Out of the Mouths of Infants

The following is one of the lessons for the first week of Lent from the small group study we are doing at our church entitled Christ in the Psalms. You can purchase the entire study for 99 cents on Amazon.com at this link.

Read Matthew 21:12-17

            It would be difficult to overstate just how important the temple was in first century Judaism; both practically and symbolically. It was the place of sacrifice, forgiveness, a house of prayer, the central place of worship for every faithful Jew, and a symbol of the presence of God with his people. But it wasn’t just a religious building. It was also connected to Israel’s kings, a place tied to God anointed authority. Its history went all the way back to the great King David who had first asked if he could build a house for God. The first temple was built by David’s son, King Solomon. The temple in which Jesus stood in this passage was built by King Herod the Great as a symbol of his power.

            So when Jesus, a peasant from Galilee, enters the temple and starts turning over tables and driving people out, the religious leaders naturally want to know who he thinks he is and why he has the authority to behave this way. Likewise, when the children in the temple start shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” thereby speaking of Jesus as a messianic deliverer in the line of King David, the chief priests and scribes become indignant and ask Jesus if they hear what the children are saying. The implication is that if Jesus had heard the words of these children, he would silence them immediately to prevent them from making such a blasphemous claim about him.

            Instead, Jesus quotes Psalm 8:3.[1] The remarkable thing about this is that Psalm 8 was addressed to God. The praise from the mouths of infants and babies was to be for Yahweh alone and Jesus now says it is appropriate for that same praise to be directed toward him. Rather than rebuking the children for hailing him as the Davidic messiah, Jesus has actually upped the ante. He has essentially said that it is not only right for them to call him “Son of David” but even to praise him as they would praise God. Just as the Psalmist marveled at the wonders of the heavens and praised God for it, these children have seen the wonderful things that Jesus has done (v.14-15) and sing his praises for it.

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[1] You might have noticed that what Jesus quotes is a little different than what you read yesterday. Most translations of Ps 8:3 say that God established “strength” out of the mouths of babies and infants whereas Jesus says “you have prepared praise.” This is because most translations of the Psalm follow the Hebrew version of the Psalm whereas Jesus’ quote in Matthew comes from the LXX (Septuagint), the Greek version of the Old Testament. Since the NT authors wrote in Greek rather than Hebrew, it was very common for them to quote from the LXX rather than the Hebrew text. 

King of the Least

Matthew 25:31-46 fascinates me for a couple of reasons.  One of those reasons is that in this scene of final judgment where Jesus describes himself separating the sheep from the goats, that is, those who will inherit his kingdom from those who will not, there is no mention of faith in Christ.  So often when we talk about final judgment, heaven and hell, etc., the first criteria that is mentioned is believing in Jesus as the Christ, trusting in Christ for our salvation.  But in this passage, faith, trust, and belief (which are all really the same word in Greek, pistis) are never mentioned.  Instead, the separating is done based on how the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned were treated.  No other criteria is brought to bear in this judgment.  In this passage, it is solely a matter of how those being judged treated "the least of these".

I'm not suggesting that salvation is really earned by our works after all or that we should throw the language of faith, trust, and belief out of our theological vocabulary simply because it is not used in this passage.  But I do think it is more than noteworthy that Jesus is able to talk about the final judgment without using those terms; something most evangelical Christians seem incapable of doing.  I am suggesting that a passage like this one should cause us to pause and reconsider what we mean when use words like faith, belief, and trust.

Even though the word faith (pistis) is not used in this passage, I think Jesus' (and Matthew's) audience still would have recognized pistis in the examples of compassion that Jesus mentions.  That's because pistis not only means faith but also faithfulness.  One is the other.  There was no need for two separate words because they are not two separate things.  Faith is faithfulness.  To really believe something is to live like it.  To place our trust in Jesus is to live like Jesus lived and if we are not living like Jesus then we do not really have faith in him, regardless of what we think about the inner life of our minds and hearts.  To think, as we often seem to in the Church, that "believing" (by which we usually mean something having to do only with thoughts and attitudes) is the critical element to being Christian while serving the least of these is just an optional add on for really saintly people is to divide in two something that is really one.  It is to misunderstand what the New Testament writers mean by the word "faith".

The other aspect of this passage that fascinates me is the equation of Christ the King with the least of these.  It is Christ who says "I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger....".  The righteous are surprised by this, saying "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink...?".  And Jesus says "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the lease of these my brothers, you did it to me."  What we do (or don't do) for the least of these is what we do for Christ.  I often feel that if I could get this single idea through my thick head and dull heart, I would live very differently.  If I could only see Christ in each person I encounter, no matter how much they frustrate me or hurt me, regardless of their appearance or need, it would make all the difference in the way I relate to people.  If in every conversation and interaction I could stay grounded in the reality that the person before me is an image of God...

Mother Theresa, who knew something about living this passage, said "When you touch the poor, you touch Christ.  When you are touched by the poor, you are touched by Christ."  Do you really long to know Christ?  Spend time with the hungry, sick, immigrant, and imprisoned and Christ has promised we will find him there.

