Isn't there something we must do?
Commentary
Living in a world that runs on the basis of rewards and punishments, many people have difficulty with the biblical understanding of God's grace. Grace means that everything we need for salvation has already been done for us. It's not the good old American way! Or Canadian or German or French for that matter. "You get what you deserve" in the world, and so that logic is carried over to God.
Many people in the church who confess that Christ died for us, to save us from our sins, will still insist that there is something we need to do: have faith. Faith becomes that good work that is still required, because nothing in this world is free.
Our three lessons challenge that worldly wisdom in profound ways, leaving us to respond with a resounding No! to the question posed above: Isn't there something we must do?
Isaiah 51:1-6
The collection of sermons in Isaiah 40-55 was addressed to the people exiled from Jerusalem in 597 and 587 B.C. Within this material several of the problems connected to exile shout out through the prophecies, announcing that the severance from their land and from their temple is not merely a sociological or economic disaster; it is a theological one. The people themselves express their exile as God-forsaken (40:27; 49:14).
Into that apparently God-forsaken community God called the prophet to "comfort my people" with the good news that the exile is over and that the Lord is coming to take the people home (40:1-11). The prophet we call Second Isaiah announces that good news in a variety of ways, most especially summoning the exiles to place their confidence in the effectiveness of the word that addresses them, for that word accomplishes that which it promises.
Here the prophet portrays the Lord as a teacher like those of the wisdom tradition. He summons his audience to "listen to me" (vv. 1, 4, 7) like the teachers of old (Proverbs 1:8; 4:1, 10, 20; 5:1; 7:1, 24; 8:32, etc.). His first call to heed his teaching is addressed to those "that pursue deliverance." (The NRSV translates the word tsedeq here as "righteousness" which is often its meaning. However in Second Isaiah tsedeq means God's saving action and is translated "deliverance." Indeed, in verses 5 and 6 NRSV does translate the word as "deliverance" where it is required by its parallelism with "salvation.") The divine teacher instructs the audience to consider, first, the "rock" from which they were hewn, and in doing so, he uses the divine imagery suggested as early as the Song of Moses (see Deuteronomy 32:18; see also Isaiah 44:8). Second, the teacher calls on his pupils to recall what he did for Abraham and Sarah in promising and then making them a great nation. In like manner the Lord -- the very same Lord who appears to have been so absent these fifty years of exile -- "will comfort Zion." If the prophet was called to "comfort my people," he soon came to realize that the comforting work would be God's (see also 51:12; 52:9) and he the simple messenger. The people of Mount Zion, the people of Jerusalem now exiled but soon comforted, will be filled with gladness and joy.
The second call to listen to the teacher (v. 4) places the salvation work of God in a larger context than that of Israel alone. God's justice will be "for a light to the peoples." His arms "will rule the peoples" not to their dismay because they already "wait" and hope" for this divine reign. The words of the teacher here anticipate the more explicit connection in 52:7-10 where the deliverance march to Jerusalem will lead to the acclamation of the kingdom of God and to the realization of that reign by "the ends of the earth."
The salvation the Lord promises here goes far beyond the immediate release from bondage, for unlike the heavens and earth itself, the salvation the Lord will accomplish will be forever. If that promise doesn't smack of the kingdom, I don't know what does. In fact, it is only because the work of salvation is exclusively God's that it can be forever.
Romans 12:1-8
In chapters 3 through 11 the apostle Paul developed his proclamation about the unconditional nature of justification, even to a humanity that was universally sinful (chapters 1-2). The amazing grace that accomplished that wondrous act for us "while we were yet sinners" leads the apostle to conclude his message about justification with such words as "unsearchable" and "inscrutable" (11:33), beyond human understanding (v. 34), and can only be received by ascribing God glory (v. 36).
The word "therefore" in our opening verse bases what follows on that wondrous justification that precedes. He appeals to the Christians in Rome "to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." In these days when there is so lively an interest in "spirituality" it is imperative to contribute to the discussion this uniquely Christian perspective, namely that "spiritual worship" is nothing other than bodily involvement in the world. How could it be otherwise for a community that believes in the incarnational involvement of the Word of God in our world, an involvement so complete that his body became a sacrifice for us?
Paul immediately summons his readers to the next step, namely the need to "be transformed by the renewal of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and perfect." This transformation stands in sharp contrast to the popular way of "conforming to this age." It is the present "age" that is full of the devil, and that doesn't mean two-year-old children. It is this age that is ruled by forces of evil, even "the evil one." It is this age that worships the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:18-25). Transformation is necessary, and such change is possible because of God's justification of us all in Jesus Christ.
