Matthew 10 gathers together teaching of Jesus for ‘missionaries’, which is essentially what ‘apostle’ means in a sense. Apostle is the Greek word for ‘agent’, which means one who is sent to represent another person’s interests in another place. Such an agent would bear the full authority of the one who sent him, and this principle of agency (also found in John 13:20 and in the rabbinic literature) is clearly stated in Matthew 10:40. In a sense, just as Jesus is ‘God’s apostle’, so now the Twelve function as Jesus’ apostles. For this reason, their activity will bear the same authority that Jesus’ own activity bears, and thus they will be able to heal the sick and cast out demons. This point about the authority of the Twelve as Jesus’ appointed agents is reinforced through the parallelism between the beginning and ending of the discourse: at the start in v1 they are given this authority to do the same sorts of things that Jesus does, and in vv40-42 receiving the Twelve is said to be the same as receiving Jesus himself, just as receiving Jesus is essentially equivalent to receiving God who sent him (this idea becomes the central motif in the Christology of John’s Gospel).
The disciples, it is said, will be persecuted, handed over to sanhedrins to be beaten in synagogues, and they will further be brought before governors and kings as a witness to the Gentiles. How does this relate to the teaching in vv5-6, which forbids them to go even to the Samaritans, never mind to the Gentiles? Presumably the teaching about the wider mission of the Church, like the Great Commission recorded in 28:18-20, is to be understood as teaching of the risen Christ for the community. By retrojecting it back onto the lips of the pre-Easter Jesus, Matthew does not thereby create a contradiction; he was presumably fully aware of what he was doing and had sufficient theological sophistication to explain it to others. In doing what he did, he also helps us to see the emphasis on limiting the mission to Israel as authentic in the ministry of the historical Jesus: since Matthew’s church was involved in mission to the Gentiles, they would not have invented sayings of Jesus that told them not to do so! Note, on the other hand, Matthew 10:22-23, which (in its present form at least) clearly refers not to a brief mission trip by the Twelve, but to the ongoing mission of the Church in the post-Easter period. This is one reason why it is crucial to distinguish between traditional and redactional material in the Gospels, and to be aware that traditional sayings are being taken up and applied in new situations and contexts. Otherwise, passages such as Matthew 10 would leave us facing numerous unsolvable problems of interpretation.
The Twelve are to rely on hospitality on their mission. This is not something that can easily be transferred to a modern American or western European setting. In that time, however, there were really nothing like the hotels and motels of today. The ‘inns’ of the ancient world were like those which today charge by the hour. They were frequented by prostitutes, and by traveling merchants who had no other connections and no alternatives as to where to stay. For the most part, people who traveled would seek out distant relatives, people of the same ethnic background, friends of friends of friends, and seek lodging with them. This was commonly practiced and formed a reciprocal relationship between the one giving and the one receiving hospitality. In Matthew 10:7-10 this is interpreted as simply the fair ‘wage’ of the missionary: they are providing a service by performing healings and the like, so the least that the locals can do is provide hospitality. Those who do not are simply disrespecting the missionaries, and thereby also the one who sent them.
Christian tradition after Easter sought to present John the Baptist as intuitively recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, in Luke’s Gospel even prior to birth! The question asked in this chapter thus has regularly proved to be difficult for Christian interpreters, and the embarrassment of later Christians is a good argument in favor of this story’s historical authenticity. John’s question, however, may be interpreted as motivated by more than one factor:
(1) It is generally assumed that John had doubts about Jesus’ ministry. John proclaimed one who would come after him, who would bring the judgment that John had declared. Jesus did not appear to meet this expectation. This would fit the reply that is given – Jesus quotes the part of Isaiah 35 and 61 that clearly applied to his ministry, but both passages referred as well to “the day of vengeance of our God”, and this reference is not taken up by Jesus. So in this case the meaning would be something like “I am the one you predicted would come, but I’m not going to be what you expected.”
