Matthew 19:1-15

Holding Present and Future in Fruitful Tension

In the two chapters that follow, Matthew would adopt the order of Mark’s Gospel, presenting and applying more of Jesus’ teachings that were pertinent to life and relationships within his own Christian community. Above all, he wished to address the issue of how disciples live together in the present, certain of the eventual triumph of God’s Kingdom, but not yet experiencing it. He would examine the interplay between the “now” and the “not yet”, and indicate how the final outcome of life in the Kingdom intersected and affected life and choices in the present.

Matthew 19:1-2 Galilee Left Behind – Journeying towards Jerusalem

¹ Jesus finished what he was saying.

He left Galilee and went to the territory of Judea across the Jordan.

² Large crowds followed him, and he cured them there..

Jesus had finished his mission in Galilee. He turned southwards towards Jerusalem for the encounter with the death that awaited him, and the resurrection that he believed would follow it.

The following crowds may have been Galileans travelling with him. More likely they were the local people of Judea. He did not set out to teach them: his clear focus was on the disciples. He did, however, reach out to the crowds in compassion to cure their sick.

Eunuchs for the Sake of the Kingdom

Matthew 19:3-12 Divorce and the Single Life

(Mk 10:1—12)

³ Pharisees approached him, testing him.

They said, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?”

Matthew was not immediately interested in this encounter with Pharisees. They served simply to introduce the question of divorce and provide the opportunity for him to give Jesus’ teaching on the issue as it applied to life within the Christian community.

The legality of divorce was not questioned in Judaism. Discussions centred on the necessary grounds for it. The pertinent phrase was for any reason at all. Pharisees themselves were divided on the matter, some accepting the wife’s sexual infidelity as the sole justifying cause, others being much more liberal.

⁴ He answered, “Have you not read that the creator from the beginning

‘made them male and female’,

⁵ and said,

‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother.

He will adhere to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’'?

⁶ So they are not longer two, but one flesh.

What God has joined together, let no person separate.”

Jesus did not immediately address the issue of justifying reasons, and, quoting from the Book of Genesis, chose instead to insist that the creating God’s intention for marriage was that it be exclusive and permanent.

The world of Jesus and Matthew was a patriarchal world. On marrying, the wife left her family and moved to the husband’s home, becoming a member of the husband’s extended family. Both remained under the general control of the husband’s father until the father’s death. She was to remain faithful; the man was freer. Within the culture, only the husband could initiate divorce; the wife could not. Jesus insisted that the marriage bond was more significant than the broader patriarchal family unit: he shall leave his father and mother, at least emotionally.

Jesus’ comment, translated as let no person separate, literally says, “the human person may not separate”. Matthew wished to insist that Jesus denied the universally accepted right of the male within the culture to initiate divorce.

⁷ They said, “Moses commanded ‘to give a document of dismissal

and to divorce her.’”

⁸ He said, “It was because of your hardness of heart

that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.

But it was not like that at the beginning.

Again, Matthew presented Jesus as the fulfiller of the Law, calling people back to God’s original intention at the beginning. Moses’ concession had no place within the Christian community, where, in Matthew’s way of thinking, hardness of heart was a condition to be overcome with God’s help, not an inevitability to be coped with.

⁹ I tell you that whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery –

except in the case of unlawful sexual behaviour;

and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Jesus was not necessarily talking about separation. His immediate concern was remarriage after divorce.

Mark’s Gospel, on which Matthew was dependent, made no mention of except in the case of unlawful sexual behaviour. It was Matthew’s addition. Scholars debate its meaning. If Matthew meant “adultery”, then he showed Jesus entering into the ongoing debate among Pharisees, and agreeing with their stricter interpretation (but no longer upholding things as they were at the beginning). To discuss detailed interpretations of the Torah was uncharacteristic of Jesus’ general approach to teaching.

Mathew may have been referring to an accepted Gentile practice that was abhorrent to Jewish sensibilities, and forbidden by the Torah: marrying within forbidden degrees of relationship. That had been the reason for John the Baptist’s criticism of Herod. In a mixed Jewish/Gentile community, a Gentile who had previously married a partner within the degrees forbidden in Judaism would need to divorce that partner, and in so doing would not be guilty of adultery in marrying another.

The discussion that followed was drawn from Matthew’s own source. It was not drawn from Mark’s Gospel.

¹⁰ His disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

The comment would seem to have voiced the concerns of Jesus’ male disciples. Until now, they had taken for granted that males could divorce and remarry.

¹¹ He said to them, “Not all can sit comfortably with this message,

except those to whom it is given.

¹² There are those who do not marry.

Some are born that way from their mother’s womb,

and there are some who are made that way by human means,

and there are some who have themselves chosen not to marry

because of the heavenly kingdom.

Let those who can, sit comfortably with this.”

The comment would seem to reflect more the Gentile experience of Matthew’s community than the Palestinian world of Jesus and his hearers. Did Matthew intend to make Jesus’ comment relevant only to remarriage after divorce, or to include also the choice for celibacy? He made two qualifying statements:

he was referring to sexual abstinence because of the heavenly kingdom
and he saw acceptance of the condition as a gift, that not everyone could sit comfortably with.

It is uncertain whether he meant that the option for the unmarried (or no longer married) state served to free disciples for practical service of the Kingdom, or whether he regarded acceptance of Kingdom as the inspirational source of the motivation and empowerment to remain single.

Jesus did not maintain that the love of God and love of spouse are necessarily in conflict. Nor does one replace the other. However, a clear faith in the certainty of the “not yet” Kingdom can serve to relativise other beautiful human values. A clear sense of the “not yet” Kingdom can enable a disciple to sacrifice the love of spouse without compromising the possibility of living life to the full in the “now”.

In addition, it was not clear whether acceptance of Jesus’ teaching was a counsel of perfection – a gift only for some - or a condition of belonging to the community. Since all conversion involved, from the very beginning, a change embraced because of the heavenly kingdom, Jesus’ comment was, in all probability, directed to every disciple.

What for Mark had been a clear affirmation of the equality of women and men remained so for Matthew. Obviously, he had questioned male domination and freedom; but the challenge had been muted by his emphasis on Jesus’ concern about remarriage (and perhaps the giftedness of the unmarried state).

Challenging the Honour System

Matthew 19:13-15 Jesus and Little Children

(Mk 10:13—16; Lk 18:15—17)

¹³People brought children along to him

for him to put his hands on them and pray for them.

But the disciples reproved them.

¹⁴ Jesus said to them, “Let the children be and do not stop them coming to me.

The heavenly kingdom is precisely for ones like these.”

¹⁵ Then he put his hands on them and went on from there.

Just as the equal dignity of women challenged the culturally assumed domination of males within the Christian community, so, too, did Jesus’ attitude towards children (and towards disciples who became ones like these) . Though children were usually appreciated and loved within their families, they had no rights. Consideration was an unmerited extra. Jesus saw them as full members of the community and, equally with adults, as heirs to the Kingdom; and their culturally imposed absence of rights was a fitting example of the voluntary renunciation of rights and privileges expected of every adult disciple.

Matthew was insistent that the heavenly kingdom is precisely for those who regarded themselves as persons without rights to honour or precedence – as women and children were considered by the broader culture. In the Christian community, women and children stood on equal footing with adult males. Honour was irrelevant.

Next >> Matthew 19:16-30