Reflections on Matthew  from a Gated Community

Alan Proctor Sherouse,

 

            “I understand there's a suspicion that we…we're too security-conscience,” President George W. Bush recently acknowledged.[1]  The concern for safety – that is, the overwhelming preoccupation with security in all its forms – represents a pervasive problem within my life-context.  As a white, heterosexual, middle/upper-middle class male living in the Southeastern United States, mine is a context insulated from physical risk, financial strain, and contact with “the other.”  From “Homeland Security” to economic policy to vast efforts to keep “our children” safe, the economic elite of the U.S. have idealized security, often at the expense of those outside the national and ideological borders.  In our culture, protective SUVs rule the road,[2] private schools insulate privileged children,[3] and officials are elected largely based on promises of security.[4]  However, pointed critical questions remain in this culture of security: safety for whom, and at whose expense?  Who is endangered, even as we are kept safe?  Who is made vulnerable as a result of my security? 

            Confronting the dominant ideology of security, my contextual reading searches for renewed vision in the Gospel of Matthew, seeking a corrective to the ideological “security-system” that prevails in my life-context.  The contextual project proceeds through six stages: life-context, interpretive choices, organizing concepts, commentary on selected passages, dialogue with Alejandro Duarte, and liturgical reflection.  To the U.S. ideology of safety, replete as it is with questionable ethical implications, the Gospel of Matthew offers a corrective vision.  In the Matthean corrective, the powerful are often made vulnerable so that the powerless in turn may be rendered secure.  I seek the same corrective – an ethic of the Kingdom – in my life-context.

 

 

I. Life-Context of the Interpretation

            While not an inherently destructive ideal, the broad theme of “safety” forms a helpful framework for understanding the ideology of the white, upper-middle class United States.  The ethical implications of this vision are broad and varied, extending to arenas of politics, economics, culture, and liturgy.

            The ideology of security is most notably a political concern.  Concern for safety has become increasingly pronounced since September 11, 2001, which jarringly erased the assumption that the U.S. is impenetrable.  On September 11, the U.S. took our place among the vulnerable peoples of the world, but only for a moment.  Fear and the hunger for vengeance quickly catapulted our political system into a tireless quest for security.  By September 17, 2002, the Bush Administration had released a new statement on National Security.  Within this document, promises of safety and promises of retaliation are intertwined.  As Bush dramatically declares, “The conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others.  It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.”[5] 

Partly as a response to “terrorist”[6] attacks and partly as an effort to restore the U.S. mythology, efforts to ensure “security” have escalated, producing dualistic understandings of good/evil and us/them, as well as validating the questionable occupation of other countries.  Savvy politicians know how to capitalize on the fears of the populous.  After all, as Henri Nouwen once observed, “Those who can make me afraid can also make me do what they want me to do.”[7]  Questions of justice, individual rights, and global community endure amidst the politics of safety and fear.  The ethical problem is heightened for me because of the fact that the primary beneficiaries of the efforts to ensure security are members of my life-context.  Nonetheless, always seeking to protect what is “rightfully” ours, our political agenda presses forward: “We have made a sacred promise: we will not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure.”[8]  But, national security often comes at whose expense?                        

            The political rhetoric of security extends also to the economic sphere.  The U.S. works diligently to protect its self-defined status as the quintessential “land of opportunity.”[9] “Opportunity” for U.S. citizens seems to rely on the thwarting of competing markets and economic visions.  For instance, biblical scholar Nestor Oscar Miguez observes that because of the impositions of the Western, “neo-liberal” economic system, “My country, Argentina, is experiencing the worst economic and political crisis in its history.”[10]  Miguez is one of many biblical interpreters whose approaches are sparked by Western economic policy.  Others have noted the ways in which U.S. capitalism depends upon the economic vulnerability of those in the Southern hemisphere.[11]  Theologians, political leaders, and theorists alike have been sharp in their critique of U.S.-initiated economic policy, noting that the Western system of free trade is not a fixed, immutable reality.  However, when these voices speak in droves, as in the November riots surrounding the Summit of the Americas meeting in Argentina, they are promptly vilified in the U.S. culture of safety.     

Ideals of security not only dominate U.S. activity at the macro levels of economics and government, but also extend to cultural assumptions and priorities.  The preoccupation with safety is predicated on an enduring fear of “the other.”  In the safety of our homes – behind walls and national borders – my friends, neighbors, fellow churchgoers and I are insulated from competing visions that threaten to disrupt our way of life.  In the Southern United States, this fear of the other is seen in the settled racism that still endures.  Individuals express frustration when their neighborhoods, schools, or churches are integrated.  Stories may be interrupted with the unnecessary aside, always whispered, “he was a black man, you know.”  Take, as another example, my experience one Sunday morning, when working at a prominent “First Baptist” church in North Carolina:  I was standing at the exit to greet the people, when the elderly matriarch of our congregation came through the exit and “hugged my neck.”  After her genteel greeting, she whispered in my ear, “I could’ve smacked those ‘blacks,’ talking while you were trying to preach.”  The church had just welcomed its first African American members, and Mrs. “M” was clearly not in approval.  When I voiced my protest, she replied, “Now, now, sugar!  Don’t you scold me.  I’m good to those folks.  We had servants, and we were always good to our servants.” 

In addition to the embedded racism that causes many of us to shutter, the myopic cultural vision of “safety” also includes a narrow understanding of “family.”  This narrow vision is specifically seen in the mythical construal of the “American Family” and the fabrication of enemies to “family values.”  In an effort to retain the “safety” and comfort of the conventional family, U.S. citizens have found enemies in everyone from Harry Potter[12] to members of the LGBTQ community.  As one critic notes, “The construction of enemies assures Americans of our own identity.”[13]  LGBTQ persons are thus excluded from marital rights and cast as artificial opponents, all in an effort to “protect the family.”[14]  In our assumption of idyllic cultural norms, we bolster a system that threatens the well-being and cultural rights of “the other.”  Rather than openness, we prefer insulation. 