The transformation for which Paul makes his appeal begins with the call to stand against the rugged individualism of this present age in order to be the community of the new age, the church. Such a community consists of persons who use "the measure of faith that God has assigned" in order to recognize not only one's own gifts but also those of others. Just as the human body has many different parts, each with its own peculiar function to contribute to the rest of the body, so it is with the body of Christ, the church. With our grace-endowed gifts we work together as a body, each contributing prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, generosity, aid, and mercy. Rather than follow the ways of this age in which differences among people drive folks apart, the transformed church of the new age celebrates the diversity "according to the grace given us" for the response of the body to God's act of justification by living sacrificially in the world! Vive la difference!
Matthew 16:13-20
Way back in 4:17 the words, "from that time," introduced a new segment of Matthew's Gospel, namely the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. The same words occur for the second and only time in the Gospel at the verse immediately following our pericope, namely at 16:21 where they introduce a new section, the private ministry of Jesus. Our pericope, therefore, concludes the long section about public ministry, at least in Matthew's outline. As a conclusion it packs a wallop.
Our story takes place in "the district of Caesarea Philippi," not merely "on the way" as Mark reports it. Matthew thus places Jesus and the disciples in the midst of Roman territory. Why that location is important for Matthew is difficult to determine.
In any case, Jesus opens the discussion about his own identity by asking what the latest polls say about him: "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" That the question in Mark's Gospel is stated as, "Who do people say that I am?" indicates that here the expression, "Son of Man," is simply a substitute for the first person pronoun "I."
The buzz about him, they answered, was he was "John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Why would the people have labeled Jesus by those persons? John the Baptist had already been beheaded. What would make the people think of John? We could assume that the preaching of John and Jesus was the same: they both announced, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (3:2 and 4:17). Or that they were cousins (a la Luke's infancy stories). But perhaps the answer to the question lay in the explanation given by Herod the tetrarch a few chapters earlier in Matthew's Gospel: "This is John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead, and for this reason these powers are at work in him" (14:2). Thus, according to the ruler who put John to death, Jesus is John redivivus. That was the only way Herod could explain the miracles Jesus performed. We have no way to demonstrate that this opinion rendered by Herod to his servants had anything to do with the popular opinion about Jesus, but the power of the rumor mill is astounding.
Why, then, did some people think Jesus was Elijah? Elijah -- and his successor Elisha -- were not preaching prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve. They were miracle-working prophets who performed some of the wonders that Jesus is reported to have accomplished in the Gospel stories. Elijah was responsible for the feeding miracle that allowed the widow of Zarephath and her son to live during the time of the famine (1 Kings 17) and Elisha fed a multitude of people with only a small amount of food (2 Kings 4). When Jesus performed the miracles of feeding the 4,000 and the 5,000, the people might indeed have thought of those earlier prophets and connected Jesus to the return of one of them. Further, Elijah raised from the dead the only son of the widow (1 Kings 17), and Elisha did the same for the only son of the Shunamite woman (2 Kings 4). When Jesus raised from the dead the only son of the widow of Nain, the people apparently thought of those earlier prophets, since they responded to that event by exclaiming, "A great prophet has risen among us" (Luke 7:16). Beyond the miracles, however, there was alive the tradition with which the Book of Malachi ends, namely, that before the Day of the Lord the prophet Elijah would come in order to mend the generation gap and prepare people for the Day (Malachi 4:5-6). Elijah was available for such an assignment because there was no coroner's report of his death. He simply went up into the heavens in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2), and so some day he could return. Since Jesus announced that "the kingdom of heaven was drawing near," the people could easily have associated him with Elijah. (Of course, that was John the Baptist's message, too, and so Jesus assigned the honor of preparing the way to John: "He is Elijah who is to come" [Matthew 11:14]).
As for Jeremiah as the identity of Jesus, what could possibly make the connection? Possibly Jesus' prophecies about destruction of Jerusalem and especially of the Temple reminded the people of that prophet's words (Jeremiah 7, 16, and 26 to cite only a few). Jeremiah was also a prophet who was rejected for such preaching, as Jesus was. Jeremiah was known as "the weeping prophet," and later Jesus "wept" over Jerusalem.
Finally, Jesus is thought to be "one of the prophets," probably because of the nature of his preaching. Like the prophets of old, Jesus preached the word of God that afflicted the comfortable but comforted the afflicted. He announced on the basis of the handwriting on the wall what would happen to Jerusalem. Like the prophets of old, he told about visions of the kingdom of God in his sermons and in his parables.
