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Today we hear Matthew’s account of the transfiguration, which appears in all three synoptics and is thus pretty familiar to most Christians. So I’d just like to focus on Jesus’ final words in the account: “Tell no one of the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead” (Matthew 17: 9).

The Jerome Biblical Commentary (3d ed.) interprets this remark as follows: “the Son’s glory is only intelligible in the light of the cross” (p. 1207). This makes a certain amount of sense, since Jesus had spoken of his upcoming suffering only a few verses earlier at the end of chapter 16 (Matt. 16: 21). But I’m not wholly convinced. Jesus didn’t say not to talk about the vision until after he had been crucified but only after he had been raised (17: 9).

So what is it about the transfiguration that could only become clear once Jesus had been raised? Apparently “merely” rising from the dead could be still misunderstood unless it was taken together with the transfiguration. Recall that at the transfiguration Jesus’ “face shone like the sun and his garments became white as light” (17: 2), and the Father declared “this is my son, with whom I am well pleased” (17: 5). In short, it is at the transfiguration that Jesus is definitively revealed as divine, the “real” (not figurative) son of God.

So where does that leave us? Well, Jesus raised several people from the dead: Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter, the son of the widow of Nain. But these folks all eventually died. Jesus, as we know, rises himself and shortly afterwards ascends into “heaven” (Luke 24: 51). We all assume this means he went back to heaven, to where he was before. But consider that without the transfiguration, the apostles might have been left in some doubt as to where he went because of lingering doubts about who he was.

So here’s my reading: the transfiguration must be comprehended together with the resurrection so we can have the complete picture: the true (divine) son of God came among us as a human, suffered death, rose, and returned to his heavenly glory. This is doubtless what we all believe but it can be helpful to sometimes go back to the sources in scripture. So I hope this helped.

Today is the first Sunday of Lent. In the gospel we hear of Jesus’ being tempted in the desert. I’d like to focus on what seems to be the tempter’s increasing desperation as the temptations move forward.

At first the tempter asks Jesus to change stones to bread, which even if Jesus had done would hardly have been a sin, at worst a minor misuse of his (Christ’s) power. Second the tempter asks Jesus to jump off the temple parapet which might have been a sin in the sense of deliberately hazarding a body that was, after all, a gift from God (as for all of us). But the tempter doesn’t really get down to it till the third temptation which I will quote because I want you to hear the desperate longing in his voice:

“All these [kingdoms] I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” (Matthew 4: 9)

So that’s it, what the enemy really wants is to be worshipped. If you think about it, this was the least likely temptation which Jesus or any Jew would have succumbed to. For, as Jesus notes, the Israelites above all things were to worship “the LORD your God” alone, full stop (5: 10).

This is the same Jesus who only one chapter later will tell us to “seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness” (Matthew 6: 33), essentially the same thing he told the devil. Years ago a wise person told me to take this verse dead literally–not merely to make God some sort of “life priority” but to literally do something godly (pray, usually) first, that is, first in time, before I do whatever I was planning or wanting to do. I can only say that it was good advice then and I think it still is now.

Today we will hear what, to me, are the most powerful words Paul the Apostle ever wrote: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2: 2). Listen to that again:

“I resolved to know NOTHING while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and HIM CRUCIFIED” (emphasis added).

In today’s gospel Jesus tells us “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deed and glorify your heavenly Father” (Matthew 5: 16). Perhaps so.

But when the apostle to the Gentiles, an educated Jew (Acts 22: 3), spent an entire year-and-a-half in Corinth (Acts 18: 11), he made certain to know nothing except Jesus Christ “and him crucified”. Paul was a man who could, as we know, spin up seven long chapters on justification by faith (see Romans 1-7), but he stuffed all that learning, if he is to be believed (and I do), to merely preach the crucified Jesus “in much fear and trembling” (1 Cor. 2: 3b).

