Matthew

Nicole Wilkinson, James P. Grimshaw, Nicole Wilkinson, James P. Grimshaw

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781451426342
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

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Community and Borders

13

The Hard Sayings of Jesus in Real-World Context

Reading Matthew 5:38-48 within the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Dorothy Jean Weaver

The words of Jesus in Matt. 5:38-48 surely qualify for the proverbial list of Jesus’ hard sayings. The commands “Do not resist the one who is evil” (5:39a, my translation), “Love your enemies” (5:44a), and “Pray for those who persecute you” (5:44b) are words we might wish that Jesus had never spoken or that the Gospel writers had never preserved.^[1] Such commands appear illogical, counterintuitive, and even scandalous.

But within Matthew’s narrative, these words are vital to Jesus’ call to greater righteousness (see 5:20a) and the life of the kingdom of heaven (5:20b). Accordingly, those who follow Jesus as his disciples face these hard sayings as the ongoing call to an extraordinary life of faithfulness within a real world peopled with evil ones, enemies, and persecutors.

Such is surely the case for present-day Palestinian Christians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.^[2] Their community has lived for more than sixty years with the aftereffects of the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), in which they lost more than half of their ancestral lands to the state of Israel. And since 1967, they have lived under occupation by the state of Israel and under military rule by the Israeli defense forces. Accordingly, when Palestinian Christians read Matt. 5:38-48, they encounter the radical call of Jesus in a context where others (whom they might view as evil ones, enemies, and persecutors) build walls around their cities, expropriate their lands, destroy their homes, bulldoze their olive groves, put roadblocks in front of their villages, impose curfews and closures on their towns, and erect military checkpoints that restrict their freedom of movement.

This paper offers a twofold contextual reading of Matt. 5:38-48. The first reading utilizes narrative criticism to analyze the text from my own scholarly context as a student of Matthew’s Gospel. This reading assesses 5:38-48 within Matthew’s overall narrative, attending to narrative location, internal structure, use of vocabulary, biblical and real-world allusions, and ultimately the narrative/theological message for Matthew’s first-century community.

The second reading assesses the pragmatic significance of these hard sayings of Jesus for twenty-first-century Palestinian Christians. What do these first-century words of Jesus mean to present-day Palestinian Christians living under Israeli occupation? And where does the call of Jesus become visible within the real world of the Occupied Palestinian Territories? This reading emerges from personal conversations with Palestinian Christians from the West Bank and Jerusalem, most of them long-term acquaintances whom I know from frequent sojourns in Israel/Palestine as traveler, tour leader, and sabbatical scholar. And the impetus for this reading lies in two crucial and interwoven influences on my life as a scholar. The first is my lifelong interest in questions of violence and nonviolence, an interest nurtured from childhood by the biblical teachings and the historical heritage of the North American Mennonite community, within which I grew up and which I claim as my own. The second influence, much more recent but no less profound, is my own existential encounter with the ongoing life challenges faced by the Palestinian people, Christians and Muslims alike, living under Israeli occupation.

The paper concludes with a brief comparison of these two contextual readings. How do these readings relate to each other? Where are their coherences and/or divergences? What happens to scholarly biblical interpretation as biblical text engages with the real world? How does the twenty-first-century Israeli/Palestinian context influence the interpretation of this first-century Matthean text?

Matthew 5:38-48: A Narrative Reading

To read a text within its narrative context is to encounter that text sequentially within the flow of the narrative. The text therefore “derives its significance not simply from its content as such but from its relationship to the other ‘events’ in the unfolding narrative” (Weaver 1990: 28). Accordingly, a narrative reading of Matt. 5:38-48 must attend first to the preceding text (1:1—5:37), second to the text itself (5:38-48), and finally to the subsequent text (6:1—28:20).

Matthew’s Narrative Pre-Information (1:1—5:37)

As David B. Howell notes in his study of narrative rhetoric within Matthew’s Gospel, “The initial information about the attitudes, characters, and narrative world which is projected [within a narrative text] plays a large part in the process of teaching readers the correct interpretive techniques for reading the text” (Howell 1990: 115). And the initial information provided by 1:1—5:37 offers multiple clues to the interpretation of 5:38-48.

