Prof. Ukachukwu Chris Manus, Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Religious Studies, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
E-mail: cumanus@yahoo.com


Abstract

Mission of the Church in Matthew's Gospel: An African Perspective

This paper is written in Africa, southwards of Bethlehem. It provides a fresh perspective on Mission for colleagues from Europe and North America so that they may see the Gospel of Matthew in a different light.

Like the other Gospel but in a special way, Matthew is a story of a mission by Jesus, a mission that he transfers and commends to the disciples. The central thrust of the Gospel is a mission to Israel (Matt 10,5-6;15,21-28) but from its later redaction and theology, it has come to reflect a mission mandate to the nations (Matt 28,19-20). In Matthew, fleeing disciples become itinerant missionaries. By this, Matthew supposes that there is a mission for the Church to the Christian society as there is to those unreached by the Gospel in many nooks and crannies as in Africa. In this light, effort is made in the paper to show how the mission involves prophetic teaching and resistance to the sins of society as well as a call to individuals. This is mandatory as the Gospel portrays the interface between salvation and teaching. The journeys of Jesus and his disciples depict the manner in which missionaries must go to those who need to hear the gospel. The teaching of the gospel is concretized and made explicit by the pictorial language and the outstanding role of the miracles of Jesus.

Some significant lessons for our time can be drawn from Matthew’s story:

(i) Mission begins at home – namely with the re-invigoration of the church and with the
evangelization of the people of God in our local communities

(ii) Mission outreach to the world out there includes peaceful dialogue with people of other
Faiths; especially Muslims in the African world as elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia.

(iii) Mission beckons for inculturation in order to relate the gospel to different cultures;
especially in Africa where people are still attached to their umbilical cords in passionate ways.

(iv) Given contemporary social political upheavals all over the world, mission involves
proclamation of reconciliation and forgiveness between human beings.

(v) Mission in the Two Thirds World involves the elimination of poverty and the proclamation of a moral challenge to the contemporary evils of the world such as corruption and exploitation, arms trade, terrorism and the violations of human rights.

(vi) Mission must be addressed to the rich as well as the poor and to the aged as well as to the
youths.

The paper concludes, inter alia that Matthew’s mission motif was to persuade people to give allegiance to Jesus as Saviour and Lord and to follow his teaching as anticipated in that of the Church. He was concerned to warn Jews who refused to accept Jesus that they were opting out of the People of God. This is a prime lesson for the African Church in this millennium. If as W. Trilling notes, the aim of mission “is the winning of all people to the status of being true Christians” (Trilling, in Bosch 1992:73), mission must be all-inclusive; that is, to all groups in society and indeed all societies. The Lord’s commission in Matthew is universal in its scope.

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