All these images that the people attached to Jesus were their attempts to understand who he was in terms they could understand. The images were the familiar boxes in which they could set Jesus and then manage him accordingly. All these boxes the people assigned to Jesus had the word "Prophet" on the outside. Inside were variations on the prophetic theme.
Now Jesus changes the conversation from the popular opinion about him to the question about how the twelve regard him: "But who do you say that I am?" Usually the first to speak, Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." In Mark's version of the same response the words of Peter are simply, "You are the Messiah" (Mark 8:29). In any case, the connection of Messiah with Son of God is consistent with the Davidic ideology in the Old Testament, for on coronation day itself each succeeding king of the family of Jesse was adopted by the Lord as "my son" (Psalm 2:7; see also Psalm 89:26-27).
Moreover, in Mark Jesus immediately responds by ordering them to keep quiet about his identity, even without confirming Peter's confession. Here, however, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir break out in song as Jesus blesses Simon for finally getting it right. The faith to understand who he is, Jesus instructs the confessor, is not a matter of human origin. Such insight can only come from God as revelation. Surely Martin Luther must have taken his cue from this verse when he wrote in his Small Catechism the explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed: "I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me...." Believing in Jesus as the Christ and confessing Jesus as Lord can occur only by the divine gift of revelation.
The key word is gift. The faith to know who Jesus is can only come as a gift from God. The words of Jesus to Simon bar Jonah and the copycat words of Luther eliminate any possibility of considering faith as the necessary good work for salvation. Faith itself does not emanate from us, that is, from "flesh and blood." It comes from God.
That God Jesus calls here "Father." Strikingly, in Mark's Gospel Jesus does not refer to God as Father, and Luke does so only three times. Matthew, however, puts "Father" on the lips of Jesus at 7:21; 10:32, 33; 11:27; 12:50; 18:10, 14, 19; 25:34; 26:39, 42, 53. In this regard Matthew sounds much like the author of the Fourth Gospel where Jesus speaks of God as "Father" twenty times. When the connection between Father and the revelation of Jesus is realized, the reader of the Gospel recalls Jesus' earlier words at 11:27: "no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." The words of our present pericope seem to add to the earlier teaching that "no one knows the Son except the Father" the corollary "and anyone to whom the Father chooses to reveal him." One of the early chosen ones was the apostle Paul (Galatians 1:15-16).
Here it was Peter, and since his confession was a gift of God, we can acclaim no special insight or merit to the man. Nevertheless, it is on Peter that Jesus here promises to build his church. Further, to Peter is given "the keys of the kingdom of heaven." In first century Judaism those keys belonged to the "scribes and Pharisees" who "lock people out of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 23:13). Their authority lay in their role as teachers of the law. They would bind and loose commandments under certain conditions, and they would bind and loose people in terms of their obedience or disobedience to the law. Now Jesus gives that authority to Peter who knows that the interpretation Jesus gave to the law is the only legitimate interpretation (Matthew 5-7), and so binding and loosing will be made through the one "having authority, and not as their scribes" (7:29).
To answer the initial question, there is something we can do. We can acknowledge that even our faith is a gift from God and thank God profusely. We can also extend that thanks to God for the church which confesses that God-given faith from generation to generation so that others know who Jesus is.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Exodus 1:8--2:10
With this text, there now occurs a long gap of time in the biblical history of Israel. Jacob and Joseph and his eleven brothers and all their offspring have kept their flocks around the fertile delta of the Nile River in the region of Goshen. But as we read in the priestly introduction of Exodus 1:1-7 to our morning's text, all of that generation finally dies, and at the beginning of our lesson, we read the ominous sentence, "Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph."
Scholars are reasonably certain that the "new king" was Seti I, who ruled Egypt from ca. 1309-1290 B.C. The facts we are given in verse 11 of our text tell us that the Pharaoh built store-
cities at Pithom and Raamses, and those, along with numerous other constructions, were begun in the reign of Seti I. The city of Raamses was called by that name only until the eleventh century B.C., when it was renamed Tanis. And when the Israelites finally escaped from Egypt, they encountered both Edom and Moab in the wilderness (Numbers 20-21), but neither of those kingdoms was established before 1300 B.C. Thus, we are dealing in the book of Exodus with actual history, and our text probably recounts events that took place during the beginning of the reign of Seti.
As is always the case in the biblical story, God has a hand in these historical events, however. The people of Israel multiply rapidly and spread throughout the land of the lower Nile. That is not a notice of Israelite fertility, but of God's working to keep his promise to the patriarchs. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the heavens (Genesis 15:5), and that promise is now being fulfilled. That is what our narrator wants to impress upon us.
But of course human fears and follies always arise to try to place obstacles in the way of God's activity. And so Pharaoh Seti, seeing the rapid spread of the Israelites, is afraid that they will join forces with some enemy and overthrow his throne. As a result, he enslaves the Israelites and sets them to hard labor on his many building projects (vv. 9-14). In addition, the royal order is given that all midwives are to kill any Israelite male child that they deliver onto their knees as they sit on the birthstool. Significantly, the names of just two midwives are given, an indication of still how small is the Israelite population (vv. 15-16).
"But the midwives feared God" (v. 17), that is, they are obedient to God and honor his gift of newborn life. The faithful women do not kill the newborns. They make excuses to the Pharaoh, and Israel continues to multiply. Desperate, the Pharaoh finally orders all male children under two years of age to be thrown into the Nile and drowned (v. 22).
The child who is to become Moses is introduced into the story. When his mother sees that she can no longer hide the "goodly child," the healthy child, from Pharaoh's slaughter, she cradles him in a little waterproof basket and hides the basket among the Nile reeds, instructing her daughter Miriam to watch to see what happens. And how fortuitous! -- or is it the guiding of God? When the daughter of Pharaoh comes to the site to bathe, she discovers the hidden basket and takes pity on the crying child, deciding to raise him in the royal palace as her son. Miriam, seeing her opportunity, comes out of her hiding place and offers to find a wetnurse for the child -- the child's own mother, who not only gets to nurse and raise her infant for at least three years, but is paid for doing so! And finally, in the most ironic touch of all, Pharaoh's daughter names the child "Moses," which comes from the Hebrew mashah, "to draw out." Pharaoh's household will become the nurturer of Pharaoh's future opponent, who will "draw out" Israel from slavery!
The passage forms a wondrous account of God's activity in human life, through human fear and faithfulness, human love and pity. Once again, the unseen Lord is at work to keep his promise. But note by what a slender thread God's working hangs. It depends on the obedience of two faithful midwives, on the love of a mother for her newborn, on a flimsy basket that does not leak, on a watching older sister, and on the pity of a royal daughter. At any point in the story, the thread could break and God's purpose could be thwarted. But it does not break and the divine plan moves forward.
Is there not a lesson for us in the tale? A lot of seemingly insignificant events take place in our lives, and we make lots of choices. At the time, how we choose seems to be of no consequence whatsoever. The smallest decision we make, we think, certainly will not affect the outcome of history or the working out of God's purpose for humankind. But could it be that if we are faithful and make decisions and choices that we know are right and according to God's will, those are gathered up and used by Almighty God in his ongoing purpose? In every action, every thought, every decision of our lives, God has a stake. He asks only that we be faithful, in whatever little corner of his world he has placed us, and concerning whatever little task he has given us.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 51:1-6
How do we know God will keep his Word? Certainly he has made lots of promises to us human beings. To the exiles in Babylonia through the words of Second Isaiah he promised deliverance, a new exodus, a new Eden paradise, a new age of joy that would encompass the earth. And to us he has promised forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and his kingdom come.
Our passage points out one of the ways we can be reassured about God's faithfulness to his Word. "Look to the rock from which you were hewn," God tells captive Israel, "Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you" (vv. 1-2). "I kept my promises to them," God is saying. "I promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation with many descendants, and that has come to pass" (v. 2).
In other words, God kept his promises to Israel -- not only the promise of descendants, but of land, of covenant, and of blessing. That is one of the functions of the Old Testament for us Christians -- that it tells the story of the centuries through which God kept his Word. Indeed, the Lord finally fulfilled his promises to Israel in Jesus Christ, summing up all that had gone before in Israel's life, so that Paul can write, "All the promises of God find their Yes in him" (2 Corinthians 1:20). Can we doubt, then, that God will keep his promises to us that he has given through our Lord? Surely the resurrection is the final confirmation of all that God has said!
There is another promise given in our text for the morning. In verse 6, God tells us through his prophet that heaven and earth will pass away, but that his deliverance will never be ended and his salvation will be forever. In an atomic age, surely that is comfort for our anxious hearts. We may blow the earth off its axis, in our human sin and greed and pride, but those who trust God will be taken into an eternal kingdom that will never end. Nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, good Christians -- nothing that human beings can devise or do. And in that love we can have joy and hope and certainty forevermore.