            As further illustration of the harmful cultural preoccupation with safety, consider the burgeoning culture of “private schools,” sparked largely by a “Great White Flight” upon the integration of public schools.[15]  As a youth minister, I work with several families that fund this culture, paying up to 20,000 dollars/year for their child to be “safe” and receive a “good education.”  Two years ago, our youth group was planning a service trip to Overtown, FL – a historically African-American community in Miami.  Weeks before our departure, Sara came to me and said her parents had decided not to allow her to attend.  When I wondered aloud about the reason for their decision, she replied, “It’s the people you’re working with…my parents send me to private school so I don’t have to be around people like that.”

            Finally, as someone whose primary community of identification is the Christian Church, my contextual commentary is concerned with safety and insulation as acted out in the liturgical life of communities of faith.  Churches in my context remain prejudicial or at best paternalistic in their relationships with persons from minority groups.  Additionally, failure to communicate authentic openness to LGBTQ persons remains a persistent issue of denominational polity and ethical frutstration.  Often overlooked, however, are the ways in which fixed, immutable liturgical priorities and the desire to “protect” a specific praxis of worship result in injustice toward persons with disabilities.  Even wheel-chair accessible sanctuaries often remain largely inaccessible on the levels of liturgy and theology.  Consider the story of Stephen, a seventeen-year-old boy with Down’s Syndrome, who attempted to find acceptance one Sunday morning. John Swinton, theologian and Stephen’s friend, visited the church with Stephen and recounts the incident:  

Several times Stephen shouted out in worship, ‘Jeeshuss,’ as he tried, in his own way, to participate in the service.  After this had happened three or four times, a representative of the church asked us either to leave or, alternatively, for me to take Stephen through to the Sunday school where he would be a little less distracting for those who wanted to ‘worship in peace.’^[16]

In efforts to preserve peace and reverence, my ecclesial context often fails to approximate God’s kingdom.  Security and serenity are protected in my context.  Responsible critics must ask, “for whom?”

            As seen above, “safety” provides a framework for understanding the various arenas of my life-context and a sampling of their ethical challenges.  However, the examples here outlined are merely symptoms of something underlying and pervasive.  The underlying problem in my context is an overarching ideological safety – a constructed barrier to the vulnerability and risk required to listen to the other.  In our insulation, we have maintained a destructive ideology that has deemed “the other” economically subject, “terrorizing,” servile, morally corrupt, or liturgically excluded.  At its root, then, the American preoccupation with safety is a problem of vision.  Preoccupied with our children, our neighborhood, and our economic security, we have failed to ask the ethical question, “at whose expense?”  Approaching the Gospel of Matthew from this context, I am compelled to search for a renewed vision, wherein relationships of power are disrupted and those who are vulnerable may be made secure.  I am concerned with how those who define themselves as the People of God in my life-context relate to the vulnerable world that surrounds them.  For me, and others in the dominant, elite United States, the power-relations exhibited in Matthew signal a dramatic corrective. 

 

 

II. Interpretive Choices

            Seeking a corrective to the challenges of my life-context, I turn now to the task of interpretation.  The interpretive project begins with the admission of the interrelated theological, textual, and analytical choices that form a foundation for my commentary. 

            Theological:  First, my commentary holds a particular view of the role of scripture.  My theological convictions and heritage lead me to hold the biblical text in high esteem.  As a Baptist minister, I value the text for its moral and spiritual direction (“lamp to my feet”) and I have experienced the text as “Holy Bible.”  Moreover, since my project converses with issues of power, holding particular concern for those rendered powerless by current political and economic systems, I also regard the text as an “empowering word” for those who are oppressed and vulnerable.  However, when read in light of my specific context – that is, the self-defined “People of God” in the upper-middle class United States and their relationship to a world that is largely vulnerable – the Gospel of Matthew provokes renewed vision.  As such, for the present interpretive project, the text functions as “Corrective Glasses.” 

            Textual:  Since the text functions as corrective glasses in my life-context, the most significant textual features in my reading of Matthew are those found in front of the text – the themes, figures, and rhetorical features that affect the readers and their relationship to the world.  As gospel, Matthew is a community-forming document aimed at engaging its readers, which includes both its intended ancient audience and unanticipated contemporary readers.  Thus the text is not fixed in a historical locale, but also active in confronting contemporary communities. 

            Analytical:  Focusing on the elements found in front of the text, I am concerned with its literary features and narrative elements.  However, because of the contextual issues outlined above, my reading is ultimately concerned with the power dynamics and ideology embedded in the text.  Who is safe and who is vulnerable in Matthew’s narrative?  How do the themes and figures of Matthew challenge the relationships of power, both within the text and within the reading community, and offer modes of resistance and correction?  With these questions in mind, my analytical approach falls under the rubric of postcolonial criticism, as outlined by Daniel Patte.[17]  Postcolonial criticism, with its focus on imperial-colonial formations, is pursued at three levels: text (relationships of power in historical context), contemporary context (the text’s effect on people in my life-context), and interpretation (power dynamics in my own interpretation).  My interpretation will attempt to engage the three levels of postcolonial concern. 

 

 

III. Organizing Concepts

            In addition to the interpretive choices delineated above, several key ethical and hermeneutical/theological concepts inform my examination of Matthew.

 

Safety and Vulnerability

            Seeking a corrective to the preoccupation with safety that governs my life-context, my contextual commentary requires careful explication of the concept of safety, so as to guard against a flippant idealization of vulnerability and vilification of security.  First, no critique of the ideology of my “gated community” should undermine the importance of ensuring appropriate safety for individuals.  For instance, every parent has the prerogative to protect her/his child.  Therefore, the parental and national impulses to provide care and security for children and others less vulnerable is not an object of critique.  My concern arises when the safety of some becomes a preoccupation that leads to the vulnerability of others.

