Reflections for Sundays Year A

By Rosalind Brown

Reflections for Daily Prayer has nourished thousands of Christians for a decade with its inspiring and informed weekday Bible reflections. Now Reflections for Sundays combines material from over the years with new writing to provide high quality reflections on the Principal Readings for Sundays and major Holy Days.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Church House Publishing
• Release date: Apr 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9780715147368

Rosalind Brown

Rosalind Brown was born in 1987 and grew up in Cambridge. She is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA, and now lives and works in Norwich.

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Contents

Title

About Reflections for Sundays

An introduction to Matthew’s Gospel

ADVENT

CHRISTMAS SEASON

EPIPHANY SEASON

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST

ORDINARY TIME BEFORE LENT

LENT

PASSIONTIDE

HOLY WEEK

EASTER SEASON

ASCENSION DAY

PENTECOST

ORDINARY TIME

ALL SAINTS

ORDINARY TIME: ALL SAINTS TO ADVENT

DEDICATION FESTIVAL

HARVEST THANKSGIVING

About the authors

Copyright

About Reflections for Sundays

Reflections for Daily Prayer has nourished tens of thousands of Christians with its insightful, informed and inspiring commentary on one of the scripture readings of the day from the Common Worship lectionary for Morning Prayer. Its contributors over the years have included many outstanding writers from across the Anglican tradition who have helped to establish it as one of today’s leading daily devotional volumes.

Here, in response to demand, Reflections for Sundays offers thoughtful engagement with each of the Common Worship principal service readings for Sundays and major holy days. Reflections are provided on:

•  each Old Testament reading (both Continuous and Related)

•  the Epistle

•  the Gospel.

Commentary on the psalm of the day can be found in the companion volume, Reflections on the Psalms.

In addition, Paula Gooder provides a specially commissioned introduction to Matthew’s Gospel, while contributions from 50 distinguished writers ensure a breadth of approach.

Combining new writing with selections from the weekday volumes published over the past ten years, Reflections for Sundays offers a rich resource for preaching, study and worship preparation.

An introduction to Matthew’s Gospel

Each of the Gospels has a ‘flavour’: something that makes their particular telling of the story characteristic of that Gospel, something that makes you know that this is unmistakably Matthew (or Mark, Luke or John). Indeed, one of the glories of having four Gospels is that we have the one story told four ways – ways that bring out different emphases about Jesus, who he was and what he said and did. Through these differing emphases, we get a deeper, more profound insight into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

The problem is that it is all too easy to miss these emphases, either because we become too familiar with them or because we read our Gospels in such short chunks that we forget to look for and experience the repeated accents to which our Gospel writers draw attention throughout the story. In this short introduction to Matthew’s Gospel, I want to draw your attention to some of the most important of these accents in this Gospel, so that as you read the Gospel during this lectionary year, you are able to notice more easily the key elements of how Matthew tells his story.

Judaism and Matthew’s Gospel

There is no doubt at all that the key ‘flavour’ of Matthew’s Gospel is Judaism; its language, its structure, its allusions, its references all have an Old Testament or Hebraic feel. Matthew’s story about Jesus is a Jewish one, told from a Jewish perspective, with a largely Jewish audience in mind; it therefore portrays Jesus very much as the fulfilment of Old Testament expectation.

This Jewish flavour comes through in many different ways. The most obvious, of course, are the phrases that introduce direct quotations from the Old Testament: ‘for so it has been written by the prophet’ (e.g. Matthew 2.5) or ‘Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet’ (e.g. Matthew 2.17). These phrases seek to show that Jesus was the one that had been long expected in Hebrew tradition. At first glance Jesus appears to come in unexpected form, because he was born in poverty, refused the option of military might and proclaimed a new way of being. What Matthew sought to do, however, was to demonstrate that, though in unexpected form, Jesus had been long expected – you just needed to look carefully and know your Old Testament well to see that he was, in fact, the one for whom Jews had waited so long.

These are not, however, the only Hebraic aspects of Matthew’s Gospel. One of the striking features of Matthew is that he included phrases or ways of speaking that seem to suggest that they were taken directly from Hebrew or Aramaic (a Semitic language closely connected to Hebrew which was widely spoken in the Ancient Near East at the time of Jesus). Phrases dotted through the whole of Matthew, which were translated in the King James Version as ‘And it came to pass’ but which are smoothed in modern translations to something along the lines of ‘Now when Jesus…’ (see for example Matthew 7.28), seem to be a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic via Greek.