Blessed Possibilities

Matthew tells us in chapter 5 of his gospel concerning Jesus "Seeing the crowds, he went up on a mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.  And he opened his mouth and taught them...."  This begins what is often referred to as The Sermon on the Mount.  It is in this sermon that we hear Jesus repeatedly say "You have heard that it was said....but I say to you..."; again and again Jesus references a command of Jewish law only to add to it an even more strict command.  "Don't murder?  Of course! But don't be angry either.  Don't commit adultery?  Don't even lust!"  Scholars tell us that Matthew's portrayal of Jesus ascending a mountain and speaking a new law is meant to remind us of Moses who ascended Mt. Sinai and received the Law from God.  Matthew is using the example of Moses to help us understand who Jesus is.  Jesus is the new lawgiver, or more precisely, Jesus is the lawgiver he has always been because he is the God who gave the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai who has now taken on human flesh.  He is the one who will "fulfill" the law as he says in v. 17.

But Jesus "fulfilling" of the law seems to take it to a level that is impossible to keep.  Not only does Jesus command us not to be angry and lustful.  He also says "that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery".  And later he says "You have heard that it was said 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'  But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.  But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well."  Jesus then sums up this new commands by saying "You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect."

Jesus can't be serious about this, can he?  Divorce and re-marriage is adultery?  Don't resist evil and violent people?  Be perfect?  Surely Jesus realizes that he is asking the impossible, right?

I actually think Jesus does realize the impossibility of what he is commanding in these verses... though probably not in the way we might expect.  Objections to the idea of living out the Sermon on the Mount almost always stem from the impractically of such a life.  "Lust and anger are just part of being human. How can two people who are miserable stay together?  Doesn't Jesus know what would happen if we didn't fight back against evil people?  That's just not how the world works!"  And so Jesus is written off as an idealistic dreamer (or in significant portions of the Christian tradition as the giver of the impossible law which drives us to his mercy).

I think Jesus knew quite well that his words in the Sermon on the Mount didn't describe the way the world works.  In fact, I think he knew it so well that he knew the workings of the world would result in his own crucifixion.  In the world as it stands, the commands Jesus gives would indeed be impossible which is why I believe Jesus is doing more in the Sermon on the Mount than giving a "new law".  Jesus is announcing a new world.  

I believe that is what Jesus is doing in the verses commonly called the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-11).  We often approach these verses as if they are law as well.  We interpret them to mean that if we want to be blessed then we must be poor in spirit, mourning, meek, merciful, pure in heart peacemakers who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  So we make the Beatitudes a list of Christian virtues.  But these verses are not imperative.  They are indicative.  Jesus is not commanding anything.  He is proclaiming.

In fact, Jesus is proclaiming in these verses things that seem to be contrary to reality.  Those who mourn are blessed?  The poor, the meek, and merciful are blessed?  It seems those are precisely the kind of people who aren't blessed in our world; the kind of people who are constantly taken advantage of.  And again, that's precisely the point!  Jesus isn't describing the way the world works.  Jesus is describing how his renewed world will work.  Jesus isn't describing the kingdoms of the world.  He is proclaiming his own kingdom; a kingdom that turns power and influence upside down, a kingdom where those who mourn will be comforted and those who are merciful will be shown mercy.  This is not command.  It is promise.  The beatitudes are Jesus' promise that the world will not always be as it is now; that might will not always make right, that the weak will not always be mistreated but that one day Jesus will rule over a kingdom marked by genuine justice and peace, a kingdom where the not-so-blessed of this world will be blessed.

But in the meantime, in this time between the times, in the tension of the "Blessed are...for they will be...", Jesus calls upon us to to be a community where the impossibility of the Sermon on the Mount becomes a reality.  Not because we are especially moral people who try harder.  Not because we've discovered that Jesus' commands are really practical after all.  But because of the resurrection.  Because the one who gives this law is also the one who accomplishes our Exodus.  Because in the raising of Jesus from the dead, God has said "Behold, I am making all things new."  Because the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is able to make us new as well.  Because we believe there is a kingdom that is coming that doesn't play by the world's rules and that kingdom is already being made a reality in us.  Because we are by virtue of what we will be.

Rejects Turned Gatekeepers

"There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower..."  

"Ah yes,  Isaiah 5."  thought the religious leaders to themselves.  "We know it well.  Israel is God's vineyard; a vineyard in which God has invested heavily, giving it every chance for success.  God has provided Israel with Torah, a land to live in, and the Temple to nurture its growth much as a vineyard owner might invest in his vineyard."

"...and leased it to tenants and went into another country."  

"Finally, Jesus is recognizing our authority a little bit.  We are those tenants.  God has entrusted his vineyard to us and we are caring for it by making sure radicals like this Jesus don't come in a destroy the harvest which God intends to reap and which we have worked so hard to protect."

"When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit.  And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another."

"What? Wait a second.  We wouldn't do that!  That's how the pagans treat us!"

"Again he sent other servants, more than the first.  And they did the same to them.  Finally, he sent his son to them, saying 'They will respect my son.'"

"Yes, the Messiah will set things right just like David did.  He'll teach those pagans to mistreat servants of God like us!"

 "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir.  Come, let us kill him and his inheritance.  And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him  When therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"

"He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons!"  

"Have you never read in the Scriptures:  The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes?"

"Why, of course, we've read Psalm 118.  We've been reciting it all week in preparation for the Passover along with the other Hallel Psalms.  Israel, faithful Israelites like us, are the stone which the nations rejected but which God chose to build into a holy nation.  Why would Jesus bring that up?"

"Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits."

