#43: Wednesday, 8 April, 2020.
Wednesday, 8 April The King Establishes His Kingdom. Matt. 27:1–10
This short reading in the context of Jesus Establishing his Kingdom serves as a severe cautionary tale. Each of the first eight verses that precede the reference to Jeremiah contain at least one pointer to a common theme (I'm using my NIV Bible here):
1. Death
2. Bound
3. Betrayed, condemned, remorse
4. Betrayed innocent blood, your responsibility
5. Threw the money, hanged himself
6. Blood money
7. Burial place
8. Field of Blood
What is the common theme? I suggest that this short passage, inserted between Jesus’ trial in the religious court and the arraigning of Jesus before the civil authorities, portrays the terrifying concept: Denying the Kingdom of God.
A cautionary tale is a term given to a story told in medieval folklore to warn people away from serious or mystical dangers. It generally involves a grim prohibition of some kind, a failure to observe the prohibition, and a grisly description of what happens to a person or group who fail to heed the warning.
In our short passage, the prohibition is implicit in the whole of Matthew’s Gospel: Do not deny the holy mission and person of Jesus Christ, Messiah, Son of God. To assault his name, his mission, his person is the most dangerous thing that any creature could possibly do.
The failures to observe this caution are multiple: the priests and elders of Israel, and in particular, the traitorous former disciple, Judas. The words from the eight verses listed above summarise the grisly description of the results of not heeding the caution.
Surely this is one of the saddest pages in Matthew’s Gospel. A man who had been with Jesus, seen him do miracles, heard his teaching, known his love – chose to betray the Lord of the Universe for a small purseful of silver!
What evil power drove him to such a place? Well, we know the answer to that, but each of us must still bear responsibility for our own sin. Part of being human is that we possess agency, that is, we have the capacity to do or not do certain actions. We may say that someone was ‘driven’ to do something, and there may be some truth to it, but being driven to something is not the same as doing the act itself. You can be driven anywhere, but you don’t have to open the door and get out of the car!
I can’t begin to imagine the turmoil in Judas’s mind – read vv 3&4 again. Matthew has shown us in quick succession, two people in deep remorse: Peter and Judas. Peter wept bitterly in tears of repentance; Judas wept bitterly and killed himself.
Peter would be graciously restored by Jesus a few days later. Would Judas have been forgiven, too, had he waited and confessed his sin? Undoubtedly. But suicide as a solution to sin is no solution at all. It is likely that Peter contemplated suicide too. Who wouldn’t, in similar circumstances? But Peter rejected the idea as a suitable solution. One person’s remorse led to life, the other to death.
We live in a culture of death, as Pope John-Paul II famously wrote in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life). By this, he meant to describe those aspects of our contemporary culture which define us at the centre of our moral condition.
According to the World Health Organisation, there are between 40-50 million babies aborted each year in the world. That’s almost 100 every minute of every day.
Statistics on the number of people euthanased are harder to come by, but there is no doubt that the numbers are increasing rapidly as more and more jurisdictions approve the practice. One writer wrote just a day or so before I am writing this reflection, in regard to Canada’s weakening protections and restrictions on euthanasia: ‘You can be diagnosed, assessed and killed all in one day.’
If we were to add in the numbers killed in war, crime, State-created poverty, terrorism and transport accidents, the numbers of annual dead would be greatly increased.
In Australia, we are seeing a significant increase in the care for animal life, even as we decrease our nurture of human life. In 1999, 39% of dogs in animal shelters were euthanased; in 2018, it was fewer than 14%. The RSPCA reports a surge in the numbers of people seeking ‘furbabies’, while rejecting the idea of having human babies.
In Jesus’ Kingdom, there is a culture of life. Outside his Kingdom, and especially where there is active opposition to his Kingdom, there is an inevitable, constantly-deepening culture of death. This is the stark message to be heard in this short reading.
Matthew is relating the story of Jesus Establishing his Kingdom of Life – but he is using this short narrative to contrast the alternative – the culture of death outside that Kingdom.
Every Christian, every Christian church, every Christian organisation, needs to seriously and spiritually reflect on the extent to which their own life and choices and political persuasions are leading them – towards the Kingdom of Life, or towards the bloody coins scattered on the Temple floor. No doubt the frugally-minded priests who gathered up the coins talked piously about how they were serving the greater good by putting the coins to a good use.
In the ancient world, 30 pieces of silver was the standard price of a slave. But you could use the money either to buy a slave or to set one free. Judas found that his money enslaved himself. We will no doubt find, as our culture descends further into the culture of death, that we, too, will be enslaved by those with powerful interests to protect, with selfish reasons to promote death as a means of “improving” life.
Choosing death is always a form of human madness – always morally skewed, but sometimes rendered subtly attractive by the devious one who hates the Loving Rule of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, I praise you for the abundance of life that you embody. You yourself said that you came to give us life; freer, more abundant life than we could possibly find anywhere else. I believe that with all my heart. Help me always to choose life, not to fear death, but not to welcome it either, entering with soft slippers on its little cloven feet. Amen.