Matthew: Chapters 9 to 13

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CHAPTER 9

Christ heals a paralytic, and notes that, “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”  This is where we first start seeing Christ make statements about himself, that he’s more than just some wise man or some healer.  It’s a very vague statement (it comes from Ezekiel) but we’ll keep getting more and more towards the question of his divine nature as we go along.  If you think about it, for most people around him, Christ is just a wise healer who himself seems to be a discipline of John the Baptist. 

Christ calls a new apostle, Matthew the tax collector.  That makes five apostles called.  Fun fact: those are the only apostles we see Christ call in the Gospel According to Matthew.  The others will all get mentioned, but only five are called in this gospel.  The first four are called because they were the first, and the book wants to show that his movement has begun. 

Matthew’s call is represented because it’s controversial.  After taking in the tax collector, Christ sits with him and other tax collectors and sinners.  I like how they’re paralleling tax collectors and sinners, like they’re all the same thing.  Anyhow, the Pharisees denounce Christ for hanging out with a bad crowd.  Christ is nonplussed – sure I hang out with sinners.  They are the ones who need me.  Take that, Pharisees!  (I’ll also point out that more than a few of the most vocal Christians nowadays act just like the Pharisees in this story and not like Christ). 

The Pharisees have more problems with the Christ Gang.  For example, they don’t fast.  Why should we, Christ says, would wedding guests fast when with the groom?  I won’t be here long, so people should celebrate while I’m here.  Well, that is the first inkling that Christ won’t live a long life in this realm. 

Right after that, comes a bunch of healings.  And it really is right after that.  One thing I notice – oftentimes in Matthew events are portrayed as happening immediately after one another.  There is no lag time between them.  Coming off the mountain after the Sermon on the Mount, he’s approached by someone wanting to be cured last chapter.  Here, Matthew tells us that as Christ is explaining why he doesn’t fast, a woman approaches him to heal her dead daughter.  It’s a mini-Lazarus story, one where it’s a little less clear if the woman actually died or not.  There are mourners outside, but Christ insists that the dead girl is just asleep, and commands her to awake.  She was probably dead – but Jesus specifically said she wasn’t, instead of taking credit for raising her from the dead.

After that, Matthew notes that “as Jesus passed on from there” – as he’s walking away from the non-dead daughter, he’s approached by two blind men.  Again, one event happens IMMEDIATELY after the other.  Christ cures them and tells them to shut up about it, but they blab about it all over town.  Then Christ healed a bunch more people.

CHAPTER 10

The first word in this chapter is “Then.”  Again – Matthew wants to give us a sense that all of these things are happening right after each other, it seems.  “Then” doesn’t indicate much passage of time. 

Anyhow, apparently Christ now has a full compliment of apostles – a dozen.  (One for each of the old tribes of Israel).  Christ gives them (and yes, they are named) marching orders.  The first one: don’t go into pagan territory.  That’s interesting, because his religion will later flourish there and be rejected among the Jews.  That’s a key difference between the religion of Christ and the eventual Christian religion. 

Christ tells them to cure people, help people – but don’t accept any payment.  “The laborer deserves his keep.”  Travel light and stay with good people in each village you come to.  Beware, though – people will try to persecute you. 

The Gospel of Matthew is silent as to why people would want to persecute them.  It’s just taken as a given.  I assume it’s related to why Christ tells people he cures to shut up about it.  He doesn’t want the authorities to know who he really is if he can help it.  He’s coming to minister to Jews – and he seems to have no problem with ordinary Jews – but he is also a disruptive influence.  And people in power don’t like things that shake up the old status quo.

But Christ keeps on going about the coming persecution, and it is a bleak image: “Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child, children will rise up against parents and have them put to death.  You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”  Forget the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem for a second – this writer sounds like he’s survived the Nero-era persecution of Christians.  This bit serves as a pep talk for people in the late first century AD to persevere through all the problems they face.  If you think about it, these words make little sense in the context Matthew places them, but they make sense for the readers later on.  Why would Christ tell this to his apostles so early in his ministry?  Most of them, please note, won’t have to worry about having their parents kill them or them killing their parents.  The pep talk goes further, seemingly addressing any/all potential martyrs point blank: “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body.”  Whatever happens, stay true to the religion – it will see you through.

Oh, and if the rewards of keeping the faith isn’t enough, Christ also applies the stick along with the heavenly carrot: “Whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”  So be courageous …or else!

Christ then makes one of his more remarkable statements – one that flies directly and intentionally in the face of family values.  He says he’s come to break up families.  You must love me more than your parents or more than you love your children.  If you don’t, then you are unworthy of Christ.  He comes off like a real fucking asshole here.  Yeah, I know – you can love your family and God.  But look at it in context. He’s saying he’s come to break up families  - he says, “I have come to bring not peace but the sword” around here.  Sure, nowadays for most people you pray to Christ and you love your family.  But at the time he’s making this statement, Jesus is clear – you might have to make a choice between me or your families – and fuck you if you pick your families. 

