Called into One Body of the Messianic Community through One Baptism

Called into One Body of the Messianic Community through One Baptism

Matt: 16: 13-19

Jesus initiating to form a new community based on obedience to God in the midst of a blind and recalcitrant Israel is a recurring theme in the Gospel according to Matthew. As is seen in the other synoptic gospels this particular portion of the gospel that deals with the identity and authority of Jesus comes as a climax of the Galilean ministry of Jesus. The Word Biblical Commentary puts this as a paradigmatic and definite confession of Jesus as the promised messiah.[1] This is an expected conclusion of the words and deeds expressed of Jesus and of whom the question of identity was frequently raised from different quarters as he was someone acting and speaking in unique way (8:27, 11: 2, 12:23). There are much intimation about his identity in the Galilean narratives about his unique identity and power. We see even demons acknowledging him as the Son of God (8:29). This is not the first time that the disciples confess him as the Son of God in Matthew’s gospel. We see, where the incident of Jesus walking over the waters had occurred in 14: 33 disciples confessed Jesus in the words, “Truly You are the Son of God”. The first confession happened in more of a sudden and excited context, but here the setting is a private, meditative and peaceful one. Some interpreter’s termed the selection of the gentile region of Caesarea Philippi as with an intention to assert Jesus’ own Lordship over the world’s religions. This seems to be a clear misreading of the text. It would have more probably because to take a retreat from the bustle of his followers crowding around to be alone with the disciples. Jesus initiates a vey contemplative dialogue at this serene setting. Jesus asks the disciples in v. 13, “Who do the people say the Son of Man is?”

v. 14 “They replied; some says; John the Baptist or Elijah”

“Still others: Jeremiah or one of the prophets”

Jesus’ preaching of judgements against the people of Israel and the Temple and the recurring emphasis on the eschaton and especially his suffering and martyrdom had made people make parallels between Jesus and the prophets like Elijah and Jeremiah and of course John the Baptist too. Elijah and Jeremiah were believed to be playing important roles in the coming of the end time as they were considered as God men taken directly to heaven without seeing death.

The Messianic Community Shares the Proleptic Experience of the Blessed Eschaton

Jesus persists with his questioning in v. 15. He asks But what about you?

v. 16 Simon Peter says; You are the messiah, the Son of the living God

Peter speaks on behalf of the disciples. He was their leader and spokesman. This was a question they have discussed again and again within themselves and might have remained inconclusive probably until the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Peter’s answer was categorically different from what the people had said about him. The people were trying to identify Jesus with the figures involved in the coming of the end times. But here Peter identifies him as the “coming one” or the eschaton itself. Jesus brings with him the messianic age and the transformation of the present order. The healings, exorcisms, feedings and all the signs were unequivocally witnessing to the immanence of this eschaton. For Matthew messiah is presented as more than a human figure, someone who is uniquely a manifestation of God and the very agent of God who somehow participates in God’s being. [2]

Jesus elicits the explicit confession of his messianic identity from the disciples. Peter is termed as blessed as he is seen as one who participates in the proleptic experience of the eschatological blessing of God.[3] The church is called out as a witnessing people to continually have this proleptic experience of the blessed eschaton. But many a times we realize that the acts and gestures of the church rarely have the eschatological bearings on them nowadays.

I’ve seen these things happening in my experiences in the mission field. Once, Dr. Thomas Mathew of the Christian Fellowship Hospital, Khariar Road, along his whole family visited us at the Kalahandi Mar Thoma Mission field. He was taken to a village congregation for the worship next Sunday. After the worship we moved around the village to interact with the people. Then someone came and pointed to a secluded shabby hut stood at a distance and said that a lunatic is chained there inside the hut. He turned to that direction and expressed his wish to visit the man. I was reluctant as I feared some violent responses from the man. But he moved on went very closer to the man, talked to him and prayed. At the time when we were about to leave he called in his wife and in a piece of paper that he could find in his pocket, he prescribed a medicine. And we sped away in our vehicles and I just forgot all those incidents as I had no faith at all in the possibility of any miracle happening. But about a month later when I visited Judaband (that’s the name of the village), I could see this man working in the paddy field with a spade. I was very eager to report this matter to Dr Thomas Mathew as I liked to put it as a big miracle by now. When I met him at Khariar Road a few weeks later; I shared about this miraculous happening. I expected a very excited and joyous response from the doctor. But he simply smiled and thanked God for the happenings. His expressions told me that he was very much believing in the possibility of that transformation. In my hind sight what I’m feeling today is that he was feeling the blessedness of the eschaton in a proleptic way.

It is not something achieved with the power of the Flesh and blood, but happens when someone deeply feels the presence of heavenly Father vibrant in our midst.

Messianic Community is called to operate the keys to the Kingdom of God

vv. 17-19 demands some intense engagement with the text for our devotion today as our theme for the day is, “One body and one baptism.”

