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2 The Ministry Begins Matthew’s chapter 3 picks up the story some thirty years later with the ministry of John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus, and in 4:1-11 the temptation narrative. At 4:12 Jesus returns to Galilee, not home to Nazareth but rather to Capernaum, where he begins to enlist disciples, beginning with Simon Peter and his brother Andrew. His itinerant ministry takes him throughout Galilee, his fame extending north to Syria and attracting crowds from the Jerusalem area, from the ten cities along the Mediterranean coast, and from the other, or eastern side of the Jordan. Those that repent and embrace the Faith and do what is right shall be admitted to Paradise. —Koran With chapter 3 the narrative has bypassed Jesus’ childhood and young adulthood, which by the second century had become the stuff of legends. It is now the spring of AD 28 (perhaps) and a significant event occurs: the baptism of Jesus by his cousin and great predecessor, John the Baptist, now often called the “Baptizer,” or, among Baptists, “John the Immerser” (or, less reverently, the “Big Dipper”). Repentance, for John, entails baptism, to which Jesus also submits (“to fulfil all righteousness”), although the event itself is not described and it is unclear what the sinless agent of God’s redeeming has to repent. John is a wilderness figure resembling Elijah the Tishbite (“an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins” [2 Kgs. 1:8]), preaching the need for repentance and the nearness of a mysteriously undefined “kingdom of heaven,” a message Jesus will repeat at 4:17. His proclamation is so brief and abrupt that readers are not told if divine forgiveness is assured by repentance or what sort of life the repentant sinner should live after baptism. Here he appears suddenly and unexpectedly, but he will be generally absent from Jesus’ ministry, though his unhappy fate, described in 14:1-12, foreshadows Jesus’ rejection and his crucifixion. John was a model ascetic, and that the word of God came to him while he was “in the wilderness” (Isa. 40:3) helped justify the earliest monks when they withdrew from civilization to be “alone with God,” though Calvin warned against turning John into a proto-monk.1 It is symbolically appropriate that he performed baptism, a ceremony of transition, in the Jordan River, the traditional boundary between the wilderness and the promised land. Baptism is something of a problem, being uncertain in its origins and meaning, unexpected in a life of Jesus, unparalleled in the Old Testament, unclear in its theology, and uneven in its acceptance and practice among Christian denominations, though it eventually came to rank with the Eucharist as the fundamental Christian sacrament. It is even questioned in its English rendering , as some would prefer “immersion,” pointing out that the Greek of 3:11 is literally “in water” and “in the spirit and fire.” Jews were accustomed to purifying themselves through ritual ablutions and bathing, as can be seen from the records of the Essenes or in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the Qumran community seems to have practiced frequent washings. But quite different is the rite of baptism, which by contrast has an indelible character and is not repeatable (though baptism vows can be renewed). Thus, it may have served as an initiation for converts to Judaism who were not circumcised and needed to be cleansed of their Gentile impurities, though it is unknown when or where or why it became an initiatory rite for Christian converts. Nevertheless, Jews did not baptize other Jews, so John’s insistence on its accompanying their acts of repentance must have seemed a surprising innovation. Baptism recurs at the end of Matthew when Jesus orders his disciples to baptize converts in the name of the Trinity (28:19). But there is no indication that it was formally instituted by him, and only once (John 3:22) is he said to baptize anyone himself. Jesus’ baptism is recorded in all four gospels, but the presence of the Holy Spirit suggests that his is a special Spirit-baptism, not a cleansing from sin. For ordinary Christians, it became a sacrament that would remit all sin, so it was normally delayed in the early church until candidates had undergone months of probation and instruction, particularly in the forty days of Lent that ended on Holy Saturday. It was then performed at Easter in order to assimilate its “rebirth ” symbolism...

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