F. Matthew 9:35 - 10:42 Discourse to the Twelve.

9:35 – 10:4 Introduction

The metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep is powerful in Israel’s developing understanding of its relation to its God YHWH. The story of its first national king David as a shepherd boy, protective of his sheep and his family tribe could not have been stage managed better. The Psalms, of which David becomes the patron, are one of the places this metaphor of “the Lord” as the shepherd of the devout flock, is explored. A part of the common fund of experience and wisdom about sheep and shepherds was the high level of intimacy between Sheep and shepherd, the very high worth of the individual sheep and the high level of danger and risk associated with being a shepherd. The two Christian Jewish gospels develop the metaphor, Matthew here the “compassionate shepherd” and John 10 the good/noble shepherd who is also the door of the sheep.

The metaphor mixing begins here with the sheep being a harvest and the trainee shepherds becoming labourers for the harvest. It will continue throughout this discourse.

Matthew’s contribution to the listings and naming of the twelve occurs here. His listing is characterized by pairing up list members, Simon and Andrew, James and John, …

Lists

What Matthew’s list shares with the list in Mark and the two Luke-Acts lists is that Peter’s name comes first and that there are twelve names in the list (this may appear to be contradicted by the list in Acts 1 but the whole point of that list is to say it is lacking one member following Judas’ death and that lack must be made up immediately.) The names and the order of names is not consistent. Perhaps what was remembered most clearly was that there was a group of twelve selected from the disciples and that Peter played a special role amongst them. The calling and naming of the group also differs. Mark has Jesus call those whom he wanted from which he selects twelve to a special task; he also calls them “apostles” (also in 6:30 when they return). Luke also has the sequence calls … 12 … apostles. Matthew cuts to the chase and has Jesus call twelve apostles. Some of the twelve never occur in stories in the Gospel. The Gospel of John has six of the named disciples but has its own inner group of disciples Lazarus, Mary & Martha. There are clearly women among the group of disciples and some of them accompany him to his grave. All of this goes to show that the traditional equation of Jesus’ disciples with the twelve tells us very little.

10:5 – 15 Mission to Israel

The ministry of Jesus was centred on Capernaum on the north west of the Galilee. As with any contemporary new religion or philosophy, if it were to spread and gain a footing beyond this small localized area it was going to be through the work of travelling missionaries. For the word of Jesus to get out, the word of the Kingdom and the word of healing, it was going to have to be by carried by wandering charismatic preachers, carried into Syria and Palestine. The conduct of such preachers had to be controlled. The principles laid out here are:

• It is to be confined to Israel. Others would go to the Gentiles (e.g. Luke 10 has a parallel set of instructions for such a mission).
• It was to be supported locally and a dramatic sign of this was that they were to take no provisions with them, no money or food or clothing or weapons.
• Go to one house in a village and stay there until you leave the village. (Luke’s Gentile instructions say eat what is put in front of you – no shopping around.) The contemporary Christian writing called the “Didache” (teaching), from the church in Syria, says that anyone who stays longer than three days is a false prophet. Clearly there was a recognized danger of a fraudulent exploitation of religion or philosophy by its missionaries.
• How do you know when it is time to move on? If you don’t get even a toe hold in the door, so to speak, if hospitality is refused by a house, if they don’t even return your “shalom” then move on to another house but register your disdain by treating that house as a foreign land and shaking off its insult like dust from your feet. If they do return your peace and welcome you in then stay put there until it is time to leave that village.
• The simply lifestyle was to exemplify the urgency of the proclamation of the Kingdom and to distinguish wandering Christian preachers from wandering Cynic philosophers. The kingdom of God has been ushered in and time is a wasting.

The fixed home base and extended family local based on ancestral land, the illiteracy of peasant existence would all have to be replaced by a new family, with new skills and with a new set of loyalties (Mk 3:31-35 “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”). It differs too from the world of Paul, the literate, educated travelling artisan who would found churches in towns and cities in the Greco-Roman world outside of the land of Israel. In time, this would be the world that would become most fertile for the growth of this new way of being the people of God.

But that time had not yet come for the church of Matthew who still saw themselves as a part of the one flock under the one shepherd. That metaphor was still powerful and it was still calling out for more apprentice shepherds to go out amongst the wolves to preach and heal.

10:16 – 25 Future Sufferings

As it was with the master Jesus, so it will be with the twelve and so in turn it will be with the members of Matthew’s community. The language of the persecution is the language of Mk 13 and Matt 24: it is the language of eschatology, the period of the end of this age and the ushering in of the next. The mission of Matthew now becomes one of the features of this transition.

Danger will come from being arraigned before local councils and kings and from within the family (Micah 7). It would be anachronistic to see this as evidence of a widespread and systematic persecution of Christians by Jews in the late first century. It need reflect no more than an inner-Jewish squabble. Matthew’s Christian-Jews may have experienced this as short and violent but we probably don’t want to blow it out into a general and irrevocable split.

The disciples are given assurance of support from God (“will be given you” taken as an instance of the “divine passive”). This will take the form of the giving of the Spirit and the coming of the Son of Man. Who is he, when does he come, and what is the extent of the “cities of Israel”? Was Matthew’s Jesus mistaken?

10:26 – 42 Other Instructions

• The disciple is not above the master. If they have called the master of the house … how much more will they malign those of the household. This is an example of an “a fortiori argument” (sometimes referred to by the Hebrew label “qal wahomer,” meaning light and heavy) This example may not be persuasive to us because they might only be interested in the master. A better example might be that of the sparrows (see below).
• What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light. Though the context now may require a degree of secrecy, the teaching is ultimately public property, not secret teaching. Luke uses the saying in the context of unmasking hypocrisy and Mark makes the context the teaching in parables.
• Two sparrows sold for a penny. The cheapest meat available in the market. Here the light and the heavy argument comes into its own. If (you Father is concerned for something as lowly as a sparrow) how much more (will he take care of you). Therefore don’t be afraid. We can understand the argument without necessarily being persuaded by it. The sparrow get killed and become someone’s dinner. How convincing is this to someone starving in Zimbabwe, facing today’s (June, 27th) sham of an election?
• Not peace but a sword. The larger context of Matthew, with the beatitude for the peacemakers (5:9) and the command to love enemies (5:43-48) and his refusal to allow arms to be taken up in his defence (26:52), requires that this metaphor of the sword be fully explained as a reference to the choices and consequences forced on the would-be disciple. His call forces a choice that severs what, in an agrarian society, was the ultimate loyalty to the family and its land.
• Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Luke ultimately says the same thing but it is dressed up in what is, to us, a stumbling block: “…and does not hate father and mother … cannot be my disciple”(Lk. 14:26). “Hate” means “to love less than …”
• Welcomes you … welcomes me … welcomes him who sent me. Underlying this is the law of agency: the agent is as the one who sent him. To see and hear the agent is to see and hear the one who sent him. To insult or mistreat the ambassador is to insult or mistreat the king who sent him. This is the stuff of diplomacy: we represent Jesus and speak on his behalf.
• What is the prophet’s reward? What is the righteous one’s reward?
• One of these little ones. A favorite expression of Matthew, seemingly referring to the members of his community. Check it out!

So then, what are we seeing? A community of “little ones” that sees itself as under threat. As the notables, Peter and the rest of the twelve represented Jesus as the carriers and performers of the kingdom while Jesus was here, how much more do we represent Jesus now in the time of his absence? If Jesus and the twelve received stick, it would be totally unrealistic to think that we are going to get anything less, now at the end of the first century. “But,” says Matthew’s Jesus, “don’t be afraid of them!” Be afraid rather of those who can destroy body and soul, those people and things that can gnaw away at our sense of integrity, desensitizing us little by little, so that we are not capable of standing up for what is right.