Prepared for the Rockport Presbyterian Church / January 25, 2026
Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder, PCUSA
Before we get into this story in Matthew’s Gospel, I want to first just get a picture of what Jesus was doing.
The first thing that Matthew tells us is that John the Baptizer was arrested and put into prison and that Jesus went to Galilee. Why?
It was because the political and religious climate in Jerusalem and Judah was too hot and too dangerous for him this early in his ministry. So, Jesus went from Nazareth to Capernaum. I want to tell you that this was not an easy trip. It was not just around the corner. It was 20 miles away and about a four-day journey.
Why would Jesus do that? After all, Nazareth was his hometown. Why would he bypass it and go to Capernaum? One reason that I found in my digging was that Nazareth was a smaller community and very conservative. Early on, the people there were not receptive to Jesus’ teachings and claims. We know from Luke 4 that when Jesus began his ministry in Nazareth, he went into the meeting place there and read a scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He quoted from Isaiah 61: 1-2:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to proclaim this is the year the Lord has chosen.
Whoa. Jesus is proclaiming something extraordinary in the Jewish meeting place of his hometown – a place he had probably sat and prayed in hundreds of times before. Everyone there knew him. He takes the prophetic scroll of Isaiah and proclaims to the people, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” Why? “Because the Lord has anointed me!” He goes on to announce, “The Lord has sent me [has selected me] to bring the good news…” And to “…proclaim this is the year the Lord has chosen.”
In other words, from the prophetic scrolls of Isaiah, Jesus proclaims the Lord God has chosen me. “This is the year the Lord has chosen.” People, you have been waiting 400 hundred years. Well now the time has come.
Well, that’s good news, isn’t it. The Jews had been waiting 400 hundred years for some word from God. God had been silent. Finally, Jesus is proclaiming, here is God’s herald, God’s messenger, God’s Messiah? That’s good news, isn’t it?
However, when he did this, it angered and outraged those listeners in the meeting place. It enraged them to the point that they drove him out of town threatening to stone him. Well, that couldn’t have been the reaction Jesus was hoping for. No. We know that Jesus would say elsewhere that prophets are not welcomed or accepted in their homeland. Jesus had to begin his ministry somewhere else.
Going to Capernaum afforded Jesus both distance from the haters and a far more receptive audience. You see Capernaum was at the farthest northwestern side of the Sea of Galilee. It was north of Samaria and even farther north of Judah and Jerusalem. It was a portion of the ancient kingdom of Israel that when the initial tribes of Israel entered into it, they never really were able to completely establish themselves as the dominant culture or religion. Instead, right from the beginning the Israelites were assimilated into the cultures of the people in those lands. They absorbed and picked up the local practices. And after a time, that caused the purist down in Judah to say they were no longer really true Jews.
Also, Galilee was on the crossroads of several important caravan routes that brought with it trade, commerce and new ideas, customs and religions. And the Galileans were quick to be accepting of new and fresh ideas. Which meant that it was fertile ground for Jesus to arise and say to the people, “…Repent. The Kingdom of God is near.” In Galilee, Jesus was new. His message of repentance and salvation was received with interest and then with a growing following.
A second reason for Jesus’ move to Capernaum may have also been to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaish foretelling that the Messiah would arise from out of the territory of Zebulum and Naphtali. Those were the two Israelite tribes that first entered Galilee. So, while Jesus was seeking a safe haven from which to begin his ministry, he was also dotting his “I-s” and crossing his “T-s” making sure that the ancient words of the prophets were being fulfilled.
And maybe, there was a little bit of Jesus saying to his hometown, “I know you are not going to believe me. But I am going to give you a chance anyway.” It didn’t go well.
So, just as Jesus told his disciples in Luke 10, “… whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say,‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.” In other words, you had your chance and you blew it!
OK. That’s our background for today’s Gospel story.
Now I want to focus on verse 17 particularly on the word translated here as “preaching”. The text reads: “Then Jesus started preaching, “Turn back to God! The Kingdom of God will soon be here.”
Now, I am going to use William Barclay’s commentary as a resource here. In his commentary on the Greek word used here that we have translated as “preaching”. The Greek word is “kerussein”. Which means: a herald’s proclamation from a king. So, what Barclay is telling us Matthew was trying to say here was that Jesus was not just preaching like I am here today but that his manner was that of a herald proclaiming a message from the King in Heaven, God.
How is Jesus being a herald of God and me being a visiting preacher differ?
First, Barclay tells us that a herald spoke with an air to certainty. The herald’s message was not filled with ifs and maybes. It was delivered with the certainty of one who spoke for the king.
