Creation and Re-Creation

The context of Matthew’s first hearers was a world in which the Roman destruction of the city of Jerusalem had created new and difficult challenges for people of faith. How was it possible to believe that the reign of God had arrived when a pagan empire had consolidated its dominance across most of the known world, claiming its victories as “the end of history”?

Jewish Christians listening to this story of the baptism of Jesus would have recognized the parallels to the Genesis account of creation. The reference to the Spirit of God descending like a dove at the moment that Jesus came up “out of the water” (16) recalled the very dawn of creation, when the Spirit hovered over the chaotic waters of a formless world (Gen. 1:2); the voice from heaven, declaring God’s delight in his obedient Son (17), echoes his pleasure in the work of his hands at the end of the sixth day of creation (Gen. 1:31). 

These connections were intended to make a particular claim for Jesus in a way that answers the questions Matthew’s contemporaries were asking. Amid the social chaos resulting from the Roman–Jewish wars, believers are reminded that in the coming of Jesus and through his glad obedience to the mission of God, the work of re-creation is underway. In a transitional period of much uncertainty, Matthew makes the stupendous claim that a rebellious world and a marred creation will be renewed and transformed through the Gospel which centers on the life, death and resurrection of Christ. At Christmas 2016, despite all appearances to the contrary, let us reaffirm our confidence that the future belongs to Jesus and that the end of history is safe in his hands alone.

Use a hymnbook (or Google!) to find William Y. Fullerton’s hymn “I Cannot Tell Why He, Whom Angels Worship” and read it—very slowly and prayerfully.