Rev. Robert Traer

Scriptures: Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-23

Jesus begins his ministry after the arrest of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas, the Jewish Tetrarch of Galilee serving under the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. The capital of Galilee had been the Greek city of Sepphoris, near Nazareth, but Herod Antipas has just completed another Greek city, Tiberias, at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, and moved the capital there. After John's death, Jesus leaves lower Galilee, where life was dominated by Greek cities and Roman legions, and begins his ministry at Capernaum near the top of the Sea of Galilee, in upper Galilee.

In the latter part of the eighth century BCE, Isaiah writes of the land East of the Jordan River as the "Galilee of the nations." Isaiah says this land has been brought "into contempt," but that God will cause a great light to shine for "the people who have walked in darkness." (Is. 9:1-2) Writing in Jerusalem, the prophet has witnessed the conquest of Galilee by Assyrian armies (732 BCE), Israelites taken into exile, and captive peoples from other nations resettled in the fertile valleys of Galilee. Isaiah now fears this same darkness will come over the people of Judah, who live in and around Jerusalem. Yet, the prophet proclaims that God will deliver the Israelite tribes of Galilee "in the latter time" (Is. 9:1), when the Messiah comes to rule the world with justice.

Isaiah's fears were confirmed when the Assyrians overran Samaria (722 BCE) and besieged Jerusalem, but Jerusalem was not be conquered until 586 BCE and by the Babylonians. Then leaders of Judah knew suffering and exile, Cyrus of Persia, who defeated the Babylonians in 538 BCE, allowed some of the Judean descendants of these exiles to came back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

The experience in Galilee was quite different. Assyrians and Babylonians ruled Galilee for two centuries, before the Persians took control. When exiles returned to Jerusalem, the Galileans remained under direct Persian control. The revolt of the Macabbees against their Persian overlords brought Galilee under the rule of the Jewish Hasmonean family in 104 BCE, but in 63 BCE the Romans took control of the region and from 37-4 BCE King Herod ruled for the Romans over all of ancient Israel including Galilee.

Through these eight centuries Galileans live in villages, farming and fishing in the Sea of Galilee. They shared some of the heritage of the Judeans, who returned from exile to the city of Jerusalem, but Galileans maintained their traditions in largely self-governing villages. Moreover, for eight centuries Galileans were subjected to foreign taxes by Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hasmonean, and Herodian rulers.

About 30 CE Jesus begins his ministry among the fiercely independent but long suppressed tribes of Galilee. The gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke report that before Jesus journeyed to Jerusalem, he led his disciples through Galilee healing, doing miracles, and preaching the good news. Jesus did not call on the Galileans to revolt against the Romans, or against Herod Antipas, but he did urge them to resist their oppressive and idolatrous rulers by embracing the reign of God.

When Jesus and his disciples came to Jerusalem, they entered the temple that towered over the city. It is hard to imagine what this magnificent edifice, rebuilt by Herod the Great in a Greek-Roman style, meant to Jesus and his Galilean disciples. The temple represented the oppression their people had known for centuries through conquest and taxation. The temple also symbolized the corruption of the ruling Jewish families in Jerusalem, who not only enriched themselves under Roman rule but had also adopted Greek language and culture. When Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple, he was not condemning commerce in the name of religion. He was challenging the oppressive and corrupt rule of the Romans and their servile Jewish governors.

Jews, like John the Baptist and Jesus, suffered because they were a threat to the peace of the Roman rulers and the privileged Jewish priests and governing families. However, when the Jews failed in their revolt against the Romans (66-70 CE), thousands of Jews (including priests and officials) were crucified outside Jerusalem, the temple inside the city was leveled, and the city was burned.

Christians writing the gospels after the devastation of Jerusalem saw this history as fulfilling the prophecies of Jesus, even as they saw Jesus as fulfilling the prophecies of Isaiah. "The people who walked in darkness," the prophet wrote, "have seen a great light." (Is. 9:2) The author of the gospel of Matthew applies this text to the experience of Jews in the first century CE, when non-Jews are known as "Gentiles." So, Matthew 4:15 translates Isaiah's phrase as the "Galilee of the Gentiles." There, in the first century CE, Jesus Christ is now the light that has dawned in the darkness.

Yet, the darkness remains... John the Baptist is imprisoned and beheaded. Jesus is arrested and crucified. The apostles in Jerusalem establish the Jerusalem church under duress, but Stephen is stoned and the disciple James executed. In the early 60s Emperor Nero persecutes Christians in Rome, and in this decade Peter, Paul and James, the first bishop of the Jerusalem church, are all put to death.

Moreover, two millennia later, the darkness remains... As I stood in the gloom of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem last Wednesday evening, and joined others in lighting candles, I wondered how Christians have had the faith to meet and worship and help one another throughout such hard times. The Armenian Church has persevered for seventeen hundred years, despite a history of persecution and tragedy that we can hardly comprehend. Nonetheless, since the time of Byzantine control in the fourth century, Armenians have been in Jerusalem witnessing to their faith.

Armenian, Orthodox, Coptic, and Ethiopian churches have maintained a presence in Jerusalem for over one and a half millennia. At times these Christians have suffered persecution from invading Persians and conquering Islamic empires. Yet, often both Jews and Christians received protection from ruling caliphs and sultans. The conquest of Jerusalem by Crusaders was not a time for rejoicing by Eastern Christians, because it followed the division of the church in 1054 into what we know as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. As the Crusaders were liberating the Holy Land for the Western Church, they killed not only Jews and Muslims but also Eastern Christians who had lived and worshipped there for centuries.

After the Crusaders were defeated by Turkish Muslims, Eastern Christians returned to Jerusalem. Few Western Christians came until the twentieth century, and even today Eastern traditions predominate among Christians in the Holy Land. Yet, pilgrims from all over the world continue to come to Jerusalem. Last Thursday evening Christians supporting church unity met where the Last Supper is remembered in Jerusalem, in the Cenacle on Mount Zion beside the southern wall of the old city. We sang in Greek, Latin and Arabic, and heard a sermon in English by a German cleric. Bishops from Orthodox, Latin and Protestant churches lit candles, and in silence we prayed for justice and peace in Jerusalem and in the world.

In the midst of the violence in and around Jerusalem, our prayers seemed as futile as lighting a candle in the dark. Tanks were in Nablus, the old city of Shechem, where the Assyrians conquered the Israelites eighteen centuries ago. Palestinians were being assassinated and arrested, and also committing suicide in attacks on Israeli civilians. Tanks faced the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and there was shooting in Gaza. Palestinians were attending funerals for their martyrs, firing machine guns into the air, and calling for revenge. Israeli officials were planning more reprisals.

Nonetheless, we prayed. And we remembered that Jesus and his disciples walked throughout Galilee spreading their faith, before they walked to Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified. They walked through "the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23), and after the death of Jesus they kept witnessing to their faith.

The prophet Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, reminds us, as he reminded Jesus and his Galilean disciples, that we are all commanded by God "to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly" with our God. (Micah 5:8) Let us pray that we will. Amen.

27 January 2002