In today’s Lectionary, the Gospel reading is from Matthew 4:12-23, where we read: “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. … From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
John the Baptist, the prophet who dared to tell the truth about power, had been seized and silenced. The machinery of empire had closed in. And it is precisely then, the Scripture tells us, that Jesus decisively began his public ministry.
That sequence matters. Especially now.
Victoria Robb Powers
Matthew shows us that when the powerful attempt to silence truth, the work of the gospel does not retreat. It becomes more urgent. Jesus did not wait for conditions to improve. He did not retreat into safety or silence. He stepped forward. He went to Galilee — a borderland, a place of tension and diversity, a place where many lived under suspicion and threat. And there, knowing he could not do the work alone, he called ordinary people — workers with nets, people with callused hands and unfinished business.
“Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Immediately the Bible says. Not after more information. Not after perfect clarity. Not after the risk had passed. Immediately. And why? Because the moment demanded it. Because there are times when delay becomes its own decision. When waiting becomes a quiet form of surrender.
We are living in such a moment.
Many of us have been watching the news out of Minnesota with grief, anger and a gnawing sense of helplessness, especially following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who cared for veterans. Alongside Renee Good and others, Alex was caught in the violence of immigration enforcement carried out with terrifying force and little to no accountability.
We are asking questions that will not loosen their grip on our hearts: Why are mass, indiscriminate immigration raids, rooted in racial profiling, being carried out by armed, masked agents on American streets? Why are children and adults being pulled from their homes in the night? Why are innocent people being unlawfully detained, injured and murdered?
“Jesus is still walking along the shoreline, still calling for followers who understand the urgency of the hour.”
These are not abstract questions. They are moral ones. They are gospel ones. And the gospel does not permit us the comfort of paralysis.
Because the truth is: Jesus is still walking along the shoreline, still calling for followers who understand the urgency of the hour. Followers who know that the kingdom of God does not wait for us to feel ready. Followers who are willing — like Peter, Andrew, James and John — to drop the nets that keep our hands busy and our hearts protected.
So the question is not whether we are distressed enough, informed enough or angry enough. The question is this: Will we respond? Will we resist the temptation to numb ourselves? Will we refuse the lie that nothing we do can matter? Will we choose faithfulness over fear? Now, and not later?
Following Jesus never has meant certainty or comfort. It always has meant courage, solidarity and movement when love calls us forward.
This is not about party or platform. It is about principle, gospel principle. It is about the core conviction that runs from Genesis to Revelation — that every single person is made in the image of God, bearing a dignity no government, badge or border can erase. It is about the truth that Jesus consistently sides with the vulnerable, the displaced, the outsider and that he himself lived as one.
The light that dawns in this gospel takes flesh in human lives. It shines wherever the image of God is honored, and it flickers wherever that image is denied. And when human beings are treated as disposable, when fear is wielded as policy, when the foreigner is made a target, Jesus does not stand at a distance. He draws near. He calls. He sends.
The light has dawned.
The call has been spoken.
The time is now.
Victoria Robb Powers serves as senior pastor of Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas.