The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Seeing Your Own Culture Through New Eyes:  Mt.14:34 – 15:20

^14:34 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. ³⁵ And when the men of that place recognized him, they sent word into all that surrounding district and brought to him all who were sick; ³⁶ and they implored him that they might just touch the fringe of his cloak; and as many as touched it were cured. ^15:1 Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ² ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.’ ³ And he answered and said to them...¹¹ ‘It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.’

         When I was seventeen years old, I went on a spring break week trip in Mexicali, Mexico.  I was shocked by the poverty.  Families lived in shanty houses with aluminum roofs.  Children played in the dusty roads.  I couldn’t drink the water that came from the showerhead like I could at home.  I felt jarred.  But when I got home, I felt even more jarred, because I had given my life to Jesus and was starting to see life through his eyes.  I saw the materialism and comfort-seeking of American culture with new eyes.  I saw myself with new eyes.  And I didn’t like what I was seeing.

Sometimes Jesus has to take us out of our familiar cultural context for us to truly see ourselves and where we come from.  He did that with his disciples.  He did that with the ‘Pharisees and scribes…from Jerusalem’ (15:1).  At this point in his mission, Jesus and the disciples ‘had crossed over’ to the other side of Gennesaret, or the Sea of Galilee (14:34).  They were going to the Gentile side of the Sea.  After doing many miracles there, Jesus is confronted by the Jewish leaders from the capital.  This is the teaching moment.

Among these Gentiles, Jesus showed both his Jewish followers and opponents the reality about the Gentiles.  They had the same diseases the Jews have.  And Jesus was eager to heal their sick, as a physical picture of his eagerness to heal them spiritually.  If he healed Gentiles on the same terms on which he healed Jews, perhaps the Jewish disciples and opponents now have to go back home and reevaluate their own culture.  In their case, that involves their own Scriptures, too. 

Ceremonies about their hands being unclean were meant to help them understand that their hearts were unclean (e.g. Gen.6:5 – 6; 8:21; Dt.30:6; Mt.15:18 – 20).  The external was meant to help them understand the internal.  But their culture had made the hands and the external important in itself.  Somewhere along the way, they had started to miss the point. 

So when Jesus takes them to the Gentile side of the Sea, he is showing any Jews who followed him there that when they came back, they had to look at Jewish attitudes and interpretations of Scripture with new eyes.  They had to look at themselves with new eyes.

When you go to another culture with Jesus and then come back, how do you experience your home culture?  Do you ever feel like you see it more ‘truly’?