Sermon Tone Analysis

Eric Meyer

BBL 7723: Spiritual Formation in the Gospels

Prof. Blankenship

Dec. 16th, 2008

 

*Matthew 18:15-35*

*I.                   **/Keeping Peace In The Church/* \\ *A.

Conflict Resolution 18:15-17*; 15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault when the two of you are alone.

If he listens to you, you have regained your brother.

16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others with you, so that at the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be established.

17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him like a Gentile or a tax collector.

\\ *B.

Authority to Interpret Christ’s Instructions 18:18-20;* 18 "I tell you the truth, whatever you  bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven.

19 Again, I tell you the truth, if two of you on earth agree about whatever you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you.

20 For where two or three are assembled in my name, I am there among them."

*II.

**/Instructions On Forgiveness/* \\ *A.

Introduction to the Parable 18:21-22;* 21 Then Peter came to him and said, "Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother who sins against me?

As many as seven times?" 22 Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times!

\\ *B.

The Parable 18:23-34;* 23 "For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves.

24 As he began settling his accounts, a man who owed ten thousand talents was brought to him.

25 Because he was not able to repay it, the lord ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, children, and whatever he possessed, and repayment to be made.

26 Then the slave threw himself to the ground before him, saying, 'Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.' 27 The lord had compassion on that slave and released him, and forgave him the debt.

28 After he went out, that same slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him one hundred silver coins.

So he grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him, saying, 'Pay back what you owe me!' 29 Then his fellow slave threw himself down and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will repay you.' 30 But he refused.

Instead, he went out and threw him in prison until he repaid the debt.

31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were very upset and went and told their lord everything that had taken place.

32 Then his lord called the first slave and said to him, 'Evil slave!

I forgave you all that debt because you begged me! 33 Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave, just as I showed it to you?' 34 And in anger his lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he repaid all he owed.

*C.

Instruction 18:35; *35 So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart."

Maybe the most important aspect of my understanding of the Bible has been the realization that the words were penned by individuals who were telling a /story/.

Yet the Bible is much more than just a story.

Here Michael Wilcock describes the Gospel, “We shall find that it is, in fact, a version of the ‘Jesus story’, an account of actual events.

It is not a theory, or an idea, or a philosophy, or even a religion.

It is the tale of a thing that really happened.

Yet it is not mere history, for it does something to the people to whom it is proclaimed.

Those who witnessed the original events found that when the story was preached, it changed men’s lives.”[1]

Far from being a dry history, I now see the Bible as a work of art that paints a picture of our Creator.

As one of the artists, Matthew used his considerable skills to draw the audience into the story.

During several of our Tuesday night classes, we have discussed how Mark crafted his message in 11:20-33 to emphasize the lack of fruit being produced in the temple.

By placing his rendition of the withering of the fig tree prior to the story of Jesus clearing the temple, the audience’s attention naturally is focused on the lack of fruit analogy.

In a similar way, it seems that Matthew crafts his chapter 18 to naturally point the audience to the concepts he feels are most important.

Bernard Brandon Scott notes that since in Luke 17:4, “The challenge to forgive appears without the narrative of the unforgiving servant, one can conclude that Matthew probably joined them together.”[2]

At one point in time, the idea that the “Word of God” had been crafted and arranged by people instead of being a verbatim reproduction of what Jesus said would have given me reason to ponder the validity of the text.

I’m beginning to understand that this living work of art given to us by God was performed for audiences long before it was printed on paper.

James Dunn says the story of Jesus was most certainly given verbally, and that the, “Performer’s awareness that some tradition is already familiar to the community is a factor in the performance.

The performance is heard within the community’s “horizon of expectation.”

The performance’s “gaps of indeterminacy” can be filled out from the audience’s prior knowledge of the tradition or like traditions.”[3]

The cultural context or “horizon of expectations” is an important place to start a discussion of Matthew 18:15-35.

This is a section of Gospel that seems to discuss many different topics, but I believe that Matthew has arranged them perfectly in order to establish the lesson he intended to enumerate.

The world in which the Jewish people lived was one filled with many difficulties.

They lived in a land occupied by the Romans, and share a dislike for non-Jews that was clearly reciprocated.

“The feelings cherished toward the Jews throughout the entire Graeco-Roman world were not so much those of hatred as of pure contempt.

The prevailing tone that runs through the whole estimate of Judaism, as given by Tacitus, is that of the profoundest contempt.”[4]

This contempt along with the fact that those of the Jewish faith avoided the norms of Hellenistic society caused further isolation.

Paul Barnett writes, “The Jews of the upper echelon not only learned /koine,/ they also came to love all things Greek…Indeed, only those Jews who learned and loved the culture of Greece had any future, economically and politically speaking…There was another social world within Israel.

