We come to the final days in Galilee, before Jesus goes to offer Himself as a sacrifice on the Cross. Matthew describes one more essential lesson in pastoral leadership Jesus gave to His Disciples. As always, our familiarity with the lessons and parables in isolation from the context has served to destroy some of the meaning. While our understanding may not be entirely wrong, we are spiritually poorer for not having the richness of the context Jesus Himself gave for these lessons. Here, Jesus is responding to a persistent blindness in the Twelve to the fundamental nature of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Peter has hosted Jesus for at least a couple of years in Capernaum. As a courtesy to His host, Jesus helped pay the Temple Tax for both of them. We can assume the others had to pay their own way. Matthew should hardly have been troubled, but some of the others might not have it so easy. There had already arisen a sensitivity over their relative status as leaders in Jesus' ministry, and He had already been teaching them it was near the time things should come to a head. Since they didn't know quite how the handle the idea the crown lay through the Cross, we find them considering instead the details of how the Messianic Kingdom would play out, specifically regarding who among them was designated for which position in the Messianic Court. They were still suffering from worldly ambitions, envy, and confusion about Messianic expectations.
Children were given scant attention in the Ancient Near East, except within the privacy of the family. Even though highly valued and prized as a proof of God's favor, their status was quite a bit lower than we in the West would find comfortable. While Hebrew tradition was a little better in such things than just about every other culture at that time, we note men didn't give them a lot of time until they were old enough to commence education and training, sometime around age nine. Indeed, we learn from the laws of the time the death from abuse of one younger than nine provoked no curiosity from officials, because their loss was simply a loss to the family. Only after their bar Mitzvah ceremony, meaning literally "a son of the Law," did they have any status in the community, and could ask questions in the synagogue, for example. We know from several Gospel passages Jesus broke this mold. When the Disciples asked Him about their assignments, He called a nearby child, who was surely younger than nine. The boy took his place in the center of the group.
This rather unimportant figure became an object lesson. Jesus referred a need to be changed, to experience a complete shift in understanding how the world works. Rather than the child needing to be trained to the ways of life, it is the world which needed the understanding of a child to enter life in the Kingdom. Once people are "converted" to become like children, they are fit for citizenship. This presents a bewildering paradox to the Twelve, who by now had begun to think of themselves as a class apart. Instead, it's not their leadership they needed to work on, but their mere inclusion in the Kingdom. Children lack ambition, and are all too happy just to be included, to be taken seriously in any degree. They are quite indiscriminate in following the leadership of any adult who seems to care about them. Becoming childlike is the sort of thing which fits men for leadership in the Kingdom.
Once having adopted this childlike faith and trust, any leader in the Kingdom takes up the responsibility of welcoming other children. It is a solemn duty, and taking it lightly by casually misleading them is no joke. Taking advantage of their dependency by leading them astray for any reason is a sin so great, they deserve one of the most hideous forms of Eastern punishment known: tossed in the sea weighted down by a millstone large enough it requires a donkey to push it. It's bad enough the world is loaded with people who lead others astray, and these deserve the greater punishment from God. It would be worth any price to avoid seducing the vulnerable. It's not hard to imagine Jesus draws a picture of the repulsive creatures who debauch children while pretending to love them. If you can't keep your hands to yourself, or even your eyes, remove them. It's better to live life with maimed flesh than to stand before God having seduced any spiritual child to sin.
Further, the dismissive attitude many leaders of that day showed to their subordinates was completely unacceptable in the Kingdom. As all in the Kingdom are children before the Lord, so none is truly above another. Becoming impatient and dismissing someone who doesn't rise to your personal demands is approaching blasphemy. You are not God, and God keeps the angelic representatives of His children close at hand. Jesus uses the image here of a tiny elite group within the court of an Eastern potentate. Most people with business at the court never actually see the ruler, but deal with his servants, taking their words as words of the lord himself. A choice few are allowed to actually see him face to face on a regular basis. Each soul is precious! A better translation of verse 12 has the shepherd leaving his flock in a safe place in the wilderness, while he goes off and seeks the one which got lost. It's not a matter of the others having no value, but that all are invaluable individually. This is frankly a revolutionary concept in that context. While some shepherds would give names to their sheep, it was extremely rare he would do so for a large flock, yet Jehovah calls each of us by name.
