it is stated that “. . . Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judaean countryside where he spent some time with them and baptized.” Al wondered if that meant that Jesus baptized his disciples and then turned baptizing over to them?
The calling of the first four disciples seemed straightforward.
From that time Jesus began to preach. “Repent,” he said, “for the Kingdom of Heaven is now close at hand.”
And walking along the shore of the Lake of Galilee he saw two brothers—Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew—throwing a dragnet into the Lake; for they were fishers. And he said to them, “Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” So they immediately left their nets and followed him. As he went further on, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee mending their nets; and he called them. And they at once left the boat and their father, and followed him.
Had they been disciples of John the Baptist, he wondered. If so, it would make sense that they might give allegiance to the one who had received the accolade, “He who is coming after me is mightier than I.” He felt that he was generally in touch with the chapter but remained apprehensive about guiding the discussion.
Tuesday came quickly enough and Al sat uneasily in his accustomed chair, waiting for Melanie to call upon him. He felt a little like a schoolboy waiting for the teacher to call him up for an oral presentation.
Things began well enough as Melanie obligingly put up the Temptation narrative on the screen.
He began: “This week, I read Matthew Chapter 4 for the very first time! I tried to put myself in the place of one of the early listeners, maybe in the first century, who was in an equivalent situation.” He looked around, relieved that they seemed to be paying close attention. “All of you, I guess, have heard many sermons on the Temptation in the Wilderness. But I am starting from scratch. It was Andrew who introduced me to the idea of Midrash last week and that got me thinking. Maybe Jesus shared with his disciples the general outlines of his experiences in the desert and then a later generation filled in the details, using texts from the Jewish scriptures.”
“Does it make sense,” he wondered, “to see the baptism and the temptation as a continuous narrative? Jesus experiences something special at his baptism, becomes aware of the possibility that he is The One and goes off into solitude to try to sort it out. The three ‘temptations’ might represent options in the fulfillment of his destiny.”
He left it to the general discussion that followed to sort out meanings for the temptations, especially with reference to modern life. Martha Henson, in particular, saw possible parallels in the life of the Church. She spoke at some length. “I wonder if the turning stones into bread might represent social action, good in itself but scarcely ‘every word from the mouth of God’ as my translation puts it. And maybe the Temple temptation is parallel to the need for extravagant display.” She paused, seeming to lose confidence. “And the temptation to find an alliance with secular power is only too well a part of the church’s history.”
She conceded that she had heard a sermon along these lines and there was some discussion with the consensus, tactfully expressed within the group, that it was all a bit far fetched. Al was impressed with the way that Melanie tried to build on Martha’s idea. “What if Jesus, at that stage, saw himself simply as the new leader of John the Baptist’s disciples? Then maybe the temptations might relate to perils of leadership. I haven’t thought out the details but I think it can work.” Martha became quite animated. “Yes,” she replied. “It is a better fit. Any leader might indeed be tempted to look after his own needs, to draw too much attention to himself or to form an alliance with the ‘Dark Side’!”
Al decided to move the discussion along, giving his own thoughts about the temptations as possible approaches to the fulfillment of the messianic destiny; Jesus, hungry and exhausted in the desert, thinking, “If I am the Messiah, how do I now proceed?” This was a cue that they, at least, needed to proceed!
Al wondered about the imprisonment of John the Baptist. “It’s mentioned here but then introduced much later in the Gospel as a new event. I know we shouldn’t look forward into later chapters but Matthew 14 gives the whole story. Why John was imprisoned and the horrors of his death. It’s as though Matthew needed a good editor.”
He would have passed over the reference to Jesus moving his place of residence from Nazareth to Capernaum. But Webster’s intervened: “Here’s where the Gospel Parallels are useful. If I look across to Luke’s account of this event, I see that it is the result of a dramatic episode. Jesus preaches in his hometown synagogue and infuriates his people by reference to stories in which Gentiles, the widow from Sidon and the foreign general Naaman from Syria, received the benefits of miraculous intervention.” He went on to read the text from Luke 4:
“When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and put him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built that they might throw him down headlong. But passing through their midst, he went away, down to the city of Capernaum.”
“A simple statement of fact in Matthew conceals a great deal,” he concluded.
Al was rather taken by surprise. “I see what you meant when you spoke last week about Gospel Parallels. Matthew says he moved house in order to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah but one could argue from Luke’s Gospel that he went away because Nazareth was too hot to hold him!” And, to clinch the point, Webster reported that he had made a check of references to Nazareth and found that nothing is said about Jesus ever visiting it again.
So to the next section: Al began by observing that it would be natural for Jesus to continue John’s preaching. “I spent a bit of time on the question of whether Jesus baptized anyone.” He outlined his findings and was disappointed that no one responded. And indeed he realized that he had strayed away from the text. He was now feeling that things hadn’t gone well and he looked over to Melanie, who had been silent for most of the evening, for rescue.
She was ready to take over the reins. “Thanks, Al. You’ve given us plenty to think about. But the big question remains: what did Jesus mean by the Kingdom of Heaven?” She paused to let that sink in. Then she continued. “In the package which I received from Aunt Matty, there was a copy of a book by the American biblical scholar, Norman Perrin. It’s called ‘The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus’ and it tells me more than I want to know on the subject.” She paused and tried to relax. “Perrin’s book shows that the scholars agree that ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ in Matthew’s Gospel and ‘The Kingdom of God’ in Mark and Luke can be regarded as meaning exactly the same thing and that the term ‘Kingdom’ means the ‘reign of God’ rather than a physical area. It would seem, however, that everything else is disputed. One of the main issues is whether the Kingdom is present in the new community being formed around Jesus or whether it is something yet to come, and to come with an overthrow of the world’s powers by God’s intervention. Or somehow, that both can be true!”
She paused again, realizing that she had little more to contribute. “Let’s put such questions to one side and check them out as we continue though Matthew. Right now, I am looking at the clock and thinking about next week.”
Al said, “I want to thank Melanie for her graciousness. I made a foolish offer last week and have had the whole week to regret it. I’m not eager to do it again.” No one else showed any keenness to substitute as leader and Melanie said, “Just when I was thinking I was off the hook . . . But get ready to roll up your sleeves. The next three weeks will be devoted to the Sermon on the Mount. Lots to talk about.”
They went off, continuing the discussion in the parking