Indeed, modern readers are not the first to notice the Hebraic tone of Matthew’s Gospel. One of the earliest writers about the Gospels, Papias, declared that Matthew had collected the words of Jesus ‘in the Hebrew language’. The problem with this statement is that, although there are a few phrases, such as ‘and it came to pass’, that seem to have jumped straight out of the Hebrew language, this is not true of most of the Gospel. Scholars have tried, with only minimal success, to reconstruct an original Hebrew or Aramaic version. Despite the Gospel’s Jewish feel and the few Hebraic-type phrases, the Gospel appears to have been written first in Greek, but by someone who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic, and so introduced a few turns of phrase into an otherwise very Greek text. It is possible then that what Papias meant was that Matthew had collected the sayings in a Hebrew style, i.e. so that the Gospel was – as it certainly appears to be – thoroughly steeped in Jewish theology and thinking.

Jesus as the new Moses

The Jewish feel of the Gospel is not just restricted to a few phrases or even to a wide range of Old Testament quotations. One of the most important features of the Gospel is that it tells its story of Jesus with the Old Testament firmly in mind. Right from the start it is clear that Jesus is the new Moses, come to give the new law to God’s people. This emphasis on Moses begins as early as the birth narratives, in which various details are clearly reminiscent of Moses’ infancy. So, for example, at Moses’ birth Pharaoh killed all the other baby boys leaving only Moses (Exodus 1.22-2.10) as happened too for Jesus with Herod (Matthew 2.13-18) and when Moses’ life was in danger he fled from Egypt to Israel (Exodus 2.15), when Jesus’ life was in danger he fled from Israel to Egypt (Matthew 2.13-21). In case we are in any doubt of the connections between the two accounts, Matthew 2.15 quotes from Hosea 11.1 – ‘Out of Egypt have I called my Son’ – which alludes to yet another Moses story – that of the Exodus.

The connections with Moses do not stop there. Just as Moses fasted for 40 days and nights in the wilderness (Exodus 34.28); so Jesus also fasted for 40 days and nights at his temptation (Matthew 4.2). Probably most important of all is the emphasis in Matthew on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: just as Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the law, so Jesus went up a mountain to deliver the new law in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). Jesus even makes specific reference backwards to the Mosaic law with the formula: ‘You have heard that it was said … but I say to you’ (Matthew 5.21; 27; 33; 38; 43).

It is important to recognize these deep connections between Moses and Jesus for what they are and not to be troubled by what they are not. To our modern eye, these typologies drawn by Matthew could suggest that Matthew was either ‘making up’ the story or indeed massaging it to fit the details. This does not seem to me to be what is happening here. In all three synoptic Gospels Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights; in Luke’s Gospel we find many of the ‘new laws’ proclaimed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew is not so much making up the stories as seeing in the events that happened deep theological patterns. What Matthew was doing was providing us with a lens through which to observe what Jesus said and did so that we could make more sense of – see more truly – who he really was. This Jesus, this new Moses, had come to show us how to live: how to welcome and live fully within the Kingdom of God.

Jesus and mountains in Matthew

It is probably worth noticing at this point that the mountain at the Sermon on the Mount is not the only mountain to be found in Matthew. There are five others, making six in all:

•  The first mountain is found in the temptation narrative where Jesus was tempted to worship the devil (Matthew 4.8).

•  The second is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.1).

•  The third is the mountain where Jesus healed many sick people (15.29).

•  The fourth is the mountain of transfiguration (Matthew 17.1).

•  The fifth mountain is the Mount of Olives, where Jesus taught about the end times (Matthew 24).

•  The sixth and final mountain is the setting for the encounter between the disciples and the risen Jesus where Jesus commissioned them to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28.16).

It is easy to make too much of motifs like this. Various scholars have argued extensively for there being only five mountains, like the five books of Torah, as that would have been pleasing and would have fitted the connections with Moses. The problem is that in order to arrive at just five mountains, you have to miss one out. This challenge suggests that we need to be cautious lest we place unwarranted emphasis on such motifs. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the events which took place on each of the six mountains – a temptation to worship the devil; teaching; healing; transfiguration; exploration of the end times and the commission to make new disciples – make a neat summary of who Jesus was and what he came to do. In an aural culture, it would have been easy to listen out for the six key mountain motifs and through them to understand the centre of Matthew’s message.

