Matthew 26:32

“But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.”

However, Jesus now makes clear that the smitten Shepherd is Himself, and that once He has been smitten He will be raised up, for God will raise Him up. And then like a shepherd going on ahead of His sheep to survey the ground and seek out new pastures He will go before them into Galilee. We are reminded of how the Ark of the covenant of YHWH went before the people in order to prepare a resting place for them as they progressed towards the place of salvation (Numbers 10:33). This idea that Jesus is with His disciples in all circumstances is one that is emphasised by Matthew (Matthew 18:20; Matthew 28:20). He was ever conscious of his Lord's watch over him and presence with him.

And once there they will meet Him, and eat with Him (John 21:13), and as usual, (and as also in the case of the ‘the breaking of bread'), the skins of water or wine which accompanied men everywhere in that hot climate are to be assumed (Acts 10:41). And there they will learn that the Kingly Rule of His Father has come (Matthew 28:18). Here the idea is of the shepherd who goes ahead of His sheep, in order to prepare pasture in the way ahead. But why to Galilee? Because Galilee was Scripturally the place where light would shine out of darkness (Matthew 4:16), because Galilee was where He had performed most of His mighty wonders, because Galilee was where He had given the majority of His teaching (Matthew 5:1), because Galilee was not gripped in the same religious stranglehold as Jerusalem, because the hills of Galilee had been where He had regularly met with His Father (Matthew 14:23), because Galilee was the centre of His outreach, and finally because for most of them Galilee was the home to which they would return when danger arose. And He expects them to do so, and wants them to know that when they do so they will find Him there, ready to feed them and make all things right. He does not want their minds centred on Jerusalem or their aims tied up in Jerusalem (compare John 4:20). He wants them to look to the One of Galilee (see Isaiah 9:2), for their outreach is to be to the world.

Galilee was from the bginning the place where the light was especially to shine (Matthew 4:15). Indeed we elsewhere gain the impression that, had they been obedient after His resurrection was notified to them, to Galilee is where they should have gone (Matthew 28:7; Matthew 28:10; Mark 16:7). It was probably fear and disobedience that kept them in Jerusalem (John 20:19), as they hid themselves away feeling that all the world was seeking them out. And that is why Jesus graciously appears to them there. But He will not allow them to be tied to Jerusalem, its horizons were too limited.

Matthew also does not want to link them with Jerusalem, for in his eyes, as in the eyes of Jesus, Jerusalem is tainted and condemned, and Jesus' new followers (and Matthew's readers) need therefore to be seen as removed from the choked atmosphere of religious Jerusalem to the spiritual freedom of Galilee. They need to see the One of Galilee as the source of the light of the Gospel (Matthew 4:15) without His message being hampered by the restraints of bigoted Jerusalem. It is in fact probable that Matthew was never really happy ministering in Jerusalem. As a former tax collector he would never be accepted there and would in fact be held in contempt there, except by the faithful, and he would thus be only too conscious of its pernicious influence. He knew that it was overly religious and stultifying.

It was very different for Luke the Gentile. To Luke and his fellow-Gentiles, to whom Jerusalem was but a symbol. it was the famed centre from which God's word was to go out (Isaiah 2:2) and was the very hub of things from the point of view of the New Testament. He rejoiced in what he knew of the Jerusalem church and saw Jesus as connected with Jerusalem, both in death and resurrection life. Unlike Matthew and Peter he was not aware of the oppressive and pernicious religious atmosphere of a Jerusalem that could choke true faith and wither it, and as a result had to be destroyed. Thus to him, as to far off Gentiles, Jerusalem was in a sense the centre from which their faith had sprung, but only as a symbol and something that could easily be left behind. It was never something that gripped them. Their reaction to its destruction, in contrast with that of many Jewish Christians,who would be divided in their hearts, was probably mainly that it demonstrated how right Jesus had been in His prophecy. Yet even Luke has to show how in the end God had to drive the Apostles away from Jerusalem with its fatal fascination, and in which they nearly got bogged down.