And with that came a voice of authority. Jesus spoke with the certainty and authority that he knew the mind of God.
And that tells another thing about a herald. He didn’t speak for himself. He spoke for the king. Jesus’ Words were the Words of the Father. These were not opinions or the rehash of commentaries.
When I enter a pulpit, it is with the preparation of study and research from commentaries of learned sources. When the Spirit takes ahold of me, using me to speak to you, you may say later, Mel that was a great sermon message. But what Matthew is telling us here in verse 17 is “Mel, no matter how good the people tell you that you are, you are a pale comparison to the true light that was the Christ.”
What Jesus was doing was far greater. When Jesus taught, it was with extraordinary authority – like nothing the people had experienced before. It was the Word of God standing before them and it was the awesomeness of God that shown through him. That is what Matthew is trying to say to us in verse 17.
Now with that being what the people of Capernaum were seeing and experiencing, imagine Jesus walking up to you [Peter, Andrew, John and James] and saying, “Come with me! I will make you fishers of people instead of fish.”
Wait a minute though. Don’t think that out of the blue, Jesus saw these men for the first time and singled them out. It was more likely that these men had already heard of and had seen and listened to Jesus’ teaching around town. And he was aware that they were following him – here and there listening to him teach.
Perhaps they had already been down to the river Jordan and heard John announcing to them “…to repent and make straight the way of the Lord.” Perhaps they had already stepped into the River Jordan with John to be baptized and cleansed so that they could be ready. Perhaps they had already witnessed a miracle or two of Jesus. Perhaps things for the people of Galilee were beginning to fall into place regarding this new message that this new herald of God was proclaiming. And when this extraordinary teacher came to these fishermen in their boats and told them to come and follow him, they were more than ready and jumped at the chance. Perhaps.
This brings us to the final thought that I wanted to share with you today. It is this. Consider how different the call of the first disciples must have been from other calls to people in the Bible.
Samuel heard the voice of God call him from out of his sleep. He didn’t understand but at the direction of Eli, he responded to God out of faith. “Here I am.”
When Isaiah found himself in a dream prostrate before the throne of God and after the Seraph cleansed his lips, God asked, “Who will go for us? Who shall we send?” Isaiah responded again in faith, “Here I am. Send me.”
When the Angel Gabriel visited Mary and proposed to her God’s preposterous scheme for impregnation and the birth of a Son of the Most High, Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s Servant. Let it be as you have said.”
In faith, these servants of God submitted themselves in order to be used by God.
The calling of the first disciples was a bit different. They were seeing firsthand the awesomeness of God. They were seeing extraordinary signs before their eyes. They may not have understood what they were seeing but nonetheless they were seeing and being called to be a part of something extraordinarily different from anything that happened prior throughout Biblical history.
In John 3:16, John tells us that “God so loved the world that God gave his only Son so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never die.”
What that boils down to is this. “God gave God’s self at the Incarnation.” And we have to connect the dots here. What that means is that God’s very self, the Word of God, the Son of the Trinity in God, was standing in their midst. In their own physical time and space speaking to these fishermen calling them to follow him. Holy [expletive deleted]!
What Matthew was describing here in his Gospel was a singular moment in human history and it is important for us not to gloss over it. We have to stop and absorb it and allow it to sink in. Because if we don’t, we would be in danger of allowing the entire Good News story of the Gospels to be swept away. We have to grab ahold of the awesomeness of what Matthew is telling us here.
Now we may never be graced or lucky enough in our lifetimes to hear the Christ, the Son, the voice of God call us so clearly. For most all of us, the calls we hear may be as Samuel’s – a wee small voice whispering in the night, calling our name. Maybe, we will dream of God sitting high up on a throne calling for someone to send. Or maybe we might be graced by an Angel’s visit. Even those were a bit out of the ordinary. But I think what the disciples experienced when Jesus looked them square in the eye and said, “Come, follow me.!” was singularly unworldly. I’ve run out of descriptive expletives.
Most of us will experience less dramatic calls that will demand faith from us. We’ll hear wee small voices in our sleep. We’ll feel the nudging of the Spirit trying to push us in a direction that we may not be sure is right for us. And that’s alright. Because Jesus didn’t offer those first disciples a structured program for discipleship. Instead, he held out his hand to offer a relationship. I think how we answer the call we feel will be based more upon faith in that relationship than in dramatic certainty.
But my friends, it is no less important that we recognize and answer that call.
God whispers to us every day, “Come follow me.” Will you leap at the chance to follow him?
