As teachers and students, we delude ourselves with abstraction. How many of us, instead of teaching the words of the Bible, offer a cheap summary or moral extraction to get at (what we call) the gist of the story? How often have you heard someone talk and talk and talk about God for hours without…
Category: Matthew
Not Everyone Who Says, “Lord, Lord”
It’s unclear how or when the phrase “I love you” became the sacrosanct rubric of America’s devolving mating rituals, but it did. In the place of duty, honor, and commitment, we peddle the fake importance of a self-involved, emotionally insecure obsession with three words that represent a hormonal response. Even if you think you disagree,…
Beware of False Prophets
Priorities control a person’s speech. If a pastor’s goal is to share the words of the Bible, he will speak the words of the Bible. If his goal is to grow his parish, he will add to (or subtract from) the words of Scripture to appeal to his target audience, ignoring the Lord’s warning in…
The Narrow Path
In the modern Internet of Consumers, everyone is treated as a profit center. Content, images, and themes are all engineered to attract the widest audience possible. If everyone likes your message, it must be good, right? This profit centered model has corrupted our media institutions and undermines our trust in each other. In 2018, everyone…
Ask, Seek, and Knock
Too often, the Lord’s promise in Matthew 7:7, that those who ask will receive, and those who seek will find, is reframed by a consumer mindset, as though prayer is the adult version of writing a letter to Santa Claus. But if we hear this verse in the context of Matthew, we’re stuck with a…
Dogs, Swine, and Pearls
Too often, teachers use Matthew 7:6 to cast aspersion on the unchurched, difficult students, or people who are not interested in what they have to say. In doing so, they twist the meaning of the Gospel to serve themselves at the expense of others. When the Lord warns his followers, “Do not give what is…
Only One Opinion Counts
Too often, we co-opt the prohibition against judgment in Matthew as a mechanism of our self-imposed fragility. We don’t want to be challenged with our sins, so when confronted, we blather, “who are you to judge?” Fortunately, Matthew 7 renders this question totally non-functional. “Who am I?” I am exactly what you are and what…
Sufficient for the Day
When we step back to consider the full scope of any effort, even when the work in front of us pertains to God and not to mammon, it’s easy to become paralyzed by stress and anxiety. In Matthew, Jesus solves this problem by narrowing the scope of our worries yet further: yes, we must limit…
The Lilies of the Field
Everyone loves Matthew’s passage about the lilies of the field. We love it because who doesn’t want to be consoled and encouraged not to worry about anything? But our enthusiasm is misplaced. We get excited about our freedom from worry in the same way that we misread our liberation from Pharaoh. In the book of…
Treasure in Heaven
“Those who want to become rich,” St. Paul writes, “fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. “For the love of money,” he continues, “is the root of all evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced…