Tag: Gospel of Matthew

Red Letter Year: 5/30

Matthew 26:1-16

1 When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, 2 “As you know, Passover begins in two days, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”

3 At that same time the leading priests and elders were meeting at the residence of Caiaphas, the high priest, 4 plotting how to capture Jesus secretly and kill him. 5 “But not during the Passover celebration,” they agreed, “or the people may riot.”

6 Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy. 7 While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume and poured it over his head.

8 The disciples were indignant when they saw this. “What a waste!” they said. 9 “It could have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.”

10 But Jesus, aware of this, replied, “Why criticize this woman for doing such a good thing to me? 11 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me. 12 She has poured this perfume on me to prepare my body for burial. 13 I tell you the truth, wherever the Good News is preached throughout the world, this woman’s deed will be remembered and discussed.”

14 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, went to the leading priests 15 and asked, “How much will you pay me to betray Jesus to you?” And they gave him thirty pieces of silver. 16 From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.

Comments

This passage shows yet again Matthew’s genius in ordering and framing his Gospel account. He begins by quoting Jesus to show that for all that happens from this point forward, the crucifixion was Jesus’ deliberate choice. The religious leaders start plotting, and Judas moves to betray, after Jesus announces what is going to happen. Unlike in Mark, where Judas is offered money, Matthew has him ask for a reward, which heightens Judas’ betrayal. He is not tempted to betray by others, he actively seeks out an opportunity and a personal benefit.

Like shadows added to draw attention to a painting’s main features, the betrayal and  plotting together serve as a frame for what takes place at Simon the Leper’s house. Jesus is hanging out with the sort of people his last teaching just talked about – the least of these – and one such woman gives an extravagant gift to Jesus, pouring an entire bottle of expensive (Mark puts the value at a year’s wages) perfume on Jesus. This makes his disciples angry (and Matthew likely intends us to relate this to Judas’ decision to betray Jesus “then”) because, after all, Jesus has just told them how their eternal salvation hinges on care for the poor. This perfume could have funded a great deal of care for the poor. Jesus’ response, “you always have the poor with you,” has often been used (quite out of context) to rationalize not caring for those in need, but given what we read yesterday, such can only be regarded as a misuse of Scripture.

There are important lessons for us here. First, Jesus moves to protect the woman from the disciples’ angry critique of her actions. She didn’t need their permission or approval to do for Jesus what was on her heart to do. She most likely did not know she was anointing Jesus for his burial, Jesus gives that prophetic interpretation of her action. But this is how it happens with us many times, we feel strongly about doing some good thing, some act of service or worship (or both, more on that in a moment), and only later do we realize the significance of what we are doing, sometimes only after someone else has prophetically shown it to us. When you feel like God has given you something to do, you have prayed and thought about it and are willing (eager even) to commit a significant amount of personal resource to doing it, then you should go ahead and do it. Others may not understand, they may actively argue against you, but you should go ahead and pour that sweet perfume on Jesus’ head no matter what they think. Jesus will receive your act of worship and defend it and you just like he did for this dear woman.

Second, what Jesus said about always having the poor with us needs to be interpreted in the light of his identification with the poor in what we read yesterday. I don’t mean that his statement here should be given less weight and the other more weight, rather, what he says here accentuates what he said before. He told us yesterday in clear terms that what we do for the least of these we are doing for him. Now he is telling us that what this woman did in pouring out her life savings on his head was a good thing, and that while we can’t do this for him directly as she did, we always have people in need – the very people he equated himself with. So we too can pour out our love and our lives on people in need. We can give to them as extravagantly as this woman gave to Jesus and in so doing we pour our perfume on Jesus’ head too. This is her act of service and her act of worship. The same should be true for us as well. Serving those in need and worshipping God are inseparable.

Or we can live in the shadows where the plotting, griping, and betraying go on. But who wants that? Do what God puts on your heart to do. Worship Jesus and serve those in need in your own way with all that you have. And let all the plotters, gripers, and betrayers be no more than frames of your story of extravagant love for Jesus and people.