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard this parable, they perceived that he was speaking about them.  They realized that they were the tenants after all as they had thought and that Jesus was calling himself the Messiah.  Jesus was aligning himself with the long line of prophets, God's servants, that Israel had rejected because he would be rejected like them.  But Jesus believed that God would vindicate him and those faithful Israelites who stood with him, taking the stone which the religious leaders had rejected and making it the chief cornerstone of his kingdom.  Jesus' claim made the chief priests and the Pharisees mad enough that they wanted to arrest him, ironically demonstrating that they were ready to act exactly like the tenants he had just portrayed them to be.  However, they were kept from doing so at the time because they feared the crowds who held that Jesus was a prophet.

In the Church, we also call ourselves the rejected whom the Lord has saved, that is, sinners saved by grace. But the story that Jesus tells turns Psalm 118 upside down.  It shows how easily those who regard themselves as "the stone the builders rejected" can become the very ones doing the rejecting.  Jesus declares that when we treat the grace we have received as mandate to become gatekeepers, then we have failed to bear the fruit he desires and the vineyard will be taken from us and given to those who will produce its fruit.

Taking a Hatchet to the Church

The religious authorities come to Jesus while he is teaching in the Temple and ask him a question we would likely ask in their situation.  "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?".  Read here:  "Who do you think you are?!"  I say we would ask this in their situation because Jesus has just been in the Temple overturning the tables of money changers  (Matthew 21:12-32). He had done this on top of breaking Sabbath rules and spending time with religious misfits.  What would we say to someone who came in our church and just started ripping up pews and overturning coffee tables?  "Who do you think you are?  What do you think gives you the right to do this?"

Jesus responds by saying that he will answer their question if they will answer a question of his own first.  "John's baptism:  was it of God or merely human?"  The religious leaders are politically calculating in their response.  They know if they say from heaven then they should have believed John but if they say merely human then they will lose popularity with the crowds that regard John as a prophet.  So they answer simply "We don't know."  Jesus refuses to answer their question either.

If the story stopped at this point, then we might assume that Jesus was simply using the question about John to avoid the questioning of the religious leaders.  But interestingly, Jesus doesn't drop his line of questioning when the elders and chief priests demonstrate their captivity to popular opinion.  Instead, he tells a story of a Father who asks two of his children to go to work in his vineyard.  The fist child says no but later goes anyway.  The second child says yes but doesn't go.  Jesus asks "Which of the two did the will of the Father?"   The answer is clear.  The first child did even though they said no initially.  Jesus now brings the conversation back to John the baptist again.

"Truly I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.  For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him.  And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him."  

What is it that is so important about John's baptism to this question of Jesus' authority?  For one thing, John was always pointing to Jesus.  John's message was about one who was coming after him that was greater than him and who would baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  Therefore, a large part of what Jesus is saying in Matthew 21 is that if the religious leaders had accepted John's message then they would have accepted Jesus as well.  Jesus says that is why the tax collectors and prostitutes go ahead of the chief priests and elder into Jesus' kingdom; they accepted John's baptism and the religious leaders did not.  However, I think there is a little more going on here.  In Matthew 3, we hear this about John's message and baptism

"But when he saw many of the pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them 'You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not presume to say to yourselves , 'We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.  Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.  Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  

John's message is one of repentance and bearing fruit in keeping with that repentance.  In other words, John is calling people away from the typical ways of doing religion (after all, he is dunking people in a dirty river out in the sticks away from the Temple and the holy city with all of its accepted religious institutions) and calling them to live lives that bear the fruit of God's love.  Furthermore, he says that any tree which does not bear this fruit will be cut down.

What is fascinating about this is that in Matthew 21, right between Jesus' overturning of the tables in the Temple and his conversation with the religious leaders about his authority to do so, is a story about Jesus cursing a tree because it wasn't bearing fruit!  Jesus actually wasn't evading the question of authority at all.  He was pointing back to John's message of repentance because that was the key to understanding why Jesus exercised his authority as he did in the Temple.  The Temple was a religious tree that wasn't bearing the fruit of God's love as God had meant for it too.  So Jesus took the hatchet to it just as John had said he would.

We probably wouldn't be too happy with someone who came into our church and started turning everything upside down but the truth is that this is precisely what Jesus wants to do.  There area all kinds of trees in our churches that aren't bearing the fruit of God's love and Jesus is more than willing to chop them down in order to make room for his house to be a house of prayer once again, for it to be a place where the blind and the lame are healed, a place where children sing "Hosanna to the Son of David!".  Are we prepared to have Jesus take a hatchet to our church if that is what it takes to truly be his disciples?

Kingdom of Grace

A wealthy man comes to Jesus asking what he must do to have eternal life.  After the man says that he has kept all the commandments since his youth, Jesus tells him to go and sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus.  This causes the young man to go away sad because he had great wealth.

While the disciples marvel at Jesus' words about the extreme incompatibility between wealth and being his disciples, they also seem to be sort of encouraged by it.  Peter replies in Matthew 19:27, "See, we have left everything and followed you.  What then will we have?"  In other words, Peter recognizes that he has done the very thing that Jesus told this wealthy man to do.  So he wants to know what reward he will receive in return.  And Jesus doesn't rebuke Peter for his thinking here.  He doesn't tell Peter that his focus is on the wrong things.  In fact, Jesus says that the twelve apostles will sit on twelve thrones with Jesus in his kingdom and that everyone who has left family and possessions for Jesus sake will receive a hundred times what they have lost and receive eternal life.  Sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

But then Jesus tells a story....

