Be Repented

Image: The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew by Caravaggio, c. 1603-1606

A long time ago, the patriarch and namesake of the Israelites, Jacob, lay dying. To each of his twelve sons, he said a few final words. These words contained either a blessing or a curse, depending on the sons’ conduct. To Zebulun and Naphtali, Jacob said:

Zebulun shall settle at the shore of the sea;
he shall be a haven for ships,
and his border shall be at Sidon….
Naphtali is a doe let loose
that bears lovely fawns.

In other words, the tribes named for these two were to be both prosperous and generative. But in the centuries since, the opposite had happened. The descendants of Zebulun and Naphtali had settled in the Galilee region. And Galilee, unfortunately, was at the crossroads of several sovereign powers. Troops from Egypt, Assyria, Aram, Israel, and Judah, among other places, trampled it down. Raids were frequent. People lived in fear. By the eighth century BC, the Assyrian army had established dominance. They destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and deported much of the population, assimilating them into their culture. They also resettled Galilee. Hence the moniker “Galilee of the gentiles” from our reading in Isaiah. Over eight centuries, successive foreign powers had control—Babylonians, Greeks, and in Jesus’ time, Romans. So, this ancient promise, along with the promise of the eternal kingship of David’s line and possession of the land, appeared utterly broken. 

But then Jesus showed up there. The trigger for this is arrest of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas. John was arrested for saying something Herod did not like. It is against this backdrop of government occupation and repression that Jesus begins his work, not with a sword, but with a sermon.

Yes, a sermon! A short sermon, to be sure, and cribbed from John! But this time, it lands differently. John had been baptizing others for repentance, as a way of preparing for the Messiah’s arrival. But now, the Messiah had arrived. So, when Jesus says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” he is saying that it is here in his very person. And the proclamation of this kingdom is going to be very, very dangerous. It will stir up opposition from those who dominate others, whether politically, religiously, or materially. The grace, love, healing, and mercy embodied by Jesus will be violently rejected by those who are determined to wield the law as a weapon, trying to kill his movement in the crib (somewhat literally in Matthew’s Gospel, as it turns out). And the powers will eventually get their Friday on Golgotha, where Jesus will be killed as a threat to the state and the Temple.

But the kingdom of heaven is here to stay in Jesus. Even his death couldn’t destroy it. And the place it starts is Galilee—war-torn, repressed, brutalized, plundered Galilee. Galilee of the gentiles, a salad bowl of peoples, religions, and allegiances, becomes the soil in which this kingdom germinates.

And this kingdom requires a radically different way of living than what we’re accustomed to in this world. In the past, plenty of pastors, including me, have said that repentance means turning around. Doing a 180. That doesn’t capture the essence of what the Greek word is saying. The word in Greek literally means “a change of mind”, but that doesn’t capture it either. The repentance Jesus is talking about is a radical transformation of how we understand God, the creation, and each other. It means having your mind blown. Repentance is seeing everything through the lens of how Jesus sees it. That means perceiving the world and one other through the lens of the beatitudes, which we’ll get into next week. The blessed of the world are the poor in spirit, the mourning, the gentle, the peacemakers (not peacekeepers), the pure in heart, and those persecuted for Jesus’s sake. They are not the rich, the powerful, the domineering, the plundering. When we see the creation Jesus’s way, we are repenting of our old worldviews and old hierarchical thinking. Because in Jesus’s eyes, all of us stand in need of mercy. No one is better, or more human, or more worthy of life, than anyone else.

But that is something we obviously can’t do ourselves. We can’t make ourselves see the world Jesus’s way. We can’t figure out a series of specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals to help us do that! That change has to be imparted to us through receiving the Word of God. That is what happens to these first disciples. They have to be called. They have to be invited. And they have to be transformed. And that transformation is going to be ongoing! It starts here, when Peter and Andrew, James and John, leave it all behind. But they will have several major failures which show us that they struggled with the kingdom perspective, too. Peter will chastise Jesus for daring to suggest that he might go to the cross, earning the rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!”, not to mention his denials the night of Jesus’ arrest. James and John, for their part, ask Jesus to sit at the positions of privilege when he comes into his kingdom. (Perhaps Peter, or “Rock”, has an additional connotation of “Rockhead”! James and John were known as the Sons of Thunder in Mark’s Gospel, probably for their gentle dispositions!) It takes not just Jesus’ resurrection, but also the gift of the Holy Spirit for them to be transformed into people of the kingdom.

And we need the Spirit, too. That same Spirit that breathed over the waters of creation, that animated our first parents, who brought the child Jesus to Mary, who transformed a group of scared, scattered men into fearless witnesses for truth, is given freely to us through baptism. That day we are baptized, the long process of being repented starts. The first day of our salvation begins. The old person with all our hatred, wrath, greed, lust, and pride is crucified with Jesus. And the new person, formed in Christ’s image, rises up. We don’t have to see the world through the lens of the voices who scream the loudest on the television, radio, or social media. We don’t have to go down ugly roads of division and hate. We don’t have to be swept along by the tidal waves of retribution and despair. What we get to do as people of God is to see the world differently, through the lens of mercy. That is how Jesus begins changing the world, after all. A big part of the message of the kingdom is the works of mercy he does: healing and casting out demons. And that mercy continues to the cross for us. Today, we may or may not cast out literal demons. We may or may not be asked to lay down our lives for our neighbors. We are, however, the people of God empowered to bring healing and mercy to our world through Jesus Christ and the kingdom he brings. And just think. It all started in a backwater, war-torn place. In Jesus Christ, Zebulun and Naphtali have their inheritance and so do we. Amen. 

© 2026, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes.