A Word from Joel - January January 28, 2026

“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishers. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.’” Matthew 4:18-19

When we were searching for a preschool for Asher, two visits stayed with me. In the first school, children’s artwork lined the hallway. The youngest students’ art was wild and messy—full of color and imagination. But as we walked toward the older classrooms, something changed. The pictures became more uniform, more recognizable, until by kindergarten they looked nearly identical, with only minor variations. Creativity slowly gave way to conformity.

Then we visited a Montessori classroom. Children of different ages moved freely between learning stations. One child walked up to an easel, put on a smock, painted on a blank page, cleaned up, and moved on. No template. No model to copy. Just freedom, care, and curiosity. In that moment it became clear to me: how we teach often matters more than what we teach. Are we forming people to conform to the world as it is—or to imagine what it could become?

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus appears as a rabbi opening a new school of living. Over the coming weeks, we hear from the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most important—and often neglected—collections of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus does not teach conformity. He teaches freedom that has the power to transform the world.

Matthew frames Jesus as a new Moses, leading people toward liberation. Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, far from the centers of power, among the poor, the marginalized, and those exploited by the empire. His first students are fishermen—overworked, underpaid, and dismissed by society. When Jesus calls them to be “fishers of people,” he is not recruiting salespeople for religion. He is inviting them to resist systems of greed and violence and to practice a new way of being human shaped by love, compassion, peace, and dignity.

Jesus’ school has open registration. No prerequisites. No tuition. Pre-existing conditions welcome. Healing—of body, mind, and community—is the curriculum. Repentance, in this school, means changing your mind: being willing to learn, to be wrong, to discover that God is always larger than our ideas.

Jesus didn’t come to enforce conformity or start a new religion. He came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth—a beloved community of freedom and grace. So come. Put on your smock. Pick up your brush. And let’s paint something beautiful together.

Rev. Joel Esala