Stephen McCutchan
Given the ideologically divided, tension-filled world in which we live, imagine hearing someone tell you how God can work through these divisions in a way that offers hope and healing for the world. The author suggests that this is exactly what Matthew sought to do in his gospel.
The Hebrew Scriptures tell the story of how God chose to accomplish a divine work of reconciliation through a chosen people who demonstrated the same strengths and weaknesses as most people in the world today. Matthew interpreted the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the midrash, or commentary on these Hebrew Scriptures, that revealed how God works with both the shadow side and the bright side of our human nature to accomplish the divine purpose.
The contemporary church, in a similar manner to Matthew’s congregation, must determine the church’s response to a world divided between the powerful and the powerless (Chapter 1), the Christian faith and other faiths (Chapter 2), male and female (Chapter 3), and the wealthy and the poor (Chapter 4). Following an interpretation of how Matthew found hope in the face of such divisions, the fifth chapter recognizes that most contemporary churches feel helpless in the face of such overwhelming realities. The author then describes Matthew’s understanding of how God works through resistance and even betrayal to transform the world. The final chapter explores God’s intention to bring about a common witness of Jews and Christians in the reconciliation of the entire world. This book will provide a vision of hope that will enable Christians to respond with strength to the challenges of the world and have confidence that their efforts are not in vain.
A study guide is included in the introduction. You may reach the author on his web page at www.smccutchan.com.
The author has spent thirty-eight years in the pastoral ministry interpreting the Gospel to lay people who experience the tension of division in their world. For the past twenty-three years, he has combined ministry with his middle-class congregation with monthly involvement in counseling the poor in his city. He helped found the Presbyterian Interracial Dialogue that works with six Presbyterian churches, three predominantly Black and three predominantly White, building community that breaks down the barriers of racism. His church has participated in regular activities with the Jewish community. Three times the church shared in an interfaith, interracial Habitat build that included Christians, Jews, and Muslims; Caucasians, Blacks, and Hispanics. He has been a featured speaker at Moravian, Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian convocations.
The author published Experiencing the Psalms with Smyth & Helwys. In 2000 the author received the Jim Angell award from the Presbyterian Writer’s Guild for the best first book published by a Presbyterian in that year. He has published ten articles in various religious journals. He is currently working on a novel that depicts the life of a pastor in Washington, D.C., where the author spent the first seven years of his ministry. Salem Presbytery, which consists of 150 churches, has made his theological reflections on the lectionary available to Salem’s clergy and churches. He is a regular contributing member to The Immediate Word, an online commentary on the lectionary. He has coauthored two plays exploring racism, one of which has been performed several times. He is currently involved in a project to explore how churches can minister to their pastors and prevent them from burning out as they minister to their congregations. His web page is at www.smccutchan.com .
There is probably no greater issue that confronts our world than the relationship between the powerful and the powerless. Whether we are talking about nations or individuals, the tension created by the disparity between those who have power and those who do not threatens to erupt in a violence that destroys.
Matthew also lived in a society that was fractured by the various power games that were played to achieve status and security. He wrote to a congregation of upper class urban merchants and landlords in an agrarian society who were used to the possession of and striving for power. Yet Matthew proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, the one who revealed God at work in the world, in a manner contrasted that sharply with the normal approach to power in this world and offered hope for a fractured society.
Claiming One’s Rights
Matthew’s congregation, and we, are urged not to be so quick in exercising judgment on the powerless. To do so may risk missing the creative word that God is revealing in the very experience that offends us.
Because Matthew’s people possessed power and used it in relation to those who were less powerful, it is significant that Matthew, unlike Luke, told of the birth of Jesus from Joseph’s point of view (1:18-25). As will be indicated in Chapter 3,in this patriarchal society, Mary’s betrothal to Joseph meant that she was bound like property to him. The betrothal could be dissolved only if Joseph gave Mary a writ of divorce and not vice-versa. When Mary was found to be with child, Joseph would have been well within his rights to have her stoned to death. The question is how are Christians, who have power, to respond to those who have apparently wronged and offended them?
Joseph saw “doing right” as a communal, rather than an individual issue. It was not, for him, just a case of claiming or defending his rights, but of considering the effect of such a claim on the very person who had offended him. However, Joseph paused to consider the effect of claiming his rights on the other person, Mary. “...Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” He had every reason to believe that she had wronged him, yet he was open to God’s revealing how the same event looked from the divine perspective. Too often we are so focused on defending our rights that we do not make space to hear what God would say to us. “...But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him...” That spiritual messenger called on Joseph not to claim his “rights,” that exercise of vested privilege and authority which no matter how sensitively handled still protects our position in the world, but rather to trust that the spirit of God was working through the very event that seemed so offensive to him.
Joseph was urged to risk identifying with a person who by “rights” was rejected. He was called upon to recognize that the very action which seemed to have violated his “rights” might well contain birth pangs of the Word of God. To have dismissed Mary as an immoral woman, no matter how sensitively handled, would have block ed the possibility of hearing God’s word as expressed through Mary and her child.
