Matthew 8:1-18

Chapter 8

Proclaiming the Kingdom

 

Earlier in his narrative, Matthew had indicated clearly the essence of Jesus’ message: Change your hearts, the kingdom of the heavens has come near [4:17]

He had then described the shape of Jesus’ public ministry: (Jesus)... went throughout Galilee,

  • teaching in their synagogues
  •  and preaching the good news of the kingdom
  • healing every kind of disease and ailment among the people [4:23]

Matthew had concluded his first collection of the teachings of Jesus: the good news of the Kingdom.  

He would move, next, to show Jesus at work healing every kind of disease and ailment among the people.  The two chapters that follow would contain nine stories of healings, grouped into three clusters of three, each cluster separated by a brief and pertinent teaching.  With a couple of exceptions, his sources would be the Gospel of Mark and the collection of teachings which Luke, too, had used.  While drawing on both these sources, he would use his own creativity and shape them to fit his purpose.

 

Including Those on the Edges

The first cluster of three healings would share a note of inclusion.

Matthew 8:1-4     Jesus Heals a Leper

[Mark 1:40-45]
 
1 He came down the mountain and great crowds followed him.  
2 Just then, a leper approached him, knelt before him and said,
“Lord, if you wish, you can cleanse me.”  
3 He reached out his hand and touched him,
and said, “I do wish, be cleansed.”  
Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.  
4 Jesus then said to him, “Tell no one now,
but go back and show yourself to the priest,
and give the offering that Moses prescribed as witness to them.”

Matthew ignored much of the colourful detail that Mark had supplied.

What made leprosy particularly poignant was its social effect.   Anyone diagnosed with the condition was not only declared unclean (or impure), but was ostracised from the community and, therefore, from family and from livelihood.  The victim was forced into poverty and social isolation.  The practice was an extreme case of consigning people to the margins of society.  Above all else, Jesus’ act of healing restored the leper to community, not just to health.

According to the Torah, a healed leper needed to be declared cleansed by a priest, and a sacrifice offered to conclude the cleansing or to celebrate the restoration of access to God and the sacred.  Matthew showed Jesus accepting unemotionally the requirements of the Torah.

Matthew’s point in recounting the story was its pertinence to his community of disciples.  Indeed, the leper addressed Jesus as Lord, the title used of the risen Jesus by the community of disciples, but not used during Jesus’ lifetime.  Matthew’s Christians had been ostracised from the synagogue (and sometimes from family).  They had been pushed to the margins – but the risen Lord was present, active and life-giving among them.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ sending the healed leper to the priests was an act of defiance.  Matthew was more respectful to the Jewish legal system. By the time that he wrote his Gospel, it was safe to mention Jesus’ adherence to the sacrificial requirements of the Torah.  With the destruction of the temple twenty years previously, sacrifice was no longer an issue in Jewish life and worship at the time of Matthew's writing.

Matthew 8:5-13     Jesus Heals a Centurion’s Servant 

(Lk 7:1—10) 
 
As he entered Capharnaum, a centurion approached and requested him,
6 saying, “Lord, my servant boy is lying ill at home
paralysed and suffering terribly.”  
7 Jesus said, “I shall come and heal him.”  
8 But the centurion answered,
“Lord, I am not worthy that you come in under my roof.  
Just say the word and then my servant boy will be healed.  
9 For I am a man under authority; and I have soldiers under me.  
I tell one, ‘Go!’ and he goes; and another, ‘Come!’ and he comes;
and to my slave I say, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.”  
10 Jesus heard this and was amazed.  
He said to those following him,
“I tell you truly, I have not found faith like this from anyone in Israel.  
11 I tell you that many will come from East and West
and they will be invited to recline
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the heavenly kingdom,
12 while the children of the kingdom will be expelled
into the outer darkness.  
There they will weep and gnash their teeth.”  
13 Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go now,
and as you have believed, so may it happen.”  
And the servant boy was healed at that hour.

The incident was not drawn from Mark’s Gospel but from the source Matthew shared with Luke.

To the Jewish mind, Gentiles, too, were on the margins.  They were unclean.  An observant Jew would not eat with a Gentile, nor even come under a Gentile’s roof.  A centurion operating in the area of Capernaum would have belonged to the Herodian or Roman armies - certainly a Gentile.  Showing due sensitivity, the centurion did not ask Jesus to come under his roof.

Gentiles were numbered among the members of Matthew’s community of disciples.  They acknowledged the risen Jesus as Lord.  The reason for their acceptance was simply their faith – a faith that Matthew contrasted with the lack of faith of some of the observant Jews of the synagogue.  The faith referred to by Jesus was not adherence to orthodox teaching, but trust in the possibility of God’s Kingdom present and active in Jesus.  Significant, furthermore, for Matthew was the fact that the centurion’s trust in Jesus was accompanied by a genuine love and care for his paralysed servant boy.   Those with faith opened themselves to change, in line with the goodness and mercy of God.

The depth of the early community’s bitterness at their exclusion from some local synagogues was evidenced clearly in the strength of the graphic imagery used to describe the fate of those who, unlike the centurion, would not believe: outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth.  The comment is not found in Luke’s Gospel.  Matthew’s one-dimensional sense of good or evil (either/or) allowed no middle ground (both/and).  The outer darkness and bitter frustration of the children of the kingdom were graphic images used to refer to the experience of life lived without faith by those to whom faith had first been offered.

Matthew 8:14-18     Jesus Heals Many at Peter’s House 

(Mk 1:29—34)
 
14 Jesus entered Peter’s house
and saw his mother-in-law lying ill with fever.
15 He took her hand, and the fever left her.  
She stood up and began to serve him.

Within the culture, particularly in the public arena, women counted for little.  They were excluded from leadership and active participation in official religious and social life.

Matthew showed Jesus taking the initiative, touching and healing the woman.  Her response was to serve him.  Later in the Gospel, Jesus would indicate service as the hallmark of every disciple.

At times, the Christian community struggled to recognise that women were as much disciples as were men, despite Jesus’ clear acceptance of women.

16 When early evening came, people brought to him
quite a number of people possessed by demons.  
With a word he cast the spirits out.  
All who were ill were healed.
17 In this way, the prophetic word of Isaiah took shape literally,
“He took our weaknesses and bore our diseases.”

Matthew returned to his theme of fulfilment of prophecy.  For Matthew, Jesus’ stance for inclusion expressed the essence of the insights of the prophets; Jesus shared the sensitivity of God towards people in need, the poor in spirit and those who mourned.  The sick, unable to work, were rendered economically marginalised.  Matthew loved to highlight the way that Jesus’ actions fitted closely the words and images used by the Hebrew prophets – in the case he cited, by Isaiah [53:4].

18 Jesus saw the crowd surrounding him,
and gave the order to leave for the other side.

It would become obvious as the narrative continued that the other side was Gentile territory.  Everything Gentile was other to the Jewish mind.  Throughout the Diaspora, as a means to protect their identity as God’s Chosen People, Jews jealously maintained their difference and separation from Gentiles.  Most looked down on the unclean Gentiles.

Matthew’s community had taken steps to engage with the other side: they had allowed Gentiles to become disciples and welcomed them into their midst.  Their gesture, however, was not without heartburn.  Indeed, their openness to Gentiles was one of the deep sources of division between them and observant Jews in some of the synagogues.  Jesus had set the precedent.

Next >> Matthew 8:19-22