When I finish here, . . . I will invite you all to stand and recite, together, everything my preaching should have brought to mind; . . . the first thing being that we believe in One God Who is our Father.  But if my preaching doesn’t remind you of the fact that God is our Father, certainly the portion of Psalm 139 we have recited today does.  The flow of words is almost musical, declaring that the Lord our God has

searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.  … Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether.  . . . If I say “Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,” Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.

. . . That musical contemplation of God’s exquisite and fatherly intimacy with each one of us puts me in mind of Johann Sebastian Bach’s definition of music.  He has written that music is something which is “an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”  I find that simple definition to be arresting.  I find it so for three reasons.  First, I am captivated by the insight that Bach took his work so very seriously.  He wasn’t just making a living as a composer and church organist.  His music has a purpose, and its chief purpose is to honor God.  The chief purpose of Bach’s music is to honor our heavenly Father, Whose love for us is so imperishable and invincible that He cannot lose any one of us . . . even if we should become lost.  Johann Sebastian used his considerable talents to honor such a Father by formulating, for Him, agreeable harmonies.  Bach did not make music simply for his amusement or pleasure; he did not pander to the questionable tastes of his public in order that music might prove financially profitable.  . . . Johann Sebastian Bach, who was capable of all music, who could have written acid rock, hip-hop, and rap; . . . Johann Sebastian Bach, who was capable of all music, recognized that not all music is suitable; that our best music is worshipful:  a loving gift to the Creator, humbly offered.  . . . The second idea that captivates me in Bach’s aphorism is the gloriously wise, reasonable, and succinctly stated truth that not all delights are permissible to the human soul; that some delights work to our detriment and harm, suggesting that delights which are wholesome to the human soul are only those delights which are worshipful:  only those delights which are pleasing to God as well as to us.  Moreover, the delights that are permissible to the human soul are permissible because the thing that gives God His greatest joy . . . is the salutary state of your soul.  . . . The final thing about Bach’s definition of music which gives me pause . . . is the sense that his words are the fruit of a stable and deep and trustworthy body of knowledge and wisdom which has become lost to the human family in these present days.  They seem like words spoken by a tranquil and wise being who comes from a culture far superior to our own.  . . . But the humiliating truth is that they are words written by a man who would look with awe upon the lighting of this room as no less than magical, . . . but who would also look with pity upon the darkness of our minds as being nothing other than bewitched.

    I call it humiliating because while we have gained so much ground in science and technology -- while we have tilled the earth and subdued it -- we have become so ignorant in the process.  Those few words of Bach, that “[Music is] an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul”; those few words of Johann Sebastian Bach, like his music, speak of a man who has reverently schooled himself in the wonderfully solid and reliable discipline of divine wisdom . . . and of human wisdom, divinely guided, . . . and who has accepted responsibility for himself and the craft of his life.  . . . How different that is from our own day in which our culture glamorizes the emotional rollercoaster rides of the ignorant and profane, and devotes enormous energies to trivialities and accidents of nature as if they were the essentials of joy and grace.  . . . This was all quite humorously captured some time back by the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes”.  In one memorable strip the young Calvin is lecturing his toy tiger, Hobbes, saying, “Nothing I do is my fault.  My family is dysfunctional and my parents won’t empower me.  . . . My behavior is addictive functioning in a disease process of toxic codependency.  I need holistic healing and wellness before I’ll accept any responsibility for my actions.”  . . . And in the final panel Calvin says, “I love the culture of victimhood.”  Indeed.  The predominant teaching of our day is that we are victims.  Our sins are the sins of our family or of our environment or of our upbringing.  Everywhere we are taught that the game plan for our lives ought to be to overcome this terrible injustice that has been done to us by demanding that “other people must accept me for who I am and the way that I am.”  Moreover, as undisciplined and as fragmented and as unhappy as this attitude about ourselves is, we are inclined to make the mistake of thinking that this same rule of belligerence applies to God as well(!):  that God must accept me for who I am and the way that I am.

    But hear the Word of God spoken to us in the Gospel! 

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee . . . that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:  “. . . the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

In other words, when the forerunner of God’s Anointed One began to be ill-used by the very people who yearned for the Redeemer John declared to be at hand . . . Jesus turned His back on those belligerent souls and began His ministry of redemption by going into darkest Galilee:  the one place of all the places available to Jesus which was least likely to expect or enjoy God’s favor.  Jesus journeyed into this darkness as a sign; He did it in order to teach a valuable truth to all of humanity; He did it as a sign to us.  Jesus went into Galilee in order to teach us that light cannot arise from within ourselves:  there is no light in self-preoccupation; there is no enlightenment in human thinking and imagining that will redeem and save.  You will not discover happiness in self-help groups or in political activism or in the Mall or on a Caribbean Cruise or in sleeping late or in having your “personhood” affirmed.  Just as Psalm 139 suggests, . . . only the light of God gives joy; only Jesus redeems us and saves us from weariness, confusion, sin, and death.  Jesus is light to humanity!  Jesus is the light of the world.

    And what is the first thing that Jesus says into the darkness?  Saint Matthew tells us:

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

One commentator observes that there is “nothing tricky” in these first words of Jesus.  While Jesus tells us to “repent” -- to “turn around” -- He “does not tell what to turn from, specifically; the emphasis is on turning from . . . whatever keeps [us] from turning toward the coming kingdom.” (Bruner, Matthew, Vol. I, p. 120).  Whatever distracts your attention from honoring God with the music of your life; . . . whatever forbidden delights threaten to harm your soul, . . . these are the things that Jesus is calling you to turn away from -- to “repent” from gawping at.  Whatever takes you away from prayer and from worship; whatever distracts you from reverently and gratefully receiving, as often as possible, the precious Body and Blood of your loving Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar . . . is what you need to turn away from, . . . turning toward Jesus and His wisdom and love; turning toward Jesus to hear and obey Him Who is the Light of the world.  For, as Saint Matthew tells us, it is only in Jesus that there is healing for every disease and infirmity among us, both physical and intellectual.  . . . All that is required is for you to take responsibility for yourself and for the craft of your life; . . . to remember God Who does not forget you . . . and to live in obedience to Jesus; . . . so that your holy life, redeemed in Christ, is one which, after the example of Peter and Andrew and James and John, has left everything else behind in order to follow Jesus; . . . so that your very life can be defined like Bach’s music:  “an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”