29. Matthew 19: Discipleship

Discipleship and Marriage (Mt.19:1-15)

Having concluded his teaching on the character of his community, Jesus, followed by the crowds, moved from Galilee to Judea beyond the Jordan from which he has been absent since ch.4 (v.1). Now, however, his New Exodus movement is on its way to Jerusalem, and like a new Joshua he is leading them into the land. He is also a new greater prophet, though no longer the greater than Elisha he has been in recent chapters.

“In the last several chapters, He has been an Elisha. He feeds four thousand and then five thousand, heals the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman, gives instruction to His disciples. On the mount of transfiguration, Elijah appears alongside Moses, and Jesus is glorified as the prophet greater than Elijah, the new Elisha. As Jesus enters Judea again, the focus changes. He is no longer like a prophet in the North during the divided kingdom but like a prophet in Judea and Jerusalem, a prophet of the last days of Judah. He is no longer a greater Elisha, but one greater than Jeremiah, announcing the end of the temple and city of Jerusalem, the threat from a new Babylonian empire, the Romans.”[1]

Jeremiah was the prophet who lodged a bill of divorce against God’s people for her adulteries and affairs with other gods (Jer.3:6-10). So finally we are still in the arena of the people and their relationship to their God and his intentions for them adulterous as they are.

The Pharisees have another go at catching Jesus up in a controversy precisely marriage. “Is divorce for any reason okay?” they ask him (v.3). In the last several chapters, He has been an Elisha. He feeds four thousand and then five thousand, heals the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman, gives instruction to His disciples. On the mount of transfiguration, Elijah appears alongside Moses, and Jesus is glorified as the prophet greater than Elijah, the new Elisha. As Jesus enters Judea again, the focus changes. He is no longer like a prophet in the North during the divided kingdom but like a prophet in Judea and Jerusalem, a prophet of the last days of Judah. He is no longer a greater Elisha, but one greater than Jeremiah, announcing the end of the temple and city of Jerusalem, the threat from a new Babylonian empire, the Romans.

Leithart, Peter J.. The Gospel of Matthew Through New Eyes Volume Two: Jesus as Israel. Athanasius Press. Kindle Edition. This is a set-up. Some Jews has very strict ideas about divorce and others more lenient views. Either way Jesus answers will land him in hot water with some group of Pharisees. He, however, cuts the ground from under their feet by going beyond the law to God’s original intent in creation. Just as he proved himself to be torah’s source and authoritative interpreter in the Sermon on the Mount in Mt.5-7, a greater New Moses, here he again goes beyond and behind the law to reveal its intent and the hearts of those who use it for their own benefit. “He is claiming that with his own work God’s whole plan has shifted a stage forwards . . . He is moving the story of God and his people into a new mode, where the law of Moses won’t be the only thing that guides them. God is now in the business of making people new from the inside.”[2]

When Jesus quotes from Gen.1:27 he draws on the same passage that teaches us we are made in God’s image. And as we have seen throughout Jesus’ work is restoring God’s image-bearers to fully working order as royal priests in his creational temple. God did allow divorce because of “you were so hard-hearted,” Jesus says (v.8). At least until the one came who was to reclaim and restore such “hard-hearted” folk.

But now that this one is here, the conditions of creation are being restored and human image-bearers made new to live in it. It is well-known that unlike Mark and Luke Jesus allows one condition for divorce – porneia, adultery and sexual irregularities. I suspect he does this not so much to keep at least a small loophole open for divorce but to keep the focus on the people’s need to be utterly faithful to their Abrahamic calling. Adultery is a common image for their idolatrous dalliances with other deities that so broke her divine husband’s heart. And here, even in this new time of the kingdom’s arrival and Jesus’ renewal of creation, adultery still threatens the people’s relation to him!

To use this passage then to hammer out new divorce “laws” for a “Christian” world, to find conditions under which we can terminate our marriages, while perhaps true, misses, I think, the larger theological point of this text. Jesus’ so-called exception here is another of his last-ditch attempts to force Jewish religious leaders to face up to the crisis coming upon them and lead their people to him and back to the utter faithfulness to their God in which they were created to live and serve him. To “divorce” one’s spouse and marry another is “adultery” according to God’s original intent but more importantly idolatrous failure in the people’s relation to God.

In this way Jesus completely turns the tables on his interlocuters and exposes these leaders’ wrangling over the conditions of the people’s “hard-heartedness” as beside the point of what they should be concerned with.

