Reading: Matthew 23-24, Psalm 92
When I was in my early teens, I developed a mild obsession with the end of the world. I assume this was the result of several factors: watching “end times” movies and TV shows, enjoyment of science fiction, and the general discontent of the early teenage years. Whatever the cause, I read and reread novelizations of a certain outlook on Biblical prophecy, and tried to understand what they had to do with the book of Revelation. This was before the Left Behind series hit the bookshelves, so I had to work a little harder to find pat answers to questions about the future than those a little younger than me. But find them I did, and for quite a while I was convinced they were correct, and I was on the lookout for the appearance of The Antichrist and the rise of a one world government. Then I grew up a little, read the book of Matthew, and started to wonder if the people making these predictions had ever read Jesus response to his disciples when they asked when and how the future would unfold. My guess is they skipped some lines.
Today’s reading opens with Jesus directing a real blast of condemnation at the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus has just answered their question about the greatest commandment, and pointed the way to the correct interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures in his answer: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. Apparently, they did not get it. Like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures before him, Jesus gets pretty hot with bad guides, blind teachers, selfish shepherds. He really lets them have it. This is probably the harshest language Jesus uses, and it is instructive in several ways. First, I think those of us who call ourselves Christians are a bit too quick to be gentle with those who are leading people astray, away from the greatest commandment. Jesus left no doubt that those who are more concerned with their own rules and regulations than with the heart of the law are very far from the heart of God. I see no reason we should not do the same. Second, it instructs our own behavior. Because humans have a problem, we are all a short distance from being the second coming of the Pharisees. It is a fine line between calling out those who manipulate the commands of God for their own advantage and become one of them.
What does all this have to do with the end of the world? When Jesus is done blasting the Pharisees, he turns to mourning over Jerusalem, and predicts the destruction of the temple there. The disciples, understandably curious, ask two important and interrelated questions: what is the sign of your coming, and when will these things take place? Jesus gives a pretty long answer. It is tempting to completely separate his answer and try to say some of it was to the first question and some to the second. I’m not sure that is what Matthew is trying to do here, though. He put those questions together for a reason, and put Jesus’ answer together for a reason, too. The question of when is closely related to the what. The more I read this section of Matthew, the more I am convinced that what Jesus is saying boils down to: read the Scriptures, keep your eyes open, work for my Kingdom, and don’t worry over much about the answer. Jesus’ answer is a lot of imagery from the Hebrew Scriptures. It doesn’t answer the question, just points back to the book of Daniel and the minor prophets. In the end, Jesus straight up says I don’t know. Nobody knows but the Father in Heaven. Then he tells a story about being faithful, because no one knows when the Master will return. That does not seem like a call to try and figure it out, but one to stick to that whole greatest commandment thing no matter what happens, because no one will be able to figure it out.
These two segments, the blasting of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the way Jesus answers the disciples question about the future, can teach us something about trying to get too fancy in our knowledge of the Story that the Scripture tells. It is a habit of at least some humans to try and reduce stories to their constituent parts and make them into propositions that must be either denied or obeyed. If you want to be “in” then you must obey the propositions that I get out of this story. If you interpret differently, you are “out.” I think Jesus is issuing a warning against this kind of thinking. The Pharisees reduced the law to a series of things to be obeyed or denied. Jesus has nothing good to say about them. Then he tells his disciples to go back to the story and pay careful attention to it, without trying to reduce it to a set of rules. Be faithful in all things, not be right about all things.
Matthew has more to say on this subject. Tomorrow’s reading will be mostly a continuation of these thoughts, with more weight given to the consequences of being faithful with what we are given. The final story Jesus is going to tell about the end of the world and judgment is pretty directly related to the greatest commandment. It might be worth listening to it.