CHAPTER 11

Apparently John the Baptist isn’t dead yet.  He sends messengers to Jesus – are you the messiah?  Christ gives one of his typical indirect answers.  He tells the messengers from the Baptist – just report to John what you see: “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.  And blessed is the one who take no offense to me.”  So yeah, he’s totally the messiah, but he isn’t going to say it directly. 

As the messengers left, Christ began speaking to a larger crowd. Once again, Matthew makes clear that there is no time lapse between these events – “As [the messengers] were going off” the next section begins.  Christ gives a speech to a crowd where he praises the Baptist, even claiming John is Elijah. 

Christ shifts gears, and begins to denounce a series of towns.  It’s not really clear why he’s denouncing these towns, but I assume they rejected him and his message.  This is frankly petty.  It reminds me of the prophet Jeremiah getting so caught up in the muck of pissing wars with his opponents that he forgot to focus on the bigger picture here.  Christ tells the towns that they’ll have it worse than Sodom.  Question/theory: I wonder what happened to these towns (Chorazin, Bethsaida) during the Jewish uprising 30 years after Christ.  If they were destroyed (quite possible) then this passage would be post facto using Christ to justify their destruction.  They were destroyed not for rebelling against Rome, but rejecting God.

CHAPTER 12

Now the Pharisees are miffed that the Apostles ate grain on the Sabbath.  That’s against the rules, but Christ has a nifty rejoinder: David did it with his army once.  So get bent, Pharisees. 

Oh, and then they try to get Christ on an even lamer excuse.  A man with a withered hand asks Christ to heal it on the Sabbath.  Now the Pharisees leap – are you going to do this labor on the Lord’s Day?  It’s not lawful to do this on the Sabbath!  Seriously, Pharisees?  You’d rather someone suffer than let a minor rule go?  This gets to the heart of the Jesus-Pharisee dispute.  They are about rigorously enforcing rules and injunctions.  Christ is about the feeling behind it.  Sure, love God – but love your fellow man, too.  It’s about love, not edicts.  Christ makes a different response to them, though.  Ever had a sheep fall in a hole on the Sabbath?  You tried to get it out, right?  Is a human hand worth less than your sheep?  So get bent, Pharisees.

We’re seeing the plot advance here, aren’t we?  Now, it’s not just Christ doing his deeds.  Now it’s Christ have to defend himself from critics; real asshole critics.  People start openly wondering if Christ is the chosen one – the “Son of David” prophesized so long ago.  The Pharisees have their answer: no way.  In fact, they make the opposite claim.  Sure Christ can heel the sick – but his power comes from Satan, not God.

Jesus’s response is one of the best bits of logic in the Bible.  I’m in league with Satan, am I?  That’s dumb.  Look, I’m casting demons out of people.  I’m attacking demons.  Why would Satan – head demon himself – look to have one of his followers attack his other followers.  That’s just dumb, Pharisees – oh, and get bent.  (I guess they could argue that Christ is a sleeper cell for Satan playing the long game, but the TV show Homeland is still 2,000 years away).

We get the official Jesus Christ quotation of George W. Bush: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and however does not gather with me scatters.”  Bring it on, Pharisees.  And get bent.  Then he calls them a “Brood of vipers.”  Hey – John the Baptists called the Pharisees that, didn’t he?  (checks)  Yup, word-for-word in Matthew 3:7.  You can see there is still some Baptism influence on Christ. 

The Pharisees still haven’t gone off to get bent, though.  They demand proof from Christ  that he is The One.  They demand a miracle.  Christ tells them, in so many words, to get bent.  More precisely, he says, “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign.”  This, by the way, fits in perfectly with Christ’s words in Chapter 4 when he dealt with Satan.  There, Christ told Satan that you don’t test God (Matthew 4:7).  Now the Pharisees are demanding a test, and that just ain’t right.

The chapter ends with a story that really doesn’t fit well with associations of Christianity – and it also is a sore sport for Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary.  Christ is told he has visitors – his mom and his brothers.  OK, first – there is our first sign that Mary didn’t stay a Virgin.  Maybe she was when Christ was born (no, I don’t really think that, but let’s move on), but now she has other kids. Yeah, that makes sense – but please note some Christian traditions insist that she was always a Virgin, forever untainted by Original Sin.  These traditions claim that Christ’s brothers are either cousins, or half-brothers by Joseph from a previous marriage (which ended in his first wife’s death). Man, some traditions are really trying to hard to deny the obvious, aren’t they? 

Anyhow, Christ is told his family is there to see him – and he totally blows them off.  “Who is my mother?” Jesus says, “Who are my brothers?”  He points to his disciplines and says “Here are my mother and brother, for whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brothers, and sister, and mother.” Get bent, Virgin Mary. 

Actually, if you think about it, that passage above indicates that Christ doesn’t think his own relatives are following his ways.  That’s interesting.  But more than that – he’s blowing off his own kin!  Boy, he wasn’t kidding when he said he was coming to bring not peace, but the sword.  There is a definite militant edge to Christ throughout this Gospel.  Early on, his birth is enough to cause Herod to slice up babies out of fear; Christ’s Sermon on the Mount sets up impossibly high standards for ethical conduct, and here he is disdainful to his own mom.

