18. Matthew 10: Instructions for 1st Century Mission Context
Emboldened by Jesus’ announcement
of the coming of the kingdom of heaven (4:17), his direction for living through
this period of crisis and judgment (chs.5-7), and a litany of ten
demonstrations of power by Jesus proving his authority to act as the Messiah and
agent of God’s coming kingdom (chs.8-9). Now we come to his transferal of his
own authority to his disciples and sending them out to spread the news of the
coming kingdom throughout Israel (ch.10).
It is crucial to read this passage
in light of this 1st century context. Jesus explicitly delimits this
mission to Israel: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles,
and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has
come near’” (10:5-7). This inter-Jewish mission is a key component of Jesus’
effort to regather and reconstitute Abrahamic Israel under the shadow of God’s
coming judgment of his people. Unlike the so-called Great Commission of
28:16-20 where disciples are sent into the world at large to make disciples of
all nations, Mt.10 is to Jews and for Jews. As I have mentioned earlier Jesus
had no plan or strategy for reaching the Gentiles. That wasn’t his gig. His was
the crucial work of regathering the people of God through whom God intended to
bless the world as part of his redeeming, reconciling work. It would fall to
Paul, primarily, to spearhead the movement of the gospel into the wider
Hellenistic world. We need to clear on the frame of reference we are reading
about here to interpret it properly.
Too
often this is taken as the message of salvation for the world first offered to
the Jews for their status as God’s chosen people. When they by and large reject
Jesus’ message it then goes out to the Gentiles many of whom accept it and
become the church. Perriman comments on this:
“The underlying assumption seemed to be that kingdom is roughly
equivalent to salvation. It is a wonderful new thing that is held out to
humanity on the grounds of the death of Jesus, and it is only really an
accident of “salvation-history” that the Jews got first bite of the cherry.
“This gets both kingdom and salvation wrong. The mission of the
disciples in Matthew is meaningful only on the assumption that “kingdom” is and
remains an
integral part of Israel’s story. It is not something extraneous
that is offered to Israel first like a cream cake, which they turn down because
they are dyed-in-the-wool legalists, and it’s then passed round to the
Gentiles, who scoff it gratefully. In fact, I would say, the story of
Israel is
the story of kingdom. Or it’s the story of how to fail and succeed
at cake making.”[1]
This means that we must not read
this account as instruction for disciples today. Like the rest of what we have
considered so far it may have some analogies and implications for us today living
out our faith under very different conditions and in a different part of the
biblical story. But it is not a transcript for doing it today that must be
followed to the letter.
Jesus
Transfers His Authority to His Disciples (10:1)
The authority Jesus has just displayed
throughout Galilee, the healing, exorcisms, power to raise the dead,
proclaiming the good news of the global regime change that is at their doorstep
and evident in Jesus’ himself, he gives to his disciples. The same signs of the
inbreaking of this kingdom of heaven he demonstrated, they will be able to
demonstrate as well.
This is the same very diverse,
ideologically opposed, and as we will see, often spiritually obtuse bunch we
have met before. At least some of them are committed to a particular version or
way of being Israel propounded by groups at odds with Jesus’ vision for the
people. Yet it is to them, not to some idealized “perfect” community that Jesus
grants his authority to “proclaim
the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure
the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons” (vv.7-8).
Is
this authority for these 1st century Jews only? For the specific purposes
of Jesus’ earthly ministry, yes. But we also find such authority demonstrated beyond
that first circle of Jesus’ original disciples as we see in Heb.2:3-4: “It (the
message) was declared at first through the Lord, and it was attested to us by
those who heard him, while God added his testimony by signs and wonders and
various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his
will.” And many evidences of such authority have been demonstrated by
Christians through out the ages. And even today in many non-Western lands we
see them still. It is not surprising that the movement of the gospel in sowing
new churches should be heralded by similar signs and wonders. That we don’t see
such things that much in the West may be more a sign of our supposed “modern
outlook” which discounts them as primitive and unnecessary for us. But that’s
beyond the scope of this commentary to take further. We have Christ’s Spirit
and his authority as the one who rules over all nations and peoples as the
ground and evidence of the gospel we preach.
Instructions for Carrying Out the Mission (10:8-15)
Jesus
gives some very specific instructions to the disciples along with his authority
for carrying out this work. The medium and the message can never be separated
(as Marshall McLuhan taught us yet we are all too prone to forget) so he
teaches them an “etiquette” that coheres with the message they announce. This “etiquette”
includes:
-don’t do it for money
(v.8b)
-go dependent on God and
the generosity of his people (vv.9-10)
-don’t book a hotel room
but bunk with whoever in town invites you to stay (“worthy” folk are those who
recognize the work of God in what they do) and let your peace rest on them
-those who do not welcome
you, retain your peace and “shake the dust from your feet” – “a Jew would shake
off his sandals when leaving a pagan land and entering the holy land. A city
that rejects the apostles has become a Gentile land, ripe for judgment.”[2]
That is why Jesus declares such a city in worse shape than Sodom and Gommorah
(v.15).
This
all makes good sense within its 1st century context. But almost no
sense if we try to take it literally for today. A couple of analogies seem possible,
however.
-mission should not be for
financial gain.
-we ought to depend on the
generosity and solidarity with those we seek to reach.
Both
of these ought to inform any mission or service to others in the name of the
God of the Bible! But they haven’t always done so. Leithart comments,
“The differences between Jesus’ mission instructions and the
missionary practices of many contemporary churches are dramatic. We won’t send
a missionary out until he has hundreds of thousands of dollars in support. We
hesitate to send missionaries out into dangerous areas. They need to maintain a
lifestyle, but their dependence on foreign money is a massive denial of what
they say about their Father, a massive lesson that the Father can be trusted so
long as there are large supporting churches in the background, too. This is not
the way the monks of the Middle Ages went on mission. Some Irish monks did what
they called White Martyrdom. They climbed in a boat, shoved off from shore, and
went wherever the waves took them. If they found people who accepted them, they
would stay there and build a church. If the people rejected them, they’d shove
off and go to the next island, assuming they survived.”[3]
Jesus Warns of the Dangers of this Mission (10:16-23)
We
are aware now of the competition and conflict between advocates of a number of
different ways Israel could go to cope with its predicament. All had zealous supporters
and the issues at stake evoked powerful passions. Each believed their way was
the only way faithful Israel ought to go. A new movement, with a charismatic,
wonder-working leader, announcing a distinctive vision of the “kingdom of
heaven” on the doorstep that challenged all these other views was
bound to generate conflict as, indeed, it already had.
Jesus bequeathed this conflict to his
disciples as well. Sheep amid wolves as he puts it (v.15). He advises them, in
response, to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (v.16). Jesus has already
told them h8is followers will be persecuted because they serve a prophetic
function and will face the same ill-treatment those worthies had (5:10-12). We’ve
also heard earlier about wolves in sheep’s clothing (7:15) which is what Jesus
warns about here. This is no surprise. At this time (2019) the American church
is undergoing what is in in my judgment a bout with false prophets, wolves in
sheep’s clothing, comparable to the German church’s capitulation to Hitler and
his Nazi ideology in the 1930’s.
Jesus moves quickly onto prescription.
Practice an innocent shrewdness (Wright), he tells them. Innocence without
shrewdness can be gullibility. Shrewdness without innocence can become a
manipulative pragmatism. Both need to qualify the other. And the tests they face
will be severe.
-detention
and flogging in the synagogues (v.17)
-taken
before political officials (v.18)
-family betrayals
leading to death (v.21)
-general hatred
(v.22)
The result
of faithfully bearing such abuse is “a testimony to them and the Gentiles” (v.18b).
Or it could be translated as “a testimony against them.” Perhaps we should not
try and choose one of these senses over the other. The disciples’ witness can
have both effects: a receptive hearing (“to”) or a negative response which will
lead to judgment (“against”).
Urgency presses
on this witness. When persecution comes, they are to go on the lam (v.23). Such
action is a refusal of the message which portends judgment. Thus the disciples
should not waste time when rejected but scurry on to the next place. Time is so
short, says Jesus, that even then they will not make it through all of Israel
before judgment falls persecution and they are vindicated. Matthew calls this, puzzlingly
to many, “before the Son of Man comes” (v.23). Wright gives what I regard the
most -lausible interpretation of this.