Thus, when dealing with a straying brother, leaders must assume his soul is so precious they will be loathe to cast him aside. Give him every chance to repent. By this time, rabbis had long realized Israel was under a foreign ruler in part because no one bothered to concern himself with his neighbor's sins (Leviticus 19:17). This emphasizes the biblical communitarian instinct built into the Kingdom. Go to the brother privately, where it's most likely he'll climb down from presumptuous sin. If that fails, bring a few witnesses to establish whether he is indeed hardened in this sin (Deuteronomy 19:15). If all else fails, let the whole congregation know why they must ostracize this brother. The obvious assumption is the fault in view is dangerous to the community of faith, something which would cause a child to stumble. Such irresponsible behavior is symbolically associated with heathens (goyyim or Gentiles) and those Jews (publicans like Matthew had been) who served them.
Jesus then calls to their memory a standard rabbinical concept: binding and loosing. It was clearly understood by almost anyone who attended synagogue the point was to teach the Law of Moses in the context of everyday life. As cultural and technological shifts came, it was necessary to understand how the agrarian orientation of the Law could be extrapolated to obey the intent. This was the original idea behind the Talmud before it was corrupted by Hellenist rational assumptions. Thus, preachers and teachers of the Law were to declare what was bound, forbidden by Law, and what was loosed, or acceptable. As leaders in the Kingdom, this responsibility was conferred on all the Disciples, and it was no small matter. However, it was not impossible to discern. While one might be mistaken in isolation, two hearts genuinely seeking God's face like children would surely come to a useful conclusion. The smallest possible congregation of faith would not lack for God's presence, and they would eventually know what was bound or loosed in His eyes.
This teaching brought to Peter's mind a question about forgiveness. While the Pharisees taught one only need to forgive the same mistake three times, Peter knew that was wrong. Would a larger number do -- seven? That was a good, sacred number. Jesus' answer showed Peter was missing the point. Echoing the number revealed to Daniel (9:24ff) as the symbolic measure of God's patience with Israel's sin, Jesus indicated there was actually no limit. To emphasize the point, He offered the parable of Debt Forgiveness.
We've noted already many rulers of that time pretended to imitate the legendary luxury and manners of the Persian Empire. Jesus' calls up the image of such a potentate who is auditing his accounts, suggesting the domain was insolvent. The apparent cause was the impossibly flagrant embezzling of a satrap. When the man begged, his lord decided to treat it as a loan, but forgave it. This man promptly went out and seized one of his debtors, who owed a rather ordinary sum. Instead of passing on that magnanimity he had received, he impatiently remanded the servant to a debtor's slave farm. When word got back to the potentate, he ordered the forgiven debt reinstated, and treated the man according to his first crime.
We stand before God with a debt of sin. By no stretch of any imagination could we repay from our own resources. There is nothing we can do, and we most certainly deserve in this life the worst. Yet God chooses to forgive those who fully confess and humble themselves before Him. How can we do any less? The sins which concern us as leaders in the congregation are likely much smaller than our sins before God. The consequences we mete out are equally small, because the issue is sin on a much lower level. However, the power to cause anguish to the soul of a child of God is huge. We rebuke a child of God for endangering other children of God. If our demands themselves constitute a corrupting influence on the faith of another, we are a threat to the Kingdom. Such indicates we have no place in that Kingdom. Being a leader in the Kingdom requires we constantly remember our place as children, with a solemn task for leading the other children closer to Him.
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Ed Hurst
17 November 2007
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