The Corinthians had criticized Paul’s teaching for lacking “wisdom” (1 Cor. 1: 18, 22). But instead of pushing back with a long Greek-style wisdom discourse, as we know Paul could do, he doubled down: “I resolved to know nothing”.

I speak here solely to myself: save the cleverness, can the learning, forget the hermeneutics: preach nothing and know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. All glory be to him.

Today we begin hearing the Sermon on the Mount which starts with the “beatitudes” where Christ states that the following people are blessed (“beatus”): the poor in spirit, mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the clean of heart, and the peacemakers.

I doubt this listing was intended as a “to do” list in the sense of telling us to work on becoming poor (in spirit or just plain poor), to work on how to mourn, to get hungry for righteousness, etc. Rather I suspect Christ was saying that when we inevitably feel poor in spirit, when we inevitably mourn, when we finally break down and become meek or merciful, then we are blessed. It’s more of an affirmation of littleness than an agenda for seeking holiness.

Second, I think Jesus was coming down on the side of a certain reliance on God, one that might even be mistaken for passivity. For example, while he indeed states that the blessed include those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness (also translatable as ‘justice’)” Jesus seems to endorse a form of hungering that manifests in poverty of spirit, in meekness, in mercy, and even in mourning. Nowhere in this sermon will we see anything like establishing God’s kingdom by force or even by use of wealth.

Finally, my good brother pointed out to me that in this passage Jesus definitively identifies his Father (the source of all the “blesseds”) with a certain kindness, mercy, meekness, and poverty. Thus, to the extent that anybody in his audience was still looking for a god who would go “smiting” that god’s enemies, they’d have to go look elsewhere. Jesus’ God, his Father, blesses poverty of spirit because he too is God of the poor.

Ask almost any Christian where Jesus was from and they’ll say “Nazareth”, perhaps adding that this was a town in Galilee. And it’s true, Jesus was raised in Nazareth (Matthew 2:23; Luke 2:39). But Jesus’ adult home was in Capernaum, another Galilean town but unlike Nazareth, which lies inland, Capernaum was a fishing village on the Sea of Galilee. In today’s gospel Matthew goes to some pains to explain that Jesus relocated to “Capernaum by the sea” (4:13).

What if we attributed some intentionality on Jesus’ part to this move? Capernaum was about three times the size of Nazareth and more importantly was a place of commerce. People didn’t fish there for mere subsistence, to feed themselves. Rather it was a commercial fishing village, with fish caught, dried and sold in bulk for cash. That in turn meant taxes were paid to the Romans who missed no opportunity to tax a gainful trade.

Matthew makes clear that Jesus called commercial fishers as his first four disciples. Indeed, Jesus calls them while they are at work (Simon and Andrew are casting a net into the sea (4:18b), while James and John are onshore mending their nets (4:21b) and utters his famous remark “I will make you fishers of men” (4:19b).

I like to think that all this emphasis on fishing was more than merely symbolic. Yes, the disciples would end up “catching” men and women for Christ, but what was it about being a commercial fisher that especially suited these four to the call?

I’m no fisherman but a few traits come to mind: early rising, damn hard work, a certain savvy (knowing where the fish are and knowing how to work quietly so competitors don’t notice), a marked lack of formal education, and an awareness of the burdens of Roman taxation (a symbol for knowing how the world works, perhaps?). I’m speculating here but I can say this: some of the better ministers I have known have shared just these types of traits: worldly enough but willing to follow Jesus anywhere; hard working but also good at resting when the workday was over; and open to strangers.

Why do I bring this all up? I suppose it’s to help us not over-spiritualize the call to discipleship. Of course God’s grace is necessary but God first gifts us with native traits and aptitudes, and he can (and does) make use of them.

As we start the new year it is fitting that the church offers us some basic Christian doctrine through this weekend’s gospel: Jesus is the son of God.

