Day by Day

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Matthew 13:53-58

 

DISDAINING THE FAMILIAR

I went to school with one of the most famous theologians of modern times.  We were not friends, but I used to see him frequently in the library, the halls, and the room where we ate our lunches.  Like others who knew him even marginally during those days, I have great difficulty believing that he is the same whose name is spoken with respect throughout the world.  He was simply too common and unattractive to have evolved into that other person.  In order to read his writings with proper reverence, I have to detach myself from any memory of the student I saw and think of him only as a renowned theologian.

Apparently it was this way for the people of Jesus’ hometown.  They could not believe that the profound teachings they heard from Jesus or the miraculous healings he performed came from one whom they had watched growing up as the son of Mary.   And the attention they paid to the contrast between their expectancies and the man who stood before them diverted them from the things he was trying to say and do, so that his effectiveness was limited in their midst.

What they needed to remember, as we do, is that wisdom is a gift of God, whatever the vehicle, and we should not permit our incredulity toward the source to blind us to its value.

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Matthew 14:1-12

THE DEATH OF THE BAPTIST

God is not the only judge of human beings.  History—the long look—also renders its judgment.  And history reveals the vast difference between the two men at the center of this little drama.

John we know to have been a simple man of simple tastes.  Herod’s life was complicated by ambition, pride, and foolishness.

John was morally zealous.  Herod was corrupt and entangled in his own sins.  He had broken Jewish law to divorce his wife and marry Herodias, and he broke it by executing John by decapitation and without a trial.

John was totally committed to the coming realm of God.  Herod was committed to keeping his own throne intact if he could.

John died with honor, and he is remembered throughout the world as the forerunner of Christ.  Herod died in disgrace, banished by the emperor to the remote districts of Gaul, cut off from the very kingdom he sought so desperately to preserve.

Real security, history seems to say, does not lie in earthly thrones and fortifications, but in commitment to God and divine righteousness.  It cannot be bought by gold and jewels.  It is given to those who live in the Spirit of God.

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Matthew 14:13-21

 

FEEDING THE CROWDS

It has been estimated that in Jesus’ time there were more than two hundred cities in Israel with populations of more than 15,000—all in a country no larger than many present-day counties in the United States.  So it was not always easy for Jesus to get away from people to pray and rest.  Here, when he crossed the lake for that purpose, the crowds merely followed him around the edge.

Feeling compassion for the people, as he always did, he told the disciples to give them something to eat. “All we have,” they said, “is five loaves and two fish.”  “Let me have them,” said Jesus.

He blessed the loaves and fish and gave them to the disciples to distribute, and when everyone had eaten, twelve baskets full of scraps remained.  The miracle is reminiscent of the Israelites’ receiving manna from heaven as Moses led them through the wilderness.  But, as Jesus is greater than Moses, the provision is much more abundant for those he feeds.

This was an important narrative among the early Christians, not only because Jesus was the new Moses but also because the multiplication of the bread accorded so well with the eucharistic meal that was the central rite of Christian fellowship.  In a time when Christians sometimes met literally in the wilderness, or at least in very private places, to avoid detection, the story spoke eloquently of the way God daily provided their food for spiritual life.

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Matthew 14:22-36

CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH

After feeding the people and sending them away, Jesus went up the hillside and swept duskily down to the sea.  The average person would have done so in order to lie down and sleep after such a strenuous day.  But Jesus went up to pray.  He had learned long before that prayer releases inner energies that restore the person even more than sleep.  Having been restored himself, he was able to come to the rescue of the disciples in the foundering boat.

We can imagine the situation in the early church’s life to which a passage like this must have spoken.  Persecutions had made survival difficult for the church.  Jesus’ reappearance was delayed beyond their expectations, just as he was late in coming to the disciples in the boat.  Peter, who was probably already known as the chief spokesman for the church, had faltered badly at the time of the crucifixion.  But Jesus had steadied him and helped him back into his role, as he helped him back into the boat in this story.  The story is really about the transcendent Christ—after the resurrection—coming to the troubled church and stilling the troubled seas around it.

It is no wonder the story reaches its climax when the disciples fall down to worship, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God” (v.33).

