William Loader
Pentecost 22: 12 October Matthew 22:1-14
This is the third parable in Jesus' reply to the question of his authority (21:23-27). The first (21:28-32) dealt with the rejection of John's ministry. The second (21:33-46) dealt with the rejection of his own ministry. This parable deals with the rejection of the ministry of the disciples and the dire consequences for Israel and Jerusalem.
Like many parables, this one has had varied applications before reaching Matthew. It is closely related to Luke 14:16-24, the Great Supper, which is probably, in turn, closer to the Q version. There is also a simple version in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 64), touched up with Thomas type themes. Matthew's version consists of two parts, (i) the invitation and the alternative strategy to fill the number of guests after so many declined (22:1-10); and (ii) the badly dressed guest (22:11-14). Only the first part has parallels with Luke, Q and Thomas. None of those speaks of a wedding and none of them speaks of a king and his son, but only of a feast. Perhaps these features belonged to a separate story about a badly dressed guest, which Matthew has appended to the original parable. Perhaps it is Matthew's own creative imagination.
At the base of this tradition is a simple story which envisages village life. It worked like this. You announced you were having a party on a certain day. People would know you were getting it ready. When it was ready to roll, you sent word to those who had been invited. It would be very embarrassing if then hardly anyone turned up. This is what happened in the story. So the person throwing the party decided that the best thing would be just to invite anyone in the village whom they ran across. It worked. Like many of Jesus' parables, the experience would have rung bells for people. It was easy to relate to. What was Jesus saying? One can almost hear the response; 'Pretty flaming obvious, mate!' Jesus was annoyed about being turned down.
Heard in its broader perspective, this story contains echoes which allow us to see that this was anything but a Jesus ego-trip. Like the prophets before him (for instance, see Isa 25:6), Jesus often spoke of the kingdom of God as a great feast. People would come from north and south, east and west, and dine with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matt 8:11). The call to respond to the good news of God's kingdom was an invitation to the feast. The invitation had gone out, the people had been summoned to come, but they refused. They made excuses. Too busy, too distracted to come to the party. So the invitation is extended to others. Jesus' pious compatriots refuse him; the sinners respond positively.
The alternative guests are a feature of the story which was bound in time to be linked not only with the irreligious, but also with all outcasts (in Luke, especially with people marginalised through disability and poverty) and eventually with Gentiles. The parable then became a story in which the church identified itself as those who had responded in contrast to those who refused the invitation. The story had been well worked over and served to help people come to terms with what had been happening.
Well worn stories are difficult to retell. They can become too bland and familiar. They end up serving the status quo. Matthew gets hold of the story, pushes and pulls it, and lays it out afresh in a version much better suited for TV! It is more dramatic; it is also deadly serious. The first modification is to abandon verisimilitude. Everyone knew it was a parable. It does not have to match reality, at least on the surface. It was OK to take some licence to play with the detail.
Transforming it into a story about a king offering a party for his son made the links with Jesus and God much clearer. In Matthew there are now two attempts to get those invited to come, reflecting doubtless not only Jesus' ministry but also the mission of the disciples. Having the king then send an army to destroy those who refused is 'over the top' for bland realism. How could you lay siege to a city, then invite other guests and run the party all on the same day! The destruction of the city is a direct reference to the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which Matthew saw as God's punishment for the rejection of Jesus' and the church's mission (see 23:34-36). Writing still as a Jew in a Jewish context with largely Jewish hearers this could hardly have been more pointed. Israel has failed again. Israel's temple has been destroyed again. Repent!
Just when hearers might have been tempted to retreat into a self-righteous sectarian huddle, bemoaning how evil the world is out there, Matthew expands the parable to bring the spotlight on those who turn up at the feast. 'Where's your suit and tie?' Whatever the expectation, someone came wrongly dressed. The breech of this cultural norm may mean little for those who know God looks on the heart (although it is fascinating how it persists in various forms today), but it serves Matthew as a vehicle for challenging his hearers about clothing one's life in righteousness, a familiar image. It is Matthew's theme (Jesus' theme, John the Baptist's theme) returning: no privilege on the basis of status, not even the status of having joined the Christian community. Only a life of transformed attitude and performance counts. Matthew undermines the 'them and us' approach. There can be no sectarian righteous elite.
As with last week's passage, we find here some of Matthew's fierce agenda with his fellow Jews. We may want to explain the debacle of 70 CE differently, although Jesus' way of challenging abusive power, had it won broad support, might have averted the disaster. It is not inappropriate to look critically at stories designed to bolster one's sense of identity. But Matthew pulls back from that kind of smugness. The challenge of the story lies both in the warning about refusals and in the richness of the image of salvation as a feast. The latter connects us with the eucharist as a vision and agenda of what is to come. Beyond the strategy to save the party at the story level is the much richer notion of God's generosity, not as an afterthought, but as God's enthusiastic being and delight in all people and pain at their refusal to share the life freely offered. A theology in retreat pictures a miffed god in retreat with a pretty violent temper, typical of a closed group of elites under siege. From Matthew you could take off along that track, but you need not. It was against such elitism that Jesus protested the universality of God's love and goodness. We feed on the brokenness of such love and nourish ourselves for celebration with a cup which was not withheld for an elite. Do we?
Epistle: Pentecost 22: 12 October Philippians 4:1-9
William Loader
Pentecost 21: 5 October Matthew 21:33-46
This is part two of Jesus' response in parables to being asked about his authority (21:23-27). Last week we considered the first parable which confronted the Pharisees with their rejection of John the Baptist (21:28-32). This week we look at Matthew's use of the parable which he originally found in Mark 12:1-12 as the sole parable which formed part of the response.
There are a few slight revisions which in part adjust the parable to align it more closely with the story of Jesus and his rejection. Instead of a series of individual messengers, as in Mark, Matthew reduces the parable to just three movements: two sets of servants (in the plural), followed by the son. This better fits the notion that Jesus stands in succession to the prophets (maybe to the Law and the Prophets). The image of Jesus as prophet is introduced explicitly in 21:45. This also helps the alignment with John who is also a prophet. The crowds have been thinking of Jesus as a prophet (21:11, 45). The hearers of Matthew's gospel know that he is much more than that; he is, as the parable implies, God's son. Matthew also tinkers with the detail about the killing of the son. Mark says he was killed and then thrown out of the vineyard. Matthew reverses this order to make it match Jesus' execution outside the city.
Matthew's version expands Mark's statement that the vineyard is to be given to others (Mark 12:9). Matthew adds: 'who will produce the fruit in its seasons', in case anyone missed the point about producing fruit, a favourite image for Matthew and central to both John's and Jesus' message (see 7:15-20; 3:10). He also repeats these implications in 21:43, stating that the kingdom of God will be taken away from the chief priests and elders (in 21:45, 'the Pharisees') and 'given to a people producing fruit from it'. The word, here, for people could suggest a Gentile people, although this is unlikely. It certainly means an alternative people. This 'people' will replace the chief priests and elders.
Mark's version of the story stands more directly in connection with the challenge to Jesus' authority, which, in turn, relates more directly to Jesus' action in the temple and the cursing of the fig tree which represents its destruction. For Mark a community which prays will replace the temple (11:23-26; see also 14:58). Here it will be built upon the foundation stone of Christ (12:10-12).
Matthew's focus is not a new temple, but certainly a new people or new leadership. To some extent the issue of leadership is central in both Mark's and Matthew's version of the parable. The parable's image of the vineyard is drawn from the famous song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5. There are subtle distinctions however. There the vineyard is Israel and the vineyard is blamed and destroyed for being unfruitful. In Jesus' parable the problem is not the vineyard, but those responsible for tending it, those in charge. That was also the problem with the temple. After all, the institution itself was based on scripture, indeed divine command, which is why Matthew especially wants to avoid any suggestion it is something of lesser value (just 'made with human hands', as Mark will say in 14:58). So the conflict is over who should run it, or, more broadly, who has responsibility for the kingdom. In an extraordinary statement Matthew has Jesus declare that the kingdom will be taken away from the Pharisees. That implies that in Matthew's view it was indeed in their hands. 23:13 implies much the same thing! They had failed and so now it passes into the hands of 'others'.
This is a claim to leadership of Israel and its religious tradition. Who is making the claim? One might expect Matthew and the Christian scribal leaders associated with him, but that is not what the text says. It declares that now a 'people' replaces Israel's leaders and carries responsibility for enabling Israel to bear fruit. It is not a new group of leaders but a community, the church, which is making this claim. It will now hold the keys of the kingdom. It will now carry responsibility for tending the vineyard. There is a new head of the corner. The rejected stone and his people will assume leadership. This is both a claim and a threat: large stones sometimes fall on people and crush them - so 21:44, a foretaste of what follows in the third parable.
The parable is immediately relevant for Matthew and his community because they have been struggling (without success) to position themselves as leaders of Israel's faith and are being increasingly driven to the margins by resurgent Pharisaism. Our connections with the parable are more oblique because our situation is different. We might, in more reflective mood, contemplate the image of fruitfulness as an image of the community, the congregation. We might reflect on the continuing challenge that we can be busy producing many things other than the fruit which God seeks. We might reflect on our much more subtle ways of beating up God's messengers who call us to become involved in the issues of the day. Loving is a challenge we often savage or sabotage, whether at a personal or a community level.
Interestingly the responsibility is no longer, for Matthew, placed on a select group of leaders but on a community. While that may have reflected a power struggle in Judaism of the 80s, there is a sense in which something of great insight remains. The church is a community and as a community carries the mandate of nurturing and caring for the vineyard. It is another way of defining the church's identity in terms of love. It is also a pattern of thought open to the kind of abusive developments which Matthew attacked in the temple leadership and history finds repeated all too often in the church. Despite what would happen in history Matthew is not abandoning Israel because of such abuses. All this should make it impossible for the church to be smug and superior. The divine part about the church is that we are in the place where we can learn and celebrate the life of God in the vineyard.
Epistle: Pentecost 21: 5 October Philippians 3:4b-14
William Loader
Pentecost 20: 28 September Matthew 21:23-32
The first part of this passage is based on Mark 11:27-33. The second part, 21:28-32, is found only in Matthew. Earlier in Matthew 21 Jesus had entered the city and then entered the temple where he drove out those who were buying and selling and overturned the tables of the money changers (21:12-13). Matthew has that all happen on the one day. Mark also has Jesus enter the temple on the first day (11:11), but the incident occurs the next day (11:15-19). Mark has Jesus curse the unfruitful fig tree on the way to entering the temple (11:12-14). Immediately following the account of the incident, he recounts the withering of the fig tree (11:20-26). The symbolism of judgement on the temple (ie. the temple leadership and system) because of its unfruitfulness could hardly be clearer. Mark is developing the theme that the Christian community is the new temple. This was not the path which Matthew wanted to follow. He undoes the way the cursing of the fig tree is a commentary on Jesus' action in the temple (21:12-13). Instead he recounts it separately and uses it to emphasise miraculous faith (21:18-22).
