Isaiah 9:1-4 Psalm 27:1-10 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 Matthew 4:12-25
Without having been to the Sea of Galilee it is pretty difficult to imagine exactly what it’s like; the view, the sounds, the scents. Sometimes the gospel feels like it happens in a place far away; some kind of holy shoreline, with ancient boats and men in robes. But Matthew locates his writing in a specific time and place. He tells us Jesus doesn’t begin his ministry in Jerusalem. He wasn’t born in a place of polish, and he doesn’t begin his work in a place of wealth, power, or control. Matthew tells us that, after John’s arrest, Jesus withdraws to Galilee and goes to live in Capernaum, by the sea.
Capernaum was a working port town. A place of tides and trade. A bustling place of fishing, not the centre. Sound familiar? If we let the Gospel come close — Capernaum is Fremantle. Jesus doesn’t arrive in Perth. He arrives here, on the edge, at the waterside, along Derbarl Yerrigan. So, let’s imagine how it matters if Jesus came to begin his work here in the 1st century, because this place had a story long before colonisation.
Walyalup was — and is — Whadjuk Noongar Country. The river wasn’t scenery. It was a living system of food, law, and kinship; a place of deep listening. Colonisation did not discover this place in 1829; It took it. Land was seized. Fishing was criminalised, and sacred sites were damaged or erased. Without treaty, or consent. And when Noongar people resisted — simply by moving through their own Country, fishing and surviving — they were punished and imprisoned.
We don’t have to imagine that history. We know the water’s edge. We know the stone walls of Fremantle Prison, where Aboriginal men were locked up for being on their own land, where control was enforced, where the cost of colonisation was made brutally concrete. Fremantle’s prosperity — its port, its trade, its growth — was built alongside this violence, and it is not ancient history.
And this is where Matthew places Jesus. Not above the harm. Not after the story is cleaned up. But inside it. Isn’t that always the scandal of where we find God? Inside darkness, oppression, injustice, mess? Not looking over, but looking upwards and outwards from within?
Matthew tells us that Jesus walks along the sea and sees fishermen at work —
Simon and Andrew, James and John — these young people, teenage labourers, working with their bodies, risky and exhausted. And if we imagine this is here in Fremantle, then widen the picture. Jesus walks past boats and nets — and past prison walls and holding cells. Past the people labelled trouble, criminal, disposable. And from here — not the religious centre, not among the respectable — Jesus says: “Follow me.”
This is where the scandal sharpens. Because Jesus does not assemble a tidy group. He calls fisher kids — poor, expendable. And later, he will later call a tax collector who collaborates with the empire. He will call them both, young and old, manual workers and professionals, criminals and judges, and they will both respond, together, immediately, follow me. No forwarding address, no job description, no idea of who it is doing the calling, or what they are following for. And the call will be so compelling, so compulsive that they will leave everything – family, business, background, debt, crimes, reputation – good and bad – and follow. That is wild. That is the scandal of the gospel.
People who should not stand side by side. People whose histories do not align. People whose presence together is already offensive. All together in one melding pot.
If we’re honest, it’s not a comfortable picture of the church. Fishers alongside tax collectors, like homeless people alongside rich homeowners, landowners, professionals, or like First Nations people, alongside colonisers. The poorest, alongside those who benefit from the system. The rejected, alongside those who enforce rejection. Together. Not because the harm is erased. Not because the past is resolved. But because Christ is walks here — and calls from the margins.
Matthew’s Jesus proclaims: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repentance here is not private guilt, or performative regret. It is a total turning around, a change of direction.
For a place like Fremantle — and for the church on this land — repentance means truth-telling, refusing silence, allowing those long pushed aside to be centred again, being in the mess together, not ignoring it or sanitising it, or despising it for being messy. The kingdom comes near not when the story is tidy, but when we turn toward the wound instead of away from it.
Matthew quotes Isaiah: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”
That darkness was not spiritual metaphor. Isaiah was speaking of occupation, violence and dispossession. And still, this is where Jesus begins. And when colonisers rock up to steal and destroy and whitewash and dominate, God shows up too and says – on you, you who sit in the region and shadow of death light has dawned. No wonder the disciples leave everything to follow! Not because the world no longer matters, but because it matters more.
Following Jesus doesn’t mean escaping this place. It means learning to be a church that doesn’t hover above history, rushing to reconciliation without truth telling. But being a church that is willing to walk where Christ walked — alongside the water, by the prison, with the wounded, towards the poor and dirty, offering a promise of life, light, healing, forgiveness. And who doesn’t need that?
And as he called then, so he calls us now, together — not knowing exactly where we are going, but knowing who we are walking with. Sometimes we need the light, sometimes we are called to be the light. Sometimes we need healing, sometimes we are the ones to bring healing. We are both the called and the one calling. That is the church in its glory.
So if this is Fremantle, and if Capernaum is here, then Christ still walks Derbarl Yerrigan. Christ still calls fisher kids and tax collectors and First Nations peoples and settlers, those healed and those broken, alike, into a way of life that refuses domination, names harm, and dares to believe that the kingdom can take root even here.
The light doesn’t wait until the damage is undone. It arrives now. And the question left hanging in the salt air, blowing in on the Doctor, is not whether the call is scandalous, it is whether we will follow. Amen.
Holy Adventures 