Its the kind of story Jesus seems to be fond of telling, the kind that gets under our skin.

The story is one about a landowner who went out to hire workers to work in his field.  He hired some first thing in the morning and agreed to pay them a denarius for a day's work.  The landowner went out again around 9 a.m. and again around noon and 3 p.m. each time agreeing to pay the workers a wage that was just.  He finally went out around 5 p.m., when one would think the work day was nearly done, and made the same agreement with even more workers.  At the end of the day, the landowner instructed his foreman to pay the workers in reverse order.  As it turned out, the foreman paid those who had come at the end of the day a denarius.  When those who had been working all day saw this, they expected to receive more.  But they too received a denarius.

These workers grumbled against the landowner and who could blame them?  Doesn't he know how this works?  Who of us, if we had been working faithfully in a career for many years and saw someone fresh out of college who had never done anything receive the same salary as us their first day of work, wouldn't be furiously upset by the injustice of it all?

There are obviously a lot of good reasons why hard work and a lifetime of experience should be rewarded in the work place.  The only problem is most of us have to spend so much time in that kind of environment that we begin to think that everything in life should work that way...even the Church.  Sure we want new Christians in our congregation but only as long as they realize that the Church runs by our rules because we are the ones who have been here for decades and worked hard to make this place what it is.

But Jesus says that his kingdom isn't like corporate America.  His kingdom is like this landowner.  It is a kingdom determined not by our hard work and long tenure, although those will be rewarded, but a kingdom determined by the compassion and mercy of its king.  It is a kingdom of grace.

Confessing in Caesarea Philippi

It is probably not coincidence that it is in Caesarea Philippi that Jesus questions his disciples about his identity.  The name itself tells us quite a bit about this city.  It bears both a name from Roman government (Caesar) and Jewish royalty (Philip, son of Herod the Great).  In it, stood a temple built for Caesar by Herod the Great.  It is a city that represents not only power, but specifically Rome's seemingly unconquerable power and the collusion of Jewish leadership with it.  In other words, this city is probably representative of just about everything that 12 Jewish men might be hoping a Messiah would deliver them from.  And it is here that Jesus asks "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

The disciples share with Jesus a quick synopsis of public opinion regarding him.  "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."  While we often think of these as the wrong answer as compared to Peter's confession two verses later, they are actually instructive in themselves.  Jesus' ministry looked very much like those of these prophets.  He went around speaking God's word to the people of Israel much like Jeremiah and the prophets, performing powerful signs and miracles like Elijah, and living an unsettled existence somewhat like John the Baptist.  Jesus often compares his own ministry to the prophets in that he will be rejected as they were.  So its not that these answers are so much wrong as incomplete.  Jesus is certainly "a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people" but he is also more than that.

Jesus now turns the question to the disciples themselves.  "But who do you say that I am?"  Peter, probably eager to distinguish himself, answers "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Now what was incomplete in the crowds understanding of Jesus has been made complete in Peter's confession.  Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son that God has chosen to be Israel's deliverer.  Peter's confession has hit the bull's eye of Christ's identity; so much so that Jesus says this was revealed to Peter by God, not by human deduction.  Indeed, Jesus proclaims that Peter (whose name means "rock") is the rock on which Christ will build his Church, a Church so powerful that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  (If you are a fan of Lord of the Rings, just picture Aragorn and his army standing before the gates of Mordor.)  This Church, of which Peter is the foundation, apparently even has the ability to impact heaven through its earthly ministry (whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven...).

But for all that Peter gets right (and Matthew's certainly wants us to see that his confession really is significant), there is still much he does not understand.  The very next thing that Jesus does after affirming Peter's confession of him as the Christ is to begin to talk about his suffering and death.  Understandably, Peter takes Jesus aside to remind him that he can't talk like this.  After all, it was just settled that Jesus was the Messiah which means he is a conquering hero, not someone who will suffer and die.  But Jesus knows he is going to be an entirely different kind of Messiah, one who will look much more like Jeremiah than David.  So he tells his disciples not only that he will die but that if they truly want to follow him they must deny themselves and take up their own cross as well.

Monuments to power fill our own world.  Often these powers are so overwhelming that we feel our only hope is either collusion or open conflict.  In the midst of these monuments of power, Jesus question to us is whether or not we know him.  Of course, we think that we do.  While our culture may label him as merely a prophet like others, we know that he is more, that is the Christ the Son of the living God.  But then the real challenge when Jesus wants to show us what he means by that word "Christ" and what he means when he call us "disciples".   This Messiah and his followers will not be defined but yet another monument of power but by one of a weakness.  To truly confess Jesus, to truly know who Jesus is, is take up our own cross, our own denial and follow him in a life of sacrifice and service.

Child-like Faith

"And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said 'Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."  -  Matthew 18:2-3

It is often said that as followers of Jesus we must have a "child-like faith".  Sometimes this is taken to mean that we should have a child-like trust in God; just as a child must depend on their parents to provide for them, so we should depend upon God to provide for us.  Other times "child-like faith" is interpreted as a kind of innocence. Still others might say this means our faith should be simple and not too complicated.  