“The
phrase echoes Daniel 7.13, where the ‘coming’ of ‘the son of man’ is not his coming
from heaven to earth, but his coming from earth to heaven: exalted, after
suffering, to be the judge and ruler of the world, and particularly of the
‘beasts’ that have opposed ‘the people of the saints of the most high’. What
seems to be meant here is this. The disciples will face the harsh fact of persecution,
in which, when called to account for themselves, God will give them special
wisdom to make appropriate answer. Families will be divided; they will find
themselves chased from town to town; they must hold on and be patient.
Eventually the moment will come when God’s judgment will fall on those who
oppose them; in other words, tragically, on the towns and villages where their
message of peace was not accepted. In particular, as we shall see later, it
will fall on the capital city, of Jerusalem itself, which will reject Jesus and
his gospel. When that happens, they will be ‘rescued’ or ‘delivered’ (verse
22), because this means that ‘the son of man’ has been vindicated, has ‘come’
to his father (see 16.27). The end of verse 23 is thus a promise, not simply a
warning: continue your mission, because God will vindicate you quickly.”[4]
Jesus has Undergone All This Already (10: 24-25)
Jesus
reaffirms now that none of this persecution and hardship is alien to him.
Indeed, it’s already happened to him and he is the reason it is happening to
them. And they must be content to bear this likeness to their Master as well as
the more positive aspects he has laid out for them in other places in Matthew’s
gospel. They are organically and inextricably connected.
Not many
Christians and churches in America face overt physical persecution for their
witness to the gospel as spelled out here. Perhaps the black church may be an
exception. Nevertheless, I contend we do face a pervasive, persuasive, and powerful
form of persecution as described in the following post from my blog in 2013.
Though we usually claim a lack of persecution in our country and
celebrate this freedom to do our Christian thing, I think this is a substantial
error. Those among us who do claim that
Christians are persecuted usually don’t dig deep enough to penetrate to the
real source. It’s not secular humanism,
Isalm, or a putative “gay agenda” as they generally allege. And these are generally parsed in ways that
are theologically superficial and evidently captive to what I will claim is the
true source of our persecution here.
Now the point of persecution is to intimidate dissent by
destabilizing a socially deviant community’s “plausibility structure” either
through making it seem wrong or perverse or criminalizing it. Either way the deviant convictions of the
community are either abandoned, assimilated into the dominant narrative of the
larger community, or eradicated by force.
The latter option is not in play (at this point) in North America. And this is what we celebrate as our
freedom. But we cheer too soon, I fear.
Our persecution is of the former “softer” or “iron fist in the
velvet glove” kind. It has been and is
the free market economy and social ideology to which most of us have bowed the
knee on pain of economic privation or, at least, fear of lack of advancement.
The affluence, complacency, and apathy that are the "gifts" of the
free market are the muzzle and bonds which coerce (gently) our compliance and distort our witness so profoundly
that our bodies do not need to be attacked for our hearts have already been
captured and made compliant. This ideology has powerfully destabilized
the plausibility structure of the church - the gospel – seeming to render it
both unthinkable and impracticable on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
offering itself as the proper framework within which to fit the Christian
message.
If it is true, and I think it is, that persecution is a condition
under which the church often grows and flourishes in the face of superior
opposition, it is a theological and tactical mistake of the first order to
allow ourselves to believe that we lack that condition here. We are under attack, not in the facile ways
the Christian right claims, but at the very core of our being as Christians and
churches from whence we derive our identity, existence, and mission as God’s
people.
A whole
set of responses to this form of persecution need to be formulated and refined
by the American church. At stake here is not the coming judgment of Israel, of
course, but the credibility of the witness of the church. And we are very far
from effectively creating ways to deal with this sort of persecution.
Fearlessness (10:26-31)
“Fear” is
theme of this section. Four times in this short section fear is emphasized
(vv.26,28 (2x),31).
