The Journey Starts Here

Week One - Day 1

Today's Reading -- Matthew 1:1 to Matthew 4:25

Our 8-Week Journey begins today with the first book listed in the canon of the New Testament.  The Gospel according to Matthew stands first in the ordering of Christian writings for the place that it found in the heart of the early Church.  It is, after all, the only one of the four gospels that uses the Greek word "ekklesia", a word which means the "called out ones." In English this is translated as "church."

Matthew contains abundant teachings of Jesus and has long been the Church's most used Gospel in worship and preaching.  So, who was Matthew?  He might have been 'Matthew the tax collector' that is mentioned twice later on in the text, but there is no way to confirm this.  In any event, the author wrote to both a community of believers and to those whom he wanted to persuade to accept Jesus as the fulfillment of earlier prophecies.  In today's reading alone there are pronouncements of five fulfillments (1:22-23, 2:5-6, 2:17-18, 3:3, 3:14-16) from the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah.  Jesus also quotes three times from the Book of Deuteronomy in response to the devil's temptations in the wilderness.  Matthew's audience was obviously well acquainted with the Hebrew scriptures.

Overall, today's reading serves to set the stage starting with a genealogy that links Jesus back through not only the kings of Israel but all the way back to the great patriarch Abraham. We hear of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem (note how Matthew tells the story and the role of Joseph), the threat to the infant Jesus, the preaching of John the Baptist, the baptism and temptation of Jesus, and the beginnings of Jesus' public ministry in Galilee including the calling of his first disciples.  Jesus has begun revealing something new, something attractive, something that excites the crowds as he moves among the people.

With all it's details, what Matthew doesn't tell us is the content of the "good news" that Jesus was proclaiming (4:23).  But then again, we have just taken the first steps of our journey.