The confrontation with the chief priests and the elders over Jesus' authority (21:23-27) remains close to Mark's account. While in Matthew Jesus' behaviour towards the religious institutions and the Law, which undergirded them, is not as radical as it is in Mark, nevertheless there is a problem. What right did Jesus have to interfere with the way things were running? They are not the only religious leaders who 'get toey' about unauthorised interference!
It is not surprising that Jesus confronts them with the question of John's authority. John had been baptising people for the forgiveness of sins. Rituals for the forgiveness of sins were largely in the hands of the priests and the temple. That was one of its main functions. While there was technically nothing wrong with John's rather novel rite, in the eyes of those properly ordained to priestly tasks it amounted to something of a maverick enterprise. Very closely related is the controversy about Jesus' declaring God's forgiveness (see Mark 2:6-10). The issue would not have been blasphemy as Mark now suggests (2:7) but authority (so 2:9-10). Could someone like Jesus declare God's forgiveness, pronounce absolution? The answer was not that it was wrong, but it sailed close to the wind. Such 'charismatic' authority was outside the control of the order established by the Law, by Scripture. Power exercised in healing and exorcism was similarly a quandary if not a threat. It is altogether too easy for us to understand, who mainly belong to orders which claim a similar kind of permanent sanction and make it difficult for us sometimes to entertain alternatives. Both John and Jesus spoke of the Spirit. How do you balance such claims against the order received by inspired tradition?
Matthew would seem to have a clear answer on these issues. It is in terms of fruit, attitude and actions which cohere with Scripture when interpreted from the central themes of love and compassion. 'Anything goes' was not an option for Matthew, even when it is allegedly 'anything goes with the Spirit'. 7:21-23 makes that very clear. Matthew also has clear lines of authority and, as we have seen in recent weeks, is concerned that there is control and oversight in the community. But it is clear that Matthew refuses claims to authority based solely on status and succession. That is clear already in the words of John the Baptist about the claims to being children of Abraham. It is clear also in relation to Peter. Being called never means you cannot sink, as Peter well learned.
Having baffled the authorities by confronting them with the issue of John's authority, Jesus, in Mark, continues the defence by recounting the parable of the labourers in the vineyard who kill the owner's beloved Son (12:1-12). Matthew will also include this as part of the response of Jesus, but on either side of it he includes two new parables. Jesus' response now consists of three parables. The first speaks about people's response to John. It is the rest of today's reading (21:28-32). The second speaks of people's response to Jesus (21:33-46), as in Mark (12:1-12). The third speaks of people's response to the disciples and their mission (22:1-14). These latter will be the readings for the next two Sundays.
The first parable has a simple structure: 2 sons whose expression of willingness or unwillingness to work in the vineyard is reversed in practice. As in the next parable the vineyard is a standard image of Israel. The chief priest and elders are set in contrast to the prostitutes and tax collectors. The former engage in the rhetoric of obedience, but fail to do God's will. The latter disqualify themselves, but then turn to God. Note that all this is in response to the ministry of John the Baptist. For Matthew, of course, already John proclaimed the kingdom of God (3:2) in the same terms as Jesus (4:17) and the disciples (10:7). Indeed, as it says in 21:32, John came 'in the way of righteousness', another of Matthew's key terms, beside 'kingdom of God' (21:31). These are the terms that embrace the beatitudes (5:3,6,10).
Matthew has a way of cutting through the red tape and of by-passing the religious bureaucracy. There is no room for pretence or pretentiousness. The prostitutes and toll collectors, the lousy rich and the women they exploited, got the point, at least some of them. Is it because they allowed themselves to be vulnerable, to be moved, to let the word of compelling compassion address their deeper needs? Were the religious leaders so defensive in protecting their system - in the name of the people of God and the Scripture - that they suppressed their inner cries, stopped their ears? It is odd that we still find so many people inside the church who have a greater problem moving with compassion for change in society than many outside the church. They seem bent on protecting God.
Epistle: Pentecost 20: 28 September Philippians 2:1-13
William Loader
Pentecost 19: 21 September Matthew 20:1-16
Who really matters? Like other parables this one doubtless has a history. In Jesus' life setting it uses a familiar image: hiring people who wait about in the town centre for work. The image gets us in touch with the vulnerability of the local people and problem of unemployment. It is not an idyllic scene. These are among the poor for whom the kingdom of God would bring change. Beside the poverty the rawness of being at other people's whim is humiliating, being an expendable resource to be exploited. The farmer's gruffness in accosting these men for standing around all day doing nothing has its echo in stereotypes of dole bludgers or people unemployed because they are too lazy to seek a job. How could you preach on this without touching people among your hearers who live in similar vulnerability and how would you affect them if you simply ignored the issue?
The parable is a story with elements of exaggeration, a certain artificiality which, combined with the ordinariness of the setting, helps the story to work. So it is schematic: hirings at regular intervals right through from sunrise at three hour intervals to the ninth hour, mid afternoon. One might imagine a grape harvest where it became imperative to complete the task of harvesting that day - impending bad weather? All that is left to our imagination.
The casual labourers are called together at the end of the day and paid, beginning with the last hired. They receive a day's wage: a denarius, considered enough to live on for a day. But all the others receive the same amount, including those who had worked since early morning. There is no way that this is equitable. So there is outrage. Jesus has a way of using outrageous people in his stories. Consider the rogue steward in Luke 16:1-7. This is part of the shock tactics. It is subversive story telling which turns normal values upside down. The scene is now not only one of exploitation but also of arbitrariness and injustice.
Yet the story opens new vistas. The employer kept the contract he had made with the first hired but also gave the last hired what they needed to live. The last hired received their denarius, their living. Viewed from this perspective the practice comes close to what for us is a norm: unemployment benefit, making sure people have enough to live on. A different standard is applied: need, not earning rights. To view it in this way puts many things in a new perspective. It does not smooth out all the rough edges, but it is enough to open the door to a different way of thinking.
At what point does it connect with Jesus and his ministry? Probably at the point where many of Jesus' parables connected: at the point of controversy over Jesus' attitude towards the last and least in society. God's grace is there for those who had been righteous all their lives but also for those who had messed up their lives - equally. There is no distinction made in this respect between the prodigal son and the one who stayed with dad all his life and worked on the farm. Unfair! At one level this is true. At another there is a different set of values operating. People are being treated according to their needs, not according to their deserts.
The issue raises the matter of rights. These days it is common to ally the gospel with the demand for human rights. There is a sense in which this undersells the gospel. Our response to people is not to make sure they get their rights, but because they are people and that will often mean going beyond what, according to accepted norms, they have a right to claim. Love of this kind goes beyond human rights. It also assumes the worth of people, human dignity, need for shelter, sustenance, self determination and the like. Needs and rights are closely related and will often overlap, so affirming human rights belongs to caring for people according to their needs, but such caring does not stop there. The argument against human rights that we have no rights and deserve nothing from God sounds pious enough and has validity, but Jesus is trying to get us used to the idea that God is not playing the game of 'Look how good I am; you have no rights and I am generously giving you what you do not deserve! So worship me!' In Jesus we are learning that God is not working with a rights and deserts scale and making exceptions, but simply loving because that, not rights, is what is at the heart of God's being. If we persist in thinking of God in terms of God's rights, we will inevitably view all of life in terms of rights and miss the point of the gospel.
Matthew takes up the story from tradition and places it immediately after the instruction about riches and Jesus' encounter with the rich man (19:16-30). That ends, as it does in Mark (10:31), with the statement that many who are first will be last and many last, first. Its immediate sequel in Mark is Jesus' third prediction of his passion and the endeavour of James and John to have top status in the coming kingdom. Matthew follows the same sequence, but inserts the parable immediately after the statement about the first being last and the last being first. It is striking that he then repeats this saying in reverse order immediately after the parable (20:16). As a result the parable is framed by the reversal saying. The reversal saying connects in Matthew, as it does in Mark, to Jesus' teaching about leadership.
The result is that for Matthew the parable is less a defence of Jesus' practice of inclusion of outcasts and society's least, and more a warning to people in his community who imagine they are deserving of special honour because they have been in the community in leadership for a long time. This is typical of Matthew's tendency to take what Jesus applied to Jewish leadership of his time and apply it to leadership within his own church community. Try doing the same! In a sense John the Baptist was making the same point when he challenged the Pharisees and Sadducees that they should not lay too much weight on being sons of Abraham; it is performance and quality of obedience which counts. Try applying it to yourself. Entrenched in leadership, it is easy to lose touch with what is the heart of the gospel. We become accustomed to employing the rhetoric of radical love. In our very verbal faith, words easily become a substitute for reality. And there is an odd sense of satisfaction we can gain by seriously talking about issues such as poverty without ever doing anything about it - even preaching and being preached to about them.
The trouble with such challenges is that people take a dive into guilt and then try to compensate by being quite unrealistic about what they can or should do. And the trouble is also that preachers can unwittingly exploit that guilt. Some people like being given a hard time. We need to get real and help people to get real. We need to get off the band wagon of being deserving or undeserving. Our opportunity is to live within our finitude and be real and loving as we are. It is OK to be who I am. There is much that I can do and much that I cannot do. I need to live with the pain out there and live with the realisation that I am who I am and can do and be only what I can do and be. All else is a running away from reality. I am not going to do anyone any good by retreating into the 'comfort' of feeling guilty. Guilt is a useful place to be only because it is a place from which to move on; it is not a place to live. The generous love which includes us also wants us to be real about being alive and free. In such generous love and loving we can be real and really play our part in the world.
Epistle: Pentecost 19: 21 September Philippians 1:21-30
William Loader
Pentecost 18: 14 September Matthew 18:21-35
Grace has the last word. Last week we saw that the theme of chapter 18 is dealing with people who go astray. Matthew surrounds the traditional rules of conflict resolution with the message of compassion and forgiveness. Today's passage is particularly emphasising forgiveness.
