MATTHEW REFLECTION - Week 1
This is the Christ.
That is the resounding message of the opening chapters of Matthew’s gospel that we’ve been reading this week!
Emily’s talk on Sunday (if you missed it, you can catch up here) mentioned that the gospels are all different; the way they are written, the sources they draw from and their intended recipients. Matthew’s gospel starts off with clear indicators as to who this is for.
Unlike the other gospel accounts, Matthew begins with a genealogy. Matthew 1:1-17 takes us through three stages of Jewish history to highlight where Jesus fits in.
There are fourteen generations between Abraham, the father of the faith, through to David, the great King of Israel. There are then fourteen generations from this great King through to the great disaster of the ancient Jewish people, the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon. Finally, there are fourteen generations from that exile through to Jesus.
So Jesus is exemplified alongside the biggest figures in Jewish history.- that is significant by itself. Something massive happens every fourteen generations and so Jesus’ arrival is all in the plan. But the symmetry created by the fourteens is important too. One prominent understanding is that the number 7 in Jewish culture represented perfection and fourteen is seven twice - so Jesus is doubly perfect! Another suggestion is that as Hebrew letters had numeric value and the letters in the name David (דָּוִד) have a value adding up to fourteen, this pattern could be a signpost to say ‘this is the one promised from the line of David’.
However it was intended, it’s clear that these names and numbers would have meant something to a contemporary Jew that it’s hard for us to pick up on. Indeed, Matthew is saying ‘This is the Jewish Messiah’.
As if the genealogy wasn’t enough, Matthew’s opening chapters are filled with ‘fulfilment citations’, or elements which fulfil prophecies from the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament).
On Monday, we read that Jesus was born of a Virgin to fulfil what had been prophesied in Isaiah 7:14.
On Tuesday, we saw that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to fulfil Micah 5:2 and that Jesus, Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt to fulfil Hosea 11:1. Matthew also suggests that the killing of all under 2s was a fulfilment of Jeremiah 31:15.
On Wednesday we read about John the Baptist fulfilling Isaiah 40:3.
And then on Thursday we see that Jesus based himself in the Galilee region so as to fulfil Isaiah 9:1-2.
So Matthew is constantly communicating that this is the Messiah, this is the one that the Jewish people were anticipating. In Jesus, the prophecies are being fulfilled.
Most of these points are not made in the other gospels accounts.
As we progress through Matthew’s gospel together, we can acknowledge that Matthew’s gospel was for a Jewish readership. This, however, doesn’t take away from our ability to learn from it and celebrate the story it tells of a Messiah who came for the salvation of all people. These opening chapters situate the life of Jesus in the Jewish story, but as we’ll read as we get deeper into this gospel, this was a Christ who is the saviour of the whole world!