One occasionally hears that Jesus did not “become God” till the 4th Century, referring to the Nicene Creed adopted in AD 325 which declared Christ to have been “consubstantial with the Father,” “God from God,” and so on, all in fairly technical Greek philosophical terms. But no halfway careful reader of the Gospels can doubt that the basic fact of Jesus’ divinity was understood (and believed in) right from the start, as we see today.

John the Baptist “[sees] Jesus coming toward him” and calls him the “lamb of God.” Leave that title aside for now. John also says “he existed before me” and after a few more verses says, in rather formal language, “I have seen and testified that he is the son of God” (John 1: 34).

My point today is not to argue whether or not Jesus was in fact divine (God’s son) but merely to show that the early church definitely thought so. John calls him “son of God” but just as importantly says Jesus “existed before me” and “ranks ahead of me” (1: 30). By this we see that John isn’t using the title “son of God” merely to refer to the Israelite king, as it sometimes was (see Psalm 110: 3b) but means it pretty much literally: pre-existing offspring or word (logos) of the deity (see John 1: 14).

I doubt any of this comes as news to followers of this Substack. But every now and then it’s helpful to go back to the basics. And in that respect look at Paul’s opening statement to the church in Corinth, also read this weekend: “[to] all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their lord and ours” (1 Cor. 1: 2b). Belief in Christ’s divine lordship is what makes us Christians, and makes us one as Christians.

If you want to start a food fight between Catholics, mainstream Protestants, and Evangelicals ask whether it is “necessary” for a person to be baptized in order to be saved. Catholics will say yes, mainstream Protestants will say yes or probably, and Evangelicals, in my experience, will say no (while sometimes acknowledging that baptism is an “ordinance” of the church but not strictly necessary for salvation because we are saved by faith or grace but not by works). Today’s gospel can be read in a way that splits the baby on the baptism “necessity” question.

Today we hear Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. While all four gospels relate the story of Jesus’ baptism, only Matthew tells us that John the Baptist tried to resist it, with his well-known statement to Jesus, “You should be baptizing me” (Matthew 3: 14, my translation). Jesus responds in a typically enigmatic fashion: “Let it be so now: for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (3: 15 (RSV-2CE)). If Matthew were writing today, Jesus’ response might have been, “Just do it, it’s a requirement.” Jesus tells John to just get on with it because the baptism fills some sort of religious requirement.

But look at what happens when both John and Jesus obey this hard-to-understand requirement: the heavens open, the Spirit descends on Jesus, and God the Father declares him “my beloved son” (3: 16-17). It is not impossible to think of Jesus, and certainly John, as being surprised by this. They thought baptism was just a deed (a “work”) required to fulfill some requirement but it turns out to be the doorway to Christ being told who he really was: son of God (as per the Father’s words) and the Christ (the one annointed (christos) by the Spirit). Not bad for a 10-minute ceremony.

I suggest we look at baptism in the way Matthew did. Just do it. Let the theologians wonder why (as did John the Baptist) but just let God work through it. It worked for Jesus.

This weekend we celebrate the Epiphany (unveiling or revelation) and hear the well-known story of the magi. Reading this story with a little care, one can see that Matthew is exploring the strengths (and limits) of human reason, and the special role of divine revelation, in helping us find God.

Think of the magi as the lay scientists of their day. They have used the essentially hard science of star study to ascertain that the Jewish messiah had been born in Judea (Matthew 2: 2). Although not themselves Jews, the magi obviously are aware of the long-prophesied christ awaited by the Israelites. Notice that the magi felt no need to consult to their own priests or oracles to figure out that Judea was the place to go. The stars told them.

But that’s as far as star gazing and calculation could get them, that is, to Judea, the general neighborhood of where the christ was to be found. In this way Matthew suggests that unaided human reason (“science”, if you will) can indeed answer many of the big questions: is there a god? (yes, reason and experience suggests there is.) If so, is the Israelite approach to god the right one or at least probably right? Answer: probably yes, if by the Israelite approach we mean that god is one, is worthy of worship, and is rational and asks us to operate according to rational laws, as the Israelites thought. So again, in the magi we see that careful thought and observation can lead us to God and indeed to the God of Israel, at least in general terms.