The parable might come from everyday life. There are such rogues and doubtless such things occurred. However this is a story and contains the storyteller's exaggeration. The amount owed is huge, larger than the estimates of the value of whole economies. Try doing the arithmetic. A talent is around 6000 denarii; a denarius is a day's living wage. It is an absurd figure, so unreal, as to distract the hearer from the literal meaning to the point being made behind the story. God's forgiveness is also massive. 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors' is the literal translation of the standard Lord's Prayer as found in Matthew 6:12. Releasing debt was a common image for forgiveness. The rogue in Luke 16:1-7 who went out and forgave his master's debtors may be Jesus' parody on himself: he declared God's generosity and was declared a rogue servant who acted without recognised authority. The saying in 18:21-22 is also making its point by exaggeration: 77 times!
The image of debt is helpful in considering the meaning of forgiveness. When someone is in our debt we have power over them. To forgive is to give up power. Forgiving is a form of giving. We no longer hold something back in our relationship with someone. Notice that we use words like 'hold' in expressions like, 'hold resentment'. Holding back is destructive for others and for ourselves. The movement of the gospel reflects the being of God. God created: God gave. The giving is also seen in the coming of Christ. It is a giving that goes the whole journey, even to the cross. It is the losing of protected life, the refusal to be devoted to a false self which keeps people at bay. It is a generosity which sets the cat among the pigeons, because it defies the arithmetic of deserving.
Forgiveness in this sense is relational. Too often it is reduced to 'sorry' without restoration, without reconciliation. This is especially the case where the focus is on sins. The reduction of the gospel to forgiveness of sins misses the point of the gospel which is about making people whole. Forgiveness cannot be deserved as if we - or Christ for that matter - can balance the equation, make the arithmetic work and keep everything clinically balanced. Reduction of God's forgiveness to a kind of trick transaction in which he has his son pay off his debtors' debts is rather lame. The more the imagery is pressed the more God becomes a dealer who does not have the generosity to forgive but is just determined to get paid off one way or another. This is far from the God of Jesus in the gospel who actually wants to be generous and does not insist on getting his pound of flesh from somewhere. It is people who cannot cope with such generosity who have had to think up mechanisms that do not involve God in being as vulnerable as that.
Yet forgiveness is costly. It is costly to the one who forgives because it is giving up something. It is also costly to the one forgiven. It is costly because it entails acknowledging the need of forgiveness and that means turning away from the lies and the pretending. It means allowing oneself to be vulnerable, allowing oneself to be loved. It means facing up to oneself. That is why it is so healthy that Matthew's discussion takes place in the context of dealing with wrong and not sweeping it under the carpet. Some forgiveness demands a degree of restitution, not as the repayment for past wrongs, which can mostly never be repaid, but because injustice and loss is acknowledged.
Is it possible to commit wrong and then be rehabilitated? If it is not, then let us fear forgiveness! Let us resist facing ourselves! Too many people have experienced so little forgiveness that honesty (to themselves or to others) poses an enormous threat. The gentleness of the gospel may sometimes need to be whispered ever so tenderly to the souls of blatant, hardened, frightened people.
Forgiveness is therefore far from naive. It is facing realities and doing something which changes the equation. It disturbs the established values. Just look at the outcry it has created in Australia over reconciliation with Aboriginal people! People are afraid to be forgiven. Corporate guilt is so much more difficult to deal with because we cannot quantify responsibility; we are afraid of losing control. Forgiveness and being forgiven is about letting go of control, accepting that debts can never really be squared. We can change the equation but in most circumstances we cannot resolve it quantitatively. Grace given and received is the basis for reconciliation. People are also afraid to find a way to forgiveness and restoration. Just look at the cry for capital punishment! Just look at the lust for vengeance in the wake of 11 September! Circumstances warrant the cessation of love? What a terrible thought. It inspires both the avengers and those against whom the vengeance is sought who have abused the rights of others. Such lack of generosity invites the kind of fear which swirls into irrational hate which will seek to crucify the very love which seeks to address the pain and loneliness which is its source.
Epistle: Pentecost 18: 14 September Romans 14:1-12
William Loader
Pentecost 17: 7 September Matthew 18:15-18
What do you do when things go wrong in the church? This little 'rule' for handling wrongs is a fascinating insight into the running of a community. It is not distinctively Christian. The word, 'church' (ekklesia) could easily be translated congregation or assembly. It would fit just as well among the sectarian documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls or among other exclusive Jewish communities of the time. The ultimate punishment is to be treated like a Gentile or a tax collector. Now who is really speaking here? Are Gentiles not included in this community? And does not Jesus earn his reputation precisely because of his openness towards tax collectors?
This passage also meets us as we re-visit 11 September. Can it have anything to say to international conflict or the issues of terrorism? At one level the incidental assumption about how one treats "Gentiles" should alert us to latent and expressed xenophobia in our own day and the way groups are stigmatized. Jesus became known as one who embraced those from whom most felt repelled. Some of the principles of handling conflict remain the same, whether in the church or the international arena. When we fail to observe them we sow the seeds of our own violence and reap the whirlwind.
The passage reflects an application of justice which incorporates the biblical provision that charges must be supported by at least two witnesses (Deut 19:15). The authority given the community to engage in such a process (18:18) is the same as that given to Peter in 16:19 and shows that binding and loosing has to do with interpreting Law/scripture and its implications for passing judgment.
It is worth pondering this strange passage in its context. The next verses speak of the agreement of two or three on earth with regard to any request and to Jesus' presence in their midst. Agreement is especially agreement in verdict; the presence of Jesus is closely related to the practice of discipline. The passage is similar to those in the Jewish Mishnah which promise God's Shekinah where two or three gather to study Torah. Jesus takes Shekinah's role.
But of greater importance still is the wider context. 18:21-22 contain Peter's question about forgiveness and Jesus' reply that forgiveness is possible not just 7, but 77 times. In other words forgiveness is never to be abandoned. 18:23-35, the parable of the unforgiving servant, makes the same point. If this is not enough, the verses immediately preceding the disciplinary rule retell the parable of the lost sheep, only that it now applies it to the issue of what to do when a community member goes astray (18:12-14). Compassion seeks the lost. If we go back further to 18:6-10, we return to issues of discipline: abuses against God's little ones: children but also members of the community of little ones, the congregation. The whole chapter begins with the lesson about greatness: to humble oneself as a child.
In this wider context Matthew has set what may well have been a bit of sectarian traditional wisdom about how to deal with deviance. While its rough edges remain, it is now heavily qualified. Without revising it directly, Matthew has set it in a context where all the emphasis falls on compassion and forgiveness. Matthew is not abandoning the need to confront abuse. Matthew is not espousing the kind of phoney harmony which sweeps abuse under the carpet in the name of Christian peace. But it is clear that he is not prepared to abandon people to being treated like second class citizens: Gentiles and tax collectors, although this is what the tradition had said. If we really rub these conflicting statements together and try to make them fit, we might end up with something like: treat them like Gentiles and tax collectors, people who no longer belong, and then relate to them the way Jesus related to toll collectors and commissioned that we should relate to Gentiles: offer to them a relation of acceptance and forgiveness! Don't write them off!
Honesty in confronting issues often makes such restoration possible, whereas half dishonest failure to name things leaves untended wounds which fester and, even in apparent reconciliation, the pain will be disruptive and is frequently destructive for all. Unfortunately Christians have been particularly good at replacing honest open love with being nice.
The rule itself is worth pondering. It is first century conflict management. If you have a problem with someone's behaviour, go and see them and talk with them about it. By implication, don't go and gossip to someone else about it. Every community needs to learn this, every generation, regularly. Deal with the issue where it belongs. There may be occasions where this is not the preferred action in terms of creative handling of the conflict. Sometimes one must go directly to the police or the body skilled to handle the issue (such as sexual abuse complaints). Sometimes our role will be to refer people to such authorities. But it is never right to go to others just to turn them against someone, in self indulgent gossip, which does not give the other person a chance. It is never right to play the game of gaining friendship with one person by denigrating another and enjoying the fellowship of denigration, which is so common.
At an international level the most obvious application is: negotiate. Don't rush to sabre rattling. Talk and listen. Seek to achieve settlement by meeting and talking, by seeking to appreciate the reasons why this or that unacceptable response has arisen. It also means avoiding the naive, not pretending there is no danger. At whatever level, we are ultimately dealing with human beings who are to respected and honoured. Intervention by force to prevent violation of others is sometimes necessary, but should come as a last resort. Much more can be achieved through negotiation than is usually assumed.
The passage affords an opportunity to throw some gospel perspectives on the meaning of love and compassion in the handling of conflict in personal relations, in family, in church, in community, in international relations, because despite the complexities some principles remain and they are articulated here. Our strategies vary greatly whether we come at conflict from hate or love, whether we believe we must avoid conflict or not, whether we believe peace is niceness or responsible openness. Each of us has a story to tell. Talk to your panel of experts: they are sitting in the pews. We all share expertise in failure and success in these areas.
Epistle: Pentecost 17: 7 September Romans 13:8-14
William Loader
Pentecost 16: 31 August Matthew 16:21-28
For Matthew identity is about much more than status; it is about performance. In Mark this scene is part of a single passage which flows from Mark 8:27 to 9:1. In Matthew there is a break. Matthew has added, 'From that time,' at the beginning of 16:21. This has the effect of setting the next scene off from 16:13-20, which we considered last week. On the other hand, the one certainly affects the other. The empowered Peter fails, just as he did when invited to walk on water.
Jesus' announcement of his impending visit to Jerusalem, which will result in his suffering and then his resurrection (16:21), derives from Mark 8:31, where it forms the first of three such predictions which come in rapid succession. The other two are 9:31 and 10:33. Matthew also takes these up into his gospel, but more material intervenes so the effect is less dramatic. He refers to the prediction, then, a fourth time in 26:2. In Mark each of these predictions is set in contrast to failures on the part of the disciples to understand the path of suffering and, instead, to be preoccupied with their own power and status. In Matthew this is still there, at least with the first and the third, but it is less dominant in the context of the whole section of chapters 16-20.
The path of suffering set out in 16:21 is fundamental for Matthew. It is interesting that he has replaced 'Son of Man' (Mark 8:31) with the simple, 'I'. It is almost as though he has transferred it (by cut and paste!) up to 16:13! Jesus' suffering receives emphasis because it is part of his obedience and provides a model for faithfulness of the disciples and doubtless of Matthew's hearers who also face adversity. The focus is not his dying for their sins. This understanding of Jesus' death is also known to Matthew, but receives little emphasis.
