The geography of our lives is far more than contour lines on a map or the layout of streets on a city plan. At best, these things, these maps and plans, spark memories within us: memories not just of the places themselves, but of people who were there with us, of events which shaped us. The external is inextricably linked with the internal. I am who I am, in part at least, because of the places I have been and the things which happened to me there.
For example, sheet 159 in the Ordnance Survey maps of Britain, contains many things: towns and villages, roads and railway lines, schools and stations, hospitals and churches, woods and farms. It also contains, though this is invisible to the naked eye, a large part of my life: not just the hospital where I was born or the village where I grew up; not just the footpath through the woods or the railway line it crosses on its way down to the next village in the valley.
It contains, too, the stone and wood and prayer book smell of the church we attended every Sunday as well as the colour of fallen beech leaves. It contains the noise of harvest suppers in the village hall and the heat of a metal window frame baked all day in the summer sun.
It contains not just joy and happiness, but also anguish and anger; tears as well as laughter, incomprehension as well as understanding. It contains a averagely unconcerned young boy and an averagely difficult teenager. It contains faith as well as doubt; darkness as well as light. This is my map; you have yours.
Today's gospel reading set off this particular train of thought, for its geography begins with the outward, but soon turns inward. The exterior geography is interestingly specific: When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth he went and dwelt in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.
This is the geography of ministry. With John the Baptist, the faint flush of the coming dawn was visible over the hills and plains, the towns and the villages. Now, with Jesus of Nazareth, the sun has fully risen, filling the landscape with God's radiant light.
Following John's arrest, Jesus moved from Judea to Galilee, from Nazareth to Capernaum, from the village of his upbringing to a commercial town in the midst of a thriving region. It was an area less under the rule of the religious authorities than Judea; it was an altogether more tolerant place. There was a greater mix of people to be found there, for it was on the trade route between Damascus and Egypt.
As we heard, Matthew the Evangelist quotes Isaiah the prophet as he sets out the geography of his story. He makes use of the prophecy that the ancient territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, which had been overrun by the Assyrians, would once again know freedom from the yoke of oppression.
Isaiah says that in the latter time [the Lord] will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The way of the sea was the ancient caravan route to the sea from the city of Damascus, the road traversed by generations of merchants and carriers, by goods of all kinds. It was an artery of commerce that carried not just people and things but, like every trade route in history, news and learning and ideas, as well as gossip and intrigue and rumours of wars.
The way of the sea was alive with words, with communication between people. What better place for Jesus to begin his ministry; what better place for Jesus to begin revealing the geography of the kingdom of heaven?
Words were the currency he used. Even when healing, there are words: "Be made clean," Jesus said to the leper, and immediately he was made clean. "Stand up, take your bed and go home," he said to the paralysed man, and the man stood up and took his bed and went home. "Go, your faith has made you well," he said to the blind man, and immediately he regained his sight.
In Matthew's account, the first word of his ministry is the very word used by John the Baptist: Repent. And if ever there was a word freighted with meaning, it is this one. The Greek word translated here as repent means something like 'change of mind.' But in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, it means something altogether more powerful. It means something more like 'to grieve for one's sins.'
Repentance is the one of the most important of all Jewish doctrines. It involves profound sorrow for sin; it involves restitution, as far as restitution is possible; and it involves a steadfast resolution not to commit that particular sin ever again. That is real repentance; and real repentance brings divine forgiveness.
If repent is the first word of our Lord's ministry, it is intimately connected with the phrase that follows: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repentance involves confession - the admission of failure - and resolution - the determination not to fail again. But human resolution, what a weak and fragile thing that can be. Here we are on the twenty-seventh day of the year and how many New Year resolutions are still intact, unbroken?
Human resolve is not enough; it is never enough. But then human resolve is not left alone in the darkness, at the mercy of every tide and wind of temptation. Human resolve is always met with an outstretched hand. Even where water is deepest and the current most treacherous, even there - especially there - there is a hand reaching out to us, a hand that wishes nothing more than to help us over to the safety of the shore. 'Repent,' says Jesus, 'for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
This year, the season of Epiphany is very short, for Easter - and therefore Lent - is very early. Epiphany is all about that sunrise, that light flooding the landscape of our lives, illuminating the secret geography of our hearts. It warms us with God's love and shows us that even the darkest corners, the places where we fall short, can be transformed. It reveals what we need to do in order to achieve the full humanity to which we are called by God out of his great love and compassion for us. Epiphany shows us the way; Lent gives us the discipline: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Sermon by: Jonathan Mason