Many people in the church who confess that Christ died for us, to save us from our sins, will still insist that there is something we need to do: have faith. Faith becomes that good work that is still required, because nothing in this world is free.
Our three lessons challenge that worldly wisdom in profound ways, leaving us to respond with a resounding No! to the question posed above: Isn't there something we must do?
Isaiah 51:1-6
The collection of sermons in Isaiah 40-55 was addressed to the people exiled from Jerusalem in 597 and 587 B.C. Within this material several of the problems connected to exile shout out through the prophecies, announcing that the severance from their land and from their temple is not merely a sociological or economic disaster; it is a theological one. The people themselves express their exile as God-forsaken (40:27; 49:14).
Into that apparently God-forsaken community God called the prophet to "comfort my people" with the good news that the exile is over and that the Lord is coming to take the people home (40:1-11). The prophet we call Second Isaiah announces that good news in a variety of ways, most especially summoning the exiles to place their confidence in the effectiveness of the word that addresses them, for that word accomplishes that which it promises.
Here the prophet portrays the Lord as a teacher like those of the wisdom tradition. He summons his audience to "listen to me" (vv. 1, 4, 7) like the teachers of old (Proverbs 1:8; 4:1, 10, 20; 5:1; 7:1, 24; 8:32, etc.). His first call to heed his teaching is addressed to those "that pursue deliverance." (The NRSV translates the word tsedeq here as "righteousness" which is often its meaning. However in Second Isaiah tsedeq means God's saving action and is translated "deliverance." Indeed, in verses 5 and 6 NRSV does translate the word as "deliverance" where it is required by its parallelism with "salvation.") The divine teacher instructs the audience to consider, first, the "rock" from which they were hewn, and in doing so, he uses the divine imagery suggested as early as the Song of Moses (see Deuteronomy 32:18; see also Isaiah 44:8). Second, the teacher calls on his pupils to recall what he did for Abraham and Sarah in promising and then making them a great nation. In like manner the Lord -- the very same Lord who appears to have been so absent these fifty years of exile -- "will comfort Zion." If the prophet was called to "comfort my people," he soon came to realize that the comforting work would be God's (see also 51:12; 52:9) and he the simple messenger. The people of Mount Zion, the people of Jerusalem now exiled but soon comforted, will be filled with gladness and joy.
The second call to listen to the teacher (v. 4) places the salvation work of God in a larger context than that of Israel alone. God's justice will be "for a light to the peoples." His arms "will rule the peoples" not to their dismay because they already "wait" and hope" for this divine reign. The words of the teacher here anticipate the more explicit connection in 52:7-10 where the deliverance march to Jerusalem will lead to the acclamation of the kingdom of God and to the realization of that reign by "the ends of the earth."
The salvation the Lord promises here goes far beyond the immediate release from bondage, for unlike the heavens and earth itself, the salvation the Lord will accomplish will be forever. If that promise doesn't smack of the kingdom, I don't know what does. In fact, it is only because the work of salvation is exclusively God's that it can be forever.
Romans 12:1-8
In chapters 3 through 11 the apostle Paul developed his proclamation about the unconditional nature of justification, even to a humanity that was universally sinful (chapters 1-2). The amazing grace that accomplished that wondrous act for us "while we were yet sinners" leads the apostle to conclude his message about justification with such words as "unsearchable" and "inscrutable" (11:33), beyond human understanding (v. 34), and can only be received by ascribing God glory (v. 36).
The word "therefore" in our opening verse bases what follows on that wondrous justification that precedes. He appeals to the Christians in Rome "to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." In these days when there is so lively an interest in "spirituality" it is imperative to contribute to the discussion this uniquely Christian perspective, namely that "spiritual worship" is nothing other than bodily involvement in the world. How could it be otherwise for a community that believes in the incarnational involvement of the Word of God in our world, an involvement so complete that his body became a sacrifice for us?
Paul immediately summons his readers to the next step, namely the need to "be transformed by the renewal of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and perfect." This transformation stands in sharp contrast to the popular way of "conforming to this age." It is the present "age" that is full of the devil, and that doesn't mean two-year-old children. It is this age that is ruled by forces of evil, even "the evil one." It is this age that worships the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:18-25). Transformation is necessary, and such change is possible because of God's justification of us all in Jesus Christ.