One such clue is the Jewish/messianic character of Matthew’s narrative. This narrative opens with a Jewish/messianic genealogy beginning with Abraham (1:1, 2, 17), the ancestor of the Jewish people (see 3:9), continuing through (King) David (1:1, 6, 17) and the deportation to Babylon (1:11, 12, 17), and rising to its climax with Jesus the Messiah (1:1, 16, 17). Accordingly, Matthew’s accounts of the birth and infancy of Jesus (1:18—2:23) feature Joseph, son of David (1:20), and Jesus the Messiah (1:18; 2:4), who “has been born king of the Jews” (2:1), who “is to shepherd [God’s] people Israel” (2:6) and whose messianic designation is that of “my [= God’s] son” (2:15; cf. Ps. 2:7).

John the Baptist (3:1-17) is an eschatological Jewish prophet, “the Elijah who is to come” (11:7-15; cf. 17:10-13; Mal 4:5). John’s water baptism (3:5-10, 11a) foreshadows the arrival of a messianic figure who is “more powerful” (3:11b) and will “baptize . . . with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (3:11d). And John’s prophetic pointers toward the Messiah find prompt fulfillment.

Jesus is baptized by John (3:13-16a), endowed with the Holy Spirit (3:16b), and affirmed by the voice of God for his messianic ministry (3:17; cf. Ps. 2:7). He is then “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (4:1) in a series of encounters that highlight his messianic calling (4:3, 6; cf. 4:9). Jesus resists these temptations (4:4, 7, 10), dispatches Satan (4:10-11a), and is served by angels of God (4:11b). He then relocates from Nazareth to Capernaum in messianic fulfillment of the Scriptures (4:12-16; cf. Isa 9:1-2). And from here, Jesus Messiah commences his mission, proclaiming the kingdom of heaven (4:17), calling disciples (4:18-22), and engaging in a peripatetic and charismatic ministry of teaching and healing that draws massive crowds from all directions (4:23-25).

Within this highly charged messianic context, Jesus goes up the mountain (5:1a), recasting the image of Moses at Sinai in a messianic and eschatological mode, and inaugurates his messianic ministry by teaching his disciples about the kingdom of heaven in the hearing of the crowds (5:1-7:29). In Terence Donaldson’s words, “The gathering to Jesus on the mountain in Galilee . . . should be seen in the context of the eschatological gathering of the people of God. The disciples are the foundation of the eschatological community called into being by the messianic activity of Jesus, and the crowds are being invited to join their fellowship. The Sermon, then, is the messianic interpretation of the Torah for this community—the authoritative declaration of the characteristics which this community is called to exhibit” (Donaldson 1985: 115).

Jesus opens his inaugural address with blessings on those who exhibit the characteristics of the kingdom of heaven (5:3-12; cf. 5:13-16). He then defines his coming in terms of messianic fulfillment: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (5:17). Following this programmatic declaration, Jesus then illustrates his messianic fulfillment of Scripture with a sixfold litany: “You have heard that it was said . . . But I say to you . . .” (5:21-26, 27-30, 31-32, 33-37, 38-42, 43-48). The text of 5:38-48 creates the conclusion and climax of this litany.

The implications of Matthew’s messianic motif for interpreting 5:38-48 are manifest. Jesus Messiah has come to carry out God’s messianic agenda: To bring Jewish history to its climax (1:1, 2-16, 17); to “shepherd [God’s] people Israel” (2:6) as “king of the Jews” (2:2); to “fulfill all righteousness” (3:15); to resist the temptations of Satan as the true and faithful Son of God (4:1-11; cf. 2:15; 3:17); to proclaim the arrival of God’s realm (4:17); and to “fulfill . . . the law [and] the prophets” (5:17). Accordingly, Jesus’ scriptural citations (“You have heard that it was said . . .”) find messianic fulfillment in Jesus’ exposition (“But I say to you . . .”). Conversely, Jesus’ calls to action reflect messianic interpretation of Jewish scripture.