Speaking of that mom – the Virgin Mary will later becomes a key figure in the Catholic Church.  Going back to medieval times, people pray to the Virgin Mary, that she might intervene with her son on their behalf.  (Because what boy would refuse his mother?) Well, Jesus would refuse his mother, that’s who.  I’m sure there are other points in the Gospels that will present a different view of the Mary-Jesus relationship – but this is in the Bible, too. 

Really, throughout Matthew so far Christ has had an anti-family attitude.  Love him more than you love your kids and parents.  Be willing to break with your family.  Now this.  Whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew, this author probably had his family reject him over his newfound religion.

CHAPTER 13

Weighing in at 58 verses, this is the longest chapter in Matthew – until the Passion. 

It’s primarily a bunch of teachings of Christ – and it’s a different type of teachings than the Sermon on the Mount.  Instead of directly saying what he means, he gives a bunch of parables.  Jesus does love his parables.  At one point in this chapter his disciples ask him why he speaks in parables, and Christ tells them that not everyone has yet been granted access to the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.  So Christ speaks indirectly, to give them a sense of it, but not really get too detailed. Oh, and he doesn’t say this, but it’s also a nice way to frustrate and those Pharisees who are constantly out to trap him. 

Most of Christ’s parables are about the kingdom of heaven, and how it will grow.  It’s like grain that is scattered on various types of soil.  Some soil might see it sprout really well, but it will wither at the first bad time.  So Christ needs his ideas to be planted in deep soil, soil that will allow deep roots that will nourish the theology and allow it go grow. 

If, in the meantime, that means some bad influences will enter his movement, Christ will accept that.  At least that’s the take I get from the next parable, about weeds among the wheat.  A mean guy planted weeds in his neighbor’s wheat field, but the guy decides to let the weeds grow. Uprooting them will uproot some wheat.  He’ll wait until the harvest and then uproot the weeds first and burn them in the fire.  Then he’ll collect the wheat.  Christ later explains that when the Day of the Lord comes, the non-believers will be the weeds and they’ll be burnt, like the weeds.  Hey!  I think we just our first sense of the Christian hell – a place where sinners go to burn. 

Christ makes a factual error in his next parable.  He says the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but grows one of the biggest of plants.  That’s what he wants his movement to be like.  Problem: there are smaller seeds than the mustard seed.  There just are – this isn’t arguable.  That hasn’t stopped an entire cottage industry of Biblical literalists to try to explain their way out of this one.  Folks, sometimes you got to let the little things go.  Moving on, this mustard seed analogy does a great job analogizing what will actually happen. The Jesus movement does start small – but boy oh boy does it ever grow big eventually!

Christ then gives a bunch more parables.  Most are short and they are too many to really recount.  The main thing is they are all nature allegories.  They are parables designed to work for farmers.  That makes sense – almost all people back then farm.  This would make sense to them.  We’re a bit removed from the agricultural focus on the early Christian environment, so it does have quite the same resonance.

Oh, and periodically the apostles ask Christ what his parables mean.  He explains without any anger – but I do believe he’ll get sick of them later on not being able to figure this out on their own.

Oh, and I almost forgot – the chapter ends with one of my favorite scenes in the Bible so far.  Jesus goes back to his hometown of Nazareth to preach before the people he grew up with.  He speaks at the synagogue and they are amazed – and not necessarily in a good way. They exclaim, “Is he not the carpenter’s son?  Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?  Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?”  They’re offended!  Jesus has to leave in anger, declaring, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.”  He didn’t achieve any miracles there, they lack faith in him.

This is wonderful for several reasons.  First, this story is great evidence for the historical Jesus.  Sometimes people will wonder if Jesus really lived, and yeah, the evidence is pretty strong (too much written about him too soon after his death to make his life total fiction).  But think about this – if Christ really was fiction; if he was a fabrication made by St. Paul and writers like Matthew – why oh why would you ever invent this story?  Wouldn’t you rather have the people who grew up around him the most likely to see him as a special one?  “Oh, we knew him when he was little and even then, you could tell…”  Yeah, that’s how you handle it if he’s fiction.

But look at it from the perspective of the townspeople.  Look at their words.  They could just as easily say, “Is he not the carpenter’s son?  Didn’t he wet his pants in the second grade and get admonished by his kindergarten teacher for eating paste?”  Man, how can they see him as the Messiah?  - They knew him when he was a snot-nosed twit, just like everyone else.  Familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt, but it sure as hell doesn’t breed awe and reverence.  How can you think someone is the Messiah when you’ve heard him belch? 

It’s just a wonderfully realistic and human story.  And Christ’s response is perfect.  He’s annoyed, he’s embarrassed – he wants out of this two-bit cow-town.  A prophet has no honor in his own house.  That reminds me of a line by Gen. Schwartzkopf after Desert Storm.  He recalled being a top general at a military base.  He gives an order and 60,000 move just as he tells them to – then he goes home and he can’t get his kids to take out the trash.  God, that’s a wonderful end to the story of Christ in Nazareth. 

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