Even his disciples cannot take Jesus’ teaching on board here. Their old world thinking collides with his new creational kingdom inauguration and they, understandably from their perspective, declare “it is better not to marry” (v.10). They may have expected Jesus to relent and soften his message for them but he does not. He makes it even more stringent with an enigmatic saying about both involuntary and voluntary ennuchs (vv.11-12). Ennuchs, whether through birth deformities or circumstances in life wee unable to have children (v.12). That Jesus is speaking metaphorically here and not literally is clear from the following story about welcoming children into his community (vv.13-15). This teaching he avers is for those to whom it is “given” (members of his followers) not for the general public (v.11).

But what can he mean that “there are ennuchs who have made themselves ennuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (v.12)? Is he speaking of those of his followers who travel with him forgoing the pleasures and responsibilities of marriage and family to serve God? Especially under the crisis situation the Jews currently lived on? Is Jesus answering some criticism of himself for not being married as were most Jewish males at the time. Did his chosen singleness cause some Pharisees to raise an eyebrow at his whole ministry?

Can we in our own time embrace chosen singleness as a gift and honored calling enabling those so called to serve God more single-mindedly? Hauerwas comments:

“Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, says to the disciples that those who have received the gift of celibacy constitute the very character of the kingdom of heaven. To be called to be a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven is, perhaps, the most decisive mark of this community of the new age. Followers of Jesus do not need to marry or have children to be followers of Jesus, because the kingdom does not grow by biological ascription, but through witness and conversion.”[3]

In this crisis, apocalyptic situation Jesus and his followers lived in being free of other responsibilities to follow Jesus as itinerant messengers (Mt.10) or remain free to serve him single-mindedly in other ways is clearly an advantage. And it remained so in Paul’s day who also remained single to serve Jesus, and it remains so in our time as well.

Yet singleness is not necessarily a desired or desirable state. Men and women are created to connect and bond with each other in love and mutual service of one another and to bear children and raise them in the community of faith (Eph.5:21-22). This too is an honorable and God honoring calling and vocation (as the next story about Jesus welcoming children among his people shows). In our culture today, though, singleness=loneliness and is an undesirable condition, whether chosen or unchosen. The recovery of singleness as a divine vocation with gifts of its own to offer the church is a crucial task in our day. Jesus’ closing words. “Let anyone accept this who can” remain a challenge both for those who can accept them as for those of us who cannot.

Little children were brought to Jesus as he made his New Exodus journey into Judea that he might pray over and bless them. Most were probably brought by parents but others perhaps by friends or relatives.

The disciples balk at what they likely regarded as a distraction for Jesus and rudely demanded such intrusions stop (v.13). They had apparently already forgotten Jesus’ teaching on “little ones” issued just a chapter earlier. Jesus rebukes them and orders them to allow the children access to him. He further declares that they are privileged recipients of the kingdom Jesus brings. Recall our discussion about children in the last chapter. Jesus thus welcomes these “little ones” as part of his work of preparing his people for the ordeal to come and prays and blesses them before continuing on with his march to Jerusalem (v.15). These children are by age what all his disciples are called to become by grace in God’s kingdom.

Marriage, divorce, singleness, and the welcome and blessing of children are all reoriented by Jesus to the condition of his people ass the vanguard of God’s kingdom. This is subversive in the highest degree. Life-long fidelity, the holiness of singleness, the exemplary role of children, all challenge and rework the very fabric of our modern world in myriad ways.     

One Thing Lacking (Mt.19:16-22)

This rich person comes to Jesus as a seeker. He has everything else in life (apparently) and like any good Jew doesn’t want to miss out on “eternal life.” He is not searching for an afterlife in heaven but rather for a share in the “life of the age to come.” That is, life in God’s new creation here, on this planet, in fellowship with God and everyone else. Jesus is “teacher” to him. He expects some regimen, something to do, something “good” that will assure him of a place in God’s new creation (v.16).

Jesus answers by questioning this person’s conception of “good” and assumption that more of his own goodness is what he needs. This is a post-Genesis 3 question where humanity has already taken in the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is so natural to us that we can’t imagine any other question: “What must I do to have eternal life.” Jesus poses an alternative – the way of the tree of life. God is the only source of good, he says (v.17). But then he answers in the idiom of his interlocuter. “Keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” Jesus then cites the second table of the Ten Commandments – our obligations to others and our community. “I’ve done all that,” the person replies. “What else?” “Just one thing,” Jesus answers. And that one thing makes all the difference.

There’s another passage in the gospels, in Luke, about a woman choosing the “one thing” necessary (10:42) that might usefully be held in tandem with this person who lacks “one thing” that will keep him from “eternal life.” More on this anon.