By contrast with those caught up in the heady world of Hellenism, the poor Jews strongly resisted these subtle and pervasive influences.”[5]

Politically, the environment during the life of Jesus was dominated by Rome.

Dunn states that, “The main political impact on the villages of Galilee, and on Jesus for most of his life, would have been in the terms of taxes.

That was why the Romans were in Palestine, and why rulers ruled territory – for the taxes they could levy on their subject peoples.”[6]

I have yet to meet an American that said they enjoyed paying taxes, but taxes were much more than a means of maintaining social services in the first century.

“Tax-paying is the duty of subjugated peoples, it is the fact of their national subjugation.

As formerly the Persian, and later the Hellenist Great King gathered taxes from conquered nations, so now the Romans exacted tribute.”[7]

Stauffer goes on to say, “The Roman tax on Jerusalem was a constant reminder of the black day in the city’s life, and a symbol of the heathen domination.”[8]

Is it any wonder then that the people who collected the taxes would be viewed with such contempt?

If they were Jewish, they were first and foremost traitors in the eyes of other Jews, but then they also took advantage of their authority to collect taxes.

“The advantage taken of such opportunities, and the not infrequent overcharges that were made by these officials, made them as a class hated by the people” [9] They were so hated that not only were they not allowed to enter the synagogues, but they, “Were excluded from the religious life of the Jewish community.”[10]

The society that resulted from foreign occupations and the economic burdens of heavy taxation (the tax burden was at least 1~/3 of all produce and earnings[11]) was not one conducive to generating an environment that fostered an attitude of forgiveness.

“In the unremitting struggle for survival that characterized the lives of most persons in the ancient world, individual interest was a predominant concern.

This expressed itself most satisfactorily in power and wealth, which went far toward allaying the widespread feelings of personal insecurity.

Because of this, any threat to personal well-being was considered to be a most serious affair, so crimes committed against individuals or groups were dealt with according to current concepts of justice.

Where codes of law existed, it was possible for the offender to be brought to trial, and if convicted, to be punished according to the penalty prescribed.

Where such codes were ignored or did not exist, summary justice when opportune rather than a magnanimous act of forgiveness seems to have been the usual procedure righting wrongs.”[12]

Taxation for the Jews even took on theological proportions.

In Mat.

22:17, the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Tell us, then, what do you think.

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”

The Pharisees seem to think this is a question that needs to be understood in terms of the Jewish Law.

Stauffer says that refusal to pay taxes was more than a political statement, “But also a theological protest by the people of God against their heathen rulers and their emperor, against ‘any confession of Caesar as lord’.[13]

The above information is a basic setting of the existing political, economic, social, and intellectual scene at the time Matthew’s Gospel was written.

To really understand Matthew’s intentions though, we need to take a close look at the intermingling of the art of the written and oral word, and the way the religious instructors passed on the scriptures to their students.

The way that most people received the word of God was as part of an audience at the reading of scripture, or oral presentation from memory of the scripture.

James Dunn writes that we should not, “Forget that even written documents like Paul’s letters would not have been /read/ by more than a few.

For the great majority of recipients, the letter would have been /heard/ rather than read.”[14]

Picture yourself as a member of an audience at a speech, or remember the last time you listened to an audio book.

The ones that I remember most were performances more than recitations.

Should that fact have changed with time?

This idea of the word of God originally being transmitted orally, and presented almost as a performance has substantial scholarly support.

In his book /Interpreting the Parables/, Craig Blomberg notes that the parables themselves seem to be recorded in a format that was very conducive to memorization, “Viewed as a prophet, Jesus would have had his words preserved at least as carefully as Old Testament prophecy (considered by many scholars to be among the most faithfully preserved of all the Old Testament traditions).

Viewed as Messiah, he would have been expected to be a teacher of wisdom, whose aphorisms required safeguarding.

Finally, a careful study of the forms of Jesus’ teaching reveals that over 90% of them are phrased in ways which make them easy to remember, by means of parallelism, rhythm, catchwords and striking figures of speech.”[15]

G.V. Jones is quoted by Kenneth Bailey as describing the parables as a true art form.

Observe the dramatically poetic description by Bailey of this art form, “His (Jones) main point is that parables are fashioned out of the raw material of human life by a creative imagination.

As a work of art a parable is not just a propositional statement about how one should behave or how God acts, but is independent of time.”[16]  Warren Carter says that the raw material of life could not be separated from religion for Jews of the time, “religion was not a self contained, separate and separated, individualized entity.

In a world dominated by Roman imperial power, religion was intricately woven into the political, social, economic, and domestic structures of daily life