The fivefold structure of Matthew

It is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is certainly true. It is also true that the structure of a book can also be in the eye of the beholder. You only need to glance at many commentaries on the Bible to observe that there are nearly as many proposed structures for the books of the Bible as there are people proposing them. Matthew’s Gospel is different. Although not everyone agrees on the precise details, many scholars discern a fivefold pattern to the Gospel. What is particularly striking is that the majority of the material that is specific to Matthew’s Gospel (and not to be found in Mark’s Gospel) can be identified as five discourses that provide teaching on narratives about what Jesus did. It is even more striking to observe that Matthew 7.28, 11.1, 13.53, 19.1, and 26.1 all contain a phrase such as ‘…when Jesus had finished saying these things’, a phrase that appears to provide the bridge from one section of the Gospel to another.

If we take these formulaic phrases as a guide then the structure of the Gospel would look like this:

•  Prologue: genealogy, nativity and infancy narratives – Matthew 1 – 2

•  First narrative (the baptism of Jesus) and discourse (the Sermon on the Mount) – Matthew 3 – 7

•  Second narrative (stories of miracles interwoven with stories of discipleship) and discourse (focusing on mission and suffering) – Matthew 8 – 10

•  Third narrative (conflict with Jesus opponents) and discourse (a series of parables) – Matthew 11 – 13.52

•  Fourth narrative (increasing opposition to Jesus) and discourse (preparation of the disciples for Jesus’ absence) – Matthew 13.53 – 18

•  Fifth narrative (Jesus travels to Jerusalem) and discourse (the coming end) – Matthew 19 – 20

•  Epilogue: the last week of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and great commission – Matthew 21 – 28.

Unlike with Matthew’s mountains, this outline does seem to have a genuine fivefold structure and might well have been influenced by Matthew’s concern to present Jesus as the new Moses, and to present his Gospel as the new fivefold Torah for the new people of God.

Matthew and the Pharisees

The only jarring note in Matthew’s otherwise profoundly Jewish Gospel, is the apparent distance that Matthew seems keen to establish between Jesus and the Jews of his day, especially the Pharisees. Chapter 23 of the Gospel contains a long list of sayings (found only in Matthew) condemning the Pharisees for bad advice, bad practice and for generally missing the main point of the worship of God. The repeated phrase ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees…’ throughout the chapter only serves to drive home the point of Jesus’ anger. Added to this is the fact that throughout the Gospel, synagogues are referred to as ‘their synagogues’ (Matthew 4.23; 9.35; 10.17), so the distance between Jesus and his fellow Jews in Matthew’s Gospel seems quite extensive.

This seems odd given the clearly Jewish emphasis of the rest of the Gospel. One explanation for this, offered by some though not all scholars, is that Matthew’s Gospel was written into a Jewish Christian community that was struggling with a conflict between themselves and their fellow Jews. Matthew therefore offered a picture of Jesus – and of the following of Jesus – that was profoundly Jewish but at the same time offered a strong critique of the Judaism practised by their close neighbours.

In other words, Matthew might have been offering the story of Jesus as a genuine way of expressing Jewish faith and belief through the following of Jesus, while at the same time seeking to put distance between the Jewish Christian community and those with whom they were in conflict.

The dating and authorship of Matthew’s Gospel

This brings us to when the Gospel might have been written and by whom. This is a question that is hard to answer but one that matters to many people, so it is worth sketching out some of the key issues that might help us to begin to construct an answer.

Who was Matthew?

A good place to begin is with the question of who Matthew was. The Gospel was attributed to Matthew quite early in its life. The Papias who noted that the Gospel was a collection of stories about Jesus in the Hebrew style also attributed the authorship to Matthew possibly as early as 125 AD; this was repeated by Irenaeus around 50 years later. By the end of the second century AD, this Matthew was firmly associated with the Matthew who was one of the Twelve and was a former tax collector (Matthew 9.9; 10.3).

One of the problems here is that although Matthew is named and identified as a former tax collector in Matthew’s Gospel, he does not appear in either Mark or Luke, where the former tax collector was called Levi. One possible answer to this conundrum is that Matthew was known by two names; either that, or there were two former tax collectors one mentioned by Matthew and one by Mark and Luke.

When and where was the Gospel written?

