With God and his Kingdom as our only cause

(Mt 4:12-17)

This morning we contemplated how Jesus overcame his temptation (Mt 4:3-11). He proved he was the son of God and could be his representative. The first thing Jesus will do in public, or better, that he must do first, is to give good news: God and his will are about to come onto the scene. God's cause, the Gospel of the Kingdom, is Jesus' business card. He identifies with what the Father wants: to reign over his people (Mt 4:17). This is the topic for our prayer.

1.The Gospel account

Matthew gives us a modest account of the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Evidently he is not interested in writing up a biography, but in identifying him with God's cause, given that he is already identified with God. The sequence is significant: first God, then his project.

After mentioning the genealogy (Mt 1:1-7), the birth in Bethlehem (Mt 1:18-2,12) and being in Egypt as an infant (Mt 2:13-22), Matthew says he is a Nazarene (Mt 2:23). Like Luke (Lk 3:1-20), he has Jesus go to John to be baptised in the Jordan (Mt 3:13; Lk 3:21). Only when the Baptist is thrown into prison does Jesus return to Galilee and begin his ministry where proclaiming God's Gospel becomes his only concern. we note that there is no detail as to who his proclamation is addressed to. His first words seem to have no definite listeners: what the writer is concerned about is not the public but the message.

Matthew only notes that Jesus returns to Galilee, and goes on from there (Mt 4:12). Galilee is the place where evangelisation must always begin from, and consequently, where the evangeliser must go to. The evangeliser must go where the Gospel awaits him. It does not matter where he comes from; what counts is where he must go (cf. Mt 28:16-20). Jesus does not stay in the desert like John (Mt 3:1). He leaves Nazareth, his home town by adoption, and sets himself up in a village with better communications, Capharnaum (Mt 4:13). This change of residence is not a simple tactical decision, something more comfortable, but a realisation of the divine plan. Thus the prophecy is fulfilled: the people who walked in darkness has seen a bright light (cf. Is 9:1). Where the evangeliser appears, light overcomes darkness. Where the Gospel is proclaimed, God's promises are fulfilled.

The God he proclaims wants to be close to human beings. And the one who is his harbinger cannot remain detached from them. Without delay he seeks listeners where they can usually be found, at work or sick (Mt 4:23-24; 9:35), on the mountains (Mt 5:1; 8,1) or close to the sea (Mt 4:18, at home (Mt 8:14), in the country (Mt 12,1) or, on Saturdays, in the synagogue (Mt 12:9-10). He cannot speak of God's presence, because it is not so evident, without proclaiming that he is near to people. So Jesus comes out of anonymity and introduces himself to people in search of listeners. He cannot preach a God who seeks to be close to his people by remaining distant from them. The Gospel he serves obliges him to ‘place himself’ amongst his listeners. He can only proclaim God's will from a position of understanding (Mt 9:2) and mercy (Mt 8:2-3; 14,14) for those who are listening to him. If God is committed to coming, there is no time to lose nor reason to justify delaying. He is pressed by a God who is in a hurry to reign. There is no time for delay or diversion when God is imminent.

2.Some highlights

All of Jesus' religious contemporaries, despite various differences, shared a faith in the final manifestation of God's kingdom: The Lord, one day, would be sovereign over the world and history. The faithful yearned for his coming. They could not hurry it but nor could they delay it. If they hope for a better future it is because they are living through a catastrophic situation the result of God's will not being carried out.

This expectation of God's kingdom then coincides with the certainty that God is about to intervene, bringing justice to those who have lived according to his will. Those who know that sovereign justice is about to arrive are ready to convert from their sinfulness. They do this not only by deploring past failures, but especially by committing to doing God's will with greater zeal. This radicalisation of obedience to God is a consequence of the imminent expectation of his kingdom.

May God reign, and this is Jesus' cause

Differently from the Baptist who continues insistently claiming that the imminent coming of the God's kingdom is a danger for personal salvation unless there are results of righteousness, Jesus proclaims the presence of God's kingdom in his own person and action. While for the Baptist the proclamation of righteousness predominates, where God is seen in works of penance that have been carried out, Jesus emphasises the universality of salvation that through the pure initiative of God, is offered to whoever accepts it. It seems at times that the Church has more followers of the Baptist than disciples of Jesus…

Hence the importance that his preaching of the kingdom of God must be accompanied by effective signs of his presence. If salvation comes to the sick or those possessed, to the excluded or despised, to the alienated or sinner, one cannot doubt its presence, nor that it is freely given, nor that it is universal. It will not be obedience to the Law but love for needy human beings which will be the way God reigns.

All of Jesus' activity, scandalous because so unexpected, is explained by his understanding of the kingdom of God: no privilege, inherited from promises or gained through works of obedience, can prevail before a God who makes righteous only those who believe they are still not right. All the rest, sabbath, laws, offerings, prayers, traditions, family, possessions, home… don't matter. Only God counts…, when he reigns.

A future already begun

God's kingdom is not only a future promise, but a current possibility, because it has to be realised according to what is expected. The first fruits of God's kingdom are are so small that they might pass unobserved. Or they could even be ignored. But as modest as their dimensions are, their requirements are not so. Parables of effective but hidden growth (Mt 13:4-9.18-23.31-32) reflect this belief of Jesus: what is imperceptible today, what even struggles to come into being, has its life and future assured. Only what has not been sown will not then flourish. As much as he seems invisible, God is already at work, and this is already his future. This is why preaching the kingdom of God, already at work even if invisibly so, requires faith and provokes hope. Jesus will teach his disciples to ask for the coming of a kingdom which has already begun (Mt 6:10). The expectation becomes more ardent because the seeds have already been planted: let he who awaits God as king not despair.

