Matthew portrays John the Baptist as a prophet who preaches judgment. The Baptist calls his contemporaries, who are children of Abraham and Sarah by blood, to become children by active faith. He compares the Pharisees and Sadducees who seek his baptism to a brood of vipers. This image of a tangle of slithery poisonous snakes suggests that John sees their differences and arguments as deadly among the people, preventing the law from leading people to holiness.
When members of these two groups step forward to bathe in the Jordan, John the Baptist challenges their sincerity. Do they mean inwardly what they are about to express outwardly? This baptism expresses repentance, change of heart, a turning toward God. John doubts the Pharisees and Sadducees see themselves as sinners who need to change.
On the day of judgment that John the Baptist announces, biological membership in the family of Abraham will not count. John wants to see repentance bud on the family tree.
- What is poisonous to your faith?
- What in people’s words and actions open you to the mystery of God present in our world?
Matthew hears the voice of an earlier Israelite prophet—Second Isaiah—resounding in the preaching of John the Baptist. Second Isaiah readied people to go home from exile in Babylon just as John prepares people for the coming of Jesus.
In the 540s B.C., Second Isaiah saw God at work in the victories of the Persian King Cyrus over the Babylonians, who held many Israelites captive. He saw God getting ready to lead Israel home and announced, “Prepare the way of the Holy One, make straight a highway for God.”
Matthew also sees in John’s rugged and uncompromising character a prophet like Elijah, whom Jewish tradition expected to return before the messiah. His camel-hair clothes and grasshopper diet liken John to Elijah, who wore a hairy mantle and ate food ravens brought him in the wilderness.
Fierce and holy like Elijah, John is a lone voice in the wilderness, calling people to repent and prepare for one who will baptize them in Spirit and fire. Repentance is the true inheritance of Israel, John insists. The fruitful tree symbolizes the repentant person.
John says the one for whom he prepares will carry a winnowing fan. This is the shovel people used in John’s time to throw grain in the air and let the wind separate the wheat from the chaff.
- What points in your life have been days of judgment—of clearing dead from live wood or of winnowing seed from chaff?
- What changes in your life are you proudest of making?
Matthew’s gospel begins with a genealogy, a family tree that says Jesus is Israel’s messiah, “son of David, son of Abraham” (1.1). This family tree describes 42 generations, 14 from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile, and 14 from the exile to Joseph. All but four of the ancestors are men. The four women in Jesus’ genealogy are not Israelites. These outsiders add strengths to the family line. Two become the mothers of kings. God acts across tribal boundaries.
Tamar, a Canaanite woman not to be denied her rights, tricks her father-in-law, Judah, into fulfilling his obligation to give her a child (Genesis 38).
Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho, opens her home to Joshua and his reconnaissance team and marries among the Israelites (Joshua 2).
Ruth, a Moabite woman, faithfully accompanies her mother-in-law, Naomi, home where she becomes King David’s great grandmother.
Uriah the Hittite’s beautiful wife, Bathsheba, becomes King David’s lover and Solomon’s mother (1 Samuel 11).
- What characterizes the Christianity you inherit in your family?
- What in the family spirit you inherit do you wish to nurture more?