Matthew 25. 31-46

An important characteristic of Matthew 25:31-46 is that it is not a parable as much as it’s an apocalyptic discourse of a final judgment scene. We read that all the nations are gathered, but it ends up being the people of those nations that are judged. The judgment that comes is based upon prior good deeds that were done to others in misfortunate circumstances, such as hunger, thirst, being an alien, lacking clothes, illness, and imprisonment. Two typical interpretations of this passage is that (1) the “least of these” are those that are unfortunate, regardless of their affiliation with Christ, and those who care for them serve Christ also in doing so (the “universalist” perspective); or (2) the “least of these” is referring exclusively to Christians and judgment is being distributed based upon how well others treated Jesus’ disciples (the “particularist” perspective). Without going into substantive detail, a simple reading of the passage seems to promote a “universalist” interpretation because those suffering are ailing from typical human problems, the Greek terminology used distinguishes between the “least of these” and the disciples, those judged are shocked to hear what is said, the passage is located with a lengthy discourse on eschatological judgment, and the passage motivates those who hear to respond to those who are suffering.

This passage is sure to put salvation defined simply as “fire insurance policy” into question. Humanity’s predilection to identify themselves through their “rational” capacity rather than their relational role has narrowed salvation to an individual matter of the soul and mind. To do so eliminates the “new creation” and “new humanity” that Jesus inaugurated through the social reconciliation of peoples. Of course we hope that reconciliation will follow private salvation, but the difference is that it does not essentially pertain to the matter. When the church’s witness of a reconciled people is suppressed it is no wonder that salvation becomes an individual’s intellectual ascension to certain beliefs about this or that. “God’s interest in a redeemed people means that salvation is not just individual; it has a corporate aspect as well. The corporate aspect of salvation finds expression as Christians come together in the church” (Hauerwas, Christian Community, 64). Therefore, salvation goes beyond just the individual to the corporate aspect of a redeemed people by placing ourselves in the history of God’s and being a part of God’s people. Redemption then is an invitation to become a part of the “first fruits” of an eschatological in-breaking kingdom known as the church. The confession that salvation does not come outside the church begins to make sense in this light when the church is thought of as an alternative community and a light to the world rather than a voluntary lifestyle enclave of like-minded individuals.

According to John Yoder, “Jesus’ concept of the coming kingdom was borrowed extensively from the prophetic understanding of the jubilee year” (Yoder, Politics of Jesus, 36). The Jubilee year included four prescriptions for ancient Israel: “(1) leaving the soil fallow, (2) the remission of debts, (3) the liberation of slaves, (4) the return to each individual of his family’s property” (Ibid, 64). Reading Matthew 25: 31-46 in this light, and other parables in Luke and Matthew especially, offers further clarification to how Jesus was presenting the kingdom of God to the Jews. The passage seems to suggest therefore that “there is no divine jubilee for those who refuse to apply it on earth” (Ibid, 69).

We can also gather from this passage that those who assume they are working for God are often working against him meaning we can never be fully sure whose side it is that we are on. Of course Christians can and should speak about Jesus through the articulation of faith, but this often leads to silence and stillness before him. We can never gain mastery or ownership of God’s Wisdom. It is often the guardians of the history of faith who are most guilty in assuming they have religion right and close themselves off from truth that might come from improbable sources. It is interesting that Matthew would begin his story with a genealogy of Jesus that includes insignificant and strange persons. God’s presence is scattered through all of creation, which God’s people are used to provide coherence to, but we are prone to exclude certain parts of creation in doing so; especially what and whom we consider insignificant. Jesus’ apocryphal discourse here teaches us that God is found quite literally in the “lesser of these”.

