Looking Forward to Worship

Sunday 6th July: Matthew 11.16-19,25-30

Having sent the twelve on their way, Jesus continues to proclaim the gospel in Galilee. In a foretaste of next week’s reading, not everyone receives the word with joy. Jesus sharply rebukes ‘this generation’ for failing to see what God is doing. They have rejected John the Baptist for being too ascetic, yet they have also rejected Jesus for being a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of sinners. This paradox is not unknown in our own generation. Sometimes the media criticise the Church for being too judgemental; sometimes they satirise it for its woolly liberalism. Matthew implicitly invites his readers to explore this tension in their own witness. How can we be true to the ethical demands of the gospel, and also be a genuine friend of sinners?

Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,’ Jesus asserts (v.19). His mission is highly successful  – and this, for Matthew, clearly proves that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. It is so obvious, even a child can see it (v.25). Jesus, the Son of God, shows us what God the Father is like (v.27). This is one of the strongest statements in the gospels about the divinity of Christ. To support what would otherwise be seen as a highly blasphemous claim, Matthew carefully shows his readers that every part of the Jewish Scriptures has been fulfilled in Jesus: first the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5.17), and now the figure of Wisdom found in books such as Proverbs and the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon. ‘Wisdom’ was often personified as a female figure who acted as a guide and teacher, accompanying people in the path of righteousness. Sirach 51.25-26 (also known as Ecclesiasticus, in the Apocrypha) speaks of being yoked together with Wisdom, and here Jesus adapts the image to invite people to be yoked directly to him, to walk with him as closely as two oxen walk, ploughing a field together.

‘Come to me…and I will give you rest’ (11.28). It must have been a compelling invitation for the crowds in Galilee, burdened by poverty, hard work and oppressive taxation. It is a compelling invitation for anyone who is burdened – by sorrow; by sickness; by anxiety; by debt; by addiction; by discrimination; by our sins; perhaps even by our sense of religious obligation (23.4). All these burdens can be taken from us, Jesus says, if we will be yoked to him. And if that sounds like another burden, he reassures us that his yoke is easy and his burden light. Paradoxically, this is the way to find rest for our souls (vv.29-30).

Sunday 13th July: Matthew 13.1-9,18-23

Matthew creates a strong sense of anticipation. The crowd assembled on the shore is so large that Jesus takes to a boat to teach them. ‘Listen!’ he says. ‘A sower went out to sow…’ The story is simple, visual, and familiar to his audience. God is revealed, the parables suggest, in the everyday events of our lives.

The story draws the listeners into its world, compelling them to ask themselves, ‘What kind of ground am I?’ How receptive, how open to growth? Although the parable is not explained at this stage, its meaning is clear. It is a parable about listening – listening to the teachings of Jesus, without distraction, and allowing them to take root and grow to fullness in our lives. ‘Let anyone with ears listen!’ (v.9). This teaching is for everyone, for the committed as well as the uncommitted.

A fuller explanation is given to the disciples in verses 18-23. Matthew follows Mark in treating the parable as an allegory. The seed is the word of the kingdom (v.19), sown at random. Some will struggle to hear it at all before it is snatched away. Some will receive it with joy initially but find that it fails to take root in them; they will fall away when trouble arises. Some will receive it and grow for a while, but ‘the cares of the world and the lure of wealth’ will gradually choke their growth. But those who hear and understand will grow and bear fruit, making a contribution to the overall harvest.

From this angle, the story becomes a manual for the disciples as they share in Jesus’ mission. The story about listening has become a story about speaking. Unlike Mark, Matthew tells the story after their mission has begun. The twelve have already glimpsed the truth of his words in their own experience. They are not responsible for the outcome. Success and failure will always co-exist. But the harvest is coming, and their labours will bear more fruit than they can know.

Sunday 20th July: Matthew 13.24-30,36-43

Today’s Gospel joins together the parable of the weeds and the wheat told to the crowds (vv.24-30) and Jesus’ explanation (vv.36-43). However, Matthew separates story from interpretation, just as he divided the parable of the sower from its explanation (13.1-9,18-23). In between, in 13.14-15, Matthew quotes Isaiah 6.9-10, connecting Jesus’ speaking in parables with the people’s misunderstanding of his teaching. Between the parable of the weeds and its explanation (vv.31-35), Matthew quotes Psalm 78.2, linking Jesus’ use of parables to his messianic revelation of God’s kingdom. In both cases, either rejection or revelation, the intervening verses indicate that Jesus’ use of parables fulfilled prophecy and enacted God’s will.

Matthew’s separation of story and interpretation is significant, and indeed the verses missing from today’s reading mark a major transition of audience, scene and emphasis. As the focus shifts from Jesus addressing the crowds on the seashore to his speaking to the disciples in the house, Matthew begins to draw our attention away from the rejecting response to Jesus by ‘this people’ towards his revelation to the new community of those who listen. In this way, Matthew encourages us to explore the relationship of story and explanation, recognising that the former speaks to enquiring crowds, challenging anyone to question assumptions and reassess values, and that the latter is addressed to understanding disciples, with a particular application to the circumstances of the Church.

The servants sensibly suggest pulling up the weeds, which will devour water and reduce the crop. But the farmer is concerned that this will damage the wheat, and defers separation until harvest time. This might discomfort those of us tempted to distinguish the ‘undeserving’ who are ‘a waste of space’ from those ‘worth cultivating’ as ‘one of us’! In the interpretation the focus shifts to the harvest, offering encouragement to Jesus’ followers who must accept the present suffering of the Son of Man so that they will share his future glory (10.16-23). As we enter that space between story and interpretation, we must have ears to listen.

Sunday 27th July: Matthew 13.31-33,44-52

Matthew stresses the priority of Jesus’ teaching, ‘instructing his twelve disciples’, and going on ‘to teach and proclaim his message’ to the people (11.1; see 4.23; 9.35). To highlight Jesus’ role as authoritative teacher of God’s people, Matthew compares him with Moses, who also came ‘out of Egypt’ (2.15; see Exodus 2) and departed from a mountaintop (28.16-20; see Deuteronomy 34). As there are five books of the Law of Moses, so Matthew groups Jesus’ teaching into five discourses, each one ending, as with the verse immediately following today’s reading, ‘When Jesus had finished’ (13.53; see 7.28; 11.1; 19.1; 26.1; and, for Moses, Deuteronomy 31.1; 32.45).

Jesus the teacher offers guidance for living well in aphorisms and beatitudes, parables and wise sayings. When, at the end of this third section of teaching, he asks his disciples, ‘Have you understood all this?’ we learn from their answer, ‘Yes’, that those who listen to Jesus are enabled to grow in faith and wisdom. Listening to Jesus, and by collecting and arranging traditions about him and showing how they fulfil the Jewish Scriptures, Matthew is one of those scribes trained for the kingdom ‘who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old’.

Jesus and Matthew are in the tradition of Jewish sages like Ben Sira, who wrote about ‘the one who devotes himself to the study of the law’, ‘seeks out the wisdom of all the ancients’ and ‘penetrates the subtleties of parables’ (Ecclesiasticus 39.1-3). Ben Sira represents a school of wisdom, traditionally associated with King Solomon, which ‘serves among the great and appears before rulers’ (39.4). He is clear that ‘the wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure’, and asks, ‘How can one become wise who handles the plough…?’ (38.24-25). In marked contrast, Jesus invites those with little leisure to find wisdom precisely through their everyday realities of farming and fishing, earning a living and feeding a family. Have we great expectations of God, and what small signs encourage us? Where have we caught sight of something really precious, and what will we risk to possess it?