The path of lowliness is an important commentary on the nature of the authority and leadership given to Peter and the church in the preceding verses. The bottom line is to be like Jesus in the exercise of leadership. He lived out what the beatitudes blessed. Matthew sharpens the focus on Peter in the verses which follow. In a play on Peter's name, Matthew adds that Peter has become a 'skandalon', a rock which trips people over. Peter has failed to understand Jesus' leadership and lowliness. He is espousing the common values of the time about power and worth and not espousing God's values. The lectionary selections from Matthew will not take us to the passages about the small child in the midst and the challenge to espouse a different understanding of greatness and power from that of those who throw it around in this world (see 18:1-5; 20:26-27). We need to bear them in mind. It is quite remarkable that Jesus addresses Peter in the same way he addressed the devil in the wilderness: 'Get behind me, Satan!' (4:10).
16:24-26 now apply these insights to the way of discipleship. The call is not to lose self identity and so abandon one's responsibility, but to abandon the agenda for living which pits self against the others. It is the creation and defence of a self image which will manipulate others to its own advantage, be preoccupied with its own power and with creating and defending its worth. It plays games to create and sustain good impressions. It is a false self because it denies that God loves us for who we are and assures us that we do not need to justify ourselves and can be free from all the business of the false self. We don't need facades. Denying oneself and taking up the cross is abandoning the project of the constructed self and allowing oneself to be real and vulnerable, to be loved and loving, also to the point of suffering and death. These texts are not calling us away from what it means to be a human being, but calling us to be truly human, to find our true selves in God, but abandoning our false selves.
Loss and gain is an issue. Clearly we are being encouraged to espouse what will be of gain. Sometimes these texts have been expounded in a way that has led people to expect that they should not value themselves and that has led to a kind of inverse hypocrisy, where one parades before oneself that one is of no value - usually a lie and certainly a denial of the gospel. The true nurture of the self is to love ourselves as God loves us. It is serving the false self that is selfishness. Caring for oneself as God cares for us means opening oneself to God's love as the life and energy of the soul. That love will expand in all directions: towards ourselves, towards others, towards God. When Christianity is perceived as teaching that we should ignore our own interests, there is deception and untruth. The gospel is an appeal to people to recognise what is good for them (in their self interest) - so here: what is gainful. The answer lies in a revolutionary thought. I find myself, we find ourselves, when we allow ourselves to be loved and to love and to abandon the effort to manipulate that love from others by playing games and exercising power.
Many, if not most people have their fair share of serving the false self. Sometimes it is because they have experienced so very little of love for themselves for who they are. So they have built up facades and hidden behind them for years. The structures now form such an integral part of their being that change is likely to be traumatic. It is important in preaching that we do not simply go on the attack against such structures. Some exposure of the issues is appropriate, but the focus needs to be on trying to let people see something of the light of God's love which might shine into the darkness through a crack and awaken them to new ways of being - gently. Sometimes the energy to save people by crashing through their barriers is the very abuse of power which Jesus confronts here. Threatened, shrivelled people hiding behind massive artifices which have enabled them to survive, need tenderness and understanding. They don't want to be told off for not letting themselves be loved. Sometimes any change will require extensive therapeutic help. It is never unhealthy to proclaim the gospel of God's compassion, .. compassionately!
Matthew has revised Mark 8:38 to bring out all the more clearly that ultimately we shall be judged not by our status nor even by whether we are 'Christian', but solely by the reality of our performance, a common Matthean theme which has a profoundly levelling effect (16:27). 16:28 may indicate that Matthew contemplates that history will reach its climax with the return of the Son of Man within a generation or so of his writing. It has been hard to sustain that urgency for 2000 years - but certain groups will get excited as we reach 2000. The transfiguration (17:1-8) is like the 'shorts' of a movie. It gives an advance showing of that day and brings us back to the figures who featured in 16:13. Whether in time or space, we are dealing in 16:21-28 with ultimate issues which affect the world of the individual as well as the world in which we all share. Love sets us free to love and to lead in serving and to find fulfilment in such giving which characterises the life of God and is revealed in the story of Jesus.
Epistle: Pentecost 16: 31 August Romans 12:9-21
William Loader
Pentecost 15: 24 August Matthew 16:13-20
This passage is about identity - of Jesus and of the church. One of the best known passages in the New Testament for all kinds of reasons, including arguments about the papacy, this reading is rich and has a rich history. It is an expansion and revision of what Mark brings us in Mark 8:27-30.
In Mark the passage has often been recognised as a turning point. For the first time these dull disciples get it right. Peter hails Jesus as the Messiah. The euphoria is short lived. Already 8:30 has Jesus warn the disciples not to tell anyone. What is the problem? Modesty? Hardly. The next verses expose it. Mark 8:31-33 has Jesus predict his pathway of suffering and rejection before being raised from the dead. Peter objects and is rebuked. What he meant by Messiah was different from what Jesus intended. Peter is by no means unique in this. What we mean when we say or sing acclamation to 'Christ' and 'God' may have little resemblance to what the gospel is about - history teaches us that - and our own experience? After Jesus' suffering the right understanding would dawn on the disciples. Mark 9:9 makes that explicit. Perhaps Caesarea Philippi is deliberately identified as representing the northern most part of Israel and a symbol of Roman imperial power. Mark would be setting Jesus' kingdom in contrast to that of the power of the day as well as in contrast to popular notions of messiahship which arose to oppose it.
Matthew retains the basic structure of Mark's story and its themes, including Peter's failure to understand correctly and the warning about waiting till they have experienced the full story. 16:13-20 does not include Jesus' prediction of his suffering and the rebuke of Peter; that comes in 16:21-28, next week. That passage still needs to be borne in mind, however, in interpreting 16:13-20, otherwise we may find ourselves giving the kind of impression which had been Peter's.
For Matthew the location is also Caesarea Philippi and perhaps the same shadows of imperial power or power through its local Jewish proteges of Herod's family are in mind. But in Matthew the passage is not such a turning point as it is in Mark. We saw two weeks back that they had all acclaimed him Son of God already (14:33). So Peter is reaffirming something rather than confessing for the first time. Matthew also changes Jesus' question from, 'Who do people say that I am?' (Mark 8:27) to 'Who do people say that I, the Son of Man, am?' (16:13). 'Son of Man' is a weighty title in Matthew. Matthew's Jesus assumes they have grasped all of that. So the focus of the passage lies elsewhere.
Matthew lists the same popular expectations: John the Baptist (recalling Herod Antipas's fears in 14:2), Elijah and one of the prophets. Both Elijah and a prophet like Moses were standard expectations, based on biblical predictions (Mal 4:5; Deut 18:15-20). At least such people are identifying a divine initiative in Jesus such as was promised for the climax of history. The tradition will have Jesus linked with both figures in the transfiguration vision (Mark 9:4; Matt 17:3). To these Matthew adds Jeremiah, the suffering prophet. How appropriate!
Peter gives the correct response: Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah). Matthew has expanded the tradition at this point adding: 'the son of the living God' (16:16). Jesus will be asked at his trial by Caiaphas if he is the Christ, the Son of God (26:63). While 'son of God' was a title which belonged to royalty, as Psalm 2:7 shows, in Matthew it carries richer associations of a unique relationship with God (11:27) and of Jesus' miraculous creation at conception. It is still the same as the confession of the disciples in 14:33. Peter reaffirms it.
The rest of the passages turns the attention from who Jesus is to who Peter is and this is the new emphasis which Matthew brings. Peter, Simon bar Jona (John 1:42 says, 'son of John'), can make this affirmation because of revelation from God. The passage is strikingly reminiscent of Paul's description of his call in Galatians 1:15. Not flesh and blood, but God revealed his Son to Paul. Was this a standard way of speaking of a call? Was it at some stage competitive between Peter and Paul? Were these both originally speaking about encounters with the risen Son of God (as in Paul)?
Certainly the focus is on Peter's calling and the tradition varies as to when that is described as happening: when Jesus summoned him and Andrew to be fishers of people (Mark and Matthew), after the miraculous catch of fish (at the beginning of his ministry - so Luke; after Easter: so John 21). Peter's prominence reflects doubtless his first encounter with the risen Christ (Mark 16:7; 2 Cor 15:3-5; Luke 24:34). Or was he already the leader during Jesus' earthly ministry? There is some fluidity on the issue of timing, but not about the fact of a call and its implications.
Matthew knows the tradition that Jesus gave Simon the name, 'Peter', Aramaic, 'Cephas', meaning rock. Mark had mentioned that Jesus gave Simon the name, Peter, but without explanation (3:16). The result in Matthew is a neat exchange. Peter says: You are the Christ, the son of the living God' (16:16). Jesus responds: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church (16:18). The church will be built on Peter and on all who join him in confessing Christ. The imagery of building was common for describing communities (holy temple, house of God, are other examples). The role description expands: the powers of death will not prevail against it. This may still be retaining the building metaphor and refer to the stability of the building founded on a rock (cf. 7:24-27!). Or it may have shifted to thinking of literally 'the gates' of Hades/death not holding out against the church. Certainly what is evoked is the encounter with the deep powers represented in the sea. Peter is being commissioned, the church is being commissioned to walk on water, to take the authority to exercise God's mission in the face of the powers of destruction and death in our world. 14:22-33 and 16:13-20 are closely linked (also by the confession as Son of God).
The focus on the church's role is continued in the word about the keys of the kingdom (16:19). There were traditionally in the hands of interpreters of the tradition. 23:13 accosts the scribes and Pharisees for using them to shut people out of the kingdom. Now there is to be a new body of scribes, who are to be inclusive. Binding and loosing reflects technical language and refers both to binding and releasing interpretations of law (scripture) and their consequences. We see how it might apply in particular cases in 18:15-18, where the local congregation is invested with the authority to deal with cases of discipline in the community.
So instead of the passage celebrating a turning point in recognising who Jesus is, as in Mark, it has become in Matthew a celebration of what the church is. Nothing suggests a dynasty where power is exclusively Peter's and his successors. Clearly 18:18 implies the same power is be taken and exercised by the congregation. Peter is representative, but it is significant that it is precisely Peter who represents. He was the first witness to the resurrection according to many traditions. He appears to have been chosen as a leader. He and the others are to be the church, the community, who walk on water, who bring God's compassion into confrontation with the destructive powers of life. That will sometimes mean having to say, no, having to exercise discipline within the church. The challenge to the scribes and Pharisees shows that it will be possible to abuse such authority. Next week's passage will show that it is possible for Peter to be a Satan to Christ and the gospel. History has many examples where Peter's success rate has been matched. Matthew is affirming the authority and waving in our face the dangers and the fallibility of leaders.
