| “I am with you always”
Unlike Luke’s Gospel text, which ends in Jerusalem where its story began,
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that after the resurrection Jesus’s disciples,
“the eleven,” return to Galilee (28:16). This region is the central location
for the public ministry of Jesus in the gospel tradition; he begins his
preaching there, gathers his disciples from this region, and spends most
of his time among the towns and villages of Galilee until he heads for
Jerusalem for his final days. There he confronts the religious authorities,
is executed, and rises from the dead.
So Matthew tells us that it is in Galilee after the resurrection where
Jesus meets his disciples and commissions them to continue his work. After
this commissioning he apparently parts from them, though Matthew does not
narrate an ascension scene proper; that scene is found only in Luke. For
Matthew, the emphasis is on the fact that Jesus, who was called Emmanuel,
“God with us,” at the beginning of the Gospel (1:23), remains present with
the church.
Jesus directs them to meet him at an unspecified mountain. Mountains
in the biblical world often serve as places of contact with the divine.
Earlier in Matthew’s text we read that Jesus gave his great sermon on a
mountain (Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5–7), reminiscent of Moses’s delivering
God’s word to the people on Mount Sinai. This Moses-Jesus connection is
one found throughout Matthew’s text and serves to highlight Jesus as the
new Moses, a theme that would resonate with the evangelist’s Jewish-born
Christian community.
The fact that they “worshiped him” (28:17) indicates that for Matthew
the disciples recognized Jesus as divine, for Jews reserved worship to
God. We see another example of the disciples worshiping Jesus in the story
of Jesus walking to them on the water. In this passage Matthew tells us
that after Jesus calmed the storm and entered the boat, “those in the boat
worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’” (Mt 14:33). Both
of these scenes, like the baptism and transfiguration, serve to remind
us of Jesus’s divine nature.
Throughout his Gospel Matthew gives us a picture of a Jesus who teaches
and works to bring about the reign of God. Now, before he separates from
his disciples, he will commission them to continue the work he began by
making “disciples of all nations” (28:19). This universal mission, while
not stressed in Matthew’s Gospel, conforms with the actions of the apostolic
community, beginning on Pentecost when the apostles preached to people
from “every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) and continuing in Acts where
the gospel is preached as far away as Rome.
Jesus tells them to baptize these new disciples, admitting them into
the newly formed community of faith centered on the message of Jesus. Matthew’s
baptismal formula, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit” (28:19), provides us with an indication that the early church
was already using this baptismal formula in its liturgy, and so the text
gives us a window into the practice and faith of the early church. We know
from Acts that in the earliest days of the church some believers were not
familiar with the Christian Trinitarian baptismal formula (19:1–5), so
this text shows us that by the time of Matthew’s writing, probably in the
80s, the church was using it for baptism.
Jesus tells the Eleven to not only baptize the new disciples but also
pass on the teachings he has spoken to them, “teaching them to obey everything
that I have commanded you” (28:20). This is another important emphasis
for Matthew as he stresses in his text Jesus’s role as a teacher, fulfilling
the words of Moses and the prophets who came before him.
With the commissioning scene Matthew brings his text to a close. But
he does it in a way that reminds us of several key themes that we have
seen throughout the Gospel. For him this is one last opportunity to present
Jesus, now in his risen form, as the Son of God who calls his followers
to continue his work of fulfilling the words of the Law and the Prophets.
At the same time, Matthew reminds us that Jesus will not abandon his church
but promises to be with us throughout the ages. The ecclesial community
founded on the faith of Peter will remain strong because the risen one
continues to be “God with us.”
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again! ML
Bruce Janiga, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., teaches
Scripture studies at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange, N.J. He is the Sunday
assistant at St. Cassian's Church in Upper Montclair, N.J.
What do YOU
Think?
Send an e-mail
to ML Editor or post an entry
on the ML Current Issue Discussion Board. (All
submissions become the property of RPI and may be edited for length.) |
