The dead city. Matthew 23. Proper 26A 2023

Rev Barbara Peddie

Sometimes there are readings set down in the Lectionary that I can’t easily find my way into. It happens most often with Matthew, and it happens to me particularly in the readings we get in these last months of the Church’s year. There are the parables where so many are left out – where is the Jesus who said: “All are welcome”. All! As we will say in a few minutes – all are welcome to the table.

So, I came to this Sunday wondering where I would go. I almost took the easy option of celebrating our saints. After all, we’re only 4 days out from that festival. And I have slipped some of them into the order of service anyway, because, after all, that’s the whole point of the saints of the church. They’re always with us, whether or not we recognise them. But at the same time, we’re living in a time where there’s war and disaster all round us. Today is the anniversary of Parihaka – a black day in the story of Aotearoa New Zealand. On November 11 this country sets apart remembers the dead from all the wars that have affected us. Our city has a Ukrainian community that is living through daily tragedies affecting the families here. All round the country people are protesting the war in Gaza. And at the same time, our young people are distraught about the disasters brought about by climate change. I very nearly decided that today we would have a Peace Sunday service. Except that prayers for peace must be part of our daily faith journey.

And, in the end, just because it’s important that we keep the candles burning every day, not just on the occasional Sunday, I went back to our reading from Matthew. But first, I went a little further afield. Who was Matthew writing to? What sort of community were they? They probably lived in Antioch, the third-largest city of the Roman Empire. The sociologist Robert Stark tells us that any accurate picture of Antioch in New Testament times “must depict a city filled with misery, danger, despair, fear and hatred; a city where the average family lived a squalid life in filthy and cramped quarters, where at least half the children died at birth or during infancy, and where most children who lived lost at least one parent”. Stark goes on to say that the city was filled “with hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms and exacerbated by a constant stream of strangers.” Antioch lacked stable networks, and was repeatedly smashed by disastrous catastrophes, which meant a “resident could expect to be homeless from time to time, providing he or she was among the survivors”.

I can think of more than one city in our time which would fit this description.

The new Christian communities in Antioch, as in every part of the Roman Empire, were made up of people from an incredible mix of faith traditions – including differences within the traditions. (Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly on theological disagreement.)  Matthew’s communities are thought to have had a high percentage of Jewish Christians as well as those with pagan backgrounds. First century Judaism itself had at least four main varieties in the first half of the first century. The Pharasaic Jews placed a special emphasis on the interpretation and adaptation of the Mosaic Law to all areas of life. The Sadducees were the priestly group, considered by many Jews to be too friendly with the Romans. They had been closely associated with activities at the temple in Jerusalem.  The Essenes were an austere community, and viewed all other groups as having deviated from the authentic faith. The Zealots were focused on throwing off the Roman yoke by military means. By the time Matthew wrote to his communities the only faction that still functioned as a significant group that of the Pharisees. The other three were mostly wiped out by the Romans after the Jewish revolt. The Jerusalem temple was destroyed in the year 70, probably just before Matthew wrote his Gospel – but you know, and I know that the beliefs of the other groups would not have vanished without trace. Building a community that followed the Way of Jesus was never going to be easy! Especially when you still had the Pharisees, with all the weight of centuries of tradition – and probably most of the wealth as well.

It would be easy to read this passage and say, here is Matthew, vehemently against the Pharisees. They’re all hypocrites. Flick through his Gospel and you find diatribes against “the scribes and Pharisees”. Go a little further with today’s chapter and you find Jesus calling them “blind guides’, “whitewashed tombs”, “snakes” and “a brood of vipers” (vv 16,27,33). This is an uncompromising, judgmental Jesus, far removed from the one who cared about the fate of a fallen sparrow.

But read the passage again. Jesus begins by saying, “the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat”. They’re the ones who hold our history and our teaching. This is how we learn our faith.  And the same goes for us. Without Judaism, there would be no Christianity. The teaching stands there, inviolate. But the problem, for the Pharisees in the first century and for church leaders in every century since, is that it’s not enough to stand at the pulpit and teach. You – we – all must live what we teach and what we believe. The Pharisees weren’t unique in that sort of behaviour. It’s a problem of human nature. Think “selfish gene”. Think of the way the love of power can corrupt. Think of those who, having reached a ‘safe’ and comfortable way of living, seem unable or unwilling to imagine what the reality is for people at the bottom. If we simply follow instincts, we’ll be no different from every other species on earth: focused entirely on our survival.

In the words of theologian Tim Beach-Verney: “The true measure of faithfulness to God is found not in the words one speaks or the doctrines one accepts, but in the orientation of one’s heart…… Though people are unequal by many measures: from intelligence to physical strength, from social standing to material wealth, they are all equal before God.” All our gifts and abilities are resources for the whole community, not individual properties.

And it’s not just the prominent among us who should beware of hypocrisy. For those with power, the sin of not living our faith may well take the form of pride, but for the oppressed and the weak, the sin of not living our faith may be withdrawing from God and assuming they have nothing to offer. Sin is a breaking of relationship with God and with God’s creation and can take the form of either weakness or pride.

The call that comes to us from these latter chapters of Matthew is a strong reminder that the heart of God’s mission is the willingness to enter into the chaos of others. It is all too easy in times like ours to focus on the needs of the church rather than on our part in the larger mission of God. Long ago, in Antioch, the early Church with no buildings, no money and no political influence, turned parts of their world upside down by loving and serving Christ in all whom they met. For us today, we are called to love and serve our neighbour and to care for our earth, and in doing this, in the words of Kathleen Rushton, we are loving and serving “God with us,” the Creator of our common home.