The foundation for such authority and confidence is that Jesus is the Christ and this cannot be appreciated until we know the whole story (16:20). The whole story portrays brokenness in compassion which God affirms by resurrection. Without the whole story (and without next week's passage) the dangers are enormous. The church has always been in danger of becoming one of the powers which we are called to confront. That reality is lived out in history - on a grand scale, but also in each of us. The will to power is very seductive, not least in ministry.
Epistle: Pentecost 15: 24 August Romans 12:1-8
William Loader
Pentecost 14: 17 August Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
Today's reading is about boundaries and boundary crossing. The passage in brackets belongs to a larger section, 15:1-20, in which Matthew revises Mark 7:1-23. There Mark had used an anecdote about controversy over washing hands ritually before meals which had become a vehicle for a general attack on the validity of outward observances, such as washing and observation of food laws. This set aside not only tradition but significant portions of scripture itself (7:19). It was done in the name of a gospel that sought to be inclusive of Gentiles who were alienated by such practices. It reflects the position one might find in churches which had been under Paul's influence. There are aspects which go even further than Paul and imply ridicule of concern with such externals which 'cannot possibly' affect a person's purity.
Matthew is happy to take over the passage, but removes all elements of ridicule and especially the implication noted by Mark in 7:19 that Jesus effectively declared all foods clean. How could Matthew say such a thing in his strongly Jewish congregation and how could he say such a thing having affirmed that Jesus had not come to abolish even the slightest detail of God's Law in scripture? Thus Matthew reduces the controversy to one about the over punctiliousness of the practice of ritual handwashing before meals, not a command of scripture. 15:20b makes this clear where it reiterates the main point of the passage in these terms. Luke was also uncomfortable with Mark here and acted more drastically: he omitted it along with related material from the context, so that his story jumps immediately from the feeding of the 5000 to the episode at Caesarea, leaving out Mark 6:46 - 8:26!
In Mark the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (7:24-30) illustrates the crossing of boundaries which the setting aside of food laws implies. Barriers to the inclusion of Gentiles are dropped. The feeding of the 4000 (8:1-10) will celebrate the inclusion of Gentiles and Mark has Jesus quiz the disciples to see if they pick up the matching symbolism in the feedings of first the 12 baskets and then the 7 baskets (8:16-21). In Matthew the transition to what becomes the encounter with the Canaanite woman is less significant. What precedes is no longer about removing barriers, so the episode no longer functions to illustrate what precedes. The story now serves to shame Israel for its poor response to Jesus in much the same way as Matthew had used the encounter with the centurion to the same end. This Gentile acclaims him, 'Son of David'! Calling her a Canaanite, the biblical pagans, serves to heighten the contrast. Matthew would have had difficulty portraying Jesus' actions at this stage as representing openness to Gentiles because that commission comes only after Easter (28:18-20) and Matthew preserves traditions which limit the mission, at least initially, to Israel, including Jesus' own mission during his ministry (10:5-6).
The story in Matthew is no less painful that Mark's. In Mark Jesus initially refuses to give his attention to the Gentile woman and her child. Israel are God's children; Gentiles are dogs. While the Greek word could mean 'puppies', it commonly meant dogs and here it is disparaging, hardly affectionate. It is after all ground for refusal, not a sentimental comment about pets. 'Let the children be fed first' (Mark 7:27). This first at least implies there will be something left over for the dogs. In Matthew this first receives fuller explanation: Jesus is not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (15:25). In Matthew she pesters Jesus three times. Jesus' initial response both in Mark and in Matthew is hardly tongue in cheek. Matthew's additions appear to have taken it seriously and offered a rationale.
Originally the anecdote innocently portrays Jesus expressing a racist stance only to abandon it when put under pressure. The abandonment of prejudice, the crossing of the traditional boundary, is the good news of the story and why it was told. It is hard not to draw the conclusion that Jesus, himself, had to make a transition, had to learn. His response was more typical of the rather conservative Judaism of the time. Is it embarrassing that Jesus was human, too? Does it make the gospel any less valid if the historical Jesus also had to struggle to come to terms with the negative in his upbringing? At least this is the assumption of the anecdote.
Matthew tailors Jesus' final response to the woman. He adds the words: 'O woman, great is your faith. Let what you wish for happen for you.' Similar words came from Jesus' lips when he addressed the centurion (8:13) and again when he addressed the woman suffering from vaginal bleeding (9:22). We should read the story from its end, not its beginning. At its beginning it is discriminatory. At its end it affirms the despised. Women and Gentiles - just as already in the genealogy. Seen from its end it becomes a celebration of inclusion of women and of Gentiles.
The anecdote was doubtless told in the first place as a story to live by. It was certainly a risky story, because it achieves its point at the expense of Jesus' past. Obviously this did not matter to the story teller whether it is history or fiction. Its redeeming feature is its redeeming feature. In Matthew it also celebrates radical inclusion, even if, unlike Mark, Matthew sees no need to set scripture aside to achieve this. What extraordinary power the woman exercises - over Jesus! But then Jesus came to enable us to learn from others and discern God's call and not to assume we can never learn or that we know it all.
Epistle: Pentecost 14: 17 August Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
William Loader
Pentecost 13: 10 August Matthew 14:22-33
High drama! Here is another highly symbolic miracle which may have been attached to the feeding of the 5000 even before it came into Mark and John. Matthew's version is almost twice the length of Mark's because he has expanded it with Peter's walk (or sink) on the water.
The story recalls images of Yahweh walking over the waters in the Psalms and Job (Ps 77:19; Job 9:8). Most of the nature miracles - and a number of others besides - have been shaped by Old Testament images. The stilling of the storm is shaped by the affirmation in the Psalms that Yahweh rebuked and calmed the seas (Ps 106:9; 65:7; 89:9; 107:25-32) and by the account of Jonah asleep in the boat in the midst of the storm. People will debate the extent to which the Old Testament passages gave rise to the stories or whether the stories were secondarily coloured by the Old Testament passages. There is evidence elsewhere of both processes being at work (for instance, in the passion narratives with Psalm 22).
In all such miracles we face the credibility issue, which we also faced last week and which is not to be ignored. See the discussion there. Unfortunately the miracle is one-off, non repeatable. Again, I wish it were not so! As a one-off miracle it can fall prey to being used only as a proof of Jesus' divinity where it must compete with similar stories in the culture of the time and join the bidding war of wonders. Most New Testament writers are unhappy with that trend. Look at what Matthew has to say about claims based on wonders (7:21-23). Still, they had no qualms in affirming them, where we pursue truth with different presuppositions.
All that should not distract us (or our hearers) from the powerful symbolism of the story. The waters and the great sea were deemed a threat; Semitic culture was not a great surf culture! Revelation offers a vision of paradise where the sea will be no more (21:1)! The sea is traditionally the source of deep and threatening powers, dragons. It is linked to the abyss: that is why Jesus' exorcism at Gerasa drove the demons/pigs back into the abyss, the sea. Jung also makes much of the sea, not as negatively. In some ways its equivalent in Australia is the great inland, the feared desert. That is the mythological background; myth is usually very true when you hear what it is saying. Israel's epics also give colour to the picture. Crossing the sea, crossing the Jordan. These are moments of great transition, of liberation.
Matthew had already made much of the stilling of the storm. In one of the earliest redactional analyses of Matthew, Bornkamm showed that Matthew so told the story, linking it with Q material on discipleship, that the buffeted boat was made by Matthew to represent the church, buffeted by adversity (8:18-27). Walking on water symbolises authority over the powers that threaten. The scene affirms that Jesus is endowed with Yahweh's power. The Philippian hymn affirms that he has been given Yahweh's name ('Lord' 2:11). It is saying the same thing, speaking from a post resurrection perspective, which also informs the story here.
What does it mean to affirm, 'Jesus is Lord'? What are the powers that destroy? There will be people in your congregation who can tell you about the deep destructive powers in their souls who are now no longer afraid of the sea. There will be others who still yearn for deliverance and others, still, whose fear has become inarticulate, silenced even to themselves, and who stay on concrete paths and never touch the sea. Our role is not to drop people into it, push them overboard into their pain in some frenzy of therapeutic manipulation for which we are probably not qualified. But it is to point to the one who walks there and with what power. With what power? Alter-ego for parent, teacher, or priest? Bigger teller-off? Rather the one whose power is compassion and healing.
So we have a role to play, an awesome role, of helping people access that kind of power. That is Matthew's point when he has Peter invited to walk on water, too. He represents the disciples. This was their commission in chapter 10. It will find its echo in Jesus' words to Peter to be a rock, to be one who withstands the powers of hell (16:16-19). The image is different, the point the same.
The powers are much more than the inner demons Freud and his schools helped us to recognise in more sophisticated ways. For Matthew and his people they also included social and political and religious powers. They would find it hard to understand the ease with which moderns retreat into individualism and personal introspection, the private journey of the soul. There is also justice and peace, the establishment of God's way in a world of oppression and inequality.
The disciples get it! They acclaim Jesus, 'Son of God' (14:33). When Peter acclaims him Messiah at Caesarea Philippi (16:16), it is no longer the climax it was in Mark. They all do it here. They understand, in contrast to what we find in Mark's account where the passage ends with a damning indictment of their failure to understand (6:52). Matthew has more confidence in ministry, or, at least, is employing a different pedagogical technique. His disciples connect with us not through failure to understand, but through their understanding and then refusal to trust. That sinking feeling!
When Jesus says, 'It's me! Don't be afraid!' (14:27), the Greek could be translated: 'I am' and evoke Yahweh's self designation (at the burning bush and in Isa 43). It certainly is a moment of revelation: of who Jesus is and his doing a Yahweh activity. But one would expect use of the designation elsewhere in Matthew, if it were so, and we do not find it. In any case the identification (which may be present in John's account, 6:20) is not a simple one ('I am God'). But Jesus certainly is God's sent one in Matthew, carrying all the authority of the shaliach and divinely created through miraculous conception for the purpose. The interest is, however, less on explaining how this can be, than the fact that it is so. For the person facing the deep, what matters is that what we affirm of Jesus is a statement about God's power, God's love and forgiveness and healing and challenge.