While there might be a number of ways we can compare our faith to the life of a child and some of those comparisons might even be instructive for our spiritual health, there is one aspect of children to which Jesus is drawing attention here; their lack of status.

Even in our own 21st century American culture, children are more or less powerless.  They can not vote or hold political office.  They usually do not have the means to acquire wealth or wield influence.  And yet, they are at least recognized as people with certain rights.  As a result, there are numerous laws to protect children from harm or abuse by those more powerful than them.  By contrast, children in the first century Greco-Roman world had no such laws to protect them.  They were essentially the property of their parents, equivalent to or of barely higher status than slaves, who could treat them however they pleased without any legal repercussions.  It was not an uncommon practice for female babies to simply be abandoned to die because they were not seen as bringing any value to the family.  In the ancient world, children had no rights, no power, no status.

It is in response to the disciples' question "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" that Jesus places a child in front of them and says that they must become like children.  Then to make the point even more plain, in v.4 Jesus says "Whoever humbles himself like this child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."  Matthew doesn't tell us this story to show us that Jesus was good with kids or to call us to a simple, trusting, innocent faith.  This is a point about Jesus' kingdom and those who participate in it.  This is an upside down kingdom where the first are last, the least are greatest, and the crucified is king.  When Jesus' calls us to child-like faith it is a call to humility, to emptying ourselves, to being a people of no status.

And Christian humility means much more than simply being modest (and certainly something other than having a low self-esteem).  It means actively receiving, caring for, serving these "little ones".  Jesus says in v. 5-6 "Whoever receives one such child in my name  receives me but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."  Obviously, "these little ones" refers to the children to which Jesus has just been referring.  However, many scholars believe this might be a reference to "little ones" within the congregations to whom Matthew's gospel is addressed.  In other words, Matthew is calling upon those in his churches to humble themselves to the point of caring not only for children but to humble themselves by caring for anyone who has been marginalized, anyone who is of low status like a child.  Jesus says whoever receives these marginalized outcasts is receiving Jesus himself and whoever does not receive them would be better off being dragged to the bottom of the sea by a large stone!  I think it is safe to say that Jesus means for us to take this admonition seriously.

Two Kingdoms

In Matthew 2:13-23, we are given a story that none of the other gospel writers tells.  It is the story of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary fleeing to Egypt and it gives a unique window into Matthew's understanding of Jesus right at the beginning of his gospel.

Matthew tells us that an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and told Joseph to flee to Egypt because king Herod was about to search for Jesus to destroy him.  Joseph obediently follows the command and flees to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod.  Matthew then adds the comment that "This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'"

This quotation comes from Hosea 11 and in that context has nothing to do with Jesus or the expected Messiah.  In fact, the "son" that God speaks of in Hosea is Israel whom God delivered from Egypt in the Exodus.  In Hosea 11, God speaks through the prophet about how he delivered these people and how he loved them.  God loved Israel like his own child but the more that he loved them the more they turned away from him.  In fact, they kept turning away from God so much that just like a father would discipline a child he loves so God also has to discipline Israel to get their attention.  So God allows them to be defeated by Assyria and to be made slaves once again.

Not coincidentally, the other Old Testament quotation in this passage in Matthew comes from precisely that time period in Israel's history.  Jeremiah 31:15 speaks about the people of Israel weeping over the destruction of their land and their families.  They have been laid waste by Assyria and Babylon.  All God's people have been taken into captivity and they face a hopelessness in their exile, a fear that they will cease to exist as a people.  And in that circumstance, God comforts them and says that he will one day restore them and not only that but he will one day make a new covenant with them where he will write his law on their hearts so that they won't be rebellious any more.

And Matthew tells us that this prophesy from Jeremiah was fulfilled when Herod ordered all the children in Bethlehem under the age of two to be murdered.  We can see in both the quotations from Hosea and Jeremiah that Matthew does not use these prophecies in a merely predictive way.  Matthew is not saying that Jesus meets some kind of prophetic checklist for what it means to be Messiah.  Instead, he is saying "Look, this story is like that story.  What God is doing in Jesus is like what God did in those times."  In other words, by telling us that Jesus' family fled to Egypt and that God called his Son out of Egypt, Matthew wants us to see a parallel between the Exodus, the great deliverance of Israel, and what God is going to do in this child Jesus.  And by quoting Jeremiah's words about the exile, words which are followed by God's promise of deliverance from that exile, Matthew wants us to see a parallel between what God did in the deliverance of Israel from exile in Babylon and what God is going to do in this boy Jesus.  Matthew is hinting to us right here at the beginning of his story that this new born child is going to deliver Israel from its slavery just as God did in the Exodus and the return from Exile.  This infant is going to be the new king of a new Israel.  

There is just one problem with all of that.  There is already a king in Israel.  His name is Herod and he doesn't think Israel needs delivering.  In fact, he is quite happy with the way things are since he is the one in power and he would like to keep it that way.  The last thing Herod needs is some upstart kid trying to step in on the power that he has worked so hard to gain and keep.  Herod will do whatever is necessary to hold on to the power that he has... even ordering every male child in the little town of Bethlehem to be murdered in cold blood.  In fact, other historical records tells us that Herod even had three of his own sons killed so as to insure his continued reign as king.  Of course, Herod was not especially unusual for his time.  Many in the Roman Empire acted this way, doing whatever they had to in order to insure that they kept the power they had.

