MATTHEW REFLECTION - Week 7
Did anyone else feel like this was a different side to Jesus that we saw this week?
The gospel of Matthew, thus far, has highlighted Jesus’ wisdom, love, compassion and leadership. Chapters 23 and 24 take a real left turn in terms of tone and focus.
Seven times (or eight if your footnote suggests that some sources add one more) Jesus says “Woe to you!”
He calls the scribes and pharisees “blind fools”, “hypocrites” and, my personal favourite, “You snakes! You brood of vipers!”
This all from the same person who told us that “blessed are the meek”.
Then, there’s mention of the destruction of the temple, followed by signs of the end of the age; including “wars and rumours of wars”, “famines and earthquakes in various places”, torture, being put to death and being hated, and an “increase in lawlessness”.
Next, we hear about the coming of the Son of Man and how we need to be ready – not in an encouraging ‘look forward to this’ kind of way, but a ‘watch out and be on your guard’ way!
Finally, at the end of chapter 24, there is an illustration of a faithful and unfaithful slave, whose final warning is
“He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
So, what’s going on here? Why the change in mood?
Well, let’s start with the ‘woes’. This language is found elsewhere in the bible and tends to reflect a pronouncement of divine judgement. For Jesus to say such things should be taken very seriously. Some have said that this is an expression of Jesus’ righteous anger.
We can remember lessons from previous weeks, where the author of Matthew’s gospel has grouped sayings, parables and healings. We read this as one long tirade, but given what we’ve seen previously, it’s quite possible that this is a collection of warnings on a similar theme. So, it might not reflect as much anger as we perceive it as we read a whole chapter’s worth of ‘woes’, but the sentiment of each one came from the same place – Jesus was not happy with the hypocrisy of the religious leadership.
Lesson 1 this week, then, is be mindful of our own hypocrisy. Just before the woes, Jesus reminds us again of the importance of humility, and then proceeds to admonish those who were falsely humble or arrogant in their faith.
Matthew 23:23 particularly caught my eye,
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith”
The scribes and pharisees follow the laws around tithing to an extreme level – they were required to tithe oil, grain, fruit or animals, but they tithe even the tiniest of garden plants. But they are betrayed by their lack of action on ‘weightier’ things – justice, mercy and faith.
We must be careful to focus on the right things and not get caught up with appearances.
Next, let’s talk about the signs of the end of the age.
There are some people for whom the ‘end times’ are of great importance. We can get the impression, from reading the gospels, that because Jesus seemed to expect the end times imminently, that we should too. Others would argue that Jesus got it wrong, because we’re all still here thousands of years later. We’ve seen wars and rumours of wars, nations rising up against nations, famines and earthquakes, but nothing apocalyptic has happened.
I think there has been some confusion and conflation of ideas around the very end times (or the end of the world) and the end of an age. Matthew 24:34 says ‘Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.’ One interpretation of the word ‘generation’ in the New Testament is a period of around 40 years.
It can be seen that everything that Jesus mentions takes place within a 40 year period of his ministry. Let me recommend a sermon given by a friend who is the minister at Counterslip Baptist Church in South Bristol. He explains in detail, from Mark 13 (which is the original from which Matthew’s gospel would have copied) how these crazy sounding things became realities. You can listen by clicking here.
What we do know, historically, is that in 70AD, Roman forces, led by General Titus, sieged Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Not only does this fulfil what Jesus said, but also incorporates the event known as the ‘desolating sacrilege’, or the ‘abomination of desolation’ in the context, cited by the author, of the book of Daniel. (There are other examples which could be understood to be the abomination of desolation. You can listen to me explore some of that in a talk I gave a while back by clicking here.)
When Titus and co came and destroyed the temple, it is said that a Roman flag was raised in the temple, and Titus was proclaimed there as Imperator, or emperor/ruler. The temple, and all it represented, were desecrated by the Romans.
There is lots that could be said around some of this language, but I think there are probably two main takeaways for now.
Lesson 2- Jesus isn’t as crazy as he seems! Passages like these can be used to discredit Jesus, but with an understanding of history, we can see some of what happens next and how events play out just as Jesus spoke.
And lesson 3 – Don’t worry too much about things that are out of our control. Jesus says, in Matthew 24:
“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”.
The following passage about watchfulness emphasises that the point is that we don’t know. Energy spent trying to work out the when and how is energy wasted, and could be better put towards doing what we know we’re meant to be doing – starting with the examples mentioned earlier of justice, mercy and faith.
Matthew 24:46 says
“Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives.”
So that’s our calling – to get to work! God will sort out the rest.
Maybe this is a different side to Jesus that we see in chapters 23 and 24. But underneath it all, the messages remain the same.
Remain humble.
Learn to live like Jesus.