Matthew 25. 14-30

This parable told by Jesus is often taken by Christian economists to prove that Jesus was a capitalist and therefore grant God’s favor upon free market systems. That such an interpretation has become normative for Christians is but a derivative of how the church has baptized the world and therefore searches for God in every corner of the earth. When the church/world distinction was lost around the time of Constantine the church steadily moved towards invisibility and faith receded to the recesses of our private hearts. This is why it has came to be that the kingdom of God is equated with the world rather than as a distinct group of people, known as Christ’s body or the church, who give the world the gift of witness as a foretaste of that reality. Since it is now widely assumed that God acts through history in general rather than in a particular community, Christians believe that it is their role to make sure that the story of God turns out right and thereby serve the secular order by attempting to ‘Christianizing’ it. It was theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr who anthropologized theology and took eschatology out of history. The danger is that Christians do not know the specifics of how the story of God turns out finally and are tempted to take control to realize the kingdom of God on earth. It is in this sense that eschatology is a much better term than teleology which implicitly implies that it is humanities obligation to realize and enact it rather than depending upon God’s agency. We place significance on human history now because we no longer conceive of any other sort of history that subjugates humanity due to the fact that the will of God became the will of man. The tension is not between nature and history, as it is commonly perceived, but between two different times and two different histories; the time and history of the world and the time and history of God. To live as an eschatological people rather than conforming to the status quo places a great deal of importance on imagining a more-encompassing story, which happens to be more at act of memory and remembrance for Christians rather than creativity and originality.

It is important that I preface the following, but brief, interpretation of the parable in discussion because without this background we proceed forward without acknowledging how our minds have been formed by the secular society we live in. In this parable the sums of money entrusted by the wealthy aristocrat is differentiated based upon proven competence of the three servants. The servants are therefore given another opportunity to prove themselves here. The third servant in the end is criticized for his poor handling of the money, not because of his inadequate business skills but because he didn’t even try. He took the safest path of least resistance due to his fear of failure. Ironically, since his master was a man who sought profit in his investments the servant had set himself up for failure from the beginning by hiding the money in the ground. Rather than being a parable about the unfairness of life where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, it has much more to do with ‘investment’ effort. In conclusion, the third servant is eternally damned which illuminates the fact that this parable is chiefly about salvation.

Since this parable is about what “the kingdom of God is like…” the opportunity presented to the servants to make their master’s joy complete is an invitation to Jesus’ hearers to serve the kingdom of God. Living eschatologically involves a great deal of risk. Just as the servant had locked himself into failure by doing nothing with what he had been given, Christians are also faced with the inevitability of death whether we play it safe or not in life which frees us in a large capacity to serve Christ rather than being paralyzed by fear of failure. I take it that most middle-class western citizens only take ‘risks’ when they know that victory can be achieved. In other worlds, we only act if we can be sure of ourselves. The danger of replacing “getting things right” with “getting things ‘just’ right” is that we easily give into self-indulgent apathy, cynicism and despair. When we cannot derive immediate achievement and satisfaction in our activism we give up quickly. I believe that the worship and liturgy of the church is the necessary training ground for the people of God not to take history into their own hands and make everything turn out right. Rather than living by sight, we are a people who life by faith and hope since we cannot assume to know in totality how it all ends eschatologically. For this reason, I do not believe the church is incidental to salvation.

Mark 1. 1-8

Mark begins his gospel by signaling the connectivity of Israel with Jesus “by conflating material from Isaiah, Exodus, and Malachi” (Lectionary Commentary: Gospels, 162). By making this move Mark unveils the fact that Jesus is intelligible only within the necessary backdrop of Israel’s history. Furthermore, if Jesus inaugurates a new world within the old then it must be properly understood how God the creator is redeeming the very creation he had created. The historical mode that designates God’s promise of redeeming the world through Israel we name as covenant. It was the covenant of God that was to solve the problems within creation. This covenantal relationship was established by God in electing a particular group of people to embody an alternative sociology in contrast to the surrounding nations, thereby giving witness to an attractive example of perfect community that could then be emulated by others. Therefore, it was the crucial task of Israel to be faithful to God rather than forcibly correct pagan nations. For Israel, this happened through the set apart practicing community of Israel rather than through theory or a simple “matter of the heart” piety among individuals. This covenant was not to deny the role of individuals in community but rather to grant priority to the whole nation of Israel in which individuals were incorporated in through birth or conversion (Authentic Witness, 80). Following the Torah was not primarily an individual private matter but obeyed rather for the purpose of setting apart Israel by visibly displaying what it means to live as we were created to by “reflect[ing] the image of their maker” in order to be a light to the world (Fresh Perspective, 89). Jews did not understand the law as a means to salvation if obeyed perfectly but a way to identify themselves with the covenant community. Therefore if a Jew chose not to continue practicing the law it was assumed that they had self-excommunicated him- or herself by stepping outside the boundaries of the covenant community.

