“According
to Matthew”
A study of the Gospel of
Matthew
Part 16: Traditions,
Dogs and Bread.
Matthew
paints for us a picture of Jesus as the Servant-king, the promised
Messiah of Israel, the Son of God. His kingdom is not to be
understood as an earthly domain but as a way of being that depends
upon faith in God. Whilst this kingdom is governed by rules, the
rules are not what you'd expect. The price of belonging to this
kingdom is high.
King
Jesus (whom our confessions call 'Lord') asks all, challenging His
followers to abandon everything to the rule of His love, even those
things that we hold most dear, even to the point of being prepared to
take up a cross and carry it for His sake. Yet in return His promises
outweigh His demands. 'My yoke is easy' He declares. In His service
and in our abandonment to His will we are promised blessing and
fulfillment.
The
disciples have witnessed marvelous things, signs of 'exousia' the
'freedom giving power of Christ'. They have witnessed healing,
exorcisms, forgiveness of sins, the stilling of storms, signs and
wonders.
At the
same time opposition is developing, particularly among those who hold
the keys of power, both religious and secular. He challenges their
authority, He treads on their toes and they don't like it. Chapters
12 through 14 show us how the resistance to Jesus was developing. In
chapters 15 through 17 we see something of a theological turning
point in Matthews account of Jesus and His ministry.
Jesus
message was rejected in the sense that people refused to commit
themselves to it. It was not always the case that they strongly
disagreed with it, or that they didn't understand it, they simply
didn't act upon it. From here on in Matthew's gospel Jesus speaks
more about the Cross and less about the kingdom. He lays out the way
of life to be adopted by those who professed faith in Him.
Chapters
15 thru 17 also give us some puzzling scenarios. Why does Jesus call
a foreign woman a dog? What exactly is the cross that disciples are
called to bear? What did He mean by keys to his kingdom? These and
other questions are all in the next three chapters.
Chapter
15 is, in many way, a recapping and a consolidation of what has gone
before. It reiterates some of the principles of the kingdom we have
already seen and talks much about faith as the necessary ingredient
to be a citizen on Christ's new community. Chapter 15 offers us four
sections; Tradition, Cleanliness, Faith, and the Feeding of the 4000.
Let's look at the first of these;
Tradition
NIV
Matthew
15:1-9 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from
Jerusalem and asked,
"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They
don't wash their hands before they eat!" Jesus replied, "And
why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?
For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses
their father or mother is to be put to death.' But you say that if
anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father
or mother is 'devoted to God,' they are not to 'honor their father or
mother' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of
your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied
about you: "'These people honor me with their lips, but their
hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are
merely human rules. '"
Traditions can be
valuable things. Traditions can be like the stepping stones in a
river that help us navigate a strongly flowing stream. Yet they can
also be a snare that prevents us from experiencing new insights and
fresh understandings. In the confrontation Jesus has with Pharisees
and Teachers of the law, He points to something deeper than
tradition, namely the attitude of the heart towards the rules and
guidelines that religion offers to us. He chastises them for
observing traditions that were insignificant whilst ignoring those
that truly mattered.
They come to Him
with something that they thought really mattered. Washing your hands
before you eat. Now bear in mind, that for the lofty Pharisees and
teachers, this had nothing to do with hygiene, but was a ceremonial
act of piety. It was a way of indicating their separation from the
common folk.
I recall seeing a
skit on British Television (though I do not recall exactly what the
show was) that had a character in it sitting at a table and
announcing to the waiter “Good morning, I'm Mr. “Talk loudly in
Restaurants so that everybody knows I'm important.” Ceremonially
washing hands was akin to saying grace in a loud voice in a public
place so that everybody else knew that you were a person of
significance. It was an act of self-promotion, rather than one
designed to honor God.
Hand washing was not
in fact part of the biblical regulations concerning ritual
cleanliness. Priests were instructed in Exodus 30:17-21 to wash their
hands and feet before ministering in the tabernacle, but that didn't
apply to everyday eating. The tradition was one that had arisen only
among the Pharisees.
However taking care
of parents was commanded. “Honor thy Father and mother” was one
of the 10 commandments. But the Pharisees were finding a way around
it by declaring that their lives were 'devoted to God' and that they
had made vows to serve God and God alone, and that this took
precedence over the need to take care of their parents. Again this
idea of vows making commandments meaningless was not something that
had come from scripture but from the traditions of the Pharisees.
They were more concerned with their traditions than the plain
teaching of scripture.