            More importantly, it is critical to acknowledge the legitimate concerns that arise when suggesting vulnerability as a corrective.  As Sarah Coakley, feminist theologian, notes, “vulnerability is a rightfully taboo subject.”[18]  Far from a pristine ideal, feminists remind us that vulnerability is often a frighteningly perilous state.  One cannot reference vulnerability without remembering the profound sexual and physical abuse that endures as one of humanity’s gravest tragedies.  It is precisely those who are physically vulnerable – many women and children – that silently become targets of the injustice of violence.   To idealize vulnerability without careful attention to its perils, and likewise critique security without acknowledging its value, would be wildly irresponsible.  As David Livingston writes in Healing Violent Men, “If the community does not care for the vulnerable and abused, it becomes an ineffectual voice for justice.”[19]  With the insights of feminist theologians and pastoral counselors in view, analysis moves cautiously to more nuanced understandings of safety and vulnerability.

            Critique in this analysis is directed toward the security that stands as an icon of U.S. Christianity and political identity.  By seeking to disrupt U.S. ideals of security, I am acknowledging that even important values, when linked to nationalistic fervor and myopic zeal, can become obstacles to the enactment of God’s Kingdom.  In the U.S., safety often entails protection from the other, nurturing a fear of the stranger that has corrupted our vision.  My critique of security, therefore, is not aimed at those children who sleep safely in their homes, or other “little ones”[20] enjoying their entitled security.  Rather, I am concerned with the inordinate concern for safety in the U.S. that leads to a growing divide between powerful and powerless, the increasing economic vulnerability of those in the southern hemisphere, and absurd ecclesial stunts like Jerry Falwell’s pogrom against the Teletubbies.[21]  As Bohdan Hrobon jokingly comments, “If you are more concerned about safety than God’s will, then get lots of duct tape, wrap your house in plastic, and stay inside; because, you know, it’s not safe out there!”[22]   

           

Empire and Kingdom

            Along with the concepts of safety and vulnerability, a postcolonial reading of Matthew necessitates examination of the central figure of basileia as both Kingdom and Empire. Across disciplines, Empire, in one political scientist’s words, “is back in fashion.”[23]  While conceptions of “Empire” differ, most theorists describe it on the basis of relationships of power and control.  As one theorist describes, “Empire is a particular form of domination or control between two units set apart in a hierarchical, inequitable relationship.”[24]  Features of Empire include the drastic inequity between the powerful and powerless, the maintenance of an underclass, the presence of a sovereign ruler, and the development of a comprehensive ideology.[25]  While the lines of comparison are often tenuous, many theorists and biblical scholars find resonances between imperial Rome and the contemporary U.S., accusing the latter of neo-imperialism.  At the least, in our analysis, Rome and America may be linked by their shared status as the existent, dominant system.  A prayer for God’s basileia in the midst of an existent Empire (Roman or American) reflects a significant challenge to the present order.

            The biblical figure of the basileia – “Kingdom of God,” or the Matthean “Kingdom of Heaven” – forms the horizon of Jesus’ ministry.  In Norman Perrin’s words, “Kingdom” is a “tensive symbol,” possessing a great cultural range.[26]  As the central figure and substance of Jesus’ proclamation, the Kingdom may be understood not only as a specific image, but also as the broad organizing principle for Jesus’ proclamation and action.  As such, “Kingdom” has garnered extensive and wide-ranging attention from scholars of the New Testament and the Historical Jesus. 

            In his comprehensive linguistic approaches to Kingdom, Perrin provides helpful catalogs of varying perspectives on Kingdom.[27]  For some scholars, most notably Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer, the Kingdom has been understood as an eschatological reality.  Rudolf Bultmann shared Weiss’ view of a kingdom that “transcends the historical order,” [28] and searched further for the existential teaching embedded in the mythological symbol. C.H. Dodd, meanwhile, conceived of a kingdom that is already “realized” in the ethical activity of Jesus’ followers.  Others, such as Werner Georg Kummel, George Eldon Ladd, and Joachim Jeremias, held a mediating position of a kingdom “already” realized but “not yet” fully established.  Numerous models of Kingdom have been explored: eschatological Kingdom, realized eschatology, existential symbol, and the Kingdom as both present and future.  Outside of biblical scholarship, Kingdom has been variously conceived as mystical experience, political state, and even institutional church.[29] 

            In addition to the chronological categories listed above, Perrin’s formidable work posits relational categories for understanding the Kingdom – that is, categories distinguished by their understandings of God’s relationship to the world and the subsequent relationship among God’s people.  These three relational categories may be applied broadly to the chronological distinctions above.  First, Kingdom may be understood as the space in which the King/God reigns.  In this understanding, God acts dramatically to ensure justice on earth, thus prompting justice among God’s people.  A postcolonial reading notes that such a conception of the Kingdom, as applied to Matthew, identifies God as the agent of power, provoking the actions of God’s people.  A second understanding of Kingdom is that of the people upon whom God reigns, focusing on their final state as those “redeemed.”  In this relationship, the people acknowledge God’s power, elevating God as King and agent of redemption.  Finally, drawing from the Hebrew malkuth tradition, Perrin notes an understanding of Kingdom as the “decisive intervention” of God, freeing God’s people from victimization and bondage.  God’s decisive action prompts similar prophetic efforts from God’s people.  Less hierarchical than the other models, Perrin’s final category suggests a collaborative, dynamic relationship between God and God’s people.        

