Sermon 2026-01-25 Light in the darkness

“Light in the Darkness,” by Rev. Dr. Mark Caggiano, 1/25/26
Isaiah 9:1-4; Matthew 4:12-23
[T]he people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.
In the Gospel of Matthew, the evangelist is quoting from our other reading from the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah was speaking in a time of difficulties for the people of Israel, and the gospel is repeating that hopeful promise of light coming to those who are in darkness, darkness like that suffered by the people of Judea in the time of the Roman Empire.
What did Jesus say? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
This is mentioned as a core teaching of Jesus, what he would go on to proclaim to those who might listen. This particular passage then leads into Jesus finding Peter and Andrew, James and John as they were fishing on the Sea of Galilee. He calls for them to join him.

So, these men were out working. Some stranger wanders up to them and says come join me so you might become fishers of men. Come join me so that you too can proclaim the message of repentance. Jesus had been a disciple of John the Baptist, so he might have been a familiar face or name to them, but still this was not an everyday conversation. In our time and with our modern mindset, we might wonder how quickly they decided to put down their nets. That might seem hasty to one of us.
Maybe we would have asked a few questions. Perhaps we would have checked back home with people about this enormous change. We do not hear about any of that, only that these men joined right away. They followed Jesus without any second thought.

And this got me wondering. Wondering about people. Wondering about such decisions and about human beings in general. How we make up our minds, how do we choose a path forward. What in our underlying nature would tell us about such moments in time. This is a question of anthropology, the study of human beings. And what can we imagine doing now using stories from long ago, which is really at the heart of this practice we call religion.

Religion as a word has two likely roots. The Latin verb religare means to bind something, to hold it fast. There is also a similar sounding Latin verb relegere which means to read over or to consider carefully. The word religion could derive from one or the other, or maybe both. Words take on meaning from many directions.
And religion can mean both to bind something and to consider something carefully. The disciples were being bound in this moment by choice and yet I do not see them as considering things carefully. Not as they dropped their nets and went along with Jesus in a moment.