For an imaginative reflection on the passage see the Dolphin of Gennesareth
Epistle: Pentecost 13: 10 August Romans 10:5-15
William Loader
Pentecost 12: 3 August Matthew 14:13-21
Come to the feast! The feeding of the 5000 is a central symbol in the rich heritage of the Jesus tradition. It can be viewed from many angles and each is enriching. In Mark (6:30-44) it serves to celebrate the nourishment of salvation offered to Israel, just as the feeding of the 4000 (8:1-10) will celebrate the offer also to the Gentiles (see also 8:16-21). Matthew is not so happy to use the stories in this way. In his composition both feedings are nourishment of Israel, so he can remove the particular elements in the feeding of the 5000 which emphasised Israel. Gone is the description of the crowd being like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:34). Matthew used it in 9:36. The numbering of groups of 100's and 50's in Mark which evoked memories of Israel's formation in the wilderness has gone. The disciples are, as usual in Matthew, more polite. Instead, Matthew emphasises the miracle and Jesus' healing ministry on site, an element not present in Mark. It enables Matthew to have the two feedings match each other, since he will make the healings by the sea into the setting for the feeding of the 4000 (15:29-39; cf. Mark 7:31-37 and 8:1-10), now atop a mountain, also a common feature in Matthew. The miracle is even grander in Matthew. He tells us 5000 counted only the men; there were women and children as well!
What were 5000 men (and it says, literally, men, males) doing in wilderness battle formation in an isolated place? It sounds like the actions of others of the time who gathered armies in the wilderness in the hope of repeating the liberation of the land under Joshua of old. Is this a new Joshua (Jesus means Joshua)? John's gospel even suggests there was a military response of sorts when the people tried to make him king (6:14-15). Perhaps the tradition about Peter's confession once stood much closer to this story (as it does in John 6): he also had that kind of messiahship in mind (Mark 8:27-31). Was Jesus staging such a symbol of liberation? If so, did he have military intentions? Hardly, unless the material has been sanitised without trace. Certainly there are traces in the story which suggest that Jesus was acting within the tradition of liberation, but there were many forms of liberation hope. One was to yearn for the kingdom.
Was there an actual feeding, an actual miracle? The tradition says there was. It makes a link with the Elijah/Elisha stories. Elisha's multiplication of barley loaves brought to him by his lad (2 Kings 4:42-44) have helped shape John's version of the story. Some may say we cannot really know what happened as a good way of avoiding the embarrassment that such magic is in the story which we could do with urgently in areas of need. Unrepeatable wonders like this are a tease to poverty and destitution. Others suggest the authors never meant the story literally or just left out the bit about everyone opening their own lunches and sharing. Say nothing about the miraculous in the story and your hearers will frequently assume you swallow all that is claimed. In principle the miracle is defensible philosophically. Random realities are fashionable in scientific reflection these days. Not to address the miracle itself in preaching may be irresponsible. I, myself, would let pastoral concerns dictate how I would handle it. Mostly one can at least acknowledge that not everyone will believe the story literally. I really wish it were something we could still do!
Certainly the meal is invested with symbolic associations. It foreshadows the great feast when all nations will gather in peace and reconciliation (Isa 25). Inevitably hearers then and now make connections with other meals in Jesus' ministry and his regular use of meal imagery (e.g., the parable of the great feast, killing the fatted calf, etc). We naturally think of the eucharist. Just before this episode Matthew, like Mark before him, had recounted the black eucharist of Herod Antipas where John the Baptist's head was presented on a platter. (Only) Matthew has John's disciples come and tell Jesus of the execution. In Mark the return of the disciples from their mission intervened. But in Matthew that lay too far back. Instead Jesus' departure by boat to a lonely spot is portrayed as a direct response to John's execution, which, for Matthew, is one of a piece with the disciples and Jesus. The feeding, in that sense, is like a requiem mass for John, a comfort for Jesus and his disciples at John's death. Maybe.
The feeding miracle evokes the many images of food and drink with which Israel spoke of God's word or law. John 6 will bring this together in the celebration of Jesus as the bread of life and his body and blood as food of eternal life. The image is at the heart of Christian worship. Now highly stylised by tradition it still echoes the richness of the imagery. Too often its link to Jesus' death has led people to miss its broader context. The last supper makes sense in the light of all the other meals including this one and they make sense in the light of the vision of liberation and reconciliation which inspired them. To receive him in bread and wine is also to participate in the vision and nourishment which makes it possible. There are very rich connections here.
Epistle: Pentecost 12: 3 August Romans 9:1-5
William Loader
Pentecost 11: 27 July Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Jesus subverts the norms. In Matthew 13:31-32 Matthew returns to Mark 4, where Mark has his version of the parable of the mustard seed (4:30-32). As with the sending out of the 12 (Matt 10:1,5-15), so here, too, Matthew draws on a Q version of the tradition (see Luke 13:18-19). Matthew's version has features of both. Parables lend themselves to ever new interpretations and this is also the case with this one. There were more positive examples of plants which Jesus might have chosen. Instead he declares the kingdom of God is like what was often a weed! Leaven (13:33) and the image of 'fishing for people' (4:19) are also fairly negative and therefore shocking images. This was typical of Jesus. Today people would call such subversion post-modernism. Jesus subverts the normal expectations.
So it may not be only the smallness of the seed (storytellers' exaggeration to call it the smallest!), but also the weediness of the mustard plant which reflects on what many thought of Jesus and his preaching. In this sense the parable has much in common with the absurdity of the sowing in the parable of the sower. It is a defiantly assertive Jesus who proclaims the coming of the kingdom, nevertheless! The cross will be absurd. This is definitely alternative in emphasis. It becomes a symbol of the way of discipleship, the lowliness blessed in the beatitudes.
Mark says it grows to be the largest of plants. Q says it becomes a tree. Matthew says both! Mark's is more realistic because it becomes a large bush (not, in fact, the largest), hardly a tree. Birds can nest under it - providing that it has grown big enough at nesting season, if we want to press the detail! Tree imagery has Old Testament precedents (Ezekiel 17:22-24; 31:6; Daniel 4:10, 20; see also Psalm 104:12). Mostly it is negative, representing foreign powers, but Ezekiel 17 appears to use it positively of Israel and the nations. In the parable it now expresses the hope that the kingdom will also draw the birds, the Gentiles. This little embellishment about the birds may already have had that significance in Jesus' use of the parable. In any case it connects us to the great vision of the kingdom as a gathering of all people in peace and reconciliation, foreshadowed in the eucharistic feast. It is a value which collides with the xenophobia which appears to be driving current approaches to asylum seekers.
The parable of the leaven is equally provocative as that of the mustard 'tree'. Potentially poisonous stuff providing bread! 44-50 bring three further parables. The treasure and the pearl illustrate the total commitment which the kingdom elicits and its reward. The fishing net returns to the theme of judgement, echoing the parable of the weeds and its interpretation. It suits those who see the threat of judgement as a sound motivator, including Matthew, and needs to be brought into critical theological dialogue with other gospel streams which appeal to grace and hope and opportunity.
It is typically Matthean that 13:51 has the disciples understand what Jesus had been saying. 13:52 has Jesus go on to speak of the scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven. Just as Jesus taught with authority and not as their scribes, according to 7:29, so the disciples are to be better scribes, but scribes nevertheless (so also 23:34). The good scribe or interpreter is one who both draws on tradition (scripture) and draws on contemporary experience as a parable of God's reality in the world, thus on both old and new. This is one reason why these 'first thoughts' resources will never do as sermons! You need also to study the unique text presented to you in your hearers.
Epistle: Pentecost 11: 27 July Romans 8:26-39
William Loader
Pentecost 10: 20 July Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The parable of the weeds appears only in Matthew's gospel. Matthew gives it similar treatment to the way Mark (and, following Mark, he) has treated the parable of the sower, which we considered last week. He first tells the parable (13:24-30; cf. 13:3-9) and then, after a space, has Jesus give the interpretation privately to the disciples (13:36-43; cf. 13:18-23). Matthew has omitted Mark's parable about the seed growing secretly (4:26-29). This parable has effectively replaced it.
Like the parable of the sower, the parable of the weeds may have functioned in various ways at different stages of its transmission. Some elements which receive emphasis in the parable, for instance, receive almost no emphasis in the interpretation. The interpretation is unlikely to have accompanied the parable from the beginning, but it testifies to creative use of the story.
The striking aspect of the parable is the skulduggery. The parable of the sower portrayed normal sowing operations and an abnormal harvest. This parable describes normal sowing but then an act of subversion. Such behaviour may have been known. Here in the parable it suggests all is not rosy with the kingdom of God. There is an enemy.
A sense that there is an enemy marks many societies, religious and otherwise. It is almost as though we need an enemy, an other, against whom to define ourselves. This need will sometimes sustain images of enemies, even create enemies for survival. What will happen to the stock exchange if the armaments industry folds! A mild paranoia keeps some people going and gives their lives meaning. There's 'them' and there's 'us'. The simpler, the better. This is the stuff of prejudice. Religion is exploited to hold the prejudices in place. This parable and its interpretation are well suited to serve such ends. Without some informed exposition they are bound to do so.
The obverse of such reflections is that we are equally naive if we view reality through rose tinted spectacles. A wishy-washy tolerance which can turn a blind eye to injustice and oppression, to exploitation and destructiveness, may sometimes masquerade as peace and harmony and its exponents become obsessed with inner stillness and survival, but this has just as little to do with the message Jesus preached. The compassion which is characteristic of the kingdom calls us to look injustice in the face and to feel the pain, to recognise the systems (the other kingdoms) which sustain inequality and exploitation, and to take a stand beside the marginalised. It does mean recognising what is the enemy of love. The ancient world personalised this and spoke of the devil and demons. The reality they spoke of is not to be passed by, even if for most of us it is no longer meaningful to employ the mythology which they used to describe it. That way of identifying evil has the disadvantage of identifying the reality at one remove from where it presents itself and can easily lead to the simplistic analyses mentioned above.
The other element which receives unusual attention in the parable is the issue of what to do with the weeds before the harvest. It is overlooked in the interpretation, but at some stage it must have been a key element in the parable and how it was being used. What is this weeding which should be avoided? It might refer to the weeding which racked many other Jewish movements of the time, where the holy pounced on the unholy in their ranks and developed strict boundaries with which to define holiness. Its effect was alienation. It was like the execution of judgement, at least the passing of sentence, before the time. In its extreme form it was violent and military, sanctioned by religious nationalist fervour, nourished by scriptural epics. Other times it was verbal and social abuse. Unfortunately Christian expositions often identified this as Jewish or Pharisaic (simplistic categories again!) and did the same to them with terrible consequences in history. There were such tendencies and they are certainly alive today in churches.