(2) Another possibility is that Jesus’ references to a future ‘Son of Man’ may have been perplexing, as they have been to modern scholars as well. It often could have sounded like Jesus was speaking about a future figure distinct from himself. This possibility, however worthy of consideration on the historical level, is unlikely to have been what the author of the Gospel had in mind. For Matthew as for all of early Christianity, the identification of Jesus as the future, apocalyptic Son of Man was completely taken for granted.
(3) A third possibility is that this was not so much an expression of doubt, as a coded message in the form of a riddle. John had predicted the coming of one who would bring about justice, yet he sat in prison, unjustly arrested. His question might have been therefore about his own situation. Jesus’ reply omits the reference in Isaiah to prisoners being set free, and thus the meaning of this exchange may have been a covert way of saying “Are you going to get me out of prison?” and “Sorry, no.” [I own this possibility to Dr. James McKeown]
Option #1 is perhaps the most likely. Yet in the context of Matthew’s Gospel, the reference soon after to Malachi chapter 3 is also important. Jesus’ answer is not “No” as regards judgment, but simply “Not yet.” The references to Isaiah are thus to be taken as a way of saying: the fulfillment has begun, even if you do not see the judgment and implementation of God’s justice yet.
A number of sayings of Jesus about John the Baptist that were presumably already linked in Q are reproduced here. One of them is that John is at the same time the greatest human being who ever lived, and yet less than the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. This saying implies that John, however great, still belongs to the old rather than the new. But what is meant by excluding him from the Kingdom? Does this mean, in modern Evangelical language, that he wasn’t “saved”? Perhaps these words were spoken by Jesus after John the Baptist’s death, and therefore suggests that although John was great, he was arrested and executed before he could experience the dawning of the Kingdom that is taking place in and through Jesus’ activity. The relationship between Jesus and his former mentor was a highly controversial topic in early Christianity, and so it is hard to dig beneath the surface and figure out how relations between the two are likely to have stood at any given point in the ministry of the historical Jesus. From Matthew’s perspective, however, the relationship is clear: John is the predicted Elijah, and Jesus is not just the Messiah, not just Wisdom’s child or envoy in a manner similar to John the Baptist (cf. Luke 7:35; most scholars assume Luke added ‘all’ to the original Q saying here), but none other than Wisdom herself (Matthew 11:19). The contrast between John’s and Jesus’ approach to spirituality, mentioned already in contrasting the two on the issue of fasting, is once again mentioned. John was an ascetic, Jesus was anything but. Yet their contemporaries rejected both of them. God’s Wisdom was going to be shown right by her actions – that is, Jesus is understood here to be speaking and acting as Wisdom. This point is reinforced in Matthew 11:28-30, which recalls those places in Jewish sapiential literature where Wisdom speaks in a similar way (see Ecclesiasticus 24:19; 51:1-30).
These words of Jesus from Q have always struck scholars because of their similarity to the language that Jesus is presented as using in the Fourth Gospel. For the most part, Jesus in John’s Gospel speaks in exactly the same way as the narrator does, and as John the Baptist does, and as the author of 1 John does. However, here the Synoptic tradition attributes to Jesus similar language. One must therefore recognize that, while the life and words of Jesus in John’s Gospel are filtered through the distinctive mind, theology, language, and style of the Gospel’s author, the source of this author’s distinctive language and style may have its roots in at least something that Jesus himself said, which was then taken up, developed, and elaborated by the author of the Fourth Gospel.
The first of the two stories in this section takes a radical approach to Sabbath observance. Hunger even overrides obedience to the Law’s finer details! Concern for genuine human needs takes priority over the Sabbath in both of these stories.
Once again, Matthew presents Jesus as the Servant spoken of in Isaiah.
Take a look at what Matthew interprets ‘the sign of Jonah’ to refer to, and then compare this with other similar sayings in Mark and Luke. What do you think the historical Jesus is likely to have said, and meant?
Matthew recounts the traditional story of Jesus walking on the water. Historians have always been at a loss to know what to do with a story like this (apart from suggesting that Jesus was actually walking along the shore and the disciples were confused!) From the perspective of a literary approach to Matthew’s Gospel, this story is transformed into a ‘parable’ about faith: in Matthew’s version (and here alone) Peter is given the opportunity to walk on water as well. He learns (as Matthew hopes his church will) that one must keep one’s focus on the Lord rather than on one’s surroundings and circumstances, otherwise one will falter and fail.