This rich person has done well. Very well. The ways of relating to others and our community must be observed. They are the way of life in God’s new creation. Leithart comments:

“Obedience is necessary for entry into the kingdom, entry into life. That obedience is entirely a gift of God, entirely a work of the Spirit. And there is no one-to-one correspondence between the gift and the work – no correspondence between the work that we do and the reward we receive. But God does call us to do something, and if we do not do it, we will not enter life.”[4]

We must remember that obedience for Jesus and for the Pharisees means different things. He asks his followers for a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees (5:20). A righteousness, or obedience, rooted in relation to him as Messiah. A righteousness gifted to him through this relation to him resulting in excessive actions of well-being and goodness, “a righteousness that not only avoids evil but reverses evil and positively establishes justice.”[5]

This is the one thing necessary that Mary found in Luke 10 and that this person in Mt.19 yet lacks. And it is this to which Jesus calls him: “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven” (v.21). This not a generalized call to poverty and renouncing stuff. But it is not for that reason any less radical. Jesus may not be calling everyone who follows him to this form of radical obedience but he is calling all who follow him to analogous radical acts of obedience based on our situations and calling. The relational righteousness Jesus seeks issues not in a merely literal obedience to a set of commands but a renewed imagination for a redemptive righteousness. Greg Laughery puts it as well as I’ve ever read:

“The eschatological plotline of the biblical narrative is deeply connected to our ability to imagine. God’s promised future can only be accessed through our imaginations, but this picture helps us live lives of imaginative faith, love, and hope in the present, where transformation and renewal are real possibilities to be embraced and embodied. Since we are tethered to the already and acquainted with the not yet, this gives us a new perspective for ‘seeing’ reality in a fuller, yet not complete way. While the parts and the whole imaginatively fit together, there is always more to be imagined and lived, as the relation and distinction between them will never entirely disappear.”[6]

Jesus is himself the end, the eschatological climax of the biblical story. Relating to him as such enables us to “see” the reality that is present and still coming in Jesus that renews our imaginations to discern what excessive righteousness entails for us in our day. It will cost us everything on which we normally depend for our significance or security, whatever that may be. For this person it was his possessions. What would it be for you? And it will never be less than the relation to God and others found in the 10 Commandments.

The Rich and Heaven (19:23-30)

The wealthy person wanting be part of God’s new creation could not bring himself heed Jesus’ call to relation with him because he was too attached to his stuff. But just because our call to relation may not be to divest ourselves completely like him, this does not mean our relation to wealth goes unscathed. Jesus follows up the wealthy person’s story with a more general call to sit lightly to whatever wealth we have. Apparently his disciples have failed to get the point of that story and require further elucidation. And so do we.

Jesus begins with a well-known comparison, one that some have done their best to water down. Wright explains:

“Some people have suggested that the saying about the camel going through the eye of a needle is actually a reference to a gate in Jerusalem that was called ‘the needle’s eye’. A camel would need to unload all it was carrying on its back to get through it. Other people have pointed out that a word very similar to ‘camel’ meant a sort of rope; maybe he was talking of threading a sailor’s rope through a seamstress’s needle. But both of these suggestions miss the point. As we have seen in this chapter and the previous ones, Jesus often exaggerates hugely to make his point. It’s like saying, ‘You couldn’t get a Rolls-Royce into a matchbox.’ The point is not that you might achieve it if you tried very hard, or that there was a particular type of small garage called a ‘matchbox’; the point is precisely that it’s unthinkable. That’s the moment when all human calculations and possibilities stop, and God’s new possibilities start. What is impossible in human terms, Jesus’ followers are to discover to their amazement, is possible to God (verse 26).”

Watered down or not, this is still too much for the disciples. They say what we doubtless would have to had we been there: “Then who can be saved?”

And by now, hopefully, we readers, at least, know what is coming. “It’s impossible for you to do. But God can will do it in you and for you.” And that, as with everything else having to do with Jesus, is the non-negotiable bottom-line.

Peter, however, is still not quite ready to give in. “We’ve given up everything for you, Jesus,” he cries out. “What, then, will we have?” (v.27). “Well,” replies Jesus, “you will rule with me in God’s new creation. And be repaid far beyond what you can imagine for the sacrifices you have made for me. And that begins even now, today. The sacrifice and renunciation required of us to share in God’s rule in the here and now still hostile to that reign is but the flip side of the sacrifice and renunciation all will willingly offer God and one another in the then and there of God’s gladly embraced sovereignty. It’s not so much that we will have more then but that we will have more to share with and care for one another with. That will be the form God’s unlimited and unending provision for us will take. The fulfilment of the partial, fragmented, and contested experience of God’s way and rule in this world. The one that killed his Son.

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[1] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 1720.

[2] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 58.

[3] Hauerwas, Matthew: 274.

[4] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 1861.

[5] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 1872.

[6] www.livingspirituality.org week of 12.16.19