Jesus, Baptism & the new Israel

​Baptism into the story of the renewed Israel. 

One of the most distinctive features of Matthew’s Gospel is the way it presents Jesus not simply as an individual religious figure, but as one who re-lives, gathers up, and fulfils the story of Israel itself.  Matthew presents Jesus as creating the church as the renewed Israel. 

And so Matthew, the most Jewish of all the Gospels appealing to a Jewish audience, wants his readers to see Jesus as walking the ancient path of Israel again, this time faithfully, this time fully, so that Israel’s vocation might at last be redefined and brought to fulfilment in Jesus. 

We see this from the very beginning.

Jesus is born under threat, as Moses was. He is taken into Egypt as Israel once was. Matthew explicitly quotes the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” What was once spoken of Israel is now spoken of Jesus. He is the Son who embodies the people.

In baptism he passes through the waters and then enters the wilderness, where he is tested for forty days, echoing Israel’s forty years of testing in the wilderness. But where the early people of Israel struggled with hunger, temptation, and idolatry, Jesus remains faithful.

Later on in Matthew Jesus calls to himself 12 disciples – Matthew, like the other Gospel writers presents Jesus as reconstituting and renewing the 12 tribes of Israel, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

Matthew is not being subtle in his Gospel. He wants us to understand: Jesus is re-living Israel’s story, bringing it to its true fulfilment, not as a geographic and political entity, but as a servant people of God, that is (as shown at the end of the gospel) to embrace and comprise of all people and all nations. The new Israel – a servant people from all nations. 

And it is within this framework that the baptism of Jesus must be understood.

In the Scriptures, water is never just water. It is the place of chaos and danger. But also the place of new beginnings. In Genesis creation itself begins with the Spirit hovering over the waters. In Exodus, Israel becomes a people by passing through the Red Sea. A generation later In the book of Joshua, they enter the Promised Land by crossing through the Jordan River.

And so when Jesus steps into the Jordan to be baptised by John, Matthew wants us to hear all of this resonating in the background. The parting of the heavens echoes the parting of the seas. Jesus is bringing the ancient story of Israel to it’s true fulfilment and restoring it to it’s true vocation. 

Just as Israel passed through the waters to leave slavery behind, Jesus passes through the waters as the one who will lead a deeper liberation, not from Pharaoh, but from everything that binds and diminishes human life including human sin and waywardness, the result of the inner Pharoah within each of us. 

And just as Israel crossed the Jordan to begin life in the promised land, Jesus emerges from the Jordan to invite people into the deeper and truer Promised Land of God’s Kingdom, which is not so much a place but a realm of the spirit that can be lived in even here and now.

And so in Jesus, the story of Israel is being re-capitulated, gathered up and re-enacted, and in the process redefined, restored and renewed. 

In Matthew’s version of the Baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist hesitates. He seems confused why Jesus needs to be baptised. And Jesus responds with words found only in Matthew: “Let it be so for now; so that we can fulfil all righteousness.”  In Matthew, righteousness does not simply mean private virtue or moral superiority. It ultimately means faithful participation in God’s saving purpose.

By entering the waters of Baptism Jesus is standing in solidarity with his people, identifying fully with their history, their sin and brokenness, their longing, and their unfinished story. He does not bypass Israel’s journey. He walks it from the inside renewing that story as he does so, and giving it fresh meaning and purpose, by entering it more deeply and faithfully than before.

And as Jesus emerges from the water, we read that the heavens open, the Spirit descends, and a voice speaks:  “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

This is a richly layered moment.

These words echo Israel’s identity as God’s son or child rescued from the land of slavery, but they also draw directly from Isaiah’s Servant Songs, especially the declaration in Isaiah 42 of the servant in whom God delights, upon whom God places the Spirit, and through whom justice will come to the nations. And the words of Isaiah 42 echo the voice from heaven at Jesus Baptism, the servant of God is described as follows: 

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. (This is Jesus Baptismal vocation… how is this vocation to be lived out…? Isaiah continues...)

He will not cry out or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”

Matthew is telling us that Jesus is to fulfil Israel’s vocation as the Servant of God to bring justice to the nations not through military might and domination of its enemies (as many were hoping), but through servant-hood, gentleness, and faithfulness.

Jesus’ mission to bring justice to the nations through servant-hood flows not from striving, but from belovedness. 

It is important to note that Matthew connects baptism with discipleship. At the very end of the Gospel, the risen Jesus commissions his followers to go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them and teaching them to live the way he has taught. 

Baptism, in Matthew, is not simply simply a ritual of belonging. It is entry into a story, a way of life, a pattern of faithfulness modelled by Jesus. In Baptism we become part of the story of the renewed Israel reshaped and renewed by the life and vision of Jesus, the servant of God.   To be baptised is to pass through the waters with Jesus.  It is to leave behind the ways of domination that define much of our ego driven world, and instead to learn the way of the servant: a way of humility, gentleness, justice, mercy, and costly love.

This is why Matthew repeatedly links discipleship with self-giving. On his journey to the cross Jesus gathers his disciples together to remind them of the call to servant-hood:  

‘You know that the rulers of the nations like to lord it over the people, and their high officials enjoy exercising their authority and dominance over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave –  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’

Did you hear the word servant in there that connects with Jesus - God’s chosen and beloved servant in baptism and in Isaiah 42 who will bring justice to the nations not with domination and military might, but through gentleness, humility, faithfulness, and courageous and costly love.  This is the meaning of Baptism and it all flows from that baptismal declaration of beloved-ness. 

To remember Jesus’ baptism is metaphorically to remember our own. It is to recall that we, too as God’s beloved, are being drawn into a larger story, invited to become part of the story of the true and renewed spiritual Israel, not as an ethnic, political and geographic entity, but as a servant community made up of people from all nations defined by the story of God’s beloved servant: a story of healing, hope and costly and loving service to make the world a more just place.

A final comment on the symbolism of the story. The splitting open of the heavens in Jesus baptism, not only connects us with the parting of the waters in Exodus, but also with the splitting of the veil in the Temple near the end of Matthew’s Gospel. This suggests that the Way of Jesus costly servant love, breaks open the boundaries between the life of heaven and the life of earth, between the so-called sacred and the secular.. When we truly live as disciples of Jesus, living out our  beloved-ness in the world, so the way of heaven breaks open upon on the earth.  The whole world becomes the temple of God’s Spirit, the Promised Land of God’s Love… and all life becomes imbued with a sense of the sacred.

As followers of Jesus we are not asked to invent meaning from scratch. In the Baptism of Jesus, we are invited to step into a story already being fulfilled.  And as we do, the same promise holds:

The heavens are open.
The Spirit is present.
And the voice still speaks:

You are my beloved.
Now walk the way.

As Jesus says soon after in Matthew’s Gospel  “Come, follow me”.