Matthew 10:11-15
Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”
Allow one more word about this part of Jesus’ instructions to his disciples, as I think the last couple of verses invite some important questions. In particular, why the incredibly harsh words about the people who don’t welcome the disciples.
It doesn’t start out harsh, of course. It starts out more pragmatically: not everyone will welcome you. Be grateful for those who do, leave behind those who don’t. But then comes this weird word of seriously intense judgment. The people that don’t welcome you will have it worse than the people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah – towns, in case you don’t remember, that the Lord destroyed altogether!
So what’s going on? Well, here I’d like to ask another question: are we allowed to criticize an evangelist? I know that probably sounds like an impious question, perhaps even a tad risky if not downright heretical. But here’s why I’m wondering: when you read the similar accounts of this scene in Mark (6:1-13) and Luke (9:1-6), those words of judgment are entirely absent. So maybe, just maybe, Matthew is writing to bolster the confidence of the Christians in his community who have had it pretty hard of late. The question, I think, is whether he goes a little overboard in his attempt and offers a revision that is, perhaps, out of sync with the rest of his Gospel.
Matthew, as we’ve said before, is likely writing to a community of Jewish Christians, many of whom may have endured difficult times in the aftermath of the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple, the increased strife between Jewish synagogues and Christian (although they also saw themselves as Jewish) congregations, and confusion over their place in the world. And so this passage may function to encourage his community by saying that, just like those people who welcomed the disciples will be blessed and those who rejected them judged, so also will people be judged – worthy or unworthy – on the basis of how they treat you (that is, the people in Matthew’s congregation). That, I think, is why that last line comes off as so hard and I often wish Matthew hadn’t added it.
But then I remember that I haven’t been in the shoes of Matthew’s community or had to endure what they endured. So maybe it’s not so much that I want to criticize Matthew — as I think he was doing his level best to interpret and pass on the stories of Jesus in a way that gave hope to a fledgling, struggling, and minority culture — but instead I want to encourage us today – Christians who are mostly not part of a fledging and minority culture (indeed, most often exactly the opposite!) – to take care in how we read Matthew’s words at this and similar points in his story. Because what may have made sense, or at least been understandable, in Matthew’s day — when his community had next to no power — doesn’t necessarily function the same way today. Indeed, at times Christians with significant cultural power have been far too quick to claim God’s judgment on those who do not receive their testimony and believe differently from them.
If we are to be disciples of Jesus, I believe, then we also will at times need to exercise faithful dependence and rely on the generosity of others. When folks help us, we should be grateful. And when they don’t, we should take our leave in peace and leave questions of judgment and blessing to God.
Prayer: Dear God, grant us patience with those who differ from us and compassion and love for all those we encounter so that we may prove ourselves true disciples of the one who cared for all. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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