Sermon for January 25,2026
Epiphany 3 A
1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-25
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
About 200 or so years after the birth of Christ, an anonymous artist in Rome drew some graffiti on a wall inside a house by the Emperor’s palace. The house was eventually acquired by the Emperor and walled off to support the expansion of nearby buildings. And there the graffiti sat, untouched, unseen and forgotten, until 1857 when the building was excavated, and the art was moved into the Palatine museum in Rome. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito]
The graffiti has a caption on it written in Greek, saying “Alexamenos worships his god”. Next to the caption is a drawing of a young man with his hand lifted in worship. He’s probably a Roman soldier. And above that is another drawing of a “human-like figure, who is affixed to a cross, and possessing the head of a donkey”. A man with a donkey-head being crucified, and another man worshiping this “donkey-headed” god? This was a double-insult in the Roman world. The graffiti mocked both Jesus and Alexamenos as the being the very definition of foolishness. Ironically, without realizing it, this graffiti artist didn’t know how right he was! As St. Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
It is the utter foolishness of a crucified God that paradoxically makes the message about the cross into a word of good news for all people. You see, this was God’s plan from the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, that the things Christ did would bring good news to all people.
Just look at where Jesus chose to base his ministry: not in Jerusalem or Judea which was the heartland of Jewish religion and culture, but in Galilee. Backwater Galilee. Jesus chose to settle in Capernaum, a melting-pot crossroads village right on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The was in “the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali”, which long before had been allotted to two of the ancient tribes of Israel. But by the time Jesus came along, even though there are still Jews living there, Zebulun and Naphtali is Gentile country. Lots of non-Jewish people lived there. Jesus is signaling that yes, he is one of his fellow Jews, an “insider” you might say. Yet he positions himself on the edge of the inside, where he could easily reach the “outsiders”.
The prophet Isaiah, writing hundreds of years before Jesus, even called the place “Galilee of the Gentiles”. So it makes perfect sense that Jesus would begin there, because Galilee was a place where people from all over the world lived. Some of them were Jews, like the fishermen whom he called to be his disciples. But as he went around teaching, healing, and preaching “his fame spread” throughout Syria—another Gentile place. Great crowds followed him from Galilee—a mixed community. Others came from the Decapolis and from beyond the Jordan—more Gentiles. And even people from the Jewish heartland of Jerusalem and Judea made their way to the borderlands of Galilee because they were curious about Jesus’ ministry.
Matthew’s gospel describes the things he did: folks “brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, people possessed by demons or having epilepsy or afflicted with paralysis, and he cured them.” Right from the very start, Jesus had compassion on all people, wherever they came from. He lifted up the dignity of all people. He cared for the health and well-being of all people. He taught the ways of God to all people. And he preached good news to all people. The good news that he preached began like this: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Now, when we hear the word “repent”, what often comes to mind for a lot of us is “I need to be sorry for my sins”, and sure, that is part of repentance. But the reason to even feel sorry for your sins in the first place goes deeper than regret for what you’ve done or left undone. Because the word “repent” [metanoia] in the New Testament literally means “change your mindset”. Start looking at your life, and the world, and all the people in the world, in a whole different way. Why? Because “the kingdom of heaven has come near”; near—to everyone! Not only near to you or your family, or those who come from the same place as you, or who speak the same language, or who practice the same religion. The promise Jesus makes is that through his coming into the world, the kingdom of heaven has come near to everyone.
And what people found, when Jesus preached his message of good news, is that when you embrace God’s promise that a different and better reality called “the kingdom of heaven” is already breaking into our sinful and broken world, then you can’t help but repent! You can’t help but to start on your way towards a whole new mindset—namely, Jesus’ mindset.
This is why St. Paul can write with such earnestness (in 1 Corinthians 1:10) a message that sounds so impossible to achieve that it can only be considered foolishness: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose.” Really, St. Paul? No divisions; same mind, same purpose? Did Paul ever meet any Lutherans? As they say, whenever two or three Lutherans are gathered together, there will be at least 4 or 5 opinions! And what would St. Paul have said if he ever met some Americans? He would say that we are no different than those quarreling people in Corinth who lived almost 2,000 years ago, who kept finding ways to disdain and divide from those who were meant to be part of one community.
So, what would it look like to live by the foolish, impossible dream of St. Paul, who appealed by the name of Jesus for people to be in agreement, no divisions, same mind, same purpose? It looks like the kind of ministry Jesus modeled as he went throughout the diverse population of Galilee. This mindset looks like: having compassion for all people; lifting up the dignity of all people; caring for the health and well-being of all people. It looks like being a support to anyone who is struggling, by the way we help others in their time of need, and in the way we serve our neighbors, and build a community where everyone is regarded as equals. It looks like speaking a word of good news to anyone who will listen, that the kingdom of heaven is already near them, just as it is already near us. Because Jesus has come into the world, therefore everyone has an invitation to change their mindset and embrace a whole new way of seeing the world—and seeing it in a way that is vastly different from the one the powers and principalities of the world are always trying to sell.
The way we live into the Jesus mindset will be somewhat different for each person. Later in 1 Corinthians, St. Paul will describe how God has given each person different spiritual gifts, and that the diversity of gifts and people is essential to the health and effectiveness of the church. But Paul’s foolish appeal to have “the same mind and same purpose” becomes possible only by the cross of Christ. The powers and principalities of the world who sent Jesus to the cross want a show of strength. On the cross, Christ dies in weakness. The world wants honor; Christ dies in shame. The world wants power; Christ dies in abandonment. The world wants wealth; Christ dies in poverty. The world wants eloquence; Christ dies with a cry and then silence. The world wants status; Christ dies as a prisoner. The world wants popularity; Christ is led to the cross after being taken away from his closest friends.
Who in the world would want to put their faith in the foolishness of a crucified God like that? Who? Anyone who needs mercy or grace to help in their time of need. At the foot of the cross everyone is on level ground: equal in our need for God; equal in our common humanity; equal in our God-given dignity; equal in our unity with God and with our fellow human beings.
Foolishness? Perhaps so. But with this kind of foolishness, Christ sets us free. Amen.