The reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (4:12-17)
We hear really amazing words today as St. Matthew the evangelist quotes from Isaiah the prophet once again. We notice this as a heavy theme throughout the gospel according to St. Matthew. He is constantly quoting from the Scriptures. By the way, this word “scriptures” when it is used in the gospels and in the New Testament, as well as when it is used in the creed that we recite during the liturgy, this word refers to the books of the Old Testament. Now Matthew is constantly quoting from the Old Testament Scriptures for a very specific purpose. He is a Jew and his goal is to convince all of the Jews that this man Jesus of Nazareth is very special. That He is in fact the chosen one, the anointed one, the Messiah. Matthew uses the Old Testament to make his defense and to prove to those who have ears to hear, that Jesus is the Christ, and that everything that He has done was previously spoken of throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. Furthermore, he demonstrates that so much of the life of Jesus Christ was foretold by the prophets.
Now this is a very interesting claim. Those who are opponents of the Church, such as atheists and pagans, will say that we have no proof that the Old Testament was not tampered with. Perhaps, they claim, the Old Testament was rewritten or verses were added to it after the fact to make it seem like Jesus Christ fulfilled the prophecies when in fact it hadn’t happened. To those claims we offer the proof of the dead sea scrolls which were discovered between the years 1957-1956. Many of the scrolls that were discovered dated back to at least the 3rd century before Christ. They also demonstrated more than 95% textual accuracy including the scroll of Isaiah the prophet.
“But wait!” say the unbelievers, “Perhaps Jesus Himself engineered His life in such a way as to make sure that He fulfilled the prophecies that were written about the Messiah?” So according to this line of thinking, Jesus spent His time focused on fulfilling prophecies for the sake of fulfilling prophecies so that He would appear to be the Messiah. For instance, Jesus decided to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey to fulfill the prophecy that says “ Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zech 9:9
Now let us examine that claim more closely. Did you know that most of the prophecies fulfilled by Our Lord Jesus Christ are completely out of His control? For instance, His birthplace and the place where He grew up are not possible to self-engineer. In addition it would be impossible to engineer the most important aspects of His life including the crucifixion and the actions of the soldiers such as casting lots for His garments and piercing His side with a spear or leaving His bones unbroken. All of these moments were prophesied hundreds of years before Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth and yet none of them can be manufactured at will.
Some of these points were further developed by a mathematician named Peter Stoner who calculated that the odds of any one person in history fulfilling just eight of the key Old Testament prophecies is about 1 in 10 to the 17th power or 1 in 100 quadrillion. Now if we try to understand this it is too difficult for the human mind. The numbers are simply too large. But here is one example that has been used to help:
“Suppose we cover the entire state of Texas with silver dollars, to the depth of 2 feet. Take one of the silver dollars and mark an “X” on it. Thoroughly mix the coins (including the one with the “X”). Spend any amount of time randomly walking around the state, blindfolded, and then randomly pick up one of the coins. What is the chance that the coin you randomly picked would be the one with the “X”? About the same as a person randomly fulfilling these eight prophecies.”
Now this is the probability with just eight key prophecies from the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, while in reality He fulfilled about 300.
Of course we don’t use these points as empirical proofs for our faith, but they are bread crumbs that show us the way. They point to the truth. What is this truth? Jesus Christ Himself is the truth and the life. When we understand this with our hearts and live this hope in our bodies and in our bones, then we have light because Christ is the light of the world. His light wipes away our darkness. It wipes away the darkness of our hearts. It wipes away the darkness caused by our sins and sinful desires. This light of Christ, as we cultivate it in our lives, begins to truly attach to us. It changes us. It becomes a part of us.
We become filled with this light, the light of the grace of God, the light of the Holy Spirit. This is symbolized by the halo or the nimbus that we see around the heads of the saints in our iconography. The saints are like us but they are not people who sit in darkness or the shadow of death. That is reserved for those who either don’t know God or who choose to separate themselves from God. The saints are like us but they move towards Christ with their whole being, with their lives. They make friends with the light of Christ and they follow His teachings and the light of Christ becomes theirs. They become lamps that hold the flame of Christ. They are lamps that are capable of bringing the warmth and the light of Christ to others.
In our world there is still so much darkness. There are so many places where the light of Christ has not permeated, even in our own town or perhaps in our own families. But we were once in that same place, in the darkness and by God’s grace, we have received the Light. Now we are the ones who carry that light to the regions of darkness and to places that seem quite dead. We come to others with joy in our hearts and when we see them struggling and in darkness, we can gently, lovingly say “All is not lost. God exists and He is still working in the world. God loves you so much more than you could ever imagine. God proved it through His Son Jesus and His Son proved that His love was more powerful than any force that exists on earth, even more powerful than death itself. And those who turn from their wrong way of life and believe in Christ and are baptized will partake of this love and will also conquer death with Him.” That is the gospel and it still has the power to transform and change our lives one person at a time. And that is truly good news for all us. AMEN.
Source: Sermons