The remarkable little picture in verses 34-36 is in keeping with such a passage.  It too is of the transcendent Christ, this time passing among the crowds of people begging only to touch the hem of his garment.  “And everyone who touched it,” translates the New English Bible, “was completely cured” (v.36).

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Matthew 15:1-20

THE PARABLE OF THE UNRIGHTEOUS MAN

This material is closely related to Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 5:17-48, where he said that he had not come to abrogate the law of Moses but to fulfill it.  The scribes and Pharisees are concerned once more with the failure of the disciples, who are unobservant Jews, to keep the regulations or traditions associated with the law.  The disciples do not perform the ritual ceremonies before meals.

Stung by this persistent nettling over nonessentials, Jesus replies in two ways.  First, he reminds them that they have altered the law of Moses to make the commandment to honor one’s parents avoidable, just as in Matthew 5:30-32 he reminded his audience that the law concerning divorce had been weakened to suit the contemporary legalists.  Second, he gives his critics a brief parable:  It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person but what comes out.

The disciples, uncomfortable with the tension building between Jesus and the legalists, ask if he realizes he has angered them.  But he too is angry, and lashes back: “Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind” (v. 14).

Peter, again the spokesman for the early church, asks for an interpretation of the parable.  This is probably for the benefit of neophytes in the church of Matthew’s age, who needed to understand the meaning of the saying.  It isn’t the food entering the body that defiles it, says Jesus, but the talk coming out of it.

As from the very beginning of the Gospel, we are reminded that religion is a matter of the heart, not of observing rules and regulations.

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Matthew 15:21-28

JESUS AND A FOREIGNER

If we are bothered by Jesus’ tendency at this stage to define his mission in terms of Israel and not of the entire world, we must remember that Matthew’s Gospel was written from a Jewish perspective to emphasize how Jesus had first fulfilled the prophecies regarding a Messiah for Israel.  But this story very self-consciously represents Jesus as bringing benefits to the Gentile world as well.

The woman, a Canaanite or non-Jew, accentuates the Jewishness of Jesus by calling him Son of David, a Messianic title.  The disciples’ irritation with her—“Send her away,” they demand of Jesus—is probably increased by the racial prejudice they instinctively feel.  And even Jesus appears to refer to her with a racial epithet; the Jews referred to foreigners as “dogs”.

But the woman is insistent, and she asks for so little—only the crumbs that fall from the table.  It is a gentle imploring that the woman makes on behalf of her daughter.

Jesus, always compassionate, cannot resist.  He grants her request, even though his first mission is to the Israelites.  The Gentile world begins in a small way to benefit from the coming of the Jewish Messiah!

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Matthew 15:29-16:12

WORRYING ABOUT BREAD

Again the story of the crowds and Jesus’ compassion on them.  Again the hesitance of the disciples—“Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” (15:33).  Again the blessing of what there was and the feeding with abundance in the wilderness.  And again the nagging question of the Pharisees, “Show us a sign,” with the cryptic answer that they were to have only the sign of the prophet Jonah.

“Beware,” says Jesus, “of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (16:6).  Yeast was often used by rabbis as a symbol of evil and how quickly it permeates everything.  But the poor, dull disciples!  They hear the word yeast and realize in an instant that they have failed to bring any bread with them, though so many basketfuls were left over from the feeding of the four thousand.  “He has caught us unprepared,” they think.

“Don’t you understand?” Jesus says.  “I was speaking of the evil influence of the Pharisees and Sadducees, not of real bread.”

It is interesting that in the parallel passage in Mark 8:11-21, it is the bread and not the yeast that lies at the center of Jesus’ meaning.  Here, Matthew is concerned to point up the continuing conflict between Jesus and his legalistic enemies.

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Matthew 16:13-20

 THE GREAT CONFESSION

Some scholars think this passage is an early attempt to bolster the papalauthority of Peter, while others insist that Peter’s confession is to be the real foundation of the church.  Regardless of what it says about Peter, this passage provides an important picture of Jesus.

 

Several times in the Gospel we have noted Jesus’ caution to people he has healed not to tell others about it.  The fact that he remains strangely unknown, despite the crowds that gather around him, is underlined by his questions, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (v. 13).

