how movements start, and Jesus basically becomes a community organizer. Herod’s not going to help us. The rich aren’t going to help us. We have to organize, and so he starts surrounding himself with others to help do the hard work of changing the culture.
But Jesus is calling them to repentance, too. They’re not upholding the empire. They’re not the oppressors. They’re the victims. What do they have to repent of? Maybe Jesus is inviting them to turn around from despair to hope, to give up their victimhood and claim their agency as beloved of God. Maybe their repentance is because they had given up on God to help, given up on God’s promise. He invites them to follow, and they do, and apparently they turn from hopelessness to hope. And all because Jesus said, “Follow me.”
Jonah went to the people of Nineveh after his adventures in the belly of a great fish, and lo and behold, they repented of their ways.
We look around us and see a world that is deeply troubled and divided, and maybe we, too, are tempted to give up. Hopelessness would be an easy trap to fall into. Jesus called the original disciples out of that hopelessness, that powerlessness, and said, “follow me,” and look at what happened. We are still here talking about it two millennia later!
The disciples dropped everything and followed. Jonah was not so quick to accept that invitation. I was not so quick to say “yes” to that invitation. Yes, I was churchy and faithful and believed in God’s promises with all my heart. What I didn’t really believe was that God could use me to do this. My repentance was also about not believing that what God said was true.
I’m here to tell you that God does not lie. God not only calls you beloved, God calls you to follow. Maybe it’s not a call to ordination, but God calls all of us to follow, in whatever way and using whatever gifts we might possess in service to God’s reign.
Today, even now, Jesus is inviting us to come and follow. We live in a world desperate for the Good News we have to share. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” Isaiah says (9:2). It is our turn to point toward that light, to tell a world trapped in the shadows of hopelessness and despair that the Light of the World has come. It’s time to turn around and walk in the light, even if it leads all the way to the cross.