matthew

I've been reading through the gospel of Matthew with group lately, and here are some of my thoughts and comments on little parts of it.

"So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (5:23-24).

Most of the time when I hear people talking about these verses, it's in the context of worship services. In that scenario, it means that if you come to worship and are mad at someone, you should talk to them before you worship. I don't think that's what it's getting at though. For one thing, I think it has to be read in light of the verses that come before it, which talk about words used that will drag you before the council and words that will put you in danger of hell. The point here is that there are words that you use that offend people, but there are things you communicate to other people that put you in danger of hell. This is the difference between me telling someone as a joke to fuck off, which might offend people around me, and me telling a person that I think they are a wreck and failure at life, where what I'm communicating is much worse even though I'm using tamer language. In this sense, I think we have to see the altar thing as what pleases humans and what pleases God (and really, a lot of the sermon on the mount is about that). So, I think what's going on here is that placing gifts on the altar is an act of piety that is impressive to people, but what God cares about is redemption and reconciliation with other people. I don't think that this is a hard and fast rule for whether or not you need to confront someone before a worship service, since I don't think that's always wise or loving, but is really done out of guilt and a desire to be pious before people (which is what this is against).

"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops" (10:26-27).

The first part of this verse, I've usually taken to be referring to sin and God's judgment: everything bad you have done will eventually be revealed. I don't think it's actually this particular verse that I'm thinking of, but almost identical passages either elsewhere in Matthew or in another gospel. In any case, that isn't what it's about. This passage is surrounded on both sides by talk about the two kingdoms (thanks, Bob) and about God being on the side of the disciples who are being sent out. Immediately before that verse it talks about how the "servants" will be maligned even worse than the "master" has been. So, what Jesus is saying is that what is covered (that they really do follow God, not Beelzebul) will eventually be known to everyone. In other words, it's a statement about identity and which kingdom they belong to rather than anything to do with sin or judgment, or a reason to fear. People say that these servants serve evil, but in the end God will say that they were part of his kingdom. The following verses talk about how important it is to not be afraid, which fits in just right with it.

Also, I've been noticing how physical Matthew is, and struck but how critical this physical side was to Jesus' mission. When John asked if he was the messiah, Jesus says that the sick are being healed and that good news is being given to the poor. He doesn't mention anything about forgiving sins (even though he's been doing that,) or about changes in peoples behavior and morals. Which isn't to say that those things are not important to Jesus, only that their importance has been exaggerated in contemporary interpretations (and thanks to Augstine!) Similarly, when Jesus sends out his disciples they are to heal the sick, cast out demons, and talk about the kingdom. The physical world is critical to Jesus' mission and the mission of his followers, and cannot simply be discarded as something that will pass away.

innocence

I've been thinking about innocence lately, and about people talk about it as a virtue, but what they mean by innocence is mostly ignorance. I don't think that ignorance is a virtue, and I have been thinking about what it means to be innocent, or why it is that I think some people are more innocent now than at other times that I've known them. People talk about children as being innocent, but I don't think that children really are innocent. I don't mean this in the original sin, depravity, born into sin sort of way, that children are born sinful and are therefore not innocent. Not to mention I've learned over the past year about how this image of innocent children has really only developed in the last two hundred years, and seeing its origins makes me much more skeptical and disgusted when people talk about childhood as the seat of innocence and virtue and imagination and nostalgia. I don't want to be a child, and I don't think that I was more innocent as a child. I want to imagine innocence being something that can continue even once people know, and that in fact requires them to be able to see reality clearly, rather than shying away from it. I don't know why I'm interested in redefining this word, but I am. I suppose I'm thinking of innocence as the capacity to see reality and still believe, to have hope, to have hope as an epistemology (thanks, Lindsey,) rather than a state of perfection or sinlessness or ignorance. I don't think that children know enough to really be innocent.

Who knows, maybe being an innocent is really just being dumb.

And...unrelated: rereading the story of "the fall" recently, it struck me that this story never mentions sin, and that the author of Genesis is interested in this story as an explanation of how death entered the world rather than how sin or evil entered the world (though sin is mentioned soon afterwards in the story of C + A). It's about the problem of death rather than the problem of evil. This is interesting to me, especially because I'm not really against death, or afraid of death, and because I don't think there has been a time in the universe when things lived and never died.

prayer

I haven't prayed, really, for about a year. Last fall quarter I prayed quite a bit, and it was such a traumatic experience that I really haven't taken it up again. By prayer, I mean setting aside a chunk of time to speak to God and to listen to him, which I think is actually a quite limited understanding of prayer. But I haven't prayed like that for some time, and I think that soon I might be able to again.

But what am I praying? Prayer lately has been thinking about those around me who are suffering. Most of the time I don't know what to pray. Everything seems arrogant or insufficient. I feel arrogant when I pray towards a certain solution or end, and I feel arrogant assuming that I know what would be a good or appropriate result for a situation in a person's life. So mostly what I pray is for God to have mercy on them, and on me*. This is really the only way I have been able to pray for months, praying for both the living and the dead.

This isn't mercy as in "they really effed up, now please don't destroy them," because that's rarely what I'm praying.