Sunday, December 17, 2023

The good news in its Jewish roots: "Here is your God!"

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John took different approaches to telling the account of Jesus' life. Matthew and Luke start before Jesus' birth; Mark starts when Jesus is an adult; John starts with metaphysics and philosophy. And yet all four place one vital point toward the beginning: 

A voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the LORD, make his paths straight." Matthew 3:3, Mark 1:3, Luke 3:4, John 1:23 (Isaiah 40:3). 

That famous passage of Isaiah was singled out as a vital part of understanding Jesus by all four of the gospel writers. That passage of Isaiah is not mainly about the messenger that we call John the Baptist preparing the way for the Lord. In Isaiah -- as in the gospels -- we see the forerunner mainly for the forerunner's message: 

You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain;
You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout: 
Lift it up, have no fear, say to the towns of Judah: "Here is your God!" (Isaiah 40:9)

That "good news" is the basis of  Bible's four gospels. When Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote, much of the Jewish community spoke Greek. Here is that passage (Isaiah 40:9) in the classical Greek Bible used in the Jewish community: 


In Isaiah's translation there, we already see the Greek word that comes to us as "evangelize". Isaiah's message is picked up by John the Baptist, then by the four evangelists, and down through the ages to us. God is here. It is our generation's turn to lift up our voices and have no fear. As St Paul mentions, "How can they believe who have not heard?"

2 comments:

Martin LaBar said...

Good direction to us. Thanks.

Weekend Fisher said...

Hi Martin

Thank you for the encouragment!

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF