Matthew 22:34-46

This passage occurs in the RCL "Pentecost"/"Ordinary"/"Proper" Season, Year A, most recently October 2023.
 
Summary:  I suppose one could go to great lengths to parse out the Greek meaning of the words, "heart", καρδια, "soul," ψυχη, and "mind," διανοια.  After discovering that they mean different things in Greek than in English you learn that Jesus wants us to...drum roll...Love God and love our neighbor with everything we've got.  This is probably not much for a sermon, but I find it comforting that Jesus wants us to love God with our minds.  In my formation and candidacy, I often internalized guilty about my intelligence as if somehow, I just needed to be a big ball of emotions to serve God.  One of my professors, Dr. Henrich, pointed out that in this passage, we are called to love God with our mind.  This was an incredible word of Gospel to me.  Intellectual exploration of God's Word is okay too!  Funny how law can be heard as Gospel sometimes...

Key words:
διδασκαλε ("Teacher", 22:36)  Thanks be to God Jesus wasn't simply a teacher, but also the savior.  However, let us not dismiss the idea of Jesus as teacher.  The word teacher appears throughout each Gospel a total of 48 times.  What can we learn from Jesus this week?  One might understand Jesus' teaching role as salvific (if we just followed Jesus' teachings, healing and life would follow); but I would like to understand it in more dialectical and unsolved relationship.  Jesus is the world's greatest teacher of human wisdom and law.  Jesus also teaches though that finally the law is not enough to save us.  However, we cannot avoid the teachings of Jesus, including when it comes to ethics.  Also, the great teachers have a passion for their subject and also a passion for their students -- Jesus literally has THE passion for his students, us.

αγαπαω ("Love" 22:37)  One can parse the word love a number of ways.  What is interesting here is that αγαπη, which is often thought to refer to divine love, here refers to neighborly love.  A reminder that in the kingdom of God, love doesn't remain on heaven, but comes to earth.

καρδια ("heart", 22:37)  In Greek, the heart is NOT the center of emotions, but of will.   

ψυχη ("soul", 22:37)  BDAG points to the broad nature of this word.  The soul is, perhaps best said, that which makes flesh alive.  The Bible will use the word ψυχη to mean more than simply "the ghostly blue vapor" of our existence.  Perhaps another way:  our essence?  Hard to nail down...

διανοια ("Thoughts" or mind, 22:37):  As I stated in my summary, I want to point out that Jesus wants us to love God with our mind.  Also interesting is that God admits fulfilling this is impossible.  In Genesis 8:21 God says that all our thoughts (διανοια) are bent on evil.  Eph 2:3 and 4:18 are similar.  Interestingly, in Jeremiah 31:33, God says he will put the law into our minds.  All this points out that not simply our "hearts," but our minds, are also a battle ground for God, a place that needs rebirth.  (In fact, this word is often translated from the Hebrew word that means "heart" because the ancient Jewish thought located thoughts in the heart).

χριστος ("anointed" 22:42).  This is a very common word in the NT.  The reason why I bring it up here is because most of our thoughts about the word "Christ" are not what the listener's in the OT would have heard.  

The word Messiah was a loaded term that encompassed the deepest hopes of ancient Israel for the one through whom God would bring fulfillment of long-standing promises.  The challenge is that people living in Jesus' day understood differently how God would do this (although there was probably less disagreement about the end result).  There was certainly a faction that believed the Messiah would be a military leader who would overthrow Herod.  But this was not universally understood in this way.  Regardless, no one was articulating the idea that the Messiah would be a crucified rebel.

The spiritualization of this role is not  New Testament development.  That Jesus came to "take us to heaven" is a much later development.  All first century Jews, including Paul and Jesus, would have understood the Kingdom of God as heaven breaking into earth, rather than us escaping earth to get to heaven.

Grammatical review:  "Hendiadys"
A Hendiadys is a very fancy way of saying "using two words to mean one thing."  Literally from the Greek:  "One through two."  An example of this might be from Genesis 1:  "Formless and void."  They both essentially mean the same thing.  Put them together and you get:  "A whole lot of nothing." 
In this particular passage, we have a hendiadys typical of the New Testament: 
ο νομος και οι προφηται (22:40)

The law and the prophets.  This is the NT way of referring to the Old Testament.  Sometimes they will include the Psalms, but more often, just these two sections.  So Jesus isn't simply saying, "All of the commands and words of the prophets hang on these two commandments" he is saying, "the whole Bible that you know of depends on this."

Matthew 22:15-22

This passage occurs in the RCL "Pentecost"/"Ordinary"/"Proper" Season, Year A, most recently October 2023.

Summary:  One does not find the Greek words for church and state in this passage, even though this passage is used to justify all sorts of behavior and relationships between church and state.  What is mentioned though is the word "εικον" meaning icon, or image.  The tempters of Jesus, forgetting Genesis 1, say that the coin bears the image of Caesar.  They answer the truth, but not the whole truth.  An image of a man is still an image of God.  Money, whether it says, "In God We Trust" or "Caesar" or anything, isn't exempt from God's creation.  It still has to do with humans and how we live in this creation, and thus it still belongs under God's dominion.

Freedom note:  I used this passage in 2017 to launch a Reformation 500 series on the Freedom of a Christian.  I pick this passage because Jesus discusses that even those of us free in Christ still have responsibilities before other people.

Key words: 
παγις ("hunter's trap", used as a verb, 22.15) The word for ensnare comes from the root for trap. What a cruel image of the pharisees trying with metal jaws, to trap Jesus. 

Interestingly, by possessing a coin with the image of Caesar on them, one could argue the Jewish leaders here are already worshiping an idol.  This is especially true given the cult of the Emperor and the fact he was viewed as a god.  They were carrying around images of a foreign god!!  Furthermore, they set up a bogus system whereby you had to trade you Roman money for Jewish money to buy sacrifices.  Thus the temple profited from this exchange.  Jesus traps them as he reveals their sin and their entanglement with the Emperor.  Herod was a puppet king of Rome...but even the Pharisees benefit from the Roman tyranny because so often they are in places of power.   So Jesus is showing that they play in the Emperor's sandbox all the time. They want to trap him and in the end, they lay a trap for themselves.  Hence why they are hypocrites (see below!)

αποστελλω ("send" 22.16).  The literal phrase here is that his enemies "apostled their disciples," a reminder that Jesus is not the only one with apostles and disciples...

υποκριτης ("actor/hypocrite", 22.18) The word for hypocrite means actor, or one who plays a part.  (He answered above the others from stage.)  This is not necessarily a negative word, but in the NT it is used exclusively that way.  Jesus isn't interested in actors, but real people with real sins that need real forgiveness.  (In fact, the sentence before Luther famously asserts 'sin boldly', he says, "God did not die for fictitious sinners.")

εικον (image/icon, 22.20) The word here for "head" or "portrait" here is literally "eikon," (icon!) which means image. So the question is whose image? If it is a human head, the answer could just as easily have been "God." (See Genesis 1!)  As Christians we must always seek to serve the creator behind the created governments of this world...yet while still acknowledging the reality of human government and laws!

τα του θεου (the things of God).  The word 'things' is implied here, for it literally reads, "the(se) of God."  While this is straight-forward Greek grammar that we don't have in English -- where we would need to include the word "things", there is something a bit trickier going on here.  Grammatically, it is worth asking -- what is the connection between "the(se) things" and "God"?  "God" is in the genitive case and this opens up many possibilities.  Do we give God back the things that come from God? The things that belong to God?  The things in this world which are for God?  The grammatical possibilities seem endless, underlying the more theological question:  What belongs to God? 

The best answer it seems, is from the Psalms:

The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it  Psalm 24:1

For 2026 to beef up -- I preached on the word "render" (αποδιδημι).  In the NT, only once we are called to give a rendering to God -- on judgment day.  In the OT, we are called to render a sacrifice of thanksgiving.  Two interesting ways to think about what we actually have to render -- confession of sin and confession of praise!

Translation/Grammar review:  Idioms
"The things of God" is not the only idiomatic construction in this passage!

Some things in a language are simply impossible to translate literally.  This week Jesus is told, "You do not look into the face of people."  This doesn't sound so nice.  It simply means, "You don't look at exterior things."  (Which is a positive assessment).  He is also told he doesn't care about nothing.  Missing from this idiom is the word "opinion."  Jesus doesn't care about the opinions of others, in the sense that he acts free from petty judgments of others.  You could take them literally, and perhaps derive some meaning; that said, with idioms, it is often best to let professional translators do the work...

Matthew 22:1-14

This passage occurs in both the Narrative Lectionary (Year 1) and the Revised Common Lectionary (Most recently October 17, 2023).

Summary:  I am having a hard time with this passage this year (2023).   As I update this post, Israel is engaged retaliation against the brutal attacks and kidnappings by Hamas.  Jews witnessed their own people slaughtered, even when they thought they were safe.  The abysmally poor in Gaza Strip will suffer as well as countless others in poverty.  This is classic tribal war along ethnic and religious lines, the kind that somehow we thought we had outgrown as a world.  When I combine this with the war in Ukraine and the political dysfunction in my own country that seems - on its worst days - to be leading us to internal civil war along tribal lines, I can do little else but lament.  And then I encounter in this parable a God who seems intent on revenge, focused on marker of tribe (clothing) and comfortable with exclusion and even cruelty.  Very tough to stomach.

Is there a glimmer of hope here?  Hmm...  This might be a passage I need to wrestle with some more, but the response of the King to the indifference and cruelty of the word is the following

- Purge it of evil

- Throw a party for everyone willing to come, including the bad and marginalized

- Deny entry to the self-righteous (see note on clothing below)

That is a party I can get behind.  But I am really wrestling with it all!  For those who are not struck by this reality a more standard way I might approach it:

It is interesting that those who don't want to come are into their own thing!  Those we (in the American church) think should come seem plenty busy and satisfied with their life.  Yet eventually folks do come -- interestingly those originally not invited.   Perhaps a challenge to most American 'mission' efforts, which are designed to get the busy to pay more attention to the church instead of inviting those in need -- those by the wayside.  This is about whom we invite but also why we invite -- are we inviting people to one more activity or something that is the balm for the wounds?  If we cannot go to the margins of people's lives, our ministry will be ineffective.

Key Words/Grammar insights:

καλεω (kaleo, "call" or "invite"; 22:3, 4, 8, 9 (14 as adjective)).  The word here for invited is simply the perfect of καλεω which means to call/invite. This word is used in various forms throughout the passage.  Jesus calls us to invite those willing to come because many of those invited were not interested.  A reminder that in all Gospels, but truly in Matthew, Jesus cares for people the world does not; the b-list people, so to speak.  The b-list people, you know, the beatitudes people!

τεθυμενα (tethymena, perfect participle of θυω, "slaughter" or "kill", 22:4).  This word can mean sacrificed.  If one were to go this route, then this parable could be interpreted within the paradigm of the conflict between Jews and early Jewish converts to Christianity:  Jesus has died (been sacrificed); many early Jews are not accepting him.  The temple is destroyed and that nation has fallen, perhaps as punishment for lack of conversion. A few other items that support this reading:

διεξοδος (literally "dia-exodus", meaning "crossroads" or "fork", 22:9)  This usually referred to the point where the roads from the country converged to the city.  (Thayer Dictionary, accessed via Accordance).  In this way, this can be seen as the movement of the church outside of its walls and likely into gentile territory.  He offers "the phrase figuratively represents the territory of heathen nations, into which the apostles were about to go forth"

εφιμωθη (aorist passive form of φιμοω, phimo-oo, "silence"; 22:12) Jesus will silence the Sadducees later this chapter (22:34).  This parable is not intended simply as a myth, but as a description, I would suggest, of how Jesus' was and is being received.

ενδυω/ενδυμα ("clothe" as verb; "clothing" as noun; 22:11, 12).  Matthew's Gospel talks about clothing a few times (more than any other Gospel, incidentally).  We learn that John the Baptist is clothed in Camel's hair (3:4); we learn not to worry about our clothing (6:25-28); we meet the angels wearing white (28:3).  Which leads to the question -- what should one wear to the heavenly banquet?

To get at this, I did a word search on ενδυω ("clothe/wear" to find examples of people wearing stuff in the New Testament, especially as it would relate to the heavenly banquet.  I've included them and underlined the word as the NRSV translates as ενδυω:

1 Corinthians 15:54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

Romans 13:14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Luke 24:49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

Matthew 27:31 After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

Ephesians 4:24 and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 6:14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.

1 Thessalonians 5:8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Revelation 19:14 And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.

Galatians 3:27    As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

The only thing that can meet all of these criterion:  the gift of Jesus Christ in faith, love and righteousness, eternally pure and immortal yet also ready to die to the world, is our Baptism.  The question becomes, then, what might it mean to have the wrong clothing.  The text does not answer this question directly.  Perhaps it means to not be baptized?  Hmm.  I wonder if the wrong clothing means we come thinking that belong on our own and not in the clothing given to us by God.

υβριζω (hubrizoo (rough breathing over υ), meaning "mistreat"; 22:6)  The word for mistreat here is "hubriz-oo," literally, have hubris.

διακονοις (-ος, diakonos, meaning "attendant", 22:13)  I find it haunting that the "deacons" are sent into bind and cast out the wicked.  Typically we associate diaconal or deacon work with humble service to the poor.  Perhaps it is a reminder that purging the world of evil is a deacon's work too.  But very disturbing!

Grammar note with some theological reflection, verse 22:5
22:5 shows two ways that Greek can show possessive; 

εις τον ιδιον αργον   his field (literally, the field of his own)

επι την εμποριαν αυτου    and his business (genitive αυτου signifying 'his')

Both of which mean that that the people were into their own thing.  Quite a statement about why people don't engage with Christianity.