The parable appears to be making a statement against such attempts. Let God deal with the alleged weediness of others! Deal inclusively. This does not mean avoiding challenge and confrontation, but it does mean: never ceasing to have compassion, never writing people off. We see it in Matthew's approach throughout the gospel, which is very confronting. Even the advice on discipline in 18:15-18 is surrounded by the plea that the straying sheep not be abandoned (18:12-14) and that sins be forgiven 77 times (18:21-22). For very practical reasons we also acknowledge we cannot really know all that is going on in another human being. We have no right to act as if we do. 'Judge/condemn not!' (7:1).
The interpretation (13:36-43) is one of the best examples of allegorical interpretation in the New Testament, so much so that we can see in it a coded description of the judgement day as commonly understood in apocalyptic literature of the time. The imagery echoes John the Baptist's preaching (3:10). Matthew makes much of the judgement day and uses it to seek to motivate his hearers. Beyond the colourful imagery it declares that we will all be accountable before God. We need to be in touch with reality now and then. Matthew's message is that if we face up to reality now we will be able to face up to it in the future. In this sentence replace 'reality' with 'God' - and blur them into the identity they have!
Such pictures of judgement may also be the inspiration for preaching fear and threat. In such approaches an image of God emerges who is in the end unforgiving and vengeful. A certain logic follows: it is a matter only of timing. God's love and compassion is only interim. Really, in the end, God will write people off, cease loving. 'But he has to keep to his rules' becomes the rationale and a god emerges for whom rules matter more than people. Where only the timing is a factor and love is only temporary, then Jesus becomes an exception to God's true nature (or, at worst, a ploy to appease him by taking our punishment). It is then not surprising that timing is soon ignored and people feel justified already in the present in acts of righteous indignation, in burning and writing people off, even in physical, emotional and social abuse. It is why Christians, feeding on these aspects of their tradition, have perpetuated terrible atrocities and abuses, and why we find Christians prepared to call for capital punishment and measures against fellow citizens which ignore possibilities for change. Root out the weeds! They just want to be the way their god is. Christians, of course, have no monopoly on religious sanction of violence.
Whoever added the interpretation was making an important point about ultimate accountability, but also created the potential for the earlier point of the parable to be given less attention than it deserves: don't weed! Never uproot people in your mind or attitude by treating them as no longer of any worth!
Epistle: Pentecost 10: 20 July Romans 8:12-25
William Loader
Pentecost 9: 13 July Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
In Matthew 13 Matthew is returning to Mark's order. Matthew 13 uses and expands Mark's parable chapter (Mark 4). The immediately preceding episode in Mark is 3:31-35, where Jesus responds to his family by declaring his new family. Matthew has just used it at the end of chapter 12, which also included other material from Mark 3: the accusations that Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebul. So, as in Mark, the focus of the parables is on making sense of the responses to Jesus, the successes and failures of the mission.
The parable of the sower draws on very familiar earthy images which would have been part and parcel of every day life in the rich granary of Galilee. It appears to have been typical of Jesus that he saw sacred text in every day life. This made him different from the scribes who derived their expositions from scripture. The earliest material we have rarely shows Jesus using scripture in anything like a scribal way and it was noted: he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes (Mark 1:22). In preaching it is always salutary to remind ourselves that there is more than one text. Good preaching arises from a meeting of the text of scripture and revelatory text of common experience and reflection.
The image of sowing and reaping had always been part of every day life and is therefore also richly used in scripture. Many of Jesus' every day images are like that, so there is scriptural allusion present in many parables. It seems that if you approach scripture as a heritage of rich imagery and less as a sterile legal document, you can be more in touch with its play, its poetry and images, and more in touch with what (who) inspired it.
At the earliest level the parable on Jesus' lips may have been asserting that despite appearances - setbacks - God's kingdom would come and surprise us with its overwhelmingly rich harvest (at least, for those days). This is all the more dramatic if the practice of the day was still to sow on the unkempt field of dried out weeds and worn paths surviving since last summer and then to plough. To the uninformed it must have appeared stupid. Already there are two elements: faith in God, in the promise that the blessing for the poor and broken people will be realised; there will be such a harvest and it will be beyond our expectations. The second is: we hold onto this despite the apparent absurdity of the task (Paul's the foolishness of preaching, the folly of the cross), despite the setbacks; this also implies setbacks are normal, as they are in sowing and harvesting. The prospect of suffering is real; the prospect of failure is real. The parable asserts ultimate trust despite the misadventures of so many seeds. At this level the parable is almost autobiographical of Jesus. It is also paradigmatic.
Such an image invites reflection and this appears to have occurred very early. The interpretation placed on the lips of Jesus now displays the hallmarks of the early church, but would not have been impossible as a reflection already in the setting of Jesus' ministry, although normally he appears not to have offered such interpretations. Whatever the case, the interpretation exploits the detail about the different state of the soil or ground on which the seed fell. Perhaps it began as an expansion of the consoling aspect of the parable: I can come to terms with failure here and there; it is bound to happen. Always a helpful reflection, especially for perfectionists and would-be messiahs of ministry! Of course, it can also be a haven for avoiding poor performance. Perhaps my sermons are really dull and missing the mark not because it is inevitable, but because I need to give them more attention! On the other hand, I need to accept that my excellent work may fall on distracted hearers. There are no rewards in giving myself a hard time!
Different soils also opened the possibility of making a point not about the preachers but about the hearers. This is the main line of the interpretation in 13:18-23. It is probably good for us preachers not to skip over the application to preachers and focus on this feature too quickly - talking about 'them' is always easier. Matthew appears to put the emphasis here. This seems indicated by some of the revisions he has made of Mark. Mark was making much of the climax and contrast between the fate of the seeds and the huge harvest. His numbers go: 30, 60, 100! Wow! Matthew reverses this order. Mark's version of the parable spoke of one seed falling here, another there and then others (plural) falling on good ground - fairly optimistic. Matthew evens this out: some fell here, some fell there; some fell into good ground. Mark has Jesus scold the disciples for their failure to grasp what he was saying (4:13), even though they were insiders entrusted with the mystery (4:10-12). Matthew removes such harsh aspersions on the disciples. Their failure in Matthew is not at the level of grasping truth, but trusting it, living by it. Take your pick! These are hardly less applicable today.
Matthew puts great emphasis on understanding. He adds it in 13:19 and 23. His gospel illustrates the importance he attaches to teaching. The great commission highlights teaching (28:19). In 13:19 he expands Mark's 'the word' to 'the word of the kingdom'. Matthew is concerned about content. Faith with understanding will help combat the adverse conditions which threaten the harvest. That is why he has written his gospel of the kingdom. The particular dangers may each warrant attention and be a sermon in themselves.
The various versions of the sower parable preserve a sense of the mystery of God's working. In Mark, especially, the parable is a parable about parables and the way they work: creating penny dropped experiences for some; passing others by, almost reinforcing their inability to hear by using this medium. Matthew's focus moves somewhat away from such paradoxical reflections. 'Mystery' becomes 'mysteries' (ie. teachings) and failure to respond is explained rather than evoked by use of parables (see Matthew 13:10-17 in contrast to Mark 4:10-12). The disciples do now see and are thus blessed. The challenge is: do they trust what they believe and understand? If not, why not?
Epistle: Pentecost 9: 13 July Romans 8:1-11
William Loader
Pentecost 8: 6 July Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Matthew began his gospel by emphasising the continuity between John the Baptist and Jesus. A certain tension developed because John had foretold that Jesus would be the judge to come. He would come with fire and judgement (3:10-11). Matthew 11 begins with an account of John's pondering whether Jesus really is the one who is to come as judge (11:2-6). Why? Because he had not brought the judgement. Jesus replies in a way that reassures John yet also distinguishes himself from John's understanding. John is to understand Jesus' present role not just his future one. In Jesus not only is the kingdom announced; it is also coming to reality. Sometimes Matthew's emphasis on judgement to come is so strong we might wonder whether his theology is closer to John's, but then there are these passages which identify the kingdom breaking through into the present. What is awaited is not just judgement but hope of liberation and renewal. When we pray, 'Your kingdom come', we pray about the future but also open ourselves to the present. Something happens as a result - in the present!
The verses which follow (11:7-15) also both affirm John and distinguish John from Jesus and the disciples. In today's passage 11:16-19 include a similar twofold emphasis. Jesus identifies his mission with John's; yet they are different. The response of children (or it could equally be servants or slaves) to each other about dancing or wailing (11:16-17) is an image which serves to contrast John and Jesus and at the same time highlights the negative response to each. Does the dance image match Jesus and the mourning image match John? Both images would have been traditionally associated with special meals (wakes and weddings?).
John's austerity of not eating and drinking belongs to the period of waiting; the promise has yet to arrive. Jesus' celebratory lifestyle of eating and drinking belongs to the period of fulfilment. In Mark's story of controversy that John and his disciples fasted, but Jesus did not (2:18-20), we have a similar contrast. Jesus' response there is to claim that the wedding time had arrived. A celebratory lifestyle of eating and drinking would normally have brought one into bad company so it is not surprising to read the full accusation here: 'a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners' (11:19). Mark also has a story to illustrate that: associated with the call of Levi (2:13-17; of 'Matthew' in Matthew 9:9-13).
Such accusations may have been a standard denigration of people who failed to live up to the normal standards of restrained piety. Similar language appears in Deut 22:20 in speaking of recalcitrant children - who should be stoned! Jesus' celebratory lifestyle fitted his proclamation that God was already actively involved in the present bringing change. Sometimes we imagine he could have had joy only because he was seriously taking note of mission successes, as though natural joy at the presence of God is a kind of self indulgence. But that is not the picture. It is not a studied joy, a kind of guilty, restrained 'rejoicing' which can be forgiven because of great achievements. It is not so serious. It takes a light and fresh approach to tradition. Jesus' words, 'The sabbath was made for people not people for the sabbath' (Mark 2:27), for instance, probably had nothing to do with meeting the needs of desperately hungry disciples who just had to pluck ears of wheat to survive, but more to do with an affirmation of the enjoyment of a few casually plucked heads of grain for a chew. It was not flouting the Law; it was enjoying the day God had made.
This affirmation of joy is not naive indulgence. Jesus knows that he reaps the fury of those who take it all so seriously that they miss the point. The words, 'Wisdom is justified by her works' (11:19), is a typical stance of Jesus. He sees himself in the tradition of the sage who knows God's wisdom and seeks to live by it. In this Matthew may be evoking those traditions which had speculated about Wisdom (Greek: Sophia) as God's companion, almost marriage partner. Jesus represents and embodies this kind of wisdom, God's wisdom, life's wisdom. Meals celebrate this presence just as they foreshadow the great dream of all peoples coming together in reconciliation in a great feast at the end of the days. Jesus was not only fond of feasting; he also employed the image throughout his teaching. It became the location for his famous last act of self giving which gave rise to the tradition of the eucharist. 'Eucharist' ('eucharisteia') means thanksgiving and needs to retain the joy of thanksgiving which characterised Jesus' ministry, which then makes sense of his death.