A further interpretive clue is the narrative juxtaposition of King Herod (2:1) and Jesus “who has been born king of the Jews” (2:2). As one who “seeks the life of the child” (2:13, 20) and slaughters the infants of Bethlehem to execute this scheme (2:16-18), Herod undeniably demonstrates evil character. The irony of the narrative, however, is that Herod, in spite of his worst intentions and his manifest power, cannot carry out his single goal—namely, to destroy the child. Instead, Matthew portrays Herod as utterly powerless vis-à-vis the angel of the Lord, who persistently dispatches people just in time to foil Herod’s plots and save the life of the child (2:12, 13, 19-20, 22). In the end, Herod lies dead (2:15, 19, 20), while the child is alive and well in Nazareth (2:21-23). The message is clear. Evil people can create horrific human devastation (2:16-18), but they have far less power than they or others imagine. And it is God, not the powers of evil, whose agenda ultimately wins the day.

A related interpretive clue emerges from the Beatitudes of Jesus’ inaugural address (5:3-12). Here Jesus pronounces kingdom blessings on the “poor in spirit” (5:3), those who “mourn” (5:4), the “meek” (5:5), those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (5:6), the “merciful” (5:7), the “pure in heart” (5:8), the “peacemakers” (5:9), and those “who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” (5:10; cf. 5:11-12). And with these extraordinary blessings, Jesus puts his listeners on immediate notice that the kingdom of heaven stands fundamentally at variance with “the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (4:8) and ultimately with all human notions of power and greatness (see 16:21-23; 18:1-4; 20:24-28).

Responding to Evil Ones and Enemies (5:38-48)

The text of 5:38-48 concludes Jesus’ litany on the greater righteousness. This litany deals with murder (5:21-26), adultery (5:27-30), divorce (5:31-32), swearing of oaths (5:33-37), retaliation (5:38-42), and hatred of enemies (5:43-48). Each section opens with the words, “You have heard that it was said,” followed by a Jewish Scripture. And each section ends with the refrain, “But I say to you,” in the authoritative voice of Jesus Messiah, followed by Jesus’ messianic fulfillment of the Scripture.

In each section, Jesus’ greater righteousness contrasts sharply with what his listeners have previously heard. The prohibition of murder (5:21; cf. Exod. 20:13//Deut. 5:17) now extends to mere anger (5:22-26); and adultery (5:27; cf. Exod. 20:14//Deut. 5:18) reaches beyond the physical acts of the body to the lustful thoughts of the heart (5:28-30). Jesus prohibits divorce (5:31; cf. Deut. 24:1) “except on the ground of unchastity” (5:32). And he forbids the swearing of oaths (5:33; cf. Lev. 19:12; Deut. 23:21), calling his followers to a simple “yes” or “no” response (5:34-37). The final two sections of Jesus’ litany (5:38-42, 43-48) fit this same pattern, even as they depict the vivid challenges of everyday life for Jesus’ disciples in a world of violence and oppression.

This is a world of physical assault and insulting behavior: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek . . .” (5:39b). Within the honor-shame culture of Matthew’s first-century Middle Eastern narrative, such a backhanded slap is considered an insult. A backhanded slap, in Warren Carter’s words, “expresses the power differential of a superior who disdains an inferior: a master with a slave, a wealthy landowner with a poor farmer or artisan, a Roman with a provincial, a wise man with a fool or a child . . . , a government official with a difficult prophet (1 Kgs 22:24), the religious elite with a dangerous preacher (Matt 26:67)” (Carter 2000: 151–52). But such an insult is likewise a brutality. Accordingly, Jesus depicts a world where his followers regularly encounter both physical assault and public insult.

This is a world where lawsuits against impoverished debtors are common: “If anyone wishes to sue you and take your tunic . . .” (5:40a). Jewish law prohibits taking and keeping a person’s outer garment or cloak, since this may well be their only blanket (Exod. 22:25-27; Deut. 24:10-13; cf. Amos 2:7-8). But there is no such law against taking the tunic, the undergarment worn next to the body. Accordingly, Jesus reveals a convenient legal loophole for taking an impoverished debtor to court and demanding the very shirt off his back.

This is a world w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table Of Contents
• Copyright
• Other Books in the Series
• List of Contributors
• Series Preface, Updated: Texts in/at Life Contexts
• Introduction
• Community and Beginnings
• Children and Family
• Disability and Culture
• Laborers and Empire
• Community and Borders
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Scripture Index
• Ancient and Other Extra-Biblical Sources Index