This is Matthew’s account of how Simon son of Jonah got his nickname ‘Rocky’. Raymond Brown, the famous Catholic NT scholar, tells the story of what happened when the Catholic Church changed its lectionary – that is, its cycle of readings from the New Testament. Previously, Roman Catholics were accustomed to hearing only Matthew’s version of the story of Peter’s confession. In Matthew, Peter recognizes Jesus to be the Christ, and is praised for doing so by calling him a ‘Rock’ and saying that ‘On this rock I will build my kingdom’ [READ Matthew 16:13-20]. In the new lectionary, there was a three-year cycle in which the accounts of this story were read in other years from Mark and Luke. In Mark, Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession is to warn them sternly to tell no one about him [READ Mark 8:27-30]. Brown tells how, in parish after parish, worried parishioners came up to their priests with shocked faces to ask what happened to the part about the rock and the Church! The problem was that these readers had become accustomed to hearing only one Gospel’s version of this story, and when they heard another one that was significantly different, they were genuinely shocked. In the churches you are from, even if you do read the other versions in church, you may simply read Matthew’s version about the rock into Mark’s version. Yet each author wrote something different, for the benefit of the church for which he wrote. By blending the two or imposing Matthew’s version of the narrative on Mark, aren’t we essentially saying ‘Mark got it wrong’? If we ignore the diversity that is there is Scripture, is it because we are uncomfortable with the Bible as God has given it to us? Most Evangelicals are so used to harmonizing different versions, that it often takes a great deal of effort to read in a way that is open to recognizing the diversity that is present in Scripture.
So what do you make of the differences? How would you preach on each of these two versions? What would you tell someone in your congregation who asked you about the differences?
Since a lot of the intervening material (though by no means all of it!) is found in other Gospels, and since the semester has ended, let’s skip to the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew’s distinctive ending recounts what Mark’s Gospel is missing: Mark’s Gospel promises that if the disciples go to Galilee they will see the risen Jesus, but that is where the story ends. That in Luke’s Gospel the disciples remain in Jerusalem is a historical difficulty but one that should not worry you too much. The point of all the Gospel narratives is that the “post-Easter Jesus” (to use Marcus Borg’s phrase) is different from the pre-Easter Jesus in many ways, not least of which is that Jesus can be experienced as a living, present reality in any place, not only in one as during his pre-Easter ministry. This is, in fact, the promise the risen Christ makes in Matthew 28:20 – he is with his disciples always and in all places, until the end of the age.
The significance of 28:18 in the context of Matthew’s Gospel is profound. Jesus had great authority even during his earthly ministry. But when tempted in the desert, the Devil offered him to rule all lands in exchange for worshipping him. This would have been the way of avoidance of the cross. And so Jesus now has been given all authority in heaven and earth precisely because he rejected that temptation to seek authority in the present, and instead followed the way of the cross. In a sense, the whole of Matthew’s Gospel revolves around the authority of Jesus.
And then, of course, there is the “great commission” as it is commonly called. The command to make disciples (not just converts but disciples) of all nations represents a broadening of Jesus’ pre-Easter ministry, which was described as being limited to ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’. Now the mission will be to all nations. They are to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Why not simply “in the name of Jesus” as in Acts? In Acts 19:1-7 we are told of disciples who were baptized in water but without any knowledge of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, new disciples who were not from a Jewish background would not take for granted the belief in one God that was the foundation of Judaism. For this reason, the church developed a creed to be recited at baptism very early on, one that had a threefold form: the person being baptized affirmed faith not only in Jesus, but also in one God and in the Holy Spirit. This development, Matthew affirms, took place under the guidance and instruction of the risen Christ.
From a historian’s perspective, Matthew says many things that are not confirmed by any other source and which a historian will probably not incorporate into his or her account of the historical Jesus. But Matthew’s Gospel concludes with a promise that is essentially verifiable, and which Christians of every sort have found to be true ever since: Behold, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.