 

When he asks, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (vv.15-16).  It is a highly significant confession, registering what may have been only a slowly maturing conviction on the apostles’ part.  In the boat, they had recognized him as the Son of God (Matt. 14:33),  but we know that time sequences were often mixed up in the writing of the Gospels, and we suspect that the boat episode may actually have been a post-Resurrection narrative.  Matthew apparently construed Peter’s confession as the first major recognition by the disciples of the true scope of Jesus’ work and ministry.  He is not merely a wonderful teacher and worker of miracles; he is the long-promised Savior of the people!

 

Again Jesus counsels the disciples not to tell anyone who he really is, as though the secret must not yet be disclosed.  And from this time on he begins to prepare them for the event of the Passion week and beyond, which now loom palpably close.

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Matthew 16:21-28

 

LETING GO OF LIFE IN ORDER TO HAVE IT

From here on out, the shadow of the cross falls implacably across Matthew’s account of Jesus’ ministry.  And how quickly Peter falls from the sublimity of the new order to the fear and hesitance of  the old!  He has barely made the great confession that Jesus is the Messiah, when Jesus speaks of his impending death and Peter counters, “God forbid it, Lord!  This must never happen to you” (v. 22).  He can no more fit the two things together—Messiah and death—than the crowds of unbelievers could.  How can a figure of such power speak of dying a shameful death?

“Get behind me, Satin!” says Jesus, rebuking Peter as furiously as he had earlier congratulated him on his insight.  “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (v. 23).  Or, as the New English Bible translates it, “You think the thoughts of man and not of God.”

If the early church described in the book of Acts had taken a motto from the sayings of Jesus, as they faced a hostile world, this might well have been the one:  “The way you think is not God’s way but man’s.”  They no longer thought in the usual terms of cost, probability of success, and failure.  They were like a people on fire for God, turning the world upside down, because everything seemed possible to them under God.

The secret, as Jesus explained to the disciples, is not to worry about self.  It is in trying to grasp life that we lose everything; it is in living recklessly for God that we find everything!

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Matthew 17:1-13

 

A FORETASTE OF THE NEW ORDER

This passage is especially striking in the light of Matthew’s theme that Jesus is the new Moses.  The event apparently occurred during the Feast of Tabernacles, as Peter wanted to erect booths or tents for the three figures.  The emphasis of Jewish thinking during this time was on the new age of the Messiah.  The ascent of the mountain, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, and the cloud representing the holy presence of God are all in keeping with this emphasis.

Jesus’ face shines as Moses’ did when he descended from Mount Sinai.  The voice from the cloud, however, the same voice heard at Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3:17, announces that this is one greater than either Moses, who represents the law, or Elijah, who represents the prophets.  It is the beloved Son, which in Jewish thought is the closest identity a human being could have to God.

The presence of Elijah among the transfigured ones leads naturally to the disciples’ questions about the popular notion that he must return to experience death before the age of the Messiah.  Jesus indicates that the people of the age have already had their Elijah—John the Baptist—but failed to recognize him.  And the reference to John is occasion for Jesus’ reference to his own sufferings, which will be in dramatic contrast to the glory he has just shared in the Transfiguration scene.

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 Matthew 24:15-31

A TIME OF CONFUSION

It would take far more space than we have here to begin to untangle the references of these verses, some of which are to the destruction of Jerusalem and some to the end of the age.  The “desolating sacrilege” of verse 15 is clearly a reference to Daniel 9:27; 11:31; and 12:11, where the prophet reflected on the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, who erected an altar to Zeus there and sacrificed swine on it.  Apparently Jesus is warning the believers to flee the city when a foreign ruler does this again, for it is a sign of the collapse of all things.

In a time of such confusion, there will naturally arise many false messiahs who will assume, because they too can see the signs of the end, that they are God’s intended leaders.  Even some of the chosen community will be deceived by them.  “But don’t listen to them,” says Jesus, in effect.  “Remember what I have told you.  When the Son of Man appears again, it will not be in a corner, in some limited way; he will be seen from east to west, like the lightning.”