The New Living Translation (NLT)Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Red Letter Year: 5/29

Matthew 25:31-46

31 But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. 36 I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

37 Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

40 And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ 

41 Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. 42 For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. 43 I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

44 Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

45 And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ 46 And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

Comments

I have made the case that everything from chapter 23 on has been leading up to this, the last teaching in Matthew’s Gospel. Unlike the earlier parts of this chapter, this is not a parable. Jesus stops comparing the kingdom to something else and gives us a glimpse of the culmination of his kingdom. We will turn in a few weeks to Luke’s Gospel, where we will see a more consistent focus on this aspect of Jesus’ teaching, which leads some to regard Matthew’s account as more ‘spiritual’ and Luke’s as more ‘practical’ (e.g., the first Beatitude, Matthew: blessed are the poor in spirit, Luke: blessed are the poor). Luke does spread things out more evenly as we will see, but that was not Matthew’s project. As I said when we first began reading his account, Matthew was like the Quentin Tarantino of Gospel writers. Chronology rarely mattered for Matthew, the ordering is done in such a way to enhance the story and bring certain points across very forcefully. This is especially true of this passage, which Matthew gives the place of honor. Tomorrow we will read about Jesus’ arrest; this is the last public teaching Jesus gives in Matthew.

And what a teaching it is. This stands all our atonement theories and salvation by faith not works teachings on their heads. Before we move to defend our pet doctrines and disclaim what Jesus says here, let’s sit with it and let the text disclaim what we think we know. Jesus says very clearly in this passage that his final judgment of all people will be based solely on how they dealt with people who were in need of food, drink, clothes, shelter, care, and visiting. Do we feed the hungry? Do we hydrate the thirsty? Do we clothe the denuded? Do we offer hospitality to strangers? Do we care for the sick? Do we show solidarity with those in prison? Interestingly, the only things involved here are food and clothes. The rest involve presence, allowing strangers to be present with us, giving our presence to the sick and imprisoned. Jesus says there are only two types of people in the world: those who give such care and those who withhold it. The givers (and presumably the receivers, though this is not stated, I assume it since Jesus identifies with these people) enter the kingdom. The withholders are denied entry. No question here of what or who you believed in, what you confessed, what your theological or doctrinal positions were. None of it.

Any single passage can be taken alone and made too much of, but here we have an extended passage dealing with the end-of-the-world judgment, just the sort of apocalyptic discussion the religious leaders and disciples were so eager to have. Jesus told them all no, told them to stop looking for signs, even things that look like signs. Jesus told them to wait, then he told them to work diligently, and now he finally tells them what to work diligently at: caring for those in need, for the disenfranchised, for the poor, for those who are otherwise grist in the mill of human society, for the least of these, for the ones Jesus personally identifies with. If we are to be like the servants who doubled the resources they had been entrusted with, then we will need to work very hard and use all our creativity to care for those in need.

The obsession with the apocalyptic has not subsided, if anything it has grown stronger. Jesus said no to all that, not because he had no vision of the end (as he shows us here) but because he understood that obsession is debilitating, it leads to inaction. It leads churches to focus only on people’s souls and not on their bodies. It leads people to think, “that’s just the way it is, some things will never change” in a variety of contexts where standing up to injustice is hard and requires a commitment to nonviolent resistance. It leads to pastors saying care for the earth doesn’t matter because it is just going to burn anyway. But care for the earth does matter, because when we abuse the earth we cause direct suffering to those who live closest to the earth, some of the same people Jesus identifies with here.

What hopefully becomes apparent to us is that followers of Jesus who take the Sermon on the Mount seriously, who endeavor to become the sort of disciples Matthew’s Gospel calls us to be, are exactly the sort of people who care for those in need as a first priority. Those who regard such as superfluous or a nice side hobby have not yet been adequately formed as disciples of Jesus.

The New Living Translation (NLT)Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.