Last week we heard how John positioned the baptism of Jesus in the context of the prophetic role of John the Baptist. And in that account the first disciples of Jesus were previously disciples of John the Baptist – no mention of them being fishermen picked up along the beach.
Matthew goes with the fisherman version of the story, although he misses the great line about becoming fishers of men (Matthew 4:12-23). Matthew doesn’t seem to be drawn to such flourishes. What is perhaps more significant is that he also emphasizes the continuity from John the Baptist to Jesus – in a way that could be more forceful even than John’s account – it’s just easier to overlook. Matthew has Jesus at the beginning of his ministry use exactly the same words as John did “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For both John and Matthew the central point is that John the Baptist and Jesus were calling people back to God, the same way that the prophets of Israel always had.
Now, Jesus of course was also different in that he was the culmination of that relationship between God and the people of Israel. That relationship now took on the fullness of which Isaiah had spoken so often – that people living in darkness would be enlightened.
We also have to recognize that this transformation that Jesus achieved by his life and death creates only a potential, a possibility, not a fait accompli. Human beings have a huge capacity for falling into factions battling with each other. Even within a few years of Jesus’s death, Paul has to write to his church in Corinth to admonish them for grouping up into followers of Paul, or Apollos, or Peter (1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17). He points out how utterly ridiculous this is. But how often in the history of Christianity has the same happened, even to the extent of large scale wars. Even without the physical violence, within just the Catholic Church, in our lifetimes, there are disputes of an intensity that is very far from Paul’s entreaty “that all of you agree in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.”
If we fail in that then the consequence is not just that we look foolish and fail totally to convince others that we have anything of value to share. Paul tells us that in that case “the cross of Christ is emptied of its meaning”. The most important thing in human history might just as well not have happened.
It’s not always easy to reach agreement with others, but if that’s the price of failure, then we have no choice but to try. To try, and try again.