When Jesus hears that John has been arrested, Matthew says John was 12"delivered up," the same verb Matthew will use of Jesus himself when he warns his disciples that the Son of Man "is about to be delivered into the hands of men" (Matthew 17:22). The forerunner's fate previews the Messiah's own, in the very word Matthew picks.
Jesus 12"withdrew into Galilee," which sounds like retreat until you know the map. Galilee was ruled by Herod Antipas, the ruler who had just imprisoned John. Jesus walks into his jurisdiction and picks up where John left off: 17"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." This is a man stepping toward danger, still carrying the word for which John was arrested.
Matthew explains the move to Capernaum with Isaiah: 16"the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light." Zebulun and Naphtali sat on the northern border, thick with Gentile traffic, the kind of region devout Jerusalem viewed with suspicion. The light comes on there first. It sets a pattern grace will keep through the whole Gospel, beginning where nobody thought to look.
Then Jesus goes looking for followers, which reversed the custom. Students applied to rabbis. He finds two pairs of brothers at ordinary work, one pair 18"casting a net into the sea" and the other 21"mending their nets" in the boat with their father, and says, 19"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew records the response at once: 20"Immediately they left their nets and followed him." James and John do the same, with an added detail. 22"They left the boat and their father and followed him." The call carries a promise: "I will make you." The making is his work. A son's duty to his father weighed heavily in that world, and walking away mid-task would have looked to anyone on shore like a small scandal.
Matthew uses the same verb for what the four fishermen do and for what the crowds do at the end of the chapter, streaming in from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. One verb covers both. The rest of the Gospel spends much of its length showing that following a crowd toward a miracle and following a man out of a boat away from your father are not automatically the same thing, even when the same word describes them.
By the end of the chapter, Jesus is teaching in synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing 23"every disease and every affliction among the people." It began with one man walking alone into the territory of a ruler who had just jailed his forerunner. By the last verse, a map's worth of people are walking toward him.
Ask which kind of follower you have been this month, one in the crowd or one who has left something behind. Then ask whether there is a net he has been asking you to put down.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a Savior who walked toward danger and took up the message that got his forerunner arrested. Thank you for light that dawns in overlooked places, including wherever we stand now. Give us the readiness of the four fishermen to leave what is comfortable when you call, and keep us honest about the difference between following you when it is easy and following you all the way. In Jesus' name, amen.