            In each of Perrin’s categories, the interpretation of Kingdom carries a distinct conception of divine power and authority.  The figure of the Kingdom is therefore loaded with ideological implications concerning the power dynamics between God and humanity.  Postcolonial critics will note that noticeably absent in the classical conceptions of the Kingdom are voices from the margins.  The history of interpretation is dominated largely by Western, historical-critical conceptions of the Kingdom.  A postcolonial reading, however, seeks reader-oriented interpretations, searching for textual features that challenge the existent order and its power relations, economic norms, and cultural assumptions.  Reading with interpreters from the margins, it becomes evident that, in settings of intense injustice, “the Kingdom of God is identified with the lives of the poor.”[30]  When focused on issues of power and justice, the Kingdom may be seen as a subversive, prophetic reality.  While acknowledging the insights of biblical scholars such as Weiss and Bultmann, and their respective constructions of the Kingdom, the present project is concerned with Matthean texts that depict Jesus’ ministry in contrast to the imperial norms of the first-century and the security-driven system of my life-context.  My reading pays close attention to Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus’ ministry and proclamation, searching for a disruptive corrective to the U.S. ideology of safety.      

 

 

IV. Contextual Commentary

            My overview of Matthew, which seeks a corrective to imperial systems of dominance and security, will give attention to representative passages that depict power and weakness, safety and vulnerability.  My interaction with selected passages will engage two of the levels of postcolonial concern, examining relationships of power in historical context along with the text’s effects on contemporary readers.  Each passage will contain commentary relevant to both the Matthean Community and the Gated Community.  

            Before proceeding to commentary on specific passages, a brief overview is needed, giving attention to features significant to a postcolonial approach.  Written around 80-90 C.E., after the fall of the Temple, the Gospel of Matthew was among the most popular accounts of Jesus’ life among early Christians, as evidenced by its canonical priority.  Due to its popularity, it has produced an extensive, largely Western, history of interpretation.  Since the gospel was originally produced in Greek, presumably for a Greek-speaking community, many have assumed it was directed to a setting outside of Palestine.  However, recent studies suggest the plausibility of a Palestinian, specifically a Galilean origin.[31]  This proposed locale is significant from a postcolonial perspective.  As a territory occupied by Rome, Galilee, and specifically Galilean peasants, suffered oppression from Roman imperialism, which widely benefited the elite at the expense of the impoverished majority.[32]  Such dynamics of power and privilege are not foreign to the gated community and its ideology of safety.

            In light of Matthew’s imperial context, there is a growing current amidst postcolonial critics that sees the gospel as a text of imperial resistance.[33]  The dominant scholarly paradigm has viewed Matthew in relation to the synagogue, constructing the so-called “Matthean Community” as a Jewish congregation struggling to define itself as it incorporates Gentile members.  While widely noted, Matthew’s Jewish character must not obscure its political resonances.  Warren Carter has effectively outlined the all-encompassing nature of Roman Imperial presence, claiming that the distinctive themes, symbols, and figures of Matthew can not be properly understood without awareness of Roman claims to authority. [34]   For example, the “yoke,” commonly used as an image of Roman control, is reappropriated by Matthew to reference the guidance and provision of God.  In the presentation of Jesus as an agent of God’s sovereignty and the references to an alternative basileia, Matthew is challenging the existent system and offering a new understanding of power and safety.  

            Even those unconvinced by recent efforts to read Matthew in relation to Rome cannot deny the presence of vulnerable and socially oppressed characters.  In the instructional material, narrative, and parabolic discourse, Matthew presents persons removed from religious and political power.  Often, these vulnerable figures challenge the embedded standards of power and subvert the system of insulation and safety.  The texts on which I have chosen to focus my comments exhibit this corrective.  In each of these scattered texts, the imperial conventions of power and safety are challenged, thus offering a corrective to communities ancient and contemporary.  While the following texts do not all explicitly reference the Kingdom, they signal the symptoms of the Kingdom and encourage the approximation of such ideals today.  In Matthew, Kingdom is the horizon of Jesus’ ministry, much larger than any specific reference.  It is evident in healing (12:28) and noted as the substance of Jesus’ proclamation (4:23, 9:35, and 24:14).  Thus, in each of the following texts, which elevate vulnerable characters and challenge the insulated powerful, Matthew is indicating a contrast between God’s Kingdom – that is, the justice of God carried out in the actions of God’s people – and the imperial power system.            

 

2:13-18.  

            Commonly called the “Massacre of the Innocents,” this unit is an initial image of woundedness and forms a crucial backdrop for reflections on systems of power.  The section holds narrative significance for Matthew’s larger program, as it indicates the passage of time since Jesus’ birth (two years) and details the family’s escape to Egypt, complete with resonances of Hebrew tradition.  Some historically-minded scholars have bypassed Herod’s command to kill the infants as a mere narrative insert, doubting its historical veracity.[35]  However, when viewed through a postcolonial approach attentive to power and vulnerability, the massacre is loaded with thematic potency.

            Matthean Community:  In the battered bodies of “little ones” we find the starkest possible image of the vulnerability and frustration experienced by the impoverished majority of Galilee.  The Herodean monarchy served as agents of Rome, subjugating the powerless.  The slaughter of children is a devastating image of imperial control.  Jesus’ life, then, begins in a setting of immediate vulnerability, where the agents of Empire (basilea) are free to destroy the children of the populous.  The world Jesus enters is one of stark woundedness, weeping mothers, and intense vulnerability, where even the most innocent may be exposed to massacre. 

            Gated Community:  When applied to my context, with its ideological safety and current political climate, the government sanctioned “Massacre” of 2:16-18 charges us to be aware of those we have deemed vulnerable and expendable in our efforts to protect ourselves.  Careful readers will notice that Herod’s twin motives – vengeance and the perception of a threat – are disturbingly familiar in the context of the United States.  In the contemporary world, where an estimated 27,383 Iraqi civilians have died because of U.S military action and countless others suffer from economic subjugation, we who are powerful are forced to see something of ourselves in Herod’s motives of vengeance and security.[36]  The powerful members of my life-context find themselves associated with Herod and, thus, made aware of the vulnerability of those outside the political security.  It is precisely against this backdrop of intense vulnerability that Matthew offers a corrective.

