MATTHEW 28: "Reading from the Underside"

Bristol, UK, 2020

Here's a picture from a protest in Bristol, UK, over the weekend.  These protesters decided the time had come to topple the statue of a slave-trading Englishman from the colonial period.  In a way, this captures the spirit of yesterday's reflection on Matthew 28.  We want to turn upside down any reading of the gospel that argues for conquering other cultures, or raiding their resources, or enslaving their peoples, or besting their religions.  We want to look instead to the radical gospel of Jesus and the radically nonviolent path he traces in the Sermon on the Mount: resisting evil with love, risking new economies of abundance and equity, hungering for justice, suffering together for freedom and reconcilitation.  That's Matthew's mountain.  That's the discipleship project.  And it's the Way of the Cross for the church in our time.

From CNN: Protesters used ropes to rip down the monument of Edward Colston, a local merchant who made the bulk of his fortune from the slave trade in the 1600s.  His statue had stood in the city since 1865, but its presence in the multicultural city had become increasingly controversial.  Crowds cheered after the statue was toppled, before pushing it into Bristol's harbor and throwing it into the water.  Many have celebrated the act, and video of the statue falling has gone viral in the UK.  But some, including leading figures in Boris Johnson's government have condemned the protesters.

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Interestingly, Matthew's own community (in Syrian Antioch, ~ 75 CE) was involved in a lively Jewish debate about the future.  Should Antiochian Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild the desecrated temple (razed by the Romans in 70 CE)?  Should they choose, instead, to build a new temple in Antioch?  What might Judaism look like moving forward: turn back to Jerusalem or look ahead to new opportunities?

At the heart of this debate, of course, was the great temple (the Jerusalem sanctuary on Mount Moriah).  Understandably, those in diaspora longed for its powerful symbolism, its storied connection to generations of God-lovers.  That particular mountain occupied a dynamic place in Jewish imagination, ethics and culture.

Matthew's community--anchored in Jewish faith, dedicated now to Jesus' teaching--seems to anticipate a new kind of temple, a temple of mercy in practice, a temple of nonviolent teaching, a beloved community dedicated to the path Jesus traced in his own short ministry.  Instead of turning back to Jerusalem, instead of building new temples, Matthew's Resurrected Jesus calls his followers to a different kind of mountain and invites them to build a community of leaders and followers, a circle of discipleship, grounded in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

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The question now, for the American church at least, is what else must be toppled?  What kinds of economic "statues" (or statutes) have to go?  What kinds of sacred cows have to be sacrificed?  What would a 'commonwealth' of peace, freedom and equity look like and how might we get there?  Jesus is pretty clear.  Disciples practice discipleship.

In 2020, the church must choose.  Insist on the temples we've built and enjoyed in the past, even temples that have solidified racist ideologies and projects, or build different communities, discipleship communities, resistance communities?