As for verse 28, it is apparently a proverb, applying to the appearance of false messiahs, who like vultures, will gather over the body of civilization.

The whole universe is seen to collapse in the terrible Day of the Lord.  But in the midst of the desolation will come the one who is to rule the new creation.  His angels will fly all over the heavens, gathering the chosen together.

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Matthew 24:32-51

MORE SAYINGS OF THE END

There are obvious signs of the collapse of all things, says Jesus. The intelligent person learns to read such signs, the way he or she knows that when the fig tree puts out its leaves summer is near.  But there is no way of knowing the exact time, so it is important to continue working and living as one normally does.

We know from Paul’s writings that some Christians, expecting the imminent end of the world, simply quit working.  Foreseeing this possibility, Jesus gave the parable of the servant who, when his master suddenly appears, is faithfully setting food before the other servants.  The servant who says that because the master has been gone so long he will surely not arrive today, and therefore neglects his duties, will be punished along with the hypocrites—and we remember that the formula for the seven woes of chapter 23 was “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”

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Matthew 25:1-13

THE JOY OF READINESS

It is possible that this parable is not about the return of Christ at all, but about the coming of God’s realm to the Jews.  If this is so, then Israel was the bride of the story, and the ancient manuscripts that add “and the bride” at the end of verse 1 may be correct.

The custom was for maidens to attend the bride, not the bridegroom, and then to accompany the two as the groom took the bride from her parents’ house to his.  If Israel was the apparent bride, then the maidens were the religious leaders responsible for seeing her delivered to Messiah.  Some of them, because of the hard intertestamental period and the delay of the Messiah’s appearance, had turned their thoughts to other things and simply were not prepared for the realm of God when Jesus came among them with his message.

Verse 13 may have been at some point a textual addition, though not an unworthy one, for the theme of watchfulness is always applicable in spiritual matters.

Most of us today are accused by a passage like this of not being properly mindful of Christ’s return and the consummation of all things.  After centuries of waiting, we have allowed our spirit of watchfulness to die like an unattended campfire.  As much as we hate to admit it, we should probably see ourselves in the careless attendants.

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Matthew 25:14-30

MISJUDGING THE MASTER

Once more we have a parable subject to two interpretations.  Jesus very possibly told it with the Jewish religious leaders in mind; the scribes and Pharisees were the one-talent servants who had been mere guardians of what had been given them in the law.  But Matthew’s placement indicates that the early church saw in the parable a challenge to faithful living in its own time, and indeed in that sense it is timeless.

The servant’s error was his misreading of the master’s nature.  He had seen only half of that nature—the tendency of the master to be a zealous farmer, gathering in hay and grain even in places where it sprang up wild and had not been cultivated.  He mistook this for miserliness, when in reality it indicated imagination, risk, and resourcefulness.

This certainly would have applied to the legalistic religious leaders of Jesus’ day.  They looked upon the religion God had given as something to be carefully guarded and restricted—hence their impossibly elaborated system of  rules and taboos.  They had completely overlooked the real dynamic of Judaism, which was able to produce John the Baptist, Jesus and, of course, Christianity itself.

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Matthew 25:31-46

THE CENTRALITY OF THE “LITTLE ONES”

Few passages in Matthew’s gospel are more moving than this one.  It represents the culmination of centuries of longing for justice; when justice is done, it is seen not in terms of mere legalistic righteousness, such as the scribes and Pharisees were interested in, but of care for all of God’s little ones.

We tend, after centuries of habit, to read the saying as applicable to some distant future.  But when the disciples first heard it, it was surely clear to them that the goats of the parable were the scribes and Pharisees, the strictly observant Jews, who had to put heavy  burdens on the common people and had not really cared about their salvation (compare Matt. 23:4).  The sheep, on the other hand, were the little ones of the heavenly realm.  The Messiah-king identified with the little ones, and thus brought judgment on the others.

There is no sharper warning to religious people in any generation then this parable, for it reminds us of our perennial tendencies to regard the poor, the unattractive, and the powerless as outsiders in the human community.  Such an attitude always carries its own judgment in God’s created order.