 

8:1-4. 

            The first activity following Jesus’ lengthy sermon, the healing/cleansing of the leper inaugurates a series of accounts where Jesus heals marginal individuals.  While presenting a truncated version of the Markan account, Matthew inserts one important distinction: Jesus heals the leper in the presence of the crowd.  This public setting is important, as the account holds implications for the larger community.

            In this story, power is situated with Jesus, the well-spoken sage who has just finished his comprehensive sermon.  The leper – a figure connoting suffering and marginalization – stands among those oppressed by the system.  The category “leper” references a wide spectrum of skin disease and, rather than a specific physiological condition, connotes a larger experience of social exclusion.  As an attack on the skin, leprosy is said to “threaten the boundary and integrity, wholeness and completeness of the community and its members.”[37]  A common communal response appears to have been social isolation.  As has been well noted, under the Levitical Law prevalent in Matthew’s context, the leper was removed from full participation in the Temple (Leviticus 13-14).  Due to the archaic conflation of sin and physical impairment, the leper was also viewed as an object of divine punishment.  The leper’s presence at the feet of Jesus represents significant risk and is severely disruptive to the crowd that is gathered.          

            Several elements of the healing moment are important from a postcolonial perspective.  First, the leper, rendered powerless and marginal by the social-political system, initiates his own healing, thus serving as a model of risk and boldness.  While the healing is carried out by Jesus, power is shared between Jesus and the marginalized man.  Jesus echoes the man’s words in the healing formula (“Be made clean”), indirectly giving him authority over his own healing.  Additionally, Matthew is careful to specify Jesus’ deliberate effort to touch the man.  Elsewhere in the Gospel, as in the healing accounts immediately following the leper’s story, Jesus heals with a mere word.  In the act of touch, Jesus is communicating something beyond physical healing.  As Patte notes, “By touching the leper, Jesus, in a first way, overcomes the separation of the leper from the rest of society.”[38]  Touch is an act of social disruption.  Further, by instructing the man to go to the priest, Jesus is calling for the man’s reintegration into the community that surrounds them and the power system from which he had been marginalized.  Such an enactment of the Kingdom holds implications for both the ancient and the contemporary reader.

            Matthean Community:  Before romanticizing the leper’s healing the ideological elements of the story merit consideration.  The healing of the leper is no isolated incident, but a verdict on the existent system of Roman imperialism and detached Temple politics.[39]  It is the standards of the system that have rendered the man vulnerable and marginal.  True, leprosy connotes some degree of physical impairment.  However, most devastating is the man’s experience of marginal existence, as evidenced by Matthew’s care to include the presence of the crowds, Jesus’ defiant touch, and the man’s ultimate reintegration into community.  The man’s healing, then, may be seen as a method of resistance of a social system that has insulated the powerful and rendered the “leper” powerless.  In Jesus’ Kingdom, the delineation of power is no longer relevant.

            Gated Community:  Reflecting on the man’s story from the safety of my life-context, we become painfully aware of the contemporary systems – political, social, and liturgical – that isolate and limit the power of those deemed “sick” or “not feasible.”  In her formidable monograph, The Disabled God, Nancy Eiesland argues for an understanding of “disability” as a socially constructed category.  While persons may be physically impaired, “disability” is a social phenomenon, as society organizes itself around able-bodied experience, preferring to isolate, institutionalize, or rehabilitate persons with disabilities.[40]  Society is structured on the terms of the powerful and able-bodied.  The construction of disability is one of many case-studies illustrating the consequences of insulation in my life-context.  The story of the leper forces us to an awareness of those who have been made vulnerable, relegated to the margins, and labeled “sick” or “disabled” as we have insulated ourselves from disruption and preserved our own power.  The Kingdom of God, as enacted by Jesus, replaces isolation with encounter, misunderstanding with touch.  Like the imperial community that surrounded the leper, we have participated in the sickness and dis-abling of many who are marginalized.  By embracing an ethic of vulnerability we may also participate in their healing and restoration to security.    

 

10:34-39. 

            In addition to the narrative units referencing safety and vulnerability, a postcolonial reading uncovers instructions that disrupt the ideology of security.  In the midst of his lengthy charge to the disciples, Jesus outlines the implications of loyalty and discipleship.  Discipleship involves a disruption of conventional household values and forces entry into conflict.  Followers exchange family values for a cross.  The crux of Jesus’ instruction, and the primary point of interest in dismantling the ideology of security, is found in v. 39: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  In dramatic discourse, Jesus challenges embedded understandings of security.

            Matthean Community:  In the earthly basilea that surrounds and subsumes the ancient reader, security is found in centralized power and the protection of the family.  The family was more than a domestic ideal.  Rather, the family system was a locus of power and security for some.  The family unit was, furthermore, a convention on which Rome relied to preserve social stability.[41]  Jesus, meanwhile, confronts those who seek to ensure their own security and disrupts an imperial convention.  Discipleship is risk, a cross, and dissension against centralized political power.  Jesus shifts the locus of security from earthly conventions to the Kingdom.  Soteriological security for the follower of Jesus comes through an ethic of vulnerability, which must also be embraced by the powerful.

            Gated Community:  Jesus’ relocation of security and challenge to conventions of social stability are particularly potent amidst contemporary attempts to ensure family safety and national security.  When viewed through the lens of Matthew’s countersystem, conventional norms of safety (family values, homeland security, etc.) are subverted and revealed as shortsighted values inconsistent with discipleship.  Social stability and the retention of power are concerns of the Empire, not the Kingdom.

 

15:21-28.  

            In this story of a bold maternal desperation, a Canaanite woman approaches Jesus on behalf of her daughter, who is tormented by a demon.  Refusing to cower from Messianic insult and persisting courageously on behalf of her daughter, the woman provides a stirring example of risk and the disruption of boundaries.