And so, right here only two chapters into Matthew's gospel, before Jesus has even had a chance to grow up, we find that his kingdom is already in conflict with, already threatening the kingdoms of this world.  Matthew presents to us these two kingdoms and we must choose one or the other.  On the one hand, we have Jesus and his kingdom which stands for all of those things that we talk about this time of year; peace, love, joy, hope.  And all that sounds very nice and appealing to us.  But on the other hand, we see that there is this other kingdom.  The kingdom of Herod, the kingdom of this world.  Matthew lays bare for us that this kingdom is built on nothing other than fear, violence, greed, and power lust.  This kingdom is built on the murder of innocent children.  We are repulsed by this kingdom and yet part of us finds it necessary, pragmatic, realistic, whatever you want to call it because we can see that this kingdom holds all the weapons, all the power, all the influence.  So we are confronted with a choice: the kingdom of the helpless infant or the kingdom of the savage Herod?

From any rational, human perspective, it seems absurd to pledge or allegiance to anything other than the Herod kingdom.  As much as we are repulsed by its method, we know that it holds all the power in this world.  After all, how can you possibly build any kind of kingdom on an infant who himself is fleeing from Herod?  In fact, I think John describes the situation well for us in Revelation 12.  There John describes a sign he sees in heaven: a pregnant woman giving birth to a male child, "one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron".  And there standing before the woman is a great dragon who is waiting to devour the child the moment the woman gives birth.  Undoubtedly, this imagery in Revelation is multifaceted in its meaning but at the very least we can hear the parallel between the dragon who wishes to devour this woman's child and Herod who hopes to devour Jesus by the sword.

John and the churches to which he was writing knew this tension between these two kingdoms well because they constantly lived in the war between them.  They had pledged their allegiance to Jesus, to the kingdom built on this male child who would rule the nations but on the other hand they had to continue to make a living in that other kingdom, the Roman Empire with its Herods and Red Dragons and all the violence they could create.  I'm sure there were times when these early Christians felt like they were the child about to be swallowed by the great red dragon; that Israel their mother had given birth to the Church only to have them gobbled up by the power of the Roman empire.

The truth is, we face the same dilemma, the same tension.  While we may not face the persecution that John's church's faced, we certainly face the same pressure to compromise with the kingdoms of this world.  We see the kingdom of Jesus and we want to follow that way.  Maybe we have even pledged our allegiance to it but then we see all the power that Herod and his kingdom hold and we feel like our faith is about to be devoured by a great red dragon.

Or to bring it back to our story in Matthew, we find ourselves in a position like that of Joseph.  I have to imagine that Joseph must have said "You want me to what?!" more than once to the messenger of the Lord that appeared to him repeatedly.  It wasn't enough that Joseph was instructed to take responsibility for a child that he knew wasn't his own, now he had to flee all the way to Egypt to protect it and he could only come back when God told him it was safe?  Have you ever thought about how differently this story could have gone?  Joseph could have reasoned this wasn't his kid anyway, taken him to one of Herod's men, said here is the one you are looking for, just take him and you don't have to kill all the other male children in Bethlehem.  Not only would Joseph no longer have the social stigma of having a child that everyone else thought was illegitimate, he would also have the continuing gratitude of all the other mothers in Bethlehem for saving their sons and maybe Herod would have even thrown him some kind of reward for being such a loyal subject.  Instead, Joseph repeatedly trusts God even when it sets him at odds with the vast might of the Roman Empire.  Joseph chooses the kingdom of this helpless little boy over the kingdom of this world.  God calls us to this same radical trust.  He calls us to pledge our allegiance to the kingdom built on Jesus even while the Herods of the world do all the destruction and violence they can.  As I said before, from a merely human perspective this call will always seems like a foolish and naive one.  But in the rest of Revelation 12, John gives us the heavenly perspective on the matter.  There John tells the churches of Asia Minor and tells us that the dragon and his angels have already been defeated.  A loud voice in heaven proclaims

"Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.  And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death."

John goes on to tell us that when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth he pursued the woman who gave birth to the child and when he is unable to capture her he goes off to make war against the rest of her offspring, "on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus."  John acknowledges that in this world the dragon has power to inflict all kinds of pain and violence on the saints of God but John is in essence telling us that all the pain and violence Satan can bring is actually good news for us.  It is good news because it represents the death throes of his kingdom.  Satan thrashes about so violently in our world because he knows he has been defeated and wants to inflict whatever damage he can in the short time that he has left.  In John's view, things like Herod's slaughter of innocent children, things like the holocaust, things like the genocides of Rwanda, Congo, and the Sudan, tragedies like Haiti, the pain we feel in our bodies, the illnesses and deaths of loved ones that we so painfully mourn, while undeniably tragic are also sure signs of Satan's defeat.  They are signs that the days of the dragon, of the Herods, of the kingdoms of this world are numbered because the kingdom of that baby boy born in a manger has already prevailed.

God With Us

The words of Isaiah 7:14 are probably some of the most well known in the book Isaiah.

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel."   

This is almost certainly the case not because of their original context in Isaiah but because Matthew quotes them in the first chapter of his gospel to refer to the birth of Jesus.  However, if we read Isaiah 7 as a whole we can see clearly that this prophecy is not one that Isaiah expected to be fulfilled hundreds of years later.  It was a prophecy for his own time.  Isaiah was speaking about a child that would be born very soon.