The closing verses of the chapter (11:25-30) also appear to draw on wisdom traditions. As wisdom is close to God, sometimes God's daughter, and the wise person God's child, so Jesus affirms his unique closeness to God (11:27). The religious wise who seriously go about trying to protect God have missed the point. Jesus' deeds of mercy and compassion are the evidence of God's will. That was what Jesus had been conveying to John's messengers (11:2-6). That was what justified the claim of true wisdom (11:19). That is why it was so offensive that Chorazin and Bethsaida refused to respond (11:20-24). There is something more serious than the immorality of the feasts; it is the denial of the miracles of compassion. The seriously moral frequently live in places like that.
The invitation of Jesus in 11:28-30 is beautiful. It is the kind of thing which sages said. Something very similar occurs in Sirach 51:26-27. It is not a summons to idol worship of Jesus, but a call to learn a new way, especially a new way of interpreting and understanding God's will. That will, God's Law, God's word, was commonly portrayed as assuaging the thirst and feeding the hungry souls. Remember the woman on the street in Proverbs who invited people to her feast (Proverbs 8-9) and Isa 55:1 with its splendid call to share free food? This is the same tradition. It is not a call to heaviness, but a call to lightness of being. It contrasts with the serious calls of those who interpret scripture as demand and stricture.
It is not by chance that Matthew will proceed directly from here to his version of the controversy over the sabbath (12:1-8). In his own way he will reshape the story to portray Jesus as an interpreter of the Law who focuses on compassion and adds to his account the words of Hosea 6:6, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice'. The promise is not joy one day after strictures now, but joy now, embedded in the life of God and located in the midst of the world in its joy and pain - also in its hostility. With such a sense of rest we can turn our attention to what really matters, people, and turn aside from the busy hassles of religiosity with its industry of piety which continues to make of many churches its factories.
Epistle: Pentecost 8: 6 July Romans 7:15-25a
William Loader
Pentecost 7: 29 June Matthew 10:40-42
This is a very short gospel passage but plays a key role in relation to the chapter. In fact 10:40 is a major theological statement. 'The person receiving (or welcoming) you receives me and the person receiving me receives the one who sent me.' It recalls the instructions at the beginning of the chapter which sent the disciples out. 'Sent ones', envoys, in a non technical sense: 'apostles' (which means: 'sent ones') were of enormous importance in the ancient world in all cultures. Jews identified such a figure as a 'shaliach' (which also means 'sent one') and one tradition speaks of a man's shaliach being like the man, himself.
It is difficult for us to grasp the importance of envoys because we have telecommunication systems which enable immediate contact. They used letters - but not a postal system! Therefore they were dependent on travelling representatives who had to be authorised to act for their senders. They might carry letters from their senders, but they had to be able to represent the interests of the ones they served. This was a major factor in ancient civilisation. You needed authorised envoys, representatives. The envoy model had already been employed to explain the role of prophets. They were God's messengers. Interestingly the words for 'angels', in both Greek and Hebrew, come from this background; they are sent ones, people who are to announce (we see the root in the word for gospel: euangelion). Jesus is God's envoy. The commissioned disciples are Jesus' envoys. There is a line of authority here. It fits Matthew's understanding of ministry so well; we all share the same commission: Jesus and disciples.
In Q Jesus speaks of himself and his followers as envoys of God's wisdom (sophia) (Luke 11:49; Matt 11:16-19, as we shall see next week). In Paul's circles we see this being applied not just to Jesus' ministry, but to his life as a whole: he is God's Son whom God sent into the world (Gal 4:3; Rom 8:3). In the tradition of John's gospel this became so central that Jesus regularly refers to God as 'The one who sent me' and sending here refers to sending from the heavenly realm to become flesh and dwell among us. The envoy represents the sender, so that to respond to Jesus is to respond to God. In terms of an encounter he is effectively God, God's Word, although John never forgets that he is also separate from God and subordinate to God, carrying out the Father's will.
Do we extend the same sense of authority to the ones Jesus sent? That is certainly the logic of this verse and of this way of thinking. It can also lead us into our own home grown heresy when we forget that we are envoys and begin to think we are God. It is also the kind of model which invested the church's ministry with enormous prestige. It distorts our understanding of our ministry and the ministry of Jesus when we fail to see the lines of authority. This danger is one of the weaknesses of the envoy model. Your response to me is your response to God - who dares claim this? But wait...
10:41 sounds similar to 10:40, except that it specifies 'prophets' and 'righteous' (maybe a technical term in Matthew for a form of leadership?). In 23:34 Jesus speaks of sending 'prophets and sages and scribes'. 10:41 shifts the emphasis to receiving the reward of a prophet. It is a significant shift in focus and addresses a problem which doubtless many of Matthew's hearers would have felt and many face today. What if I am not an apostle or a prophet or out there in the front line? What if all my responsibilities which are important to me mean I simply cannot fulfil them and be carrying official church roles as well? At one level Matthew is saying: welcoming and supporting such people warrants the same reward.
Something is happening here which definitely undercuts a sense of hierarchy. Ordinary people get the same reward as the high flyers or the necessarily public functionaries, the envoys. Matthew uses the language of reward not to incite our consumer imagination, but to evoke an image of God's favour. Matthew wants us to believe that it is just as rewarding to be on the supporting side of these ministries as to be exercising them. We don't have to feel we have to do everything ourselves! Paul would say, it is OK to be part of the body; you don't have to be a foot if you are a hand.
10:42 takes us one step further. It speaks of 'little ones'. This appears to be a term with which members of the community described themselves. Caring within the community is also ministry. This trio of verses sets side by side: welcoming Christ, supporting ministry, and caring for one another. In the final speech of Jesus' ministry in Matthew, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats, which takes this to its widest conclusion 25:31-46). Your caring for people in need (and probably in that context not only those in your church community) stands on the same level as your response to Christ. Back to our question above: Your response to me is your response to God - who dares claim this? Here it finds a radical answer.
Many people could feel disenfranchised by all this talk about apostles and ministry in Matthew 10 until we reach these final verses. Here in these verses is an opportunity to address that feeling and affirm mutual ownership of the gift given to all of us to own and to exercise: allowing ourselves to be involved in God's life in the world. And what could be more natural than that and more inclusive!
Epistle: Pentecost 7: 29 June Romans 6:12-23
William Loader
Pentecost 6: 22 June Matthew 10:24-39
This passage covers most of the second half of the major speech in Matthew 10. 10:40-42 is still to come. Already 10:17-23 has emphasised the persecution which awaits the community of believers. Our passage continues the theme. The break at 10:24 is almost artificial. If there is a shift, it is to compare the opposition which the disciples will face with that of Jesus. This coheres with Matthew's emphasis that disciples share Jesus' task. They also share the implications of pursuing that task. 10:24 picks up a statement which originally seems to have been part of the great sermon in Q which formed the sermon on the mount in Matthew (Luke 6:40). Matthew chooses to use it here, because it helps him introduce the imagery which follows which is tied to the surrounding context.
Thus 10:25 alludes to the accusation that Jesus casts out demons by Beelzebul (9:34). It will return in 12:24. In answer to this accusation Jesus will argue that in casting out demons by God's Spirit he brings the kingdom of God into the midst of humanity, he establishes God's reign. Living out the kingdom in the present in ways that disempower evil and evil's powers is also the task of the disciples and for this they will pay. Today the 'swear words' will not be Beelzebub, but 'bleeding hearts', 'leftists', 'welfare lobby', 'aboriginal industry' and the like. People use names to disempower others.
Matthew has already used Q material in the details of the sending and woven it with Mark's account of the sending. He had then transferred the warnings of persecution from Mark 13 and made use of the Q saying in 10:24 as a transition. Now in 10:26-33 he adds material from another body of Q material, reflected in Luke 12:2-9. It continues the link between Jesus' ministry and that of the disciples, only this time there is a contrast: Jesus' modest proclamation is to become a much more public affair in the hands of the disciples (10:26-27). People listening to Matthew's gospel would doubtless reflect on the turbulence which faced their community.
10:28-31 turns to comfort and encouragement in the face of such turbulence. Sparrows do fall to the ground and so will they! There are no easy promises of protection entailed in believing that God counts the hairs of one's head. The comfort is in knowing that God knows. These are mere hints of a greater theme of divine solidarity in our suffering.
Matthew combines them with his familiar ploy of focusing on the judgement day (10:32-33). Confessing and denying is very much the language of the Christian community. Solidarity is reciprocal. Confess and be confessed. Deny and be denied. We are in danger of trivialising the challenge if we see it is as a rather desperate plea (and threat) about personal loyalty, as though Jesus is building his own religion. The context is about God and God's reign. To deny Jesus is to deny the work of the Spirit. It will later be called blaspheming the Spirit (12:31-32). Mouthing the words of the kingdom while not allowing one's life to participate in God's liberating work in the world is playing a religious game which will be exposed. This has less to do with vengeance and more to do with being brought to face the truth about ourselves. Matthew has no room for hypocrisy.
Matthew makes much of judgement. 10:32-33 is the Q version of a saying present also in Mark 8:38. There Jesus speaks of himself as 'the Son of Man'. Matthew also uses Mark 8:38 in 16:27, supplementing it with Psalm 62:13, to leave no one in any doubt that judgement will be on performance not status.
10:34-36, drawn also from Q, but from further on (Luke 12:51-53), keep the focus sharply on human realities. Echoing the language of Micah 7:6, Jesus' words confront the mighty power of the family. 10:37-39 reinforces the challenge of family power. Since Freud and the development of the pastoral counselling movement we are well attuned to the potential destructiveness of family power and the false self it can generate in people which must be given up if there is to be new life. Family power extends its influence far beyond the psyche. Its unquestioned assumptions govern attitudes, hold values in place, and set patterns which can perpetuate systems of injustice and oppression at both individual and community level. Yet Matthew has in mind much more than liberation from such things; he has in mind liberation for living the life of the kingdom. Later he will speak of demons returning in force to an emptied soul (12:43-45). It is a call to the way of the cross, not just a call to be free.
Epistle: Pentecost 6: 22 June Romans 6:1b-11