Christian tradition identifies Antioch as the place where Matthew’s Gospel was written. Although there is little concrete evidence to support this, it would be as good a location as any. As we observed above, when reflecting on Matthew’s Gospel and the Pharisees, the Gospel may reflect a situation in which there was a growing conflict between Matthew’s Jewish Christian community and their Jewish brothers and sisters. We know from Acts that such a conflict did take place early on in the Christian life in Antioch, so there is no reason to assume that it suddenly resolved later in the first century. There is certainly evidence – even if it is slightly sketchy – that the Jewish War (66–72 AD) and the fall of the temple in Jerusalem (70 AD) contributed to heightened tensions between Jews and a number of groups, including followers of Christ.

Another factor that might nudge us to this date would be that Matthew, like Luke, contains a lot of material that overlaps with Mark, suggesting that Mark had already been written when Matthew was composed. Scholars often date Mark to the late 60s AD or very early 70s, so if Matthew knew Mark, then this might suggest a date for Matthew of the mid-70s AD (though it could have been slightly later or slightly earlier).

Concluding reflections

People react to Matthew in widely differing ways. For some, Matthew is their favourite Gospel; for others their least favourite. Others still are more lukewarm in their response, neither loving nor hating it. Matthew’s is a profoundly practical Gospel. Probably more than any of the other gospels, Matthew’s Gospel shows what it is like to live in the Kingdom: the Sermon on the Mount, the Kingdom Parables and the other discourses of Jesus all reveal profoundly practical insights into how we, who seek to follow Jesus, should live. The ‘new law’ of Jesus is in many ways even more taxing than the ‘old law’ of Moses, requiring not only right action but right thought and attitude too.

Matthew also appears to reveal the gritty reality of life in the Kingdom. The Gospel reveals that conflict existed for those who read it: whether from inside that community when disagreements took place (see ‘If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone’, Matthew 18.15) or from those who were not followers of Jesus (‘Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues’, Matthew 10.17). Matthew holds out no utopian vision of life in the Kingdom; his is a stark depiction of life as it really was – and, for many Christians around the world, still is.

As we meet the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel, however – through the new law he brought, the parables he told, the discourses he unfolded, the miracles he did, indeed simply through the way he lived his life and faced his death – we are reminded that, no matter what the cost, Jesus is the one truly in whom we can find rest for our souls (Matthew 11.28); the one worthy of our worship (Matthew 28.17); and the one who sends us onwards to take the message of this good news to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28.19). This Jesus still calls ‘come, follow me’ (Matthew 4.18-19) as he did to the very first disciples. If we hear his voice and answer his call, we can be sure that our lives will never be the same again.

Introduction by Paula Gooder

First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 2.1-5

Psalm 122

Romans 13.11-end

Matthew 24.36-44

Isaiah 2.1-5

‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation’ (v.4)

The famous and very encouraging passage that foretells the end of war, with swords beaten into ploughshares, leads into yet another prediction of doom for those who displease God (‘The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled, v.11) – salvation and judgement always occur together in Isaiah, for whom there is no ‘cheap grace’. Pride and self-satisfaction are the essence of what he condemns – people worshipping gods ‘their own fingers have made’ (v.8). In other words, their apparent worship of God is really a form of self-worship. God, however, is merciful, and verses 2 to 5 foresee a time when all people on earth will follow his ways and so be at peace with each other.

A powerful image of this transformation can be found in the Sainsbury African gallery at the British Museum, where there is a ‘tree of life’ made from parts of guns. It is a monument to an initiative by a Catholic bishop in Mozambique, which was taken up and developed by Christian Aid. During the Cold War, millions of weapons flooded into Mozambique, and their continued existence gravely threatened the country’s peace as they came to be used for settling internal disputes. Under the 1995 initiative ‘Transforming Arms into Tools’, people can bring their guns to a collecting point and receive agricultural implements in return. The tree of life celebrates this venture, by which instruments of death have been replaced with instruments of life.

Reflection by John Barton

Isaiah 2.1-5

Psalm 122

Romans 13.11-end

Matthew 24.36-44

Romans 13.11-end

‘… the day is near’ (v.12)

‘Wake up and smell the coffee!’ the saying goes. Pull yourself together, pay attention and get a grip before it’s too late!

Paul’s warning is not that we avoid disaster, but should make the most of the good news. ‘Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers’ (v.11). We have the capacity to experience more fully all that salvation brings, as we mature in faith, and ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (v.14) ever more