At the beginning of
his public ministry, Jesus established a base of operations near the Sea of
Galilee at Capernaum, about 40 miles from Nazareth where he had grown up. Matthew
tells us he made this move right after the arrest of John the Baptist, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
It was near Capernaum
that he called his first disciples, preached the Sermon on the Mount and calmed
the storm. It was from the same region that he sent out the Twelve into the
rest of Israel to proclaim the kingdom of heaven.
Galilee and Thereabouts
Chorazin and Bethsaida, two Galilean cities the Lord later denounced, were respectively two and ten miles away, and thus benefited from miracle after
miracle and message after message.
In Capernaum he drove
the Pharisees to the breaking point, and he was still there when his mother and
brothers presumably made the trek down from Nazareth to stage what may have
been intended as an intervention. Which makes his dismissal of them all the more interesting, doesn’t it? They
hadn’t just wandered over from the next town to retrieve him.
His Own City
We don’t often think
of the Lord having a home, maybe because he famously declared,
“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has
nowhere to lay his head,” and it seems he said this at least once while residing in Capernaum. Now of
course he went out from Capernaum to other places so many times that those of us
who have failed to notice its prominence in his ministry can hardly be blamed.
All the same, Matthew refers to Capernaum
as “his own city”, and Mark calls it
“home”.
Interesting, no? Now, there is some debate
as to how to best translate oikos here, since the word means both “house” and “home”, but the latter is more
likely the intended meaning in Mark 2, and almost all modern translations
go that route. In any case, even “house” suggests the Lord was living somewhere specific on a semi-regular
basis, so that the locals knew where he might be found.
Whose House Was That?
There’s even a reference later in the same
chapter to the Lord reclining “at table in his house”, which
this New Testament professor takes to mean that the Lord may have had his own place in Capernaum.
Now, that’s neither a necessary nor a
common conclusion. Most take the “his” to refer to Levi rather than Jesus,
since the Lord had just called him moments before. It would not be outrageous
for the Lord to call a disciple and promptly invite himself over to dinner. He
did just that with Zacchaeus. Also, the “tax collectors and sinners” he ate with that day are better
explained by the meal being at Levi’s house, since Levi was one of the former. And the
clincher is that Luke flat-out says that Levi “made him a great feast in his house”, which should seal the deal for anyone who believes in the inspiration of
scripture.
Remain in the Same House
Given his circumstances, I doubt Jesus
owned or rented anything. It seems far more likely to me that he simply stayed
with the first disciple in Capernaum who had the means to offer him hospitality.
When he sent out the seventy-two to preach in advance of him, the Lord gave
them these instructions:
“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.”
Since he instructed his disciples to remain
in the same house, it is highly likely that the Lord had first modeled for them
that same behavior.
The Closest Thing to an Earthly Home
Frankly, the peace of Christ resting on a
household sounds like an awfully good deal in exchange for a few meals and a
place to come back to at night. I can imagine any number of his more well-off
followers jumping at the chance to have Messiah in their home regularly.
Anyway, assuming it was the same home, the
house in Capernaum comes up one more time in Mark’s gospel, where we discover it was big enough to accommodate the Lord’s disciples.
So while we cannot be dogmatic about the
circumstances, I think we can fairly say that Capernaum was the closest thing
to an earthly home the Lord ever had during his years of ministry.
Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood
How did that work out for Capernaum, you
ask? Well, that city and its surrounding regions may well have seen more
miracles and heard more instruction than anywhere else in Israel, but the
residents of Capernaum failed to respond to the Lord’s generosity.
John’s gospel records that it was in Capernaum that Jesus finally divided wheat from chaff among his own disciples by
antagonizing the unbelieving ones (and perplexing the believing ones) with the repeated
declaration that they must eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood in order to have life. John sums up the story by saying, “After this many of his disciples turned back
and no longer walked with him.”
It is difficult to construe this as
anything but a deliberate act.
Down to Hades
Luke preserves for us what may have been the
Lord’s final words about the city he had made his home. “And you,
Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.” To fail to hear Jesus was to fail to hear God: “The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
The place the Lord made his earthly home is
reserved for the greatest possible judgment.
The Bottom Line
Now, you and I are said to be the “aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved” in this world. That’s quite a pair of sandals to fill, and none of us is remotely up to it. If
my life provides even the faintest, tiniest reminder of him — if people I
encounter along the way experience even a microscopic fraction of the same
reaction he inspired — well, that might be something.
But we are also said to be the fragrance from death to death among those who are perishing. When we live like Christ, people are bound to respond to us almost as
negatively as they responded to him.
That means wherever we make our home is
just a little bit like Capernaum, in the sense that it stands to either benefit
tremendously from our presence or to incur tremendous judgment by ignoring our
testimony.
Assuming, of course, that we have a
testimony to ignore.
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