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25 October. Matthew chapters 1-4
Well, there’s a surprise! As I have mentioned before, I am following an online Bible reading plan that’s supposed to be in the order the books of the Bible were written. They don’t tell you in advance what the next day’s reading will be. Suddenly we have moved from the letters to the Gospels.
But not for the first time, the good folks at Bible Gateway have got it wrong. Every commentary I have seen or sermon heard that compares the gospels agrees that Mark was the first to be written, and that Matthew and Luke copied most of what Mark wrote, edited it a bit and added their own material. So why we are getting Matthew first, I don’t know. But here goes…
Matthew, it is widely believed, belonged to a community of Jewish Christians – those Jews who had accepted that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah or Christ. Therefore in these opening chapters, and elsewhere in the book, Matthew appeals to the Jewish scriptures for evidence to support this. To begin with, he produces a genealogy of Jesus that identifies him as the 42nd generation from Abraham in the male line, consisting of 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations of kings to Jeconiah, and another 14 after the Babylonian exile. This is suspiciously neat and symbolic (3 x 2 x 7) and the last third seems to include names not known from other Bible books, but the point is made: Jesus (or rather his father Joseph, for it is Matthew who gives us the legend of the virgin birth) is a direct descendant in the royal line.
Matthew it is who also gives us the stories of the Magi, Flight to Egypt and Massacre of the Holy Innocents, the stories we hear at Christmas time. At the end of this, we find Joseph, Mary and Jesus settling as returning refugees in Nazareth in Galilee without any suggestion that they had originally come from there. They would have had to make a new home and establish a place in a community. Maybe that is why it was another 30 years or so before Jesus felt called to start his ministry, as he had to be accepted among the people before he could bring God’s word and power to them.
What is the application of that? When I felt called to be a Reader (lay minister) in a church in London, I was fairly new to that community. The Rector (parish priest) warned me that it would take ten years before the congregation fully accepted me as one of their leaders. As it was, I moved to Yorkshire five years later, and after two years getting to know the congregation in a church here, I was licensed by the Bishop of Leeds as a Reader here. Not quite the same as seeing the heavens opened and hearing the voice of God, but then Jesus was unique. Will it take ten years for people to accept me as a leader? Hopefully not – I think the priest in London was exaggerating – but even in the three years of Jesus’ amazing ministry of preaching and healing, after nearly thirty years living in Galilee, he met with opposition as much as praise. I am aware that not everything I say will please all the people all the time, but I do try to listen to what God is saying, and pass that on.