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Book: Matthew

The Potential of Creative Misinterpretation

Perhaps the tension between honest reading and creative liberatory “misinterpretation” should not be solved at all but rather retained as an unsettling force in our work.

Redeeming Refusal

The third slave, as truth-teller and whistle-blower, validates what Jesus’ listeners know about their reality. They know that the deck is stacked against them, if they choose to buck the system.

Christian Nationalism’s Superstition Problem

Christian nationalism is a form of superstition. It is superstitious because, instead of appealing to the God of all nations, it appeals to a culturally fabricated God for cultural privilege, power, and benefits.

The Cost of Dissent

Jesus’ parable identifies chosenness in those who resist, dissent, protest and refuse the invitations of the empire.

The Laborers are Many, the Jobs are Few

If we are willing to listen to those standing around without work, however, a new possibility emerges. Why are they standing around without work? “Because no one has hired us,” they reply (Matthew 20:7). They aren’t lazy, they’re desperate enough to stand around all day waiting for work. The laborers are many; the jobs are few.

Breaking Barriers from Our Background

We all learn ways of negotiating life from our histories, families, religions, and our broader society. These passages suggest that some of what we learn can be deadly to our siblings and our neighbors, but we can explore different visions of God and abandon the toxic ways of thinking that are so often deeply embedded in our world.

The Scandalous and Subversive Kingdom

Given the precarious nature of the planet we call home, the need for a scandalous and subversive kingdom animated by the Spirit of God, which advocates justice, mercy, compassion, and healing to the creation, couldn’t be more urgent.

From Hosannas to the Cross

The pairing of Jesus’s celebrated entry into Jerusalem with the story of his Passion by many churches this Sunday presents a kind of emotional whiplash. It offers a warning to how we treat the prophets and revolutionaries of our own time.

The Politics of Scripturing—Matthew 5:21-37

Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount unsettles many biblicist ways of understanding Scripture. It may even be better to move from speaking of ‘the Scriptures’ as a noun, to speaking of ‘Scripturing’ as a verb.

Follow the Leaders

This week’s lectionary represents the challenges of leadership, and the passing of more than one torch. The arc that emerges is one of hope and promise, but also one of struggle and discernment concerning leadership.

<strong>Baptism and the Gods of Capital</strong>

Everyday life gives us ample opportunity to fulfill all righteousness, at least as far as the gods of global capital are concerned. Building credit, contributing to a 401K plan, purchasing ordinary goods produced through an extraordinary supply chain, we participate in the enchanted world of mammon, in which money defies space and time to make and remake a world that bears its image. But in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus inhabits a different kind of story about God and the world, about empire and capital.

<strong>Mary Begot Jesus</strong>

Jesus is not Joseph’s biological son. Matthew starts his genealogy in the usual patriarchal way, but Jesus does not continue this line. Does this not mean freedom from the patriarchal lineage?