It has at least four important aspects

·       Commissioning of peter

·       Saying about the church

·       Authority of the keys

·       Command to silence

In v. 17 we see Jesus commending Peter for being able to confess him as the messiah. For this was not revealed by flesh and blood, but by my Father in Heaven

v. 18 You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church; Hades will not overcome it

G. A. F. Knight (1960) interprets the rock as God-in-Christ felt and expressed by Peter. It is none other than the confessing Peter who is seen here as the rock, but as the representative of Christ. It is strength of his confession of Jesus as the messiah that makes him the rock. The rock imagery implies both stability and endurance. [4]

v. 19 I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of God; whatever you bind will be bound and whatever you loose will be loosed.

This verse has very clear resemblance with Rev 1: 18, where John at Patmos writes, “I died, behold I am alive forever, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.” Key symbolize authority.  But it is not about absolute authority. Peter’s authority expressed is not something absolute as we see in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, it seems to be more negotiable especially in his relationship with apostles like Paul and in his role at the Jerusalem Council. The negotiability of the authority is to make the body of the messianic community more accommodative. The key when we consider Matthews gospel in its entirety is the authority to teach, disciple and baptize by proclaiming the Jesus tradition (Matthew 28: 18-20; All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit). It is to speak on behalf of “heaven” to the people on earth. “Hades” is a usage developed in the inter-testamental period. It is synonymous with the realm of death. The church as an eschatological community will never die off or come to an end. In spite of the fact of death of Jesus and its martyrs the church will continue to live as an eschatological community.[5]  Church is called out to be the saints of every age and hence the community of saints cannot ever be destroyed.

Messianic Community Gathers Men and Women as God’s People into God's Reign through Baptism

Some scholars allege an anachronism of introducing the church in this passage as the church of Christ in that respect was yet to be formed. But yet the discussions on authority of the community take very legitimate grounding here. The reference is clearly not about ekklesia, which is a Greek term and the fact is that Jesus had never spoken in Greek. Scholars suggest the Aramaic equivalent of ekklesia as qahal.  Qahal in Hebrew means the community of the Lord/Yahweh. It does not signify an exclusive community that limits its membership to people of a particular ethnicity or religiosity; but implies a more broad imagination of the community of God.[6] What Jesus assembled was not a remnant in ethnic or racial terms but a people of God that is gathered from people of all walks of life. The point that needs special attention here is that the calling of God’s people into being demanded a decision or a baptism for the kingdom of God as announced and embodied in Jesus himself. Jesus extended this offer of a new baptism that is conceived beyond any kind of a ritualistic and fixed performance of it was more of sacramental nature signifying an individual’s or community’s total immersion in the will of God. In the early church baptism signified a broadening of the base of the “Community of the Lord” to include the gentiles. The choice of twelve disciples and the trouble that Jesus had taken to teach them and groom them as future apostles point to Jesus’ longing for the building up of a messianic community through this baptism. His prediction of his resurrection and the promise of his presence with the disciples in his future ministry are also indications of his contemplations on founding a messianic community.[7] It also gives us the picture of a self-conscious church as it moved towards the end of the first century.

Christian theology of Baptism understands it as regeneration and rebirth into the new life, and adoption as a child of God and the benefits conferred are believed to be forgiveness of sins, membership in the church, the gift of the Holy Spirit and inheritance of the Kingdom of God.[8] Thus baptism here turns out to be a key that opens a person to the reality of kingdom of God. Very many times baptism and conversion becomes a cause of contention and conflict for Christians in their relationship with the people of other faiths, as the ritualistic and doctrinal dimension of baptism is overemphasized at the cost of its sacramental dimension. The second Vatican Council describes the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. Walter Buhlmann opines that the church does not preach the salvation as something but as a new relationship with God.[9] We need to invite peoples to this sacramental dimension of new relationship with God to enter the reality of the kingdom of God.

Are we the people who share in the proleptic experience of the blessed eschaton?

Are we the people who diligently operate the keys to the kingdom without absolutizing the power entrusted to us?

Are we the disciples who gather men and women for the Community of God through highlighting the sacramentality of baptism?

References

Buhlmann, Walbert. The Coming of the Third Church: An Analysis of the Present and Future of the Church. Translated by Ralph Woodhall and A. N. Other. Fifth ed. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1978. Reprint, 1982.

Hagner, Donald. Word Biblical Commentary: Matthew 14-28. Edited by Donald Hagner. Vol. 33B: Nelson Reference & Electronic, 1995.

Thomas, Owen C. Introduction to Theology. Serampore: Indian Theological Library, 1989.

---

[1] Donald Hagner, Word Biblical Commentary: Matthew 14-28, ed. Donald Hagner, vol. 33B (Nelson Reference & Electronic, 1995), 466.

[2] Ibid., 468.

[3] Ibid., 469.

[4] Ibid., 471.

[5] Ibid., 472.

[6] Ibid., 464,65.

[7] Ibid., 466.

[8] Owen C. Thomas, Introduction to Theology (Serampore: Indian Theological Library, 1989), 248.

[9] Walbert Buhlmann, The Coming of the Third Church: An Analysis of the Present and Future of the Church, trans. Ralph Woodhall and A. N. Other, Fifth ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1978; reprint, 1982), 91.