Isaiah 7 begins by telling us that King Rezin of Syria and King Pekah of Israel marched against Jerusalem the capital of Judah where Ahaz was king and Isaiah a prophet.  Isaiah doesn't give us any details as to why the kings of Israel and Syria wanted to make war with Judah but considering the historical context of the time we can make a guess.  The mighty nation of Assyria was a threat to all of three these nations but was likely a more immediate threat to Syria and Israel due to their geographic location.  So its seems likely that Rezin and Pekah were trying to intimidate Ahaz in to forming a political and military alliance with them against Assyria, something Ahaz had been hesitant to do.

Whatever the reason for their advance, Isaiah tells us that Ahaz and the people of Judah were exceedingly fearful, their hearts were shaken "as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind", when they heard that these two armies were approaching their capital.  Isaiah tells Ahaz that however intimidated he may be, God's command is not to make this alliance with Syria and Israel.  Instead, Ahaz is to stand firm in his faith and trust that God will deliver him.  In fact, God even offers Ahaz a sign through the prophet Isaiah as assurance of what God has promised.  Ahaz refuses the sign claiming that he doesn't wish to test God but Isaiah says that he will be given a sign anyway.  That sign is the child that is promised in Isaiah 7:14.  Isaiah says that this child will be born and before he is old enough to understand right from wrong the two nations which Ahaz fears will be laid waste.  This child is given the name Immanuel because his birth was a sign that God (el) was with the people of Judah (Immanu meaning "with us").

Of course, Matthew was not unaware of all of this when he decided to quote Isaiah 7:14 in his writing of the gospel.  He knew that the child of which Isaiah spoke was one that would be born in Isaiah's day and not his own and Matthew was not trying to negate that original meaning.  Nor do I think Matthew was simply looking for any Old Testament prophecy about the birth of a child which he could then use to show that Jesus' birth was really predicted hundreds of year earlier, regardless of the original context of that verse.

Instead, by quoting this verse, I believe Matthew wants us to see the story of Isaiah and Ahaz in the story of Jesus.  Matthew's quoting of Isaiah 7:14 is not about prediction or proving that Jesus is the Messiah.  It is Matthew's way of saying this story is like that story; this story I am telling about Jesus is like that story of God delivering Judah from its enemies, it is a story of "God with us".  In Isaiah, the birth of Immanuel served as a sign, a real physical reminder of God's promise to deliver his people if they would trust in Him.  In Matthew's gospel, he wishes to show us that the birth of Jesus is a sign, a real physical reminder of God's promise to deliver his people if they would trust in Him.

Of course, Matthew will go on to show throughout the rest of his gospel that he means the quoting of this verse from Isaiah in ways even more radical than this.  Matthew reveals to us that Jesus is not merely a sign of God with us as Immanuel was only a sign in Isaiah but that Jesus himself is in fact God with us, the very presence of God himself in human flesh.  As God was with the people of Judah to deliver them from their enemies, so God became even more present among us by taking on our own flesh in order to deliver us from our worst enemies; sin and death.

The Kingdom Experiment

Fortunate are those who are poor. Truly privileged are those who mourn. Favored by God are those who are persecuted and oppressed. It is with these words, normally called the beatitudes, that Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount.

You can sense the tension we feel when we read these words by the way we normally try to explain them. We know that the poor, those who mourn, and the persecuted and oppressed are not really blessed. Blessedness means that it is obvious to everyone that God is taking care of you. It means that all your needs are met. The poor, persecuted, and mourning are those who have not had their needs met. They are not blessed. So we often say that Jesus meant that these people are spiritually blessed in spite of not being physically blessed. Or we turn these statements into a checklist of Christian morality. In other words, the Christian must be a gentle, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaker. There is some truth in both of these statements but I think somehow they miss the point that Jesus is really making.

Only in a world completely different from ours could these statements be true. In our world, the powerful, influential, and violent inherit the earth, not the gentle. In our world, the merciful are usually taken advantage of rather than receiving mercy in return. In our world… well you get the idea. What Jesus is describing in the beatitudes is a world which operates by different rules than our own. He is describing the Kingdom of God, a kingdom which is backwards and upside down in comparison to the kingdoms of this world. These words are not an observation about how things are or a checklist of Christian virtues. They are a promise of what is to come, a promise that one day things will really be different. They are a promise that one day those who mourn will find real comfort and that the violent and powerful will not always control everything and that mercy, purity, and peace are really possible.

As followers of Jesus, we live in the hope of these promises. It is the promise of God’s kingdom which sustains us as the Church. However, it is not our mission to simply sit around and wait for this kingdom to show up. We aren’t called to just get by in this life until Jesus fixes everything. Instead, the hope that we have for the future impacts how we live today. Because we believe that our world will play by different rules when God’s kingdom finally comes, we want to live by those rules now as witness to the new reality that we anticipate with eager expectation.

This fall, we are going to participate in a small group study entitled The Kingdom Experiment. It is a study centered on the beatitudes but it is much more than just a Bible study. It is an experiment in intentionally living out our hopeful anticipation of the Kingdom of God. In addition to a lesson on one of the beatitudes each week, there will also be experiments from which to choose. These experiments are challenges to live out the kingdom value of that beatitude throughout the week. Each person in your group will choose which ever experiment they want to try that week and journal about it before your next meeting. Your meetings each week will consist of discussing your experience from the previous week as well as the beatitude for the next week. I believe that this study can help us to see the Kingdom of God in new ways and I hope that you will prayerfully consider participating.

