Gospel Readings:
Matthew 22:34-40
Matthew 22:41-46
Matthew 23:1-39
Devotion 1
Wait: Take time to sit in silence together, allowing space for God’s voice to be heard.
Read: Matthew 22:34-40
Having fielded a number of questions from different parties aligned with the ruling elite, Jesus now is questioned by the Pharisees. Here, one of the their lawyers asks Jesus a question in order to “tempt” him. Matthew has added this to Mark’s account, putting it in the same line of questioning as Satan’s (4:1-11), and the Pharisees’ questions about divorce (19:3) and tax (22:18).1 In those episodes it is clear that the stakes are high for Jesus, and answering in a faithful to the way of God will likely bring him in conflict with the ruling powers. In this episode it is not immediately clear what the stakes are. Is the lawyer expecting a particular answer? In early Judaism there was great debate over how to rank the 613 commands of the Torah in importance.2
Perhaps the temptation of the question lies in the fact that it is a totalising one—a question which demands total and exclusive allegiance to God as God is portrayed in the law. Such totalising allegiances throughout history have had, and continue to have, disastrous results.
In his answer, Jesus does call for a total allegiance to God. But what is surprising, subversive, and of upmost importance for our interpretation of any scriptural text, is that he qualifies this commandment. The second commandment that Jesus gives “is like” the first. The word used here (homoia) indicates that Jesus is best understood not as saying the second is similar to the first, but the same as it. Loving your neighbour as yourself is the same as loving God. One cannot love God and do violence to their neighbour. One cannot love God and fail to care for one’s neighbour. We can only love God insofar as we love our neighbour. It’s a truth that Jesus’ questioners desperately needed to hear. And so do we.
Reflect
- In what ways, positively or negatively, have you seen or experienced people or groups who demand “total” allegiance?
- What do you think Jesus inclusion of the ‘second” commandment alongside the “first” might have meant to his hearers? What about Matthew’s community?
- In what ways are you challenged or encouraged by today’s reading?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
1 The word used on all of these occasions is peirozó which, while often translated as “test”, is better rendered “tempt”.
2 Ben Witherington III, Matthew (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2006), 417-418.
Devotion 2
Wait: Take time to sit in silence together, aware of God’s presence in a broken world.
Read: Matthew 22:41-46
Now Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees, asking them a question. His question about the Messiah evokes Jewish tradition which hoped for a popular king-figure to fight off the oppressing imperial forces. “Just as the ancient hill-country Israelites “anointed” the young shepherd-warrior David to lead them against the Philistines (2 Sam 2:1–4; 5:1–3), so now their descendants were acclaiming popular figures as kings (messiahs) to lead the struggle against the Romans.”3
Matthew’s text here follows Mark and which seems to reject the idea outright that Jesus was the “Son of David”. The Messiah, according to Jesus’ teaching here, will not be the Son of David, but will be a leader in a different—and much greater—sense. This text hangs in tension with other texts in Matthew, particularly in the infancy narrative, which seem to affirm Jesus’ identification with David. At the very least, this tension might highlight to us that Jesus has some continuity with David, in that he is a liberative figure for Israel, but also—and this is the stress—discontinuity with David in that this liberation will not be associated with violence or domination.
Jesus uses Psalm 110 to challenge Davidic notions of the Messiah, affirming that God will subjugate the Messiah’s “enemies” under his feet, and as an aside the Psalm affirms that the Messiah is greater than—not a son of—David. The subjugation of enemies in the Psalm is certainly problematic—why does Matthew affirm this vision of rule-by-domination whilst elsewhere refuting it, calling disciples to exercise power-through-servanthood?4
In reading this passage, as in reading all of Scripture, we need to keep in view that we are reading resistance literature; that is, we are reading texts written by those on the underside of power in order to challenge dominant power arrangements. Reading such texts becomes problematic when we read them from positions of relative power, assuming they speak to us in the same way that they might speak to those on the underside. We can only read this in a morally responsible way when we read alongside those on the underside of power, and even then we must deconstruct its inherent violence.
Here, the point Jesus makes by quoting Psalm 110 is that the tables of power will eventually be turned, and those on the underside will be vindicated. How the tables will be turned is the point of the rest of Matthew’s narrative. They will be turned as God works through those communities who live out the way of Jesus; through generous collaboration, welcoming outsiders, loving enemies and nonviolently confronting unjust powers. For then a power is unleashed that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against.
Reflect
- What strikes you as you read through this passage?
- In what ways do you think our social, economic, or political location changes the way we read Scripture?
- In what ways are you challenged or encouraged by today’s reading?
Pray for one another.
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
3 Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Powers: Conflict, Covenant, and the Hope of the Poor. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 82.
4 E.g. Mt 20:20-28.
Devotion 3
Wait: Take time to sit in the silence of repentance together, aware of our inadequacy and God’s grace.
Read: Matthew 23:1-39
Chapter 23 of Matthew’s Gospel sees Jesus launch a sustained attack on the scribes and Pharisees. There are a number of things that we must keep in mind here as we read.
Firstly, Matthew is writing his Gospel not as an outsider to the Jewish faith. On the contrary, Matthew and his Jesus-following community would have seen themselves very much as part of the Jewish people. He is not involved in a Christian-Jewish dispute, but a dispute with other leaders of Jewish communities (groups associated with Pharisees) who have different ideas about what is good and how to get there. His description of Jesus’ critique here is not against all Jewish leaders of all time, but “against a particular set of religious leaders.”5 And importantly, his polemic in no way pronouncing a final rejection of God by the Jewish people or vice-versa. It is extremely unfortunate such a passages such as this in Matthew’s Gospel have been interpreted in this way, opening the door for condemnation and mistreatment.
Nevertheless, we can read in this passage Matthew’s Jesus turning upside-down values of honour and shame. The woes here stand in contrast to the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12, in which those on the underside—those deemed illegitimate and cursed by God because of their low position or unfortunate circumstances, are legitimated by Jesus, who announces that God is “on their side”. Conversely, here Jesus announces that those who see themselves as having special honour are not honoured by God.
n this series of seven woes, the fourth and central one is the climax, according to Jewish literary patterns. At the heart of Jesus’ critique then, is a lack of justice, mercy and faith. And the outcome of this lack, according to Matthew’s Jesus, is that “your house is left to you desolate”. That is, the people of Israel have been reduced to a “desolate” people by the injustice of their leaders. The leaders’ collaboration with imperial forces and their complicity in systems which stripped the people of their land and means of sustenance had caused the breakdown of social and economic relations. It was no coincidence, then, that when rebellion broke out in the war which led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 66-70 A.D., the first thing that rebel did when they seized control of the temple was to burn debt records which had effectively placed much of the population in enslavement to the ruling elite.
Justice, mercy and faith matter. Personally and politically.
Reflect
- What do you think Matthew’s community would have felt hearing todays’ reading?
- In what ways do Jesus’ words pose a challenge to you personally?
- In what ways do Jesus’ words pose a challenge to the community and society in which we live?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
5 Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000), 449.
Devotion 4
Wait: Take time to sit in the silence of gratitude together, giving thanks for the ways you’ve experienced God’s loving kindness.
This week’s Common Value: Faith
Read: Daniel 3:1-30
Reflect
- How might it mean to live by faith this week?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer