Utumishi Blog

Trying to get more familiar with Matthew’s gospel at the moment as we get ready to look at it in the next Ministry Training week. I’m still not feeling very at home in it but increasingly hungry to know it better. Read it through in a morning last week (I’ve always been scared of doing that sort of thing but it was great) and was struck afresh by a few things – all of which, I later realised, come together at the end (Matt. 28:19-20):

• Discipleship – ‘make disciples… teaching them’. The dominant structure of the book is the five teaching blocks (chp. 5-7, 10, 13, 18, 24-25) each ending, ‘when Jesus had finished saying all these things’. This is a manual for disciples and disciplers.
• Trinity – ‘baptising them in(to) the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. People are to be plunged into the water as a sign that they are being plunged into the Trinitarian community. How can that be? Through union with Christ: “I am with you always” (a theme that begins at Matt. 1:23 with the mention of ‘Immanuel’). Perhaps John’s Gospel is a little clearer on relationship of Father, Son and Spirit (loving, sending, obeying, glorifying) but Matthew is great on the character of the Father and the way the Son alone reveals that character and how those who are sons of the Father in Him will display that character: peacemaking (Matt. 5:9), merciful, loving enemies (Matt. 5:43-48), generous (Matt. 7:11), humble (Matt. 11:27-29), compassionate, forgiving (Matt. 18:27). Extraordinary picture.
• Future – ‘till the end of the age.’ I was familiar with the way Matthew looks back into Israel’s history and sees the ancient promises and patterns being fulfilled but I’d not noticed how often this Gospel looks forward. 7 times Jesus talks about the ‘age’ or the ‘end of the age’. It comes out really strongly in chp. 24-25 but actually the consummation / final judgment is a strong theme in each of the five teaching blocks.

Aren’t these really helpful emphases – the need for discipleship to be the core business of church (not entertainment, healing or politics); the need for a rich doctrine of God (not the Great Dictator but the Humble Giver); and the need for a radical future focus to our faith (not just the here and now but the New Creation).  And they’re not independent ideas – the three flow together: discipleship is life with the Good God looking forward to the end of the age.

Or something like that… work in progress…