The transformation for which Paul makes his appeal begins with the call to stand against the rugged individualism of this present age in order to be the community of the new age, the church. Such a community consists of persons who use "the measure of faith that God has assigned" in order to recognize not only one's own gifts but also those of others. Just as the human body has many different parts, each with its own peculiar function to contribute to the rest of the body, so it is with the body of Christ, the church. With our grace-endowed gifts we work together as a body, each contributing prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, generosity, aid, and mercy. Rather than follow the ways of this age in which differences among people drive folks apart, the transformed church of the new age celebrates the diversity "according to the grace given us" for the response of the body to God's act of justification by living sacrificially in the world! Vive la difference!
Matthew 16:13-20
Way back in 4:17 the words, "from that time," introduced a new segment of Matthew's Gospel, namely the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. The same words occur for the second and only time in the Gospel at the verse immediately following our pericope, namely at 16:21 where they introduce a new section, the private ministry of Jesus. Our pericope, therefore, concludes the long section about public ministry, at least in Matthew's outline. As a conclusion it packs a wallop.
Our story takes place in "the district of Caesarea Philippi," not merely "on the way" as Mark reports it. Matthew thus places Jesus and the disciples in the midst of Roman territory. Why that location is important for Matthew is difficult to determine.
In any case, Jesus opens the discussion about his own identity by asking what the latest polls say about him: "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" That the question in Mark's Gospel is stated as, "Who do people say that I am?" indicates that here the expression, "Son of Man," is simply a substitute for the first person pronoun "I."
The buzz about him, they answered, was he was "John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Why would the people have labeled Jesus by those persons? John the Baptist had already been beheaded. What would make the people think of John? We could assume that the preaching of John and Jesus was the same: they both announced, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (3:2 and 4:17). Or that they were cousins (a la Luke's infancy stories). But perhaps the answer to the question lay in the explanation given by Herod the tetrarch a few chapters earlier in Matthew's Gospel: "This is John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead, and for this reason these powers are at work in him" (14:2). Thus, according to the ruler who put John to death, Jesus is John redivivus. That was the only way Herod could explain the miracles Jesus performed. We have no way to demonstrate that this opinion rendered by Herod to his servants had anything to do with the popular opinion about Jesus, but the power of the rumor mill is astounding.
Why, then, did some people think Jesus was Elijah? Elijah -- and his successor Elisha -- were not preaching prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve. They were miracle-working prophets who performed some of the wonders that Jesus is reported to have accomplished in the Gospel stories. Elijah was responsible for the feeding miracle that allowed the widow of Zarephath and her son to live during the time of the famine (1 Kings 17) and Elisha fed a multitude of people with only a small amount of food (2 Kings 4). When Jesus performed the miracles of feeding the 4,000 and the 5,000, the people might indeed have thought of those earlier prophets and connected Jesus to the return of one of them. Further, Elijah raised from the dead the only son of the widow (1 Kings 17), and Elisha did the same for the only son of the Shunamite woman (2 Kings 4). When Jesus raised from the dead the only son of the widow of Nain, the people apparently thought of those earlier prophets, since they responded to that event by exclaiming, "A great prophet has risen among us" (Luke 7:16). Beyond the miracles, however, there was alive the tradition with which the Book of Malachi ends, namely, that before the Day of the Lord the prophet Elijah would come in order to mend the generation gap and prepare people for the Day (Malachi 4:5-6). Elijah was available for such an assignment because there was no coroner's report of his death. He simply went up into the heavens in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2), and so some day he could return. Since Jesus announced that "the kingdom of heaven was drawing near," the people could easily have associated him with Elijah. (Of course, that was John the Baptist's message, too, and so Jesus assigned the honor of preparing the way to John: "He is Elijah who is to come" [Matthew 11:14]).
As for Jeremiah as the identity of Jesus, what could possibly make the connection? Possibly Jesus' prophecies about destruction of Jerusalem and especially of the Temple reminded the people of that prophet's words (Jeremiah 7, 16, and 26 to cite only a few). Jeremiah was also a prophet who was rejected for such preaching, as Jesus was. Jeremiah was known as "the weeping prophet," and later Jesus "wept" over Jerusalem.
Finally, Jesus is thought to be "one of the prophets," probably because of the nature of his preaching. Like the prophets of old, Jesus preached the word of God that afflicted the comfortable but comforted the afflicted. He announced on the basis of the handwriting on the wall what would happen to Jerusalem. Like the prophets of old, he told about visions of the kingdom of God in his sermons and in his parables.
