Matthew 9:14-17

Further Criticisms

Matthew 9:14-17     Fasting – Imposed or Ritualised

(Mk 2:18-22; Lk :33-39)
 
14 John’s disciples approached him and said,
“Why is that, while we and the Pharisees fast,
your disciples do not fast?”

After indicating the criticism of Jesus by scribes and Pharisees, Matthew introduced the censure (or puzzlement) of a third group, disciples of John.  The Pharisees had criticised Jesus’ openness to feasting with tax collectors.  The question of John’s disciples centred on the issue of fasting.  Previously, Jesus had criticised the fasting of  people who used it as a way to obtain honour within community [6:16-18].  At the same time, he had assumed that members of the Christian community fasted, and had given some practical indications on how they might approach the practice.

15 Jesus said to them,
“Do wedding guests go into mourning
so long as the bridegroom is with them?  
But there will come a time
when the bridegroom is taken away from them;
then they will fast.”

Matthew chose not to engage with the specific issue of fasting, but to use it to raise another more important point.  Initially, he indicated a response that was clearly appropriate when first voiced by Jesus, the time before his crucifixion, while Jesus was still physically present with his disciples.

Matthews’s principal concern, however, was the period between Jesus’ crucifixion and the eventual coming of the Kingdom in its fullness, the days of the bridegroom’s absence, the era in which his community was living.  This interim time would be one when disciples would, indeed, “hunger and thirst for justice” – a time of metaphorical fasting, the intensity of which they would feel in proportion to the intensity of the suffering inflicted on them by the kingdoms of the world, and to the depth of their longing for the Kingdom of heaven.

Now, two thousand years since the bridegroom has been taken away, and with many of the values of the kingdoms of the world still in the ascendency –  ruthless national interest, unbridled corporate profit, corrupt leadership – over eight hundred million people around the world go to bed hungry each night.  Their fasting is imposed and unwanted, a stark reminder of the endemic sin of the world.

16 No one puts a patch of unshrunken material on an old cloak;
the added piece pulls away from the cloak,
and makes a worse tear.  
17 Nor do people put new wine in old wineskins.  
If they do, the wineskins burst,
the wine pours out and the skins are ruined.  
Rather they put new wine into new wineskins,
and both are preserved.

For Matthew, Jesus’ response showed a concern for both the old and the new.  He was anxious that the old cloak not be torn more than previously, and that the old wineskins not be ruined.  At the same time, he recognised that there was indeed new unshrunken material and new wine, both of which had to be accommodated.  After all, Matthew saw Jesus’ new approach to prophetic tradition and to the Torah as fulfilling them both.

Fasting and other traditional acts of piety have value to the extent that they challenge, focus and energise a life of compassion: what God wants is mercy, not sacrifice.

Perhaps the “earthquakes” within Matthew’s community were not caused simply by the interaction of Jewish and Gentile ways.  They arose from the constant problems associated with all growth, the tension between new and old.  Many of the problems besetting the Church today have to do with such issues.  There is no simplistic answer.  Instead, as always, the solution lies in a clear prioritising of mercy and careful discernment.

It would seem that Matthew’s own sympathies lay instinctively with the old, the tried and true ways of Israel, yet his painful exclusion from the local synagogues was due to his acceptance of the new spirit brought by Jesus.  Sympathetic discipleship will always be difficult and contested.

Next >> Matthew 9:18-35