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Change? No, thanks!

Then he began to reproach the cities in which the majority of his mighty powers came into being - in that they would not change. (Matthew 11: 20, my translation)
 
Above is an extract from Matthew’s first-century AD, eye-witness biography of Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. The year is about AD 30. Possibly two years had gone by when the “mighty powers” of Jesus had been seen and talked over incessantly in Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum – three town in the extreme north of the Sea of Galilee.

First of all, what were “his mighty powers”? We know what they were because Matthew has recorded Jesus’ own description of them in this way –

• the blind receive their sight;
• the lame walk;
• lepers are cleansed;
• the deaf hear;
• the dead are raised up; and 
• the poor have good news brought to them.

The Messiah was not living in a palace, did not have an army, had no financial resources and was not the boss of any hierarchy. He had come bringing “good news” – for “the poor”. That’s really unusual...
 
But these three towns were “reproached” by Jesus because, despite seeing all these mighty powers, “they would not change”. He said to them -
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“Sorrow for you, Chorazin. Sorrow for you, Bethsaida, because if, in Tyre and in Sidon, the mighty powers which came into being in you had been done there long ago, in sackcloth and ashes they would change. But I state to you, for Tyre and Sidon it will be more bearable in a day of judgment than for you.” 

In the years when Jesus spoke these words, Tyre and Sidon, at one time great, rich and wonderful cities of the Phoenicians, were skeletons of their former glorious selves. As reported in Wikipedia, “the Phoenician civilization in the eastern Mediterranean slowly declined [in the first millennium BC] in the face of foreign influence and conquest; its presence endured in the central and western Mediterranean until the destruction of Carthage in the mid-second century BC”.

Jesus’ point is that those seeing “his mighty powers come into being” are faced with a choice. Either “they would change” or “they would not change”. Upon that decision, the future of those places would depend. Tyre and Sidon “would change” had those cities seen the “mighty powers” of Jesus. Tyre and Sidon still exist today. Chorazin and Bethsaida “would not change” even though those “mighty powers came into being” in them. Today they are archaeological sites. 

“And you, Capernaum, you will not be exalted - until heaven. You will descend - until hell inasmuch as if, in Sodom, there came into being the mighty powers which came into being in you, it would have remained up to this very day.”

It seems that Capernaum firmly believed that it would “be exalted” until, one day, it would come to be “heaven”. Collective prosperity forever in fact. But Jesus foretold the opposite. He stated to them that – for one particular and vital reason – they would in fact “descend until hell”. The reason was: Change? No, thanks.

In the same way as towns, cities, islands and parishes look down on one another today, Capernaum looked down on historical “Sodom”, then and now beneath the Dead Sea. Capernaum’s thinking was that in no way would it ever come to be like “Sodom”. Not so, said Jesus, for one good reason. The reason was their strategy: Change? No, thanks.
 
If Jesus’ “mighty powers” had “come into being in Sodom” it seems that that notorious city would have changed. Because of that “change”, it “would have remained up to this very day”. It was destroyed around 1,800 BC. Capernaum was itself destroyed by an earthquake in AD 749, abandoned in the eleventh century, and depopulated again through civil war in 1948. 
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“But I state to you that, for the land of Sodom, it will be more bearable in a day of judgment than for you.” 

“More bearable in a day of judgment” because “they would not change” in response to “his mighty powers”. Soon after then, of course, Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead after three days.
 
Sinner Syvret
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