All these images that the people attached to Jesus were their attempts to understand who he was in terms they could understand. The images were the familiar boxes in which they could set Jesus and then manage him accordingly. All these boxes the people assigned to Jesus had the word "Prophet" on the outside. Inside were variations on the prophetic theme.
Now Jesus changes the conversation from the popular opinion about him to the question about how the twelve regard him: "But who do you say that I am?" Usually the first to speak, Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." In Mark's version of the same response the words of Peter are simply, "You are the Messiah" (Mark 8:29). In any case, the connection of Messiah with Son of God is consistent with the Davidic ideology in the Old Testament, for on coronation day itself each succeeding king of the family of Jesse was adopted by the Lord as "my son" (Psalm 2:7; see also Psalm 89:26-27).
Moreover, in Mark Jesus immediately responds by ordering them to keep quiet about his identity, even without confirming Peter's confession. Here, however, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir break out in song as Jesus blesses Simon for finally getting it right. The faith to understand who he is, Jesus instructs the confessor, is not a matter of human origin. Such insight can only come from God as revelation. Surely Martin Luther must have taken his cue from this verse when he wrote in his Small Catechism the explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed: "I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me...." Believing in Jesus as the Christ and confessing Jesus as Lord can occur only by the divine gift of revelation.
The key word is gift. The faith to know who Jesus is can only come as a gift from God. The words of Jesus to Simon bar Jonah and the copycat words of Luther eliminate any possibility of considering faith as the necessary good work for salvation. Faith itself does not emanate from us, that is, from "flesh and blood." It comes from God.
That God Jesus calls here "Father." Strikingly, in Mark's Gospel Jesus does not refer to God as Father, and Luke does so only three times. Matthew, however, puts "Father" on the lips of Jesus at 7:21; 10:32, 33; 11:27; 12:50; 18:10, 14, 19; 25:34; 26:39, 42, 53. In this regard Matthew sounds much like the author of the Fourth Gospel where Jesus speaks of God as "Father" twenty times. When the connection between Father and the revelation of Jesus is realized, the reader of the Gospel recalls Jesus' earlier words at 11:27: "no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." The words of our present pericope seem to add to the earlier teaching that "no one knows the Son except the Father" the corollary "and anyone to whom the Father chooses to reveal him." One of the early chosen ones was the apostle Paul (Galatians 1:15-16).
Here it was Peter, and since his confession was a gift of God, we can acclaim no special insight or merit to the man. Nevertheless, it is on Peter that Jesus here promises to build his church. Further, to Peter is given "the keys of the kingdom of heaven." In first century Judaism those keys belonged to the "scribes and Pharisees" who "lock people out of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 23:13). Their authority lay in their role as teachers of the law. They would bind and loose commandments under certain conditions, and they would bind and loose people in terms of their obedience or disobedience to the law. Now Jesus gives that authority to Peter who knows that the interpretation Jesus gave to the law is the only legitimate interpretation (Matthew 5-7), and so binding and loosing will be made through the one "having authority, and not as their scribes" (7:29).
To answer the initial question, there is something we can do. We can acknowledge that even our faith is a gift from God and thank God profusely. We can also extend that thanks to God for the church which confesses that God-given faith from generation to generation so that others know who Jesus is.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Exodus 1:8--2:10
With this text, there now occurs a long gap of time in the biblical history of Israel. Jacob and Joseph and his eleven brothers and all their offspring have kept their flocks around the fertile delta of the Nile River in the region of Goshen. But as we read in the priestly introduction of Exodus 1:1-7 to our morning's text, all of that generation finally dies, and at the beginning of our lesson, we read the ominous sentence, "Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph."
Scholars are reasonably certain that the "new king" was Seti I, who ruled Egypt from ca. 1309-1290 B.C. The facts we are given in verse 11 of our text tell us that the Pharaoh built store-
cities at Pithom and Raamses, and those, along with numerous other constructions, were begun in the reign of Seti I. The city of Raamses was called by that name only until the eleventh century B.C., when it was renamed Tanis. And when the Israelites finally escaped from Egypt, they encountered both Edom and Moab in the wilderness (Numbers 20-21), but neither of those kingdoms was established before 1300 B.C. Thus, we are dealing in the book of Exodus with actual history, and our text probably recounts events that took place during the beginning of the reign of Seti.
As is always the case in the biblical story, God has a hand in these historical events, however. The people of Israel multiply rapidly and spread throughout the land of the lower Nile. That is not a notice of Israelite fertility, but of God's working to keep his promise to the patriarchs. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the heavens (Genesis 15:5), and that promise is now being fulfilled. That is what our narrator wants to impress upon us.
