Today’s readings: Isaiah 8, 23 - 9,3; 1 Corinthians 1, 10-13.17; Matthew 4, 12-23.
‘Repent’ is the key word in today’s gospel text. But for Jesus, repentance is not simply linked to sin. The context of the words from Matthew: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand” marks the beginning of a new chapter after John the Baptist had been arrested. Jesus goes back to Galilee, and from that moment, walking by the Sea of Galilee, he chose his core team of fishermen whom he called, not to confession, but to a radically new future.
His proclamation was different from John’s and was characterised by “curing all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people”. It was a radical break from the religious past of his time. These same words today should call on us to make a similar break and let a new bright future dawn on the Church in our times.
The words of the prophet Isaiah in the first reading also carry this sensation of something new in the air: “In days past the Lord humbled the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, but in days to come he will confer glory on the Way of the Sea on the far side of Jordan”.
We need to come to terms with the fact that our religious past may no longer be relevant to people’s real needs. This happened at the time of Jesus and he served as a catalyst for change. Now it is time for us to discern whether in truth we may be facing a similar shift. In that case, the rehash of old styles and methods would only be disastrous for the credibility of the Gospel.
The challenge ahead is not to resuscitate our religious past. Fifty years ago with Vatican II the priority for the Church was ‘reform and renewal’. Now we need to discern our way forward differently. In the Gospel, the call of Simon, Andrew, James and John marked the beginnings not of something refurbished but of something radically new. It was an innovation that clashed with the religious past of the Jews and with their religious mindset.
In the social sector, too much attention was given to providing more of the same to narrow populations that were already served. The theory of so-called ‘disruptive innovation’, coined by Clayton Christensen in the 1990s, proved to be a powerful way of thinking about innovation-driven growth. I believe this was already Jesus’ way of thinking.
He was addressing more a religious mindset than the moralistic realm. His proclamation, unlike that of the Baptist, was not concerned in the first place with forgiving sins. Jesus acknowledges that it is not only sin or moral behaviour that block the way of the Spirit. I am in no way denying the reality of sin or the truth about our sinfulness. But at times it is more our mindset that hinders our reaching out to God.
The so-called first proclamation about Jesus can be the good news we need to listen to because it can provide the light in our darkness and the right perspective to grasp what being fully human really entails. This, strictly speaking, is what the mission of the Church is about. It is not to tell people what is sinful or not.
And this is precisely where at this point in time we are experiencing again the old clash between a religious past that fails to address us existentially, and the novelty of the gospel of Jesus that can still spark in us new desires and the search for God. In today’s second reading St Paul writes to the Corinthians: “Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the Good News”.
For too long we’ve put our minds at rest simply by making sure that people are ‘sacramentalised’, without bothering about evangelising them. Evangelisation is not about converting people to Christianity but about helping people encounter Christ in their lives. Now is the time for our churches to reset their priorities and to choose between perpetuating a religious past that risks being a fossil, and breaking with that past to help people recover in them the spark of the divine.