Sermon given by Revd Maggie Hindley, Sunday 25th January 2026

Matthew 4.12-23

Last time I was here – and I hope you had a joyful Christmas in between – last time I was here, we thought about Jesus’ slightly older cousin John, also born miraculously, also with an important promised destiny. John is to be the Prophet of the Most High. 

Thirty years on, they are still closely connected. The message Jesus proclaims today as he begins his ministry is the exact same one John announces (in Matthew 3) until Herod imprisons him for speaking unwelcome truth. Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near! Today,  Jesus recruits his disciples to share in spreading that message and that call.  It’s kind of central to the gospel. Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near! What, if anything,  does it mean for us?

Well, let me say at the beginning that I find the language off-putting. I don’t like being told to repent. I don’t think I ever ask anybody else to repent. The word smacks to me of undeserved shame and of manipulation. I don’t much like traditional prayers of confession, either. All that searching for little misdemeanours to confess, things that are really neither here nor there.

But of course that’s not what repentance is about, if you can drop a little  deeper into its meaning. The word in Greek, as it was first written in the gospels by Matthew and the others, is metanoia, and it means a change of mind. Now that’s much more useful, I think. We all change our minds often, all but the most stubborn of us, in the light of new experience. And sometimes we have big changes of heart about a person or an issue – or about ourselves and God, such as in those moments given to us when we realise that God is the centre of everything, not self, not me. That’s true repentance! Abandoning a worldview that is too small, too self centred, surrendering to the reality that God is forever and everywhere and letting ourselves be absorbed into his kingdom.

Jesus, of course, was saturated in the Hebrew scriptures and would have been familiar with the Old Testament word for repent – shuv, to return. This too, is helpful, don’t you think? Repentance is about returning, maybe from great errors (like King David having great remorse for his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, expressed in the psalms) Or maybe from the same petty self-centredness all human beings are prone to. It’s a turning to look God in the face, to accept God’s embrace, a return to our true nature, which is a person made by God to be faithful to the creator and to his intentions for us.

It’s like Mog (Mog’s Christmas, by Judith Kerr) deluded about the celebrations taking place around her, suffering in isolation, receiving the grace of a fall down the chimney into reality, getting washed – baptism! – getting received joyfully by the family, joining the celebrations after all with her whole heart.

This kind of repentance, a return to reality, a reconciliation with the one who loves me, I understand and can do every day. And I do do every day – it’s an important part of our prayer life, isn’t it, a way God brings change and development to our lives.  Shame should be fleeting; we need just enough to get us to stop doing whatever is destructive in our lives. Manipulation doesn’t come into it; what I repent of is a matter for what God has laid directly on my conscience.

Seen like this, I can call myself to repent. And I can call you! too And we too can call others, also, to be open to the life of the spirit, to be open to the change that that life brings in us. In this way we build hope.

Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near! What do John and Jesus mean by the Kingdom of Heaven?  What does it mean to us?

John and Jesus use the same words to call the people to change, but there’s a difference of emphasis in their preaching. As John says, he baptises with water; Jesus baptises with the Spirit. John’s call is to personal change; Luke’s John talks about sharing with people who are in  need, about financial honesty, about refraining from exploitation and greed; and here in Matthew he rails against the hypocrisy of the religious leaders. When Jesus begins to preach, he immediately calls his first disciples. Then,  pretty soon, in the Sermon on the Mount, he describes the Kingdom, in which those who are unassuming, bereaved, hungry for justice, non-judgemental, makers of peace, prepared to suffer for what they stand for, have a special place. As I read it, John calls for inner change in the individual, while Jesus calls for engagement with and change in the world his hearers live in. Water, for purity, Fire, for action. The fruits of repentance are a surrendered heart and readiness to take risks for the sake of the Kingdom.

We need both, in the lives we live now.

We ourselves wrestle for inner purpose and peace in our lives. And when we have come to repentance and reconciliation, half our work as disciples is as evangelists, letting people know that there is a remedy for our inner fragmentation, if we will turn, and let go, and change, and invite God, invite Jesus, to be our motivation, our guide, our support in everything we undertake. We receive renewal, over and over again, and by who we are and what we say and do we point the way for others. We come to the water, over and over again, and its our joy to accompany others to it.

We wrestle, too, for purpose and peace in the world we live in. Half our work is as advocates for change, for turning the established order upside down,  as Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount and lives in his ministry, as his mother sings out in the Magnificat as she tells Elizabeth of her pregnancy, as Isaiah foretells in today’s passage; light shining in places where darkness rules, joy visiting those who haven’t previously known abundance, freedom granted as the grip of the tyrant is loosened. We need Jesus’ baptism of fire to activate us, to keep our God given passion for justice burning in the face of the delusion and lies and opposition and, yes, the persecution that meets our efforts to do what many Jews call tikkun olam, mend the world.

Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.  Our call: to turn, to return, to open ourselves to transformation at the hands of God daily, hourly. To embody in our daily lives and the choices we make the Kingdom values of truth and compassion, freedom and equality for all God’s children. To get up and follow Jesus as he walks by, and calls to us, today and every day of the life that is given to us.