But of course human fears and follies always arise to try to place obstacles in the way of God's activity. And so Pharaoh Seti, seeing the rapid spread of the Israelites, is afraid that they will join forces with some enemy and overthrow his throne. As a result, he enslaves the Israelites and sets them to hard labor on his many building projects (vv. 9-14). In addition, the royal order is given that all midwives are to kill any Israelite male child that they deliver onto their knees as they sit on the birthstool. Significantly, the names of just two midwives are given, an indication of still how small is the Israelite population (vv. 15-16).
"But the midwives feared God" (v. 17), that is, they are obedient to God and honor his gift of newborn life. The faithful women do not kill the newborns. They make excuses to the Pharaoh, and Israel continues to multiply. Desperate, the Pharaoh finally orders all male children under two years of age to be thrown into the Nile and drowned (v. 22).
The child who is to become Moses is introduced into the story. When his mother sees that she can no longer hide the "goodly child," the healthy child, from Pharaoh's slaughter, she cradles him in a little waterproof basket and hides the basket among the Nile reeds, instructing her daughter Miriam to watch to see what happens. And how fortuitous! -- or is it the guiding of God? When the daughter of Pharaoh comes to the site to bathe, she discovers the hidden basket and takes pity on the crying child, deciding to raise him in the royal palace as her son. Miriam, seeing her opportunity, comes out of her hiding place and offers to find a wetnurse for the child -- the child's own mother, who not only gets to nurse and raise her infant for at least three years, but is paid for doing so! And finally, in the most ironic touch of all, Pharaoh's daughter names the child "Moses," which comes from the Hebrew mashah, "to draw out." Pharaoh's household will become the nurturer of Pharaoh's future opponent, who will "draw out" Israel from slavery!
The passage forms a wondrous account of God's activity in human life, through human fear and faithfulness, human love and pity. Once again, the unseen Lord is at work to keep his promise. But note by what a slender thread God's working hangs. It depends on the obedience of two faithful midwives, on the love of a mother for her newborn, on a flimsy basket that does not leak, on a watching older sister, and on the pity of a royal daughter. At any point in the story, the thread could break and God's purpose could be thwarted. But it does not break and the divine plan moves forward.
Is there not a lesson for us in the tale? A lot of seemingly insignificant events take place in our lives, and we make lots of choices. At the time, how we choose seems to be of no consequence whatsoever. The smallest decision we make, we think, certainly will not affect the outcome of history or the working out of God's purpose for humankind. But could it be that if we are faithful and make decisions and choices that we know are right and according to God's will, those are gathered up and used by Almighty God in his ongoing purpose? In every action, every thought, every decision of our lives, God has a stake. He asks only that we be faithful, in whatever little corner of his world he has placed us, and concerning whatever little task he has given us.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 51:1-6
How do we know God will keep his Word? Certainly he has made lots of promises to us human beings. To the exiles in Babylonia through the words of Second Isaiah he promised deliverance, a new exodus, a new Eden paradise, a new age of joy that would encompass the earth. And to us he has promised forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and his kingdom come.
Our passage points out one of the ways we can be reassured about God's faithfulness to his Word. "Look to the rock from which you were hewn," God tells captive Israel, "Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you" (vv. 1-2). "I kept my promises to them," God is saying. "I promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation with many descendants, and that has come to pass" (v. 2).
In other words, God kept his promises to Israel -- not only the promise of descendants, but of land, of covenant, and of blessing. That is one of the functions of the Old Testament for us Christians -- that it tells the story of the centuries through which God kept his Word. Indeed, the Lord finally fulfilled his promises to Israel in Jesus Christ, summing up all that had gone before in Israel's life, so that Paul can write, "All the promises of God find their Yes in him" (2 Corinthians 1:20). Can we doubt, then, that God will keep his promises to us that he has given through our Lord? Surely the resurrection is the final confirmation of all that God has said!
There is another promise given in our text for the morning. In verse 6, God tells us through his prophet that heaven and earth will pass away, but that his deliverance will never be ended and his salvation will be forever. In an atomic age, surely that is comfort for our anxious hearts. We may blow the earth off its axis, in our human sin and greed and pride, but those who trust God will be taken into an eternal kingdom that will never end. Nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, good Christians -- nothing that human beings can devise or do. And in that love we can have joy and hope and certainty forevermore.