Although God had called Israel to be a light to the nations in order to solve the problems of the world, “the covenant people [had] become part of the problem, not the agents of the solution” (Fresh Perspective, 29). Was God then to abandon the covenant community and set out on a different plan to redeem the world? Rather than take this path, as many Christians have assumed over the centuries, God choose to renew and restore his chosen people through the activity of Jesus in gathering his people and fulfilling the covenant on behalf of the world, which was Israel’s original task. Therefore, the long anticipation of the restoration of creation and Israel is accomplished by God. I mention “gathering his people” because “the twelve disciples could refer only to the twelve tribes of Israel” (Jesus and Community, 10). Furthermore, it is suggested that these twelve came from various regions and sects within Judaism to further represent “the gathering of all Israelites” (ibid, 11). It can be seen from this short summary of Israel’s divine purpose that faith is a matter of the Messiah’s faithfulness to the intended plan of Israel rather than human faith in the Messiah. Since God’s called people are the earthly representation of God, then for God to sanctify his own people is to sanctify his own name. The “Good News about Jesus the Messiah” therefore is a new aeon set within yet beyond the old. For Mark to recall the story of Israel when introducing the Messiah is to historically situate how God is faithfully fulfilling his promises.

Secondly, that Mark begins his gospel with pairing repentence with baptism in declaring the Good News that was prepared by John the Baptist is to reiterate that the people of God is not incidental to faith since in baptism and confession “[we] acknowledge our dependence on others; we recognize the indispensability of the church in the work of God; we inject ourselves willingly into the practices of the Jewish tradition. We tell the world that we cannot make it on our own” (Lectionary Commentary: Gospels, 166). Take confession for instance. By confessing my sins in general terms to God in the privacy of my consciousness I could easily neglect particular sins that I might not see without the presence of other people to point them out for me and keep me honest as well. “For it is one thing to confess our sin in general, but it is quite another to confess our sin to one in the church who we may well have wronged and to seek reconciliation” (After Christendom, 110). It is noteworthy that it is John the Baptist who was chosen to prepare the way for the Messiah seeing as how he inverts all earthly values thereby orienting us to properly anticipate the one who is to come to be characterized not by popularity or power but humility. Metanoia, the Greek terms for repentence, “literally means a change of mind or a reorientation of perception and understanding” (Authentic Witness, 125). John the Baptist preaches repentence at the same time that he changes our perspective on what the Messiah is going to be like. That the kingdom can only be received through metanoia unsettles us to acknowledge that peace and reconciliation in community is possible only through repentence and forgiveness rather than knowledge and power. Therefore the church is not incidental to the Good News because we depend on each other to point out our particular sins and remind us that forgiveness is the necessary process that makes community possible.

Baptism similarly inducts us into a community of discipleship “that has so truthful a story that we forget ourselves and our anxieties long enough to become part of that story, a story God has told in Scripture and continues to tell in Israel and the church” (Resident Aliens, 59). Baptism therefore is our adoption into the new humanity of Christ which is a new way of living in the world which transcends all other identities and classifications such as gender, class, ethnicity and nationality. “Thus the primary narrative meaning of baptism is the new society it creates, by inducting all kinds of people into the same people” (Body Politics, 32). This is the best response the church has to individualism and discrimination. In Christian baptism we are gathered together in anticipation of the eschatological gathering and bear the first fruits of that hope.