-do not fear because all things will
be exposed – both the evil deeds of darkness and the hidden truth of the teachings
of Jesus. No one gets away with anything nor will the truth fail to be
vindicated (vv.26-27).
-do not fear the evil one who can kill
only the body; rather fear God who can kill both (v.28).
-Finally, do not fear because of the
sovereign care and goodness of God for the least of his creation (v.29-30).
Fear is
the opposite of faith. Fear doubts the goodness and or power of God. Such doubt
would erode one’s capacity to endure under duress. Occasions for fear will be
coming hot and heavy. Jesus wants his people prepared for fortified to
persevere through those times. Fear will come, we can’t avoid that. But we don’t
have to give in allow fear to dictate our response to it.
Acknowledging Jesus (10:32-33)
Jesus gets
to the bottom line here. He’s run his flag up the flagpole and he’s waiting to
see who salutes! Loyalty to Jesus and his way of being Israel is our way of
saluting his flag. Again, remember the context. This is not a statement about “believing
in Jesus or going to hell.” It’s context-dependent. Jesus is saying those who
follow him through the dangers and fear in this crisis will stand with his approval
before his father.
Not Peace but a Sword (10:34-42)
Jesus
rounds off this teaching on his disciples’ mission with some sober warnings.
-He’s not promising them a rose garden!
Only struggle, difficulty, and division, even within families (vv.34-36)
-Commitment to Jesus and his cause may
well sever ties with father and mother (vv.37-39). This does not mean
commitment to Christ requires severing such ties, just that under the
conditions of this crisis it might well. To make that a condition of commitment
to Christ anywhere and everywhere under any conditions is to misread and misuse
this text. Wright notes:
“Actually,
the passage about sons and fathers, daughters and mothers, and so on, is a
quotation from one of the Old Testament prophets (Micah 7.6). In this passage,
the prophet predicts the terrible divisions that would always occur when God
was doing a new thing. When God acts to rescue his people, there are always
some who declare that they don’t need rescuing, that they are comfortable as
they are.”[5]
-To cling to family ties rather than
follow the costly path of Jesus (the cross)[6] is
the wrong choice no matter how wrenching a choice it may be (v.38) but the one
that leads to life (v.39). And it would be a wrenching, costly choice in 1st
century Israel.
“What
happens when someone in this kind of setting is estranged from his family? He’s
not just shunned at family reunions. He loses his identifying name—James
no-longer-the-son-of-Zebedee. He loses the contacts that he might need to get
along economically. He loses the safety net that will keep him from
excruciating poverty if disaster strikes. He loses inheritance. It would not be
uncommon for estrangement from the family to take a violent form. If you want
to imagine what Jesus’ disciples might have heard when Jesus tells them they
risk losing their family, think of what happens to Muslims who convert, or
Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. That’s what Jesus is telling them to expect.”[7]
-In compensation for such losses Jesus’
followers will meet surprising benefactors along the way. Welcome and support,
even just a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name. Such supporters of Jesus’ mission
will not “lose their reward” (vv.40-42). Jesus does not ask every follower to
join his contingent of itinerant missionaries. Some stay at home and play support
roles for the mission when the occasion presents itself. There are no small roles
in this mission, however. And Jesus’ assurance that these unnamed supporters
will not lose their reward is evidence of this.
Thus
this section of Jesus’ teaching comes to an end. In the narratives of chs.11-12
the drama heightens with John’s imprisonment and increased conflict with the
authorities.
[1] Perriman, “Why did Jesus instruct his disciples
not to preach the kingdom of God to Gentiles and Samaritans?” at https://www.postost.net/2015/11/why-did-jesus-instruct-his-disciples-not-preach-kingdom-god-gentiles-samaritans.
[2] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 3103.
[3] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 3117.
[4] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 2236-2244.
[5] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 2355.
[6] “The cross is an instrument of torturous death. It is
a method of execution. “Sit in your electric chair and follow Me,” Jesus says;
take up the lethal injection and follow Me. And the cross was often reserved
specifically for Jewish revolutionaries revolutionaries who were opposing Rome”
(Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 3315).
.
[7] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 2367-2371.
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