Matthew 26:3-5
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, “Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.”
This is a rather difficult topic, so we might as well bring it up at the outset. The relationship between Christians and Jews has been marked for centuries by Matthew’s account of the passion of Jesus and the results have often been tragic.
It’s important to keep in mind two things when considering such elements of our history. First, each Gospel was based on various oral and written traditions and shaped to address the particular needs and questions of the community for which it was written. In Matthew’s case, that’s most likely a group of Jewish Christians who have had to defend their beliefs to other Jews who do not believe in Jesus. And so Matthew writes his gospel in large part to demonstrate that Jesus was the fulfillment of Messianic hopes contained in the Jewish Scriptures (what we now call the Old Testament). That’s why, for instance, we’ll see as we go along how often Matthew says that something Jesus said or did, or something that happened to Jesus, was “in order to fulfill the Scriptures.” All of the Gospels have this feature to one extent or another, but none more so than Matthew.
But Matthew was not simply writing to make sense of Jesus’ life in terms of the Bible, he was also arguing against those – most likely contemporary Pharisees – who asserted that Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah. Matthew wrote his Gospel, that is, in the heat of controversy and division. And for this reason he at points paints a harsher picture of Jesus’ Jewish religious opponents than Mark, for instance, even as he offers a “softer” view of Jesus’ political opponents from Rome.
This was not unusual in ancient histories. The point of history in the ancient world was not to establish with certainty the facts of a particular event or person’s life. Rather, the point of history was to teach, to educate, and to persuade an audience of something you believe to be true. The point of history, that is, was to make a point….about the relevance of some past event or person for the present. And so Matthew, as with the other evangelists (and in accord with first-century practices), was trying to convince his audience (and us) of the larger truth about what God had accomplished in Jesus by composing a story about Jesus’ words and deeds that was based in part on traditions he’d received and in part on his own original construction to make his confession most clearly.
The second thing that is important to keep in mind when reading Matthew’s Gospel is that it’s one thing to be defend your version of the truth over and against your opponents when you’re representing a minority religious tradition that may feel itself under siege or even oppressed by the religious and political powers of the day. It’s another to read that same defensive story when your group is now the one in power.
That is to say, by and large Matthew wrote to bolster the confidence of his fledgling religious community. At times he did this by showing where he believed Jesus fulfilled Scripture. At other times he did this by countering claims that Jesus was not the Messiah (for instance, this will come up near the end of the story regarding claims that Jesus didn’t rise again but that his disciples only stole his body). And at still other times he did this by portraying his opponents in a poor light. But once Christians are no longer a minority but the majority religion and have the power of the Empire on their side, this account can become quite dangerous and fuel inter-religious prejudice and even hatred, as happened at numerous points in Christian history, none more tragic than during the Second World War in Nazi Germany.
As to the passage at hand, it is very likely that Jesus had opponents among the religious authorities of his day given that he criticized Temple practices. And it’s likely that Jesus enjoyed a measure of popularity among the general masses that would make any move against him both challenging and complex. The degree to which the chief priests and scribes plotted against him, either here or in the scenes to come, is more difficult to reconstruct, and we’ll need to be wary of how we read and interpret all these passages, as far too many of God’s Jewish children have suffered and died at the hands of Christians who justified their actions, in part, based on these accounts.
Prayer: Dear God, forgive us when we do not regard all others – no matter what religion or race – as your beloved children, and help us to read Matthew’s story of Jesus in a way that points us to your great love for all people. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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