Who Is Jesus?
In many ways the great question of the New Testament is quite simple – ‘Who is Jesus?’ We seek to live out that answer by way we live our life.
We will have doubts, just as John the Baptist, cooped up in his prison cell, wanted to be quite certain that he had got it right – that Jesus really was the promised messiah.
In John’s Gospel the works Jesus does are called ‘signs’ because they indicate Jesus’ identity; that is the same in this passage from Matthew’s Gospel. The compilers of the lectionary help us appreciate this by coupling the reading from Isaiah with the passage from Matthew. Isaiah gives us a great vision of hope announcing the coming of God to his people, and that is accompanied by great signs in nature, but also by the healing of the blind, the deaf, the lame and the dumb. When Jesus answers John’s disciples, he simply points to the signs he gives to indicate who he is.
Matthew is the Gospel which most emphasises the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. This is above all true of the beginning of Mathew’s Gospel, the first two chapters are full of quotations, references and allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures – Matthew actually begins his Gospel of Jesus Christ by a genealogy from Abraham. In those first two chapters, there are five formal statements like that in today’s passage: ‘this took place to fulfil the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet’.
We are very familiar with the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel to Mary in Luke’s Gospel and her response; Matthew gives us a similar scene of annunciation, but the recipient is Joseph, betrothed to Mary, who hears the announcement and accepts the commission.
The opening of Paul’s letter to the Romans offers a similar line of argument. He talks of the Good News which has been promised in the past and has now happened in Jesus.
Fr Ron