            In his important work on miracles, Gerd Theissen sites “boundary crossing” as a central element of the gospel healing narratives.[42]  In episodes of healing, lines of insider and outsider often collapse and individuals are transformed.  In most cases, Jesus is the one initiating the radical healing, thereby shattering socially constructed barriers.  In 15:21-28, however, it is the Canaanite woman who crosses the boundaries.  Jesus is “off-duty” and behind closed doors when the woman barges in, pleading on behalf of her daughter who is suffering.  A triple outsider, the woman is marginalized and rendered powerless on the basis of her gender, social status, and ethnic heritage.  Her status as a “Canaanite” merits particular attention, as this distinction is unique to Matthew. 

            The story is set in the region of Tyre and Sidon, which Matthew inserts to evoke the Hebrew traditions of those who threaten Israel.  It is a region that is viewed perilous and unclean.[43]  Furthermore, by labeling her a “Canaanite” – the conventional enemy of the Israelite – rather than the Markan “Syro-Phoenician,” Matthew magnifies her status as an outsider, thereby accentuating the differences between the woman and Jesus.[44]

            As Gail O’Day notes, the story defies conventional genres and interpretive assumptions, which presume Jesus is the protagonist of every story.[45]  From a postcolonial perspective concerned with marginalized figures, the focus here is on the Canaanite woman who initiates the entire exchange.  In an action distinct to Matthew, the woman “comes out” (exercomai) from her people.  The powerless woman, detached from her people and vulnerable before an apparently hardhearted Jesus, serves as the agent of healing and confrontation.  Jesus ignores her presence, saying nothing to her initial request.  The woman then transfers her urgency to the disciples, impinging on them in every way.  When Jesus finally addresses her, he responds with harsh denial and insult: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (15:26).  However, the woman is clever and unrelenting.  “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (15:27).  Twisting Jesus’ metaphor, she becomes the only Matthean character to convincingly outwit Jesus.  Insult turns to agreement and with a word he grants her request.  The daughter is healed instantly.  However, the story dares to suggest a meaning beyond that of the conventional healing narrative: the messiah is also transformed and, therein, the power is relocated.  In his encounter with the relentless mother, Jesus is forced to reevaluate his boundaries.  The vulnerable, desperate, boundary-crossing woman not only secures healing for her daughter, she also challenges the scope of Jesus’ ministry.

            Matthean Community:  In the Canaanite woman, the ancient audience encounters a model of faith in presence of “the other.”  The woman is a symbolic figure – powerless, marginal, and hated.  Yet, it is this expendable woman who achieves great power and ensures safety for herself and her daughter.  Jesus, the locus of power, is challenged.  In the Kingdom, wherein God acts to bring justice and redemption, those deemed expendable and powerless by the present order are in fact agents of transformation. 

Gated Community:  For those of us reading from positions of safety and power, the text calls for our association with Jesus.  Like Jesus, we are confronted with those we regard as expendable or marginal with out political decisions or economic priorities.  Of particular relevance are the voices of lamenting mothers, who echo the Canaanite woman in their cries for their children.  The Canaanite woman amplifies the cries of mothers whose children are made vulnerable by war, inadequate educational systems, or capitalistic greed.  In my context, our safety and insulation perpetuates the vulnerability of children and the laments of mothers.  Like Jesus, we must listen and be transformed, achieving vulnerability so that others might find safety and healing.

 

19:16-22. 

            In the last of our selected units, unrestrained power and safety are identified as obstacles to the Kingdom.

            “Someone” comes to Jesus and wonders aloud, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  The anonymous identity of the speaker extends throughout the exchange.  He is simply a man; and he appears an ideal candidate for participation in the Kingdom.  He is eager, initiating contact with Jesus.  His diligence is apparent, as he has kept all the commandments since his youth.  However, when asked to forfeit possessions and power, the man departs grieving.  In verse 22, the reader discovers the reason: “he had many possessions.”

            Matthean Community:  As a man with “many possessions,” the so-called “Rich Young Man” is one of the societal elite, holding privileged status.  From a postcolonial perspective, it is important to note that in occupied Galilee wealth ensured social and political power.[46]  The eager young man enjoys the safety and power ensured by economic status in imperial culture.  However, even he knows that he lacks something.  As the story develops, Jesus reveals that the man lacks vision beyond the values of his normative culture.  In Jesus’ corrective, he is called to become poor – indeed, powerless – in order that the poor might gain provision.  Unable to see beyond the ideals of his environment, the man rejects the vulnerability of the Kingdom in favor of safety, familiarity, and power.

            Gated Community:  In the story of the “Rich Young Man,” contemporary readers in my life-context encounter a self-portrait – power, security, wealth, and status.  A figure of privilege, he seeks entry into the Kingdom, but is unprepared for the powerlessness that is required.  The norms and values of Empire are discarded in the Kingdom of Heaven.  “Give to the poor,” Jesus instructs.  Carter argues that Jesus’ command is a call to  “repentance” – a turning away from societal norms to embrace a new vision.[47]  In his inability to repent, the man is joined by members of my life context, as we preserve ourselves in our gated communities.  Like the man, we walk away with safety and power in tow.  Yet the message remains: for the powerful, participation in the Kingdom carries a concrete cost, requiring economic, social, and political vulnerability.    

 

 

V. Dialogue with Alejandro Duarte (GBC)

            In addition to the focus given to ancient text and contemporary community, a postcolonial approach also critically engages a third level: the dynamics of power and ideology that shape interpretation.  For help in exposing my own biases and privileged reading, I turn to Alejandro Duarte, a challenging and insightful interlocutor.  Located in a sharply different setting, Duarte’s reading is shaped by two separate life contexts: his experience of the Argentinian military dictatorship (1976-1983) and his experience of multicultural and multireligious immersion while living in both Israel and Spain.  In his dual-context, confrontation, violence, and power function as important considerations.  Emphasizing the responsibility implicit in the exercise of reading, Duarte takes Matthew as a test case for the development of liberating discourse.

