Tag: Week 12

So, Jesus has sat on the mountain and taught, outlining a new way of relating to God and our fellow human beings. Jesus has come down from the mountain, like Moses, bringing God’s love and power into our midst. Jesus has healed a member of the Jewish community. Today we read of Jesus healing a gentile. Not just a gentile, but a Roman, one of the greatest enemies of first-century Jews. If the crowds were shocked at Jesus touching the Jewish leper, how much more profound must their shock have been when the same divine healing power was extended to a Roman officer?

For me, there are two key words in today’s reading: faith and authority.

No one can doubt the faith of the Roman centurion. How many of us have ever been able to demonstrate even half as much faith? We live in a modern ‘rational’ age where the simplicity of faith is constantly being challenged by the laws of science. We want to believe with a blind and trusting faith, but we constantly pull back from the cliff’s edge, and we constantly allow questions to get in the way. Just as we struggle with praying, so we struggle with following God in a spirit of blind and humble obedience, even though we may want to with our whole hearts.

And why should we try to let go and place ourselves in God’s hands? Because God created us in his own image and God loves us. It is as simple as that. We need to learn that all authority in heaven and on earth rests with God. 

The problem with managing our way in and out of lockdown, or coping with isolation and shielding, or planning for the uncertain nature of the days to come, lies solely in our inability to trust God. We want to manage, cope and plan, but we want to do those things on our own terms. Yes, we want our churches to re-open and we want to gather in prayer and praise, but we want to do that on our own terms. Are we ready for God to say to us, Let’s just re-think that and see how it fits in my plan?’

As we continue our journey through Matthew’s gospel in the coming weeks we are going to be presented with many such challenges. Let us all pause now, pray to God and ask for his strength to trust in his teaching, in his power to restore and renew us, and in his power to lead us on new paths.

Our readings for today and tomorrow recall events that took place immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, and they both concern Jesus’ God-given authority to heal.

Today’s short account presents us with Jesus restoring and renewing a sufferer from leprosy who was also a member of the Jewish faith. In this act of love and cleansing Jesus demonstrates the inclusivity of the Christian message.

In Jesus’ time the term leprosy was used as a catch-all term for a variety of diseases. What each disease had in common was their contagious nature and their ability to disfigure. They also resulted in social isolation. Nobody would willingly approach a ‘leper’, and a sufferer was not allowed to approach anyone else. We have come to call this self-isolation, social distancing and shielding; first century Jewish society described it as being untouchable.

The ‘untouchable’ nature of leprosy makes it all the more shocking when we read of Jesus touching the leper. How those who witnessed this scene must have recoiled in horror!

But, what about the leper? Imagine the thrill of simple, unfamiliar human contact. Imagine his surprise at the stirring of a long-forgotten memory – the loving touch of another human being (perhaps the first for years). Imagine feeling God’s restoration and renewal flowing through his body.

Of course, that restoration and renewal also involved re-integration into normal society. It also placed a responsibility on the shoulders of that leper: the responsibility to accept God’s healing touch and to share it with others.

Are we up for that challenge?

Are we ready to let God lead us through these strange times into his time of renewal and restoration?

Are we ready to share the Good News of Jesus’ healing touch with others?

Matthew’s gospel can be split into five great blocks of teaching. The first (chapters 5-7) being the Sermon on the Mount. Today we come to the end of that Sermon.

Our journey through this great moment in Jesus’ teaching ministry has been subtly punctuated, by Matthew, with many references that place Jesus firmly where he should be – at the heart of the age-old sweep of Jewish law and tradition. But, today, there is a real twist.

Up to now we have heard Jesus’ words and seen him pointing us in a new direction. Many centuries of interpretation have been overlaid with human ‘wisdom’. The simple message of faithful and obedient love of God has become confused and obscured by human routines and requirements. Jesus rounds off the Sermon on the Mount by warning us that if we hear his words and then follow a different path through life, well, then, we are just plain stupid! We are just like the man who builds his house on sand; we should not be surprised to see it all fall around us when the rains come.

As Jesus’ first audience was listening to his words, they could have turned their heads and seen Herod’s men working towards the completion of their rebuild of the Temple. This great house of God, they believed, would stand for ever. In fact, it would be destroyed by the Romans just a few years after its completion – just as Jesus predicted.

Jesus is warning us about trying to confine God’s love, power and truth within human boundaries. 

We have spent much time outside our man-made churches this year. 
How have we used that time?
Have we drawn closer to God?

Or, are we waiting with the bricks and mortar to try and reinforce the false barriers that we so readily erect between us and our loving Creator and Father?I pray that our prayers and devotion have taken us nearer to, and not further from, the God who loves us all.

The opening of today’s reading must seem like a complete contradiction of Jesus’ earlier teaching that we should not judge and condemn others, but it isn’t really. The talk of dogs and swine always causes confusion because it sounds so condemnatory, but is it?

One interpretation of these words requires us to put them back into the context of Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been guiding us, steadily and systematically, onto a path that will lead us into a closer relationship with God, our Father in heaven. The terms ‘dog’ and ‘swine’ were common terms for gentiles in Jesus’ times. The gentiles were those who did not understand the importance of all that was holy in the Jewish world; they were those who did not understand what it means to see God as the loving Father of all.

This may sound as though Jesus was trying to institute a spiritual and theological ‘closed shop’. He was not! We know, that in his Great Commission, Jesus will send us out to all corners of the world to baptize all who would come to him – no matter who or what they are.

Today, Jesus is summarizing all that he has been teaching. Today, he is reminding us to make sure that we know what is holy and good, and then to use that knowledge to establish and strengthen our relationship with God. 

Once we understand, then we can become true, faithful and effective disciples of our risen Saviour.

Then we can lead others through that narrow gate.

It is easy to condemn others – to point the finger of blame – to ask why others are not as good as us. This is the situation that Jesus is addressing in today’s reading. Jesus is drawing attention to the casual judgements and condemnations that we all indulge in on a daily basis. Jesus is drawing attention to them, and then telling us to: Stop it!

In the context of last week’s readings, we can see that Jesus is speaking about the old ways of engaging with God. But, to stop there is to ignore that Jesus is talking to us too. Yes, us, in our modern, sophisticated twenty-first century world.

There are so many things that cause us to condemn and judge: politics, morality, economics, the environment, what should and should not be opened as we come out of lockdown, to name but a few. We all have opinions, and we all fall into the trap of seeing our personal opinions as sacrosanct; we use our own prejudices as the yardstick against which we choose to judge and condemn others. This is exactly what Jesus is telling us not to do!

Of course, Jesus is not telling us that we should not have high standards. Rather, he is reminding us that we need to make sure we apply those standards, first and foremost, to ourselves. Jesus calls us to stop focusing on the shortcomings of others, whilst wallowing in our own failings and sins.

Do you remember last week’s reading when Jesus taught us how to pray in a new way?

The challenge for today is contained in that prayer: And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Lord, guide us in our thinking and in our interaction with others, that we may love as you love.