Old and New 2009

Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.
Matthew 13:52

All the gospels can be read on two levels, as narratives of the ministry of Jesus and as reflections of the community to which the evangelist is writing.  Matthew has been called the most Jewish of the four gospels, and yet the mission mandate with which it concludes has the risen Jesus commanding his followers “Go make disciples of all Gentiles (28:19).”

This polarity between Jews and Gentiles reflects the historical situation of the Matthean community after the year 70, which left the centre of Jewish worship, the temple, in ruins, and saw the move from the holy  city to Syria of the centre of Jewish Christianity, the Jerusalem community. 

The increasingly negative stance of post-war Judaism towards Jewish Christianity (“the Nazarenes”) made missionary work among Gentiles an attractive, not to say necessary, option.  And yet the community’s attachment to its Jewish roots is reflected not only in its fidelity to the law but also in its respect for Pharisaic teaching.  While the conduct of the Pharisees is criticized, as inconsistent with their teaching, the community is nonetheless commanded “Practice and observe whatever they tell you (23:2).” 

The evangelist is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.  We have all heard Bishop Spong’s mantra, “Change or die,” and John Henry Newman had written long before Spong, “In this world to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

But change presupposes something which changes, some underlying entity which undergoes change; pure change is impossible.  In Matthew’s formulation, the new presupposes the old.  In the subsequent history of the church the theological radicalism of Paul was the inspiration of Luther’s Reformation, but it has been the Catholic Christianity of Matthew’s gospel, in which Peter is the rock on which the church is built (16:18). which has  stood the test of time. 

There is a lesson for us here: we must, to be sure, be open to change, but not to the point of abandoning what makes us who we are.  Tradition can be a straitjacket, and the demise of Jewish Christianity is a warning that failure to change with the times is indeed a death warrant, as Bishop Spong has pointed out. 

But the example of Matthew the evangelist shows us that holding together what is old and what is new is indeed a treasure which marks the disciple of the kingdom of heaven.

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October 25, 2009