            Despite marked contextual differences, Duarte and I approach the text with similar concerns.  In more explicit terms, Duarte conveys my attempt to understand the Gospel of Matthew in the context of first-century imperial realities.  For Duarte and I, attention to the imperial structures is motivated by our respective understandings of oppression and concern for the vulnerable or, in his terminology, “the defenseless.”  However, our contextual similarities end with our shared ideological concerns.  We find ourselves on opposing sides of the spectrum of power.  Duarte is a victim of oppression.  I am merely an observer and, at times, a complicit witness holding the coats of those that commit violence against the innocents through means of political and economic structures.  Duarte writes from the experience of violence.  I write from a posture of safety.  As a victim of oppression, Duarte’s analysis of power is more sharply focused, giving specific attention to the perpetuation of violence.  While in Argentina, Duarte witnessed the deaths of eleven friends at the hands of a military dictatorship.  His justified anger, while measured, is boldly displayed throughout the body of his commentary as he deftly traces the theme of “violence against the little ones” throughout Matthew.      

            Contextual concerns for violence and imperial power lead Duarte to situate his analysis in Matthew’s life context.  His reading attempts reconstruction, employing methodological tools distinct from my postcolonial approach.  While motivated by reader-oriented, contemporary concerns, Duarte’s interpretive project seeks the world behind the text, that is, the world of Matthew’s community.  It is a world with which those in his context readily identity.  Well-balanced in his method, he employs a narrative approach as his primary methodology.  Matthew is read as narrative, as Duarte remains aware of the role of symbol and notes narrative features such as the chiastic relationship between chapters 1-2 and chapters 26-28.  As a narrative project, Duarte’s work identifies broad themes that extend through the Gospel.  He also uses intertextual arguments to demonstrate Matthew’s relationship to Judaism and the vitality of Jewish themes (salvation history, “Jerusalem,” and conceptions of the “king”).  By giving greater attention to the literary aspects of the Gospel of Matthew, Duarte subsequently focuses on textual features omitted from my work or, in some cases, interpreted divergently.

            Duarte’s reading maximizes the minimal space with a focused reading of “the little ones,” following the motif from the initial violence of Herod’s decree to the ultimate solidarity of Jesus’ death.  Matthew 2 serves as his primary text.  In my reading, 2:16-18 serves to set a backdrop of vulnerability.  Duarte is more direct.  The massacre of the little ones is, for Duarte, the paradigmatic expression of violence, carried out amidst divine impotence.  The remainder of the Gospel is a response to this violence, as the readers measures Jesus’ ability to answer the injustice posed by structural and physical violence.  While bypassed in my analysis, Herod is an important character – a figure representing corruption and capitulation to imperial rule.  “Jerusalem,” appearing only marginally in my reading, is acknowledged for its symbolic importance by Duarte.  Duarte sees the city as the seat of corrupt imperial power.  Finally, for Duarte the cross and the suffering of Jesus hold climactic importance, as Jesus demonstrates his ultimate solidarity with the “little ones.”  While I acknowledge Matthew’s overarching emphasis on “the powerful vs. the powerless,”^[48] my reading searches for pericopes of subversion while Duarte deals with broad themes.  His analysis informs mine with literary-critical attention to important figures (Herod) and locations (Jerusalem), while reminding me of the importance of the cross.  While I resist elevating the cross so as not to idealize suffering, Duarte’s reading freely emphasizes its subversion of the power-centered ideology.                                  

            Just as Duarte emphasizes elements of the text that I overlook, his thematic reading omits several features key to my analysis.  Most notably, Duarte’s reading makes limited reference to the Kingdom, making one passing reference to the Kingdom and the community’s service to the weakest.  As one seeking to find a Matthean challenge to systems of power and control, it is puzzling that Duarte overlooks the symbolic value of the Kingdom as the “system” of heaven, wholly other than the current order.  Additionally, Duarte and I utilize our minimal space to different ends.  Duarte’s reading is a more concise thematic reading that, consequentially, neglects many of the specific texts mentioned in my survey.  In a more lengthy commentary, several of my chosen units would serve Duarte’s thesis, particularly the story of the rich young man, who is challenged to give his possessions to the “little ones” but turns away grieving.

            When read in conversation with Alejandro Duarte, my analysis is greatly complicated and enriched.  Despite divergent life-contexts, Duarte and I share concern with the imperial resonances of the text and the relationships of power that organize life.  In our examination of these systems, our differences and assumptions become apparent.  Duarte writes as a victim of violence, displaying keen depth of insight.  While my search for vulnerability is ethically pertinent to my life-context, my conclusions appear abstract next to Duarte’s urgent combat with violence.  Similarly, having experienced violence up close, Duarte seems less concerned with retaining a positive view of God and displays suspicion in his treatment of the Divine.  God is not spared from interrogation, as Duarte sees God failing to save the “little ones” and wonders whether or not “God is with us.”  Duarte’s reading reveals my theological biases, which hold God as good and virtuous – always on the side of the vulnerable.  Exposing my failure to interrogate the divine character, Duarte reveals to me my own constructed boundaries and insulated theological “safety.”  My reading would be enriched by a more thorough examination of questions of theodicy posed by the Gospel of Matthew.  As a reading that seeks to subvert existent systems of power, positing a vision in which the vulnerable are made secure, my reading fails to authentically engage the pressing question for those who are vulnerable and marginalized: “Is God with us?”        

