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Jesus Calls Us

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This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, Jan. 22 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text was Matthew 4:12-23. It’s time for Jesus’ ministry to begin; the turning point being the imprisonment of his cousin, John the Baptist. The time is right. Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum. If we walked that distance today, it would take between eight and nine hours. Can you imagine the move Jesus must have had? Nazareth is nowhere near Galilee and the landscapes are so different.  When I lived with my young family in Bethlehem, we would often vacation in the north. It was cooler there and such a relief from the desert Bethlehem is in. One such time we visited friends working at a hospital in Nazareth. I’ll never forget how the car climbed and climbed and climbed some more to get to where they lived, in the hospital compound, at the very top of a high hill. And it didn’t look anything like Galilee.  Throughout Matthew’s gospel, actions were to fulfill what was spoken by the prophets. The reas