William
Barclay comments “Here
is the clash and the collision; here is the contest between two kinds
of religion and two kinds of worship. To the Scribes and Pharisees
religion was the observance of certain outward rules and regulations
and rituals, such as the correct way to wash hands before eating; it
was the strict observance of a legalistic outlook on all life. To
Jesus religion was a thing which had its seat in the heart; it was a
thing which issued in compassion and kindness, which are above and
beyond the law.”
Christian faith can
easily degenerate into something that it was never meant to be if
legalism is allowed to take the upper hand. Whilst there are expected
ways of behaving and we have accumulated over the centuries certain
ways of doing things, we should never presume that just because
'that's the way we have always done it' that settles the issue. The
ideals of love and acceptance of those who differ from us, the notion
that we most honor God by honoring one another, needs to be over and
above all rule keeping and observance of traditions. Particularly
those traditions that have more to do with human regulation than
scriptural counsel.
For instance we
worship at 10:00 on a Sunday morning. We do so using an order of
worship that is informed by centuries of theological insight and
practice. We sing in a certain way using particular forms of music.
We have our ways of standing and sitting, of coming in and going out.
We have our annual calendar of events. And none of it is bad. But
neither is it scriptural. These are our traditions, and they prove to
be a wonderful guide, great stepping stones to lead us forward. But
there are occasions when we may choose to do things in a different
way, particularly if we do so to include others in our celebrations
or to widen our ministry.
Maybe
it's a case of not letting our preconceptions be a straight jacket
that lead us to practices that become more of a help than a
hindrance. I had a dear friend in Baldwin, NY, George Kappelmann,
who
loved to to reflect and write poems. While doing a similar study to
this he once shared one with me, that fits well with this passage. He
titled it 'Ideology'.
Ideology
(by George Kappelmann - Jan 2010)
'A
mind that to an ideology bound
Can
be virtually blind.
Decisions
made without wisdom
Or
factual considerations
Merely
to conform
To
pre-conceptions
Often
problems accentuate
Rather
than solutions make'
The
Pharisees and teachers of the law were allowing their ideology to
dictate their theology, rather than allowing the scriptures to be the
guide by which they formed their priorities. Having had this
confrontation that touched upon ritual and
cleanliness,
it seems to have raised some questions in the minds of the folk who
were listening in. Jesus uses the occasion to re-emphasize some of
the teaching He had given in the sermon on the mount, again about
religion being a matter of the heart. Read 10-21
Cleanliness
Jesus
called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. What
goes into someone's mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of
their mouth, that is what defiles them." Then the disciples
came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were
offended when they heard this?" He replied, "Every plant
that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the
roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the
blind, both will fall into a pit." Peter said, "Explain the
parable to us." "Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked
them. "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into
the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out
of a person's mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For
out of the heart come evil thoughts--murder, adultery, sexual
immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a
person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them."
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
In the sermon on the
mount Jesus speaks of external sinful actions such as murder,
adultery, taking and breaking vows, unforgiving attitudes, wrong ways
of praying and fasting and all kinds of anxiety as being rooted in
the attitudes of the heart. Only an attitude of gratitude placed a
person in the right latitude of love.
Here
He talks of how it's not what goes into our mouths that should
concern us, but what comes out of them. Elsewhere in Scripture the
Book of James asks the question 'Who
can control the tongue?”
and points out the dangers that the misuse of words can bring upon
us. Ironically the disciples are concerned that what has come out of
the mouth of Jesus has upset the Pharisees. 'Don't you know you
offended them?' they ask Him.
People sometimes
talk about the uncomfortable truth. Jesus had certainly confronted
the Pharisees with His words. Yet being confronted by the truth was
not a negative thing, but on the contrary a necessary thing. I think
it's a danger that every person who stands up in a pulpit faces that
there always is a temptation to never say anything that may offend
somebody, or never deal with passages that make us uncomfortable.
Fact is that sometimes we need to be offended by the word of God when
it confronts an uncomfortable reality about who we really are or
challenges our true motives.
Because
that's what the new covenant is about. Attitudes of the heart. If you
can change a person inside then everything else changes along with
it. If you can change a persons motivation and focus then they become
'new'. One could almost describe such a change as being 'born again'
as John does in his gospel. 'For
out of the heart come evil thoughts--murder, adultery, sexual
immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. ' Jesus
connects wrong actions with wrong attitudes.
In
the Old Testament the prophet Ezekial anticipates a new covenant
relationship with God that would come to the people. 19
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I
will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of
flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my
laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
(Ezekial
11:19-20 NIV).