 

 

VI. Conclusions and Liturgical Reflection

            When read with attention to the priorities of the postcolonial approach, the Gospel of Matthew functions as a text of resistance, interrogating existent systems of power in light of the Kingdom.  The Kingdom, referenced in the ministry and proclamation of Jesus, appears as the intervention of God for purposes of justice and redemption.  Ancient reader, contemporary community, and privileged graduate student are challenged to participate in the challenge of Gods Kingdom.  In contrast to conventional safety and existent power dynamics, Matthew provokes readers in my life-context to a stance of vulnerability, thereby enabling security for the powerless and approximating appropriate safety for all.  Through the lens of the Gospel of Matthew, the people of God gain access to a dramatic corrective.           

            However, in order to enact the renewed vision, it is necessary to reflect on its liturgical implications.  As “Scripture,” the Gospel of Matthew retains a religious significance that must not be subsumed under the category of ideology.  Renewed vision, therefore, requires liturgical reflection.  The symbol system and measured repetition of ritual provides a valuable resource for the renewal of vision.  Ritual replaces the mythical with the parabolic, steadily challenging our boundaries and renewing our settled ideology. It is through ritual that God’s people rehearse and approximate the Kingdom.  In closing, I offer suggestions for the ritual enactment of the Matthean corrective.  Grounded in Matthean themes, these liturgical suggestions form pointed responses to the political, economic, cultural, and liturgical safety constructed in my life-context.

            At the political level, the Gospel of Matthew challenges the U.S. preoccupation with self-preservation.  Reminding us of the vulnerable victims of war, the Matthean corrective calls for foreign policy that goes far beyond the question, “How will we be safe?”  In the “Massacre of the Innocents,” the U.S. reader finds a dramatic literary portrait of the suffering that takes place when the powerful disregard the vulnerable.  Amidst a military campaign replete with “collateral damage,” the U.S. reader must listen for the cries of mothers in the Middle East, Sudan, and throughout the vulnerable world.  Ritual reflection, then, must extend the vision of God’s people beyond dualistic understandings of “us” and “them.”  One possibility is to mark national holidays – often an awkward occasion for liturgical reflection – with reflection on the corporate experience of humanity.  Rather than patriotic anthems and prayers for “our troops,” God’s people can engage in a prayer service for all those made vulnerable by war.  The ritual may provide an occasion for the reading of names of victims – American, Iraqi, and beyond.  Through the intimacy of prayer, members of my life-context may encounter the suffering of the other and be provoked to work for their security.  

            At an economic level, Matthew elevates a corrective of economic repentance.  In the story of the “Rich Young Man” the text indicates that participation in the Kingdom requires a concrete cost from those who are powerful and privileged.  Liturgical reflection, therefore, must reject the obsession with economic growth, realizing that to idolize the economic security of one nation or social context is to jeopardize the survival of others.  The ritual life of the Church provides opportunity for economic justice.  As an act of repentance, I propose the establishment of partnerships with churches who lack the economic funds that my context has hoarded.  Large, safe, upper-middle class, white churches can join together with smaller, economically challenged churches in a ritual of reparation.  In such relationships, exchange is always mutual.  Churches in my context offer economic resources not out of paternalism or arrogance, but rather from a sense of indebtedness.  Like the rich young man, Churches are called to economic repentance as part of the Matthean corrective.

            Our cultural reflection is similarly challenged by the lens of Matthew.  My context of similarity and cultural myopia meets a gospel in which the expendable and marginal (Canaanite Woman) serve as agents of power, calling for transformation.  As a means of approximating such cultural transformation, I suggest various rituals of encounter, shaped around the Matthean theme of welcoming the stranger (Matthew 25:35).  Churches must seek to develop rituals that collapse boundaries and, in turn, challenge the norms of ideological safety.

Encounter may take place through the sharing of a ritual meal or the experience of table fellowship with individuals and communities from a different social location.  In the sharing of food, we participate in longstanding significance of commonality and the intimate experience of eating.  In my current context, for instance, I will seek shared meals with churches outside our cultural context, providing a forum for open dialogue and listening.  The ritual of encounter may also extend across liturgical lines, involving experiences of corporate worship.  Through such experiences of encounter, we meet individuals, like the Canaanite Woman, who serve as agents of transformation and challenge us to cultural renewal. 

            Finally, at a liturgical level, Matthew confronts the faithful with their exclusion of “the other,” offering images that provoke us to encounter and touch.  In the story of the leper, healed by Jesus, we encounter one rendered marginal by society’s efforts to preserve safety.  Through the lens of Matthew, my life context is made aware of those whom we have marginalized.  One area demanding reflection is the relationship of the Church to persons with disabilities.  In our preservation of tradition, convention, and indeed, liturgical safety, we have often failed to make space in our liturgical praxis for persons with disabilities, rendering them as marginal participants or charitable “causes.”  Ritual compels us to question why pulpits and platforms are so often inaccessible to persons who use wheelchairs.  What’s communicated by our architecture?  A ritual of encounter may involve a lengthy dialogue/training session on theological/liturgical openness, culminating in the construction of an intentionally conspicuous wheelchair ramp at the front of the sanctuary and a service of dedication reflecting on its practical and symbolic significance.  The ramp is only a symbol of a larger program of liturgical and theological openness.  In a dramatic restructuring of liturgical norms, members of my life-context may indicate our openness to community and willingness to set aside ritual convention for the sake of God’s Kingdom.

 

            Provoked by the dominant ideology of security that pervades my life-context, my contextual reading has searched the Gospel of Matthew for renewed vision.  Through this project’s attention to contextual analysis, theological reflection, textual engagement, conversation with Alejandro Duarte, and ritual reflection, the Gospel of Matthew has issued challenge to the U.S. ideology of safety and its political, economic, cultural, and liturgical consequences.  Resisting the existent order and its dynamics of power and privilege, Matthew offers a corrective, calling the gated community to exchange the preoccupation with safety for a practice of vulnerability, in order that the powerless may find security.  In Matthew’s corrective, the powerful are made vulnerable in order that the powerless may be rendered secure.  Or, said in Matthean prose,  “The vulnerable shall be safe; and the safe shall be vulnerable.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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