FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook

Advent 1 - A - December 1, 2013 
Matthew 24: 36-44        

  

Harry T. CookBy Harry T. Cook
11/25/13

 

 

 

Matthew 24: 36-44

Whilst on the Mount of Olives with his followers, Jesus spoke privately with them: "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the heavenly messengers, nor the Son but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the One Like Us. For as in those days before the inundation, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah went aboard the ark, and they knew nothing until the inundation swept them all away, so too will be the coming of The One Like Us. At that time, two will be in the field; one of them will be taken, the other left. Two women will be together grinding meal. One of them will be taken, the other left. Keep alert, then, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Got it? So in the same way you must be ready, for The One Like Us is coming at an unexpected hour." (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

 

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With the beginning of the liturgical year denominated "A," we turn to According to Matthew as the primary gospel text that will occupy us for much of the year to come. It will be useful to remember that Matthew was probably chronologically the second such attempt at creating a story around the spare remnants of sayings and teachings attributed to a Jesus who had evidently lived ca. 7-4 BCE to 30-33 CE. -- According to Mark being the first. Matthew shares with According to Luke (the probable third in the series of the three synoptic gospels) considerable material known to textual scholars as "Q" (from the German "quelle," meaning "source.") That material is presumed by most scholars to have been in existence pre-70 CE and began its life as a collection of orally transmitted sayings credited to a person or persons named "Jesus."

 

It is thought by many scholars that Matthew is based on the narrative originally proposed by Mark, though Matthew is a more thoroughly systematized and elongated version bearing unmistakable signs of pro-synagogue Judaism. Matthew includes a genealogy and tries to resolve the unresolved (but probably honest) chord left in Mark at 16:8 by adding the first post-resurrection scenes.

 

Matthew makes liberal use of the fulfillment formula (see 1:23; 2:6,15 and 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9) in an effort to cater to Jews on the cusp between the post-Temple synagogue and Jesus movements. In that connection, it is fair to say that while Matthew does nothing so overt as presenting Jesus as a new Moses, he did not seem embarrassed to send Jesus up a mountain to set forth as series of Torah-like declarations (5:1-12). These, the so-called Beatitudes, are probably a heavily edited series of otherwise discrete sayings brought together in this highly stylized scenario.

 

Other evidence suggests that the compiler(s) of According to Matthew was/were not as Jewish as all that. The Isaiah passage quoted in ch. 1 is mistranslated in what may be a failure to observe the Hebrew "almah" instead of the Septuagint's version which used the Greek word παρθενος, the former meaning "young woman of marriageable age" (i.e. fecund), the latter generally but not always meaning "sexually pure" (hymen intact). Or the Hebrew particle in the passage from Zechariah quoted at 21:5b, which means "even" rather than "an" so that the authors/editors thought they were required to say that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on not one but two animals.

 

Withal, Matthew became the preeminent gospel in the second and third century church, which may explain its usual placement in the series. At 16:18 and 18: 12-20 considerable concern for the church is articulated. In due course, it would be the theology of According to John that would overwhelm the synoptics and other non-canonical gospel documents and come to dominate the church's belief system./1 

 

It may at first seem curious that the first gospel reading for Year A from Matthew is a passage from one of its final chapters. But remembering that it is appointed for Advent Sunday, its choice makes sense. It is Matthew's denouement. The setting is Jerusalem sometime after Jesus' arrival there after his supposed tantrum in the temple courtyard, after he has been depicted as lambasting the scribes and Pharisees -- the tantrum had within the hearing of the crowds supposedly gathered for Passover./2  Now Jesus has left the temple and is in retreat upon the Mount of Olives which towers immediately over the city.

 

His followers want to know when his previous prediction about the temple's destruction will come to pass.  Thus ensue warnings about fake messiahs, natural and man-made disaster, torture and death, community chaos but with the assurance that those who can bear up under it all and remain faithful will be saved. Saved from and faithful to what, it is not vouchsafed. In Matthew's world, given the inclusion of many of the ethical sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospel, being faithful might have meant trust in the wisdom of those sayings and courage to live by them because they are a fulfillment of Torah, or at least Hillel the Elder's understanding of Torah./3 

 

The question is, "How do people in the 21st century reasonably receive and deal with such a text?" One can take it literally, or one can take it seriously. The idea is that the denouement will come sooner rather than later, and that it will come suddenly and without warning. So vigilance is the order of the day.

 

Certainly life is unpredictable. Moments of crisis can be upon us unawares, catching us unprepared even as we might well be prepared for other eventualities. Psalm 90:12 springs to mind here as a desirable attitude ("So teach us to number our days . . ."). Numbering one's days is more than keeping an eye on the clock, calendar and the procession of days, weeks, months and years. It is receiving each new moment or otherwise quantifiable passage of time as a gift outright with the not morbid but realistic understanding that the next could be the last.

 

If one has made the ethic attributed to Jesus his or her own, then that teaching is present in each of those moments in time as the mentor of one's choices. Such awareness and intention is the trajectory of life that is desirable in any time or season, but especially in Advent -- those fewer than 25 days that, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, bring the longest spells of darkness and a natural sense of both dread and expectation and maybe even hope.

 

Not taking any day or hour for granted is the goal, not out of fear but out of gratitude for the opportunity each may present to make a difference for good in that part of the world in which one can.

  

 

1 Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Elaine Pagels, 2003 Random House, pp. 114-142

 

2 See From Jesus to Christ, Paula Fredriksen, 2d ed., 2000, Yale University Press, pp. xxi-xxiii

 

3 Attributed to Hillel the Elder (60 B.C.E.-10 C.E.): "What you hate, do not do to another."

 


Copyright 2013 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

What a Friend They Had in Jesus: The Theological Visions of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hymn Writers

Have you ever found yourself humming a favorite childhood hymn, only to realize you could no longer embrace its message? Harry Cook explores how hymns reflect the religious beliefs of their times. He revisits the texts of popular hymns, posing such questions as: How true are they to the biblical texts that seem to have inspired them? What aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century piety have persisted into the twenty-first century through the singing of those hymns? And, how does one manage the conflict between the emotional appeal and the theological content of such hymns?

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