Two New Causes of Conflict

(9:9-17; see Mark 2:13-22; Luke 5:27-39)

The call of Matthew is told in few words. At the summons of Jesus, he immediately left his profession, which was a very remunerative one (see Luke 19:2,8). He was a publican or tax officer, a collector of duty. One bought this position, a practice which gave opportunity for much abuse. Furthermore, the tax collector was in the employ of the detested Roman authority. His profession defiled him. For these reasons, publicans were regarded as a species of outcast by strict Jews, who avoided all contact with them. Jesus not only invited a publican to follow him, he also made him one of the twelve Apostles (Matt. 10:3).

Further still, Jesus welcomed tax collectors and "sinners" (people of obviously bad life) to his table. They came spontaneously, it seems, and gathered around him and his disciples. The pious Jew, afraid of defiling himself, shunned inviting anyone to his table who did not practise the ritual laws. The Pharisees strove to constitute a community of "pure ones." Jesus thus breached all the religious and social prejudices of his time. He made friends of all these doubtful people. He accomplished the miracle that they felt themselves "at home" with him.

The Pharisees were astonished. They did not question Jesus directly, but spoke to the disciples. We see them here, full of a scandalized solicitude: "Why does your teacher. . .?" Jesus, hearing their remarks, replied: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." It is for "the lost sheep" of Israel that he has come (see 10:6; Luke 15:4-7). It is toward them that his tenderness and his love carry him. They feel this, and they come to him. There was in this no condescension on Jesus' part, none of the self-righteousness which crushes the person to whom one speaks.

Who are the "well" in this matter? Jesus recognizes in the Pharisees men who know the Law of God. He is not necessarily speaking ironically. The citation from Hosea (vs. 13; see Hosea 6:6) expresses his profound thought. He who does not show mercy to his neighbor multiplies sacrifices and offerings in vain. Jesus had nothing to say to those who believed themselves to be righteous, but spoke rather to those who knew themselves to be poor and guilty and who had need of pardon. We find again in this teaching the dominant thought of the whole Sermon on the Mount.

[In the following episode (vss. 14-17) it is no longer Jesus and the Pharisees who have words with each other, but Jesus and the disciples of John the Baptist, who speak both for themselves and for the Pharisees. The debated question is that of fasting. It is to be noted that Jesus does not deny the legitimacy of fasting but its present appropriateness. The passage is weighted with Messianic significance, for he compares his coming to a wedding. For his disciples, the dawn of the Kingdom has come. It is a day of joy! How could they fast? The day will indeed come "when the bridegroom is taken away from them." This is a veiled allusion to his approaching death. The image of the wedding may seem strange to us. It strikes its roots into the Old Testament where the love of God is compared to that of a fianc6 (Jer. 2:2; Ezek. 16:8). The image of a wedding is found again in relation to the royal banquet (Matt. 22:2-3). For Jesus to say that the bridegroom was there was to declare the arrival of the Messianic Age, a time of consummation and joy. And this note of joy remains the dominant one of the Apostolic Church, which awaited her Lord as a bride awaits her bridegroom (see John 3:29; Matt. 25:1; Rev. 19:6-8; 22:17).

The double parable of the Garment and the Wineskins sets forth the revolutionary element in the attitude of Jesus: the new times demand a new deportment, another style of life. The Messianic Age signifies a renewal of all things. The two images are suggestive. One does not sew the new onto the old; the fabric would tear. One does not pour new wine into old wineskins; it would burst them! Such is the dynamic of the Kingdom.

Do we know this revolutionary power of the gospel, this fresh and free manner of approaching men and of judging traditions, which gives to all things their true meaning?]

A Raising and a healing (9:18-26)

The story of the raising of the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue is told in the Gospel by Mark in a much more lively and moving fashion (Mark 5:21-24, 35-43). Matthew retains only the essential facts: the faith of the father; the word of Jesus, "the girl is not dead but sleeping"; and the deed itself. The saying of Jesus has sometimes been interpreted as though this were a case of catalepsy. This does not seem to be the thought of the evangelist. Jesus is the great conqueror of death; so in this sense death, in the absolute and terrible meaning of the term - a definitive end does not exist. The dead "sleep" while awaiting the final resurrection (Dan. 12:2; see John 5:26-29; 1 Thess. 4:13-14). The raising of the girl, as all the healings wrought by Jesus, is a sign of the omnipotence of God in the work of Jesus, a prior sign of that Kingdom where sickness and death will be no more.

The healing of the woman (vss. 20-22), in Matthew as in Mark, is inserted into the story concerning the raising of the child (see Mark 5:25-34). Once again we have in Matthew only a very abbreviated echo of Mark. The story here lacks the deeply human note - the agony of the woman that her illness rendered her "unclean," her daring to touch Jesus, the reaction of Jesus to her touch. But in both stories, Jesus sees in the woman's faith the cause of her healing. She had believed on him, and she had been heard.