But that’s as far as it goes. In order to pin down the exact location of the messiah, the magi must ask the Jewish prophets as understood by Jewish holy men. Only in the rather minor prophet Micah are we told that the messiah (here called a shepherd and ruler of Israel) will come specifically from Bethlehem (Matthew 2: 5). And so the magi go to Bethlehem, a small enough place that they can track down a newborn there.

(Yes, I know Matthew says the star preceded them to the birthplace. But if that were so the magi wouldn’t have needed to ask where the messiah was to be born.)

The magi’s experience as reported by Matthew almost exactly tracks my own. My reason and experience tell me there’s got to be some kind of god. And sometimes I do rely on that. Sometimes when I’m discouraged and inclined to drop the entire religious enterprise I am called back by sheer reason: I know there is a God because it just just makes sense (and in contrast, it’s simply silly to think the universe has just sat here for all eternity without a source).

But for real comfort, for real guidance, to find the actual messiah in his actual crib, I need the scriptures. They tell me where he is, how to pray, how to live. Go to Bethlehem, find the “child and his mother”, prostrate myself, and offer whatever gifts I may have.

Happy New Year to you all.

In this week’s gospel we see a good example of “un-thinking” obedience and one of very thoughtful prudence. And both are exhibited by Joseph, husband of Mary and legal father of Jesus.

Notice the four imperative verbs I’ve highlighted in the passage below:

Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you (Matthew 2: 13b).

Now notice what Joseph does:

Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt.

He stayed there until the death of Herod, …. (2: 14-15a)

Joseph is instructed to “rise … take … flee [and] stay”, and he immediately “rose … took ... departed [and] stayed”. From this the scholars draw the conclusion that Matthew the evangelist is touting the virtues of strict obedience. Joseph literally does what he’s told.

But does he always? Only four verses later we read:

When Herod had died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream

to Joseph in Egypt and said,

“Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel,

for those who sought the child’s life are dead.”

He rose, took the child and his mother,

and went to the land of Israel. (2: 19-21)

So far we see the same pattern: rise, take, go, stay. But read on:

But when [Joseph] heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod,

he was afraid to go back there.

And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee.

He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth …. (2: 22-23a)

Joseph doesn’t just blindly return to Bethlehem, he pays attention to the political situation at the time, is wisely afraid to go back to Bethlehem, and keeps walking past Judea all the way to Galilee where he settles. In short he exercises the virtue of prudence.

Yes, I know Matthew says an angel (again) told Joseph to go to Galilee but that sounds like an editorial afterthought. My sense is Joseph went to Galilee for the reason Matthew states first: he was (rightly) afraid of the Herods in Judea. (Why he settled in Galilee, the territory of yet another of Herod’s sons, is a mystery but that’s another Substack.)

Suggested lesson: in an emergency Joseph just got up and ran as he was told. This is exactly what we ourselves are taught to do when the fire or earthquake alarm goes off. Just move. But once the emergency has passed, it’s ok to think, to look at the situation and interpret what’s best under all the circumstances. It worked for Joseph and hence for Jesus and Mary too.

Side note: in the middle of the gospel passage heard today from Matthew 2 the church inexplicably omits verses 16 through 18 from the lectionary, which report the fact that Herod murdered all the infant boys under two years old in Bethlehem (Matthew 2: 16-18)). I will say it again: the church does us no favors by trying to water down the gospel, and this is a particularly egregious example. Indeed, this Sunday is December 28, which is normally the feast of the holy innocents. That feast gets superseded by the “greater” feast of the Holy Family this year but that’s hardly a reason not to simply read all of Matthew 2—flight to Egypt, mass murder, and forced relocation to Galilee—in full.