Church and Trinity

This Sunday is the day known as Trinity Sunday in the Church Calendar. It is one Sunday a year that is set aside to talk about this central doctrine of the Christian faith. Unfortunately, I think that for most Christians, the doctrine of the Trinity is anything but central to our faith. Instead, it is often seen more as a theological abstraction that most Christians are certain has nothing to do with real life. It is more likely to be an impossible mathematical conundrm (how can God be 3 and 1?) than it is to shape our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ in anyway.

This problem is then compounded by the fact that the Trinity is never spoken of in Scripture, at least not by that name (which can be a real problem for folks like us who want everything we believe and do to be "biblically" based). There are passages like Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 (and many others, those are just two of our readings for this week) where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are listed together and seem to somehow be treated equally and yet also differently from one another. But those limited references don't seem to give any explanation of how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to each other or why the Church believes in something called the Trinity.

In spite of that, the Trinity is the central doctrine of the Christian faith. It is the essense of the shape of the Nicene Creed, the most basic confession of Christianity. It is the very first article of faith in our Nazarene Manual (as it is in the manual or handbooks of nearly every other denomination). It is the doctrine that most fully captures the identity and character of the God that we serve (although all doctrines fail to do this at some level).

So how did this seemingly abstract and unbiblical doctrine become the central confession of the Church's faith? It did so because it is neither abstract or unbiblical. The doctrine of the Trinity did not begin as an exercise in philosophical reasoning or lofty ideals. It began in the lived experience of the Apostles and the early church, who were predominantly Jewish and therefore, adhered to a radical monotheism. One of the most firmly held beliefs of any Jew in Jesus' day was that God was one and that there were no other true gods (see Deut 6:4). Yet these early Christians knew that the one God that they believed in was present in some special way in the person of Jesus Christ and later in the presence of the Holy Spirit among them. They knew that God was one but they also knew that God had revealed Godself in these two distinctly new ways. In essence, the doctrine of the Trinity actually contains the story of our salvation. It tells the story of the God who created us and sent the Son to redeem us and the Spirit to transform us. It was this reality, which is the overarching story of all of Scripture, that would lead the Church over the first several hundred years of its existence to work toward articulating its belief about God in the doctrine of the Trinity.

Not only was this doctrine borne out of the lived experience of the Church. It continues to guide the Church in its life together today. This is true because we believe that as humans beings we were created in God's image and we believe that we, as the Church, are the people on whom God's Holy Spirit has been poured out in a special way so that God's image might be redeemed in us and so that we might be about the business of seeing God's image redeemed in others. As we say in our mission statement every week, we are called to be a community that is a faithful image of God's love. In other words, we are to be an image of the Trinity. The love that exists between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a model of the kind of love that we are called to exhibit as the Church; an intimately interconnected, missional, self-giving love that so binds us together that we become one body, the Body of Christ.

The Danger of Sentimentality

This Sunday is Baby Day in the Church of the Nazarene. As a result, I have chosen to deviate from the lectionary readings and use scripture readings that speak more directly to or about children and youth (Psalm 78:1-7, Joshua 4:1-8, 1 Timothy 4:11-16, and Matthew 18:1-6). I will be giving the children's message this Sunday (my first time doing that) from the 1 Timothy passage. My sermon is probably going to make use of the Joshua and Matthew passages but will be about half as long as usual in order to make time for the Baby Day introductions.

As I reflect on these passage of scripture and think about what this Baby Day service is all about, I am repeatedly reminded of how we are in danger of reducing the gospel to nothing more than warm, fuzzy sentiments. It is all too easy to confuse the gospel with all things cute and cuddly or to confuse it with anything that is emotional or makes us feel good inside and forget that the gospel is a radical, challenging, and world-changing message. It is easy to reduce the gospel to nothing more than family values and forget that Jesus said that he came to turn children against their parents and brothers against sisters.

Now, of course, this does not make a celebration like Baby Day contradictory to the gospel; far from it. This celebration is intimately tied to the gospel in many ways. It reminds us that God is continually creating new life among us. These new, little lives that we celebrate on this day give us hope because they remind us that God is not finished with his loving and creative work on this earth which means he is also not done creating new life in us as well. Baby Day also reminds us that God has entrusted us with a significant role in this life-giving work. This is true not only in the biological sense but also because God has entrusted these children to us so that we might raise them to be faithful disciples. That represents a remarkable risk on God's part; allowing broken, sin-scarred human beings to shape and mold these most recent additions to God's creation. The family is an important part of the gospel because for most people it is the first and most complete means of discipleship.

However, as we celebrate these new lives, God's creative work, and our part in it, we must not forget why we are celebrating. We must not lose the gospel in the adorable faces of our children because if we do, we will have failed them. I know that when my 3 month old daughter smiles at me I would give almost anything to keep that smile on her face. It is precisely for that reason that her smile and her happiness can so easily become an idol for me. We are all in danger of allowing our families to become idols for us because we are naturally inclined to give the kind of total allegiance to them that we are called to give only to Jesus. As we celebrate our babies this Sunday, we must not confuse the sweet and sentimental with the true life and hope of the gospel message.