When the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being in league with Beelzebul, Jesus slams them by exposing a fatal contradiction in their logic: if the only way I am able to’ cast out demons is by Beelzebul, how are your sons able to do it? I’ll tell you how. If you are right and I am…
Category: Matthew
Teach and Move
Internet comment culture invites useless and emotionally charged conflict that accomplishes nothing, except to inflame everyone’s self-serving sentiments. That’s why, in Matthew, Jesus refuses to engage in any argument with the Pharisees. To do so, Matthew teaches, is to squander what is holy. In keeping with the teaching of Isaiah, Jesus refuses to quarrel with…
The Lord of the Sabbath
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave or your cattle or…
God Doesn’t Need Our Bread
When the Pharisees complain about the disciples picking and eating grain on the sabbath, they betray both their ignorance of Torah, and their desire to control the consecrated bread of God’s instruction to consolidate their power. But God, Matthew teaches, does not need our bread. After all, whatever we offer him already belongs to him….
The Father
In a society that consumerizes rebellion against parents both as entertainment and an axiom of pop-psychology, the basic premise of the New Testament—that the Son is disempowered because all glory and all power belong to his Father—is practically impossible to accept. In Matthew, when Jesus praises his Father, in the very content of his prayer,…
It’s Worse for Us
One of the strangest characteristics of religious psychology is the commonly held belief that those who have received instruction are better than those left untaught. We don’t phrase it that way, but the implication of consumerized evangelism is that others need what we have so that they can become like us. It is precisely this…
Ideology is Idolatry
When we choose an ideological framework, we employ a system of ideas and ideals to bolster our self-styled morality. We want so desperately to have power over others that we create a false reality in which we are always right, always the victim, always justified, and always able to find the culprit. Instead of child…
More Than a Prophet
When we look at the world, intuitively, we betray Matthew’s admonition against judgment, assessing and interpreting people and texts based on our presuppositions. Instead of seeing everything through the lens of God’s teaching, we trust the lamp of our human eyes, which presents the world to us in darkness. Thankfully, the preaching of John the Baptist—made…
The Kingdom of the Heavens
In Matthew 11, we discover that John the Baptist, who earlier preached the Kingdom of God in the wilderness, is now imprisoned. At this point in the story, we do not know how John ended up in prison. All we know is that he preached the Kingdom. Looking a few verses ahead, we learn from…
To These Little Ones
Image credit: “Mother of God, Protectress of the Oppressed,” by Kelly Latimore, inspired by Brother Robert Lentz. Today is July 4, a holiday in the United States. As is the custom of our church, over the centuries, many such holidays have been coopted to serve the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In this spirit, on this day,…