Such
is the kind of relationship that Paul, in the New Testament, would
later explain that the coming of Jesus, and the sending of His Holy
Spirit made possible in the life of a person who trusted in Jesus
Christ. In 2 Corinthians he writes;
'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The
old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled
us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of
reconciliation:
(2Co
5:17-18 NIV)
The Pharisees?
“Well,” Jesus says about them, “Let the blind lead lead the
blind”. They were comfortable in their misconceptions and only
wanted to get rid of Him. They desired only His downfall. The
possibility, in their minds, that they might need to change, was
beyond what they could handle. Their roots were in the wrong place.
Their rules and regulations had little to do with God, but a whole
lot to do with making them feel better about themselves. As long as
they could dot the i's and cross the t's of their self-made laws they
would continue to feel pretty pleased about themselves. And with such
self-assurance it never occurred to them that they may be the ones in
need of change.
Self satisfaction
has a habit of doing that to us. We become convinced that everybody
else needs to change, that the world would be a better place if
everybody came around to embrace our minority opinion. And far from
ever considering that we may be the ones in the wrong and not seeing
the whole picture, we just become even more self righteous. 'Be
careful' Jesus warns us. “Check the motivations of your heart.
Don't seek only outward conformity, seek to be renewed from the
inside out”.
Jesus now departs
and heads into Gentile territory where He will encounter a Canaanite
woman with a daughter in need of help, something that at first, Jesus
seems reluctant to respond to. Read 22 – 28.
Faith
A
Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord,
Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and
suffering terribly." Jesus did not answer a word. So his
disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she
keeps crying out after us." He answered, "I was sent only
to the lost sheep of Israel." The woman came and knelt before
him. "Lord, help me!" she said. He replied, "It is
not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs."
"Yes it is, Lord," she said. "Even the dogs eat the
crumbs that fall from their master's table." Then Jesus said to
her, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted."
And her daughter was healed at that moment.
This is one of those
passages where at first glance it seems Jesus is the one being taught
a lesson rather than being the one with the answers.
One commentary
describes the Canannite woman as an aggressive single parent who
defies cultural taboos and acts to free Jesus from His sexism and
racism. Catching Him in a bad mood and with His compassion down, she
beats Him in an argument and so becomes the vehicle for His
liberation and the deliverance of her daughter.
That's
certainly one way of looking at it. But maybe we would be better
served by going back to one of Matthew's constant themes, namely that
of faith. In the previous passage Jesus has described Peter's faith
as being dull. In Verse 15 -16 'Peter
said, "Explain the parable to us." "Are you still so
dull?" Jesus asked them. ' The
highpoint of this passage comes in verse 28 'Then
Jesus said to her, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is
granted." And her daughter was healed at that moment.
'
And far from being
'dull' the Canaanite woman seems intelligent, humorous and
enlightened. She calls Jesus, 'Lord of David.' When the disciples
seek to send her away she kneels before Jesus in an act of
submission. When Jesus frames His ministry in terms that exclude her,
and could even be seen as insulting, she plays with the words and
talks about crumbs!
We
should also remember that at this stage of the ministry of Jesus His
mission truly is to the lost sheep of Israel. It is only later in the
Book of Acts that the statement of Christianity being a religion that
was to spread from 'Jerusalem,
to Samaria and to the ends of the earth'
comes into play. Yet, that being said, throughout his gospel, Matthew
keeps throwing in the idea (and after all we should not forget how
radical such an idea would be to a Jewish audience) that the Messiah
had come for all peoples.
We saw Him welcomed
by wise men from afar. We saw the healing of a Roman Centurions
servant and Jesus declaring that the roman soldiers faith went beyond
that of any person He had seen in Israel. And now here He is, telling
His disciples their faith had become dull and lifting up the faith of
a gentile woman as exemplary.
Jesus
stating He was 'being
sent to the lost sheep of Israel' appears
to be a statement of His purpose rather than a refusal to help. When
faced with the woman's request it almost seems that He is trying to
tease out of her exactly the response that she offers. “Look” He
seems to ask, “You know I'm on a particular mission here, why
should I abandon my guidelines and do something that's outside the
box?” And the woman, almost playfully, suggests that not
everything happens inside the box and that for all the world to be in
glorious technicolor, sometimes you have to color outside the lines.
In
response to the image Jesus offers of a 'dog'
and of 'bread'
she uses images of 'master'
and speaks of 'crumbs
that fall from the table'.
In many ways this passage is setting us up (and maybe the disciples
to) for what is to come next, which is the feeding of the four
thousand, a miracle that takes place in the lands of the Gentiles
rather than the previous miracle of the 5000 which was rooted firmly
in Jewish territory.
It could be that
this discourse between the woman and Jesus is more for the disciples
benefit (and those who would read it as members of the earliest,
predominately Jewish church) than it is for the woman herself.
However we interpret it, the outcome remains the same. Through faith
in Jesus a woman's daughter finds healing. And in the process we are
reminded that nobody is beyond the reach of the compassion of Jesus,
even those we may consider beyond His touch!
And
so our final passage, the
feeding of the 4000,
verses 29 thru 39.
Jesus
left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a
mountainside and sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing the
lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid
them at his feet; and he healed them. The people were amazed when
they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking
and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. Jesus
called his disciples to him and said, "I have compassion for
these people; they have already been with me three days and have
nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may
collapse on the way." His disciples answered, "Where could
we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?"
"How many loaves do you have?" Jesus asked. "Seven,"
they replied, "and a few small fish." He told the crowd to
sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves and the fish,
and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the
disciples, and they in turn to the people. They all ate and were
satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of
broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was
four thousand men, besides women and children. After Jesus had sent
the crowd away, he got into the boat and went to the vicinity of
Magadan. (Mat
15:1-39 NIV)
As we noted earlier the significance of the feeding of the 4000 is
that we are here in Gentile territory. William Barclay locates this
feeding as being at the center of 'the Decapolis'; a federation of 10
Gentile cities.
He
also picks up on the fact the word used for baskets is in this
passage is 'sphuris'
as
opposed to that of 'kophinoi',
the word used for basket in the feeding of the 5000. He comments;
'The
kophinos
was a narrow-necked, flask shaped basket which Jews often carried
with them, for a Jew often carried his own food, lest he should be
compelled to eat food which had been touched by Gentile hands and was
therefore unclean. The sphuris
was much more like a hamper; it could be big enough to carry a man,
and it was the kind of basket that a Gentile would use'
In
a chapter that begins with a debate about ritual cleanliness it is
fascinating to see how it closes with a reference to the kind of
baskets that could lay Jews open to the charge of being ritually
unclean. Such is part of the genius of Matthew, the way themes keep
re-appearing in unexpected ways! That we are in Gentile territory is
also restated in verse 31 where we read that 'The
people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made
well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God
of Israel.'
Some commentators
draw attention to the fact that when Matthew uses numbers there is
always something more going on than just mathematics. Numbers are
used as symbols rather than representing actual figures.
The
number 5 was thought to represent grace. The number 10 to represent
perfection or completion. So in the feeding of the 5000 the grace of
God to complete the mission of Israel was symbolized.
The
number 7 was thought to represent the completion of God's work (as in
the 7 days of creation). The number 4 was thought to be associated
with God's creative work. So in the feeding of the 4000 by 7 loaves
Matthew is indicating that following the mission to the Jews, the
mission 'To
Samaria and all the ends of the earth'
would take place.
All of which is a
roundabout way of saying that there are things we may never
understand about the way Matthew wrote his gospel and that if we read
to many commentaries we may end up with more questions than answers.
But I find it all fascinating stuff nonetheless! And it does
reinforce the idea that one of Matthew's aims was to tell his Jewish
readership that the kingdom of God would be something more than they
ever had dreamed of.
William Barclay
mentions in his commentary how in three significant stages of His
ministry Jesus ends each stage by setting a meal before people.
“First
there was the feeding of the 5000; that came at the end of His
ministry in Galilee, for Jesus was never to teach and preach and heal
in Galilee again. Second there was this feeding of the 4000. This
came at the end of His brief ministry to the Gentiles, beyond the
bounds of Palestine – first in the districts of Tyre and Sidon and
then in the Decapolis. Third and last, there was the Last Supper in
Jerusalem, when Jesus came to the final stage of the days of His
flesh.
… Jesus
always left people with strength for the way; always He gathered
people to Him to feed them with living bread. Always He gave Himself
before He moved on. And still He comes to us offering us also the
bread which will satisfy the immortal hunger of the human soul, and
in the strength of which we shall be able to go all the days of our
life.”
In chapters 16 and
17 we will reach some turning points in the gospel according to
Matthew. We will hear less about the Kingdom, more about the Cross.
We shall hear some clear statements about the life and purpose of
Christ's life through both mountain top experiences and disciples
declarations.