During the course of the Liturgical Year
beginning today there will be a variety of Homilies and Courses, all of which
it is hoped will strengthen the hope that is within us. The old parish blog has
gone and a new one has been started in order that the Homilies and Teaching
articles may be posted on it later the same day.
During this Season of Advent to mark the
start of this year of Teaching we will consider each of the four Gospels in
turn. Happily this First Sunday of Advent sees us considering the Gospel of
Matthew, in which Jesus is presented as The Teacher. The post published later
today on this homily may well have a few more points to note on Matthew’s
Gospel which time precludes from including, and also because this Homily is
meant as an introduction to Matthew’s Gospel so that as we read it we
understand his reasons for writing.
In our modern translations many of them
translate the opening Greek words as ‘A record of the genealogy …’ but in the
Greek in which he wrote, Matthew begins ‘Biblos
geneseos’, which literally
translated would read ‘The Book of Genesis’, which is, of course, the first
book of the Scriptures.
Genesis is the first of five Books that
comprise the Pentateuch, or five volumes, also known as the ‘Torah’, the Book
of the Law. It is worth noting that Matthew has divided his Gospel into five
sections as well, and he marks the division by using the same phrase each time:
“When Jesus had finished saying these things.’ That word ‘Torah’ we usually
translate as ‘Law’ but more accurately it means ‘Teaching.’
One third of Matthew’s Gospel consists
of the teaching of Jesus, and it has been noted that Matthew portrays Jesus as
another Moses. Jesus begins his teaching with the Sermon on the Mount, in a
similar way to Moses who teaches the law as handed down by God from Mount
Sinai.
It is almost certain that Matthew was
writing for a community of Jewish believers in Christ sometime between AD 75
and 80. If the dates are accurate then the Temple had already been destroyed by
the Roman occupying forces about ten to fifteen years earlier and the Jewish
people had been forced to leave Jerusalem. Among them were two distinct groups:
the remnant of the people who were led by the Rabbi’s and had fled to what is
modern day Tel Aviv, and the small group of Jewish followers of Jesus who were
dispelled as heretics in AD 85 from the wider Jewish community. Into this
situation Matthew writes and on no less than fourteen occasions does he use the
language of fulfilment to show that Jesus is the fulfilment of the law and the
prophets. Because of Matthew’s keenness to demonstrate that Jesus is the true
Messiah he has been criticised as being anti-Semitic, especially by his inclusion
of a phrase attributed to the Jewish people at the trial of Jesus, “His blood
be upon us and our children.” However, Matthew was a Semite Jew, as were those
for whom he was writing. It may well be that the best interpretation is that of
seeing Matthew as one who is enthusiastic because he has seen the light, and
finds the fact that other Jewish people don’t see this as frustrating.
From the teaching of Jesus, Matthew
gives his community a sure foundation of guidelines, rules and regulations. It
is in Matthew’s Gospel that we discover the Church, for it is not mentioned in
the other three Gospels. So for some Matthew has what might be described as
‘churchy’ or institutional tone. And Matthew has organised the teaching of
Jesus into five lengthy discourses
·
The Sermon on the
Mount which deals with how we become members of the kingdom.
·
Guidance for
Missionaries
·
Parables which
explain the mystery of the Kingdom
·
Matters
pertaining to Christian conduct, and the settling of disputes within the
Church.
·
Two whole
chapters which describe how God will ultimately vindicate the teaching of Jesus
at the end of time.
Within Matthew’s Gospel there is a
repetitive style which is quite meditative, and again this indicates that it
was written for the Jewish community, which shares an eastern understanding of
the rhythm and repetitive ways of nature and day and night, of waxing and
waning of the moon and the seasons. More of the early Church Father’s wrote
commentaries on Matthew’s Gospel than on the other three, and have you noticed
that it is Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer we know by heart, while it is
fairly certain than none of us could recite Luke’s shorter version.
What comes across in Matthew’s Gospel is
how rooted in Judaism the Christian Community is, and that if we denied or
forgot those roots then we would forget our own identity.
In Chapter 13 Matthew recounts Jesus
speaking about a teacher who is steeped in the knowledge of the Kingdom of God
and who brings out of his storeroom things both new and old. It is said that
this could well be a description of Matthew himself, and indeed of any wise
parish priest!!
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