Jesus prefers a God whom one gains access to from within one's own story, in one's own country. But precisely because he proclaims the absolute sovereignty of God, he does not set out to reform the society of his own time. He does not worry too much about the Roman domination of his people but about the fact that they are not dominated by God. Jesus does not fail to question all areas of human life: family, property, worship, interpersonal relationships, politics. Because God demands exclusive service in all areas of human life. But the God of Jesus makes himself present only to the one who serves him.

A gratifying and undeserved gift

Given that the kingdom of God is the realisation of a divine plan, it should not be confused nor reduced to the satisfaction of human desire for happiness. A god who would satisfy everything in the human heart or who is in the image of human needs and a compendium of human desires, is not the God of Jesus. But it is Jesus' belief that God, when reigning, will give full satisfaction to the needs of the human heart. The kingdom of God is not a salary which is our due. There is no place in Jesus' teaching for 'merit', even though obedience to God requires effort. As much as he is expected and needed, God is always gratuitous and surprising.

Prevailing wickedness can nurture our expectation of God, but when he comes he does not limit himself to curing that. Since it is a divine plan, God's kingdom goes beyond any human realisation, any of good Christians, who by obeying God, seek to bring it about in history. The Church is not yet the kingdom, even if through its ministry there should already be clear indications of God's presence in the world. The kingdom of God is God's way of being God for us: interested in our happiness and committed to making it possible. To have the kingdom of God as our task we need to see that God alone is the Lord of our hearts. It is not the expectation of being heard that urges God to come close to us. He comes because he wants to; he comes to those who want him. To come he needs to be wanted and awaited.

God wants to reign - this is the good news

Announcement of his arrival then, feeds expectation and desire. But at the same time it highlights his absence. We don't announce someone who is already here. We don't wait for someone who has already arrived. Jesus' message is good news for someone who is unhappy because he is experiencing God's absence. This emptiness of God, where it is noticed and people are unhappy about it, indicates the lack of obedience of his subjects, reveals their unreadiness to accept him as God. It is not then that God has retired from where we notice his absence. it is more a case that he has not been allowed to come there. By good fortune for the one who feels that absence, He comes only where he has not yet been found.

This is why even the most unfortunate of human beings, sinners, the marginalised, can live happily amidst their misfortune. It is not that their situation is a good one, but precisely because of it, God is on the way to them. This is good news. Jesus' proclamation of his cause then brings joy to those who hear it. Being converted to the kingdom of God implies necessarily the joy of being alive, even while awaiting him. Joy is the form of life of the one who has been evangelised, and sadness is the evident sign of 'dis-evangelisation’.

Surrendering to this God is the faith that saves us

By proclaiming that God is near, Jesus does not limit himself to bringing joy, but ask for acceptance, faith. Faith – “only faith can guarantee the blessings we hope for” (Heb 11:1) – is unbearable without hope, and would have no basis or content. Faith is consent concerning the one who is coming, assent to what has been hoped for. More than being reasonable obsequiousness, it is an adventure we are ready to risk, a lack of certainty we are ready to take on. God comes before our faith, precedes it and makes it possible; we do not create him (God forbid!), we believe in him. Faith is assent (to believe, etymologically speaking is equipping ourselves for) the God we await, conversion to the one who is not yet present in my world, but is coming to it.

This is why the believer never despairs, because he knows that God and his kingdom, wherever they are not as yet, are about to come. For someone who trusts in Jesus, God is always his immediate future. And if God only comes where he is not, whoever knows this and is waiting for him knows he is loved by the One who still must come and who is not yet with him. Hope is the maturing of a faith experienced as the certainty of being the object of love no less, of a God whose absence we still feel.

The one who awaits God to put himself at his service, allows himself no other concern than the feverish expectation of his Lord. In order to desire his Lord there is no need for the believer to be completely good. It is enough for him to be sorry about his absence and that he lives yearning for his coming. The good have already lost God once because they were too satisfied with being good (Mt 9:11-13; Lk 15:1.25-32) Is it worth believing we have no need of God? Would that not perhaps be the effective and subtle way that we are losing him?

The kingdom of God, cradle of discipleship

A final brief highlight. The synoptic tradition is unanimous in locating the beginning of discipleship (Mk 1:16-20; Mt 4:18-22; Lk 5:1-11) immediately after presenting Jesus preaching the kingdom (Mk 1:14-15; Mt 4:17). This is not by chance: the Kingdom of God, the core of what Jesus must say, comes prior to the invitation to follow him.

As the first institution to come from the preaching of the kingdom, discipleship (following Jesus) finds its origin and cause in Jesus' personal mission. His awareness of being the apostle of God who is near means he must be near to human beings; he addresses himself to them if they are far away; he lives with them, they are his chosen ones. Therefore, is not the one who wants to be or proposes to be so, but the one chosen by Jesus invited by him. The follower of Jesus, like his Lord and through him, is at the service of the kingdom of God. That God is on his way, is a reason for discipleship to exist, just as it is a reason for the personal existence of Jesus (Mt 9:9-13). The one who is called shares with the One who has chosen him - shares not only his life but also his cause.

[A reminder of the spiritual work that has already been indicated, cf. Day one. Presentation, p. 2].

The four Gospels hardly speak of Mary while they tell us about Jesus' public ministry. But she became his mother because she accepted Jesus as her son, accepted God's salvific plan. Let us ask her to tell us how to accept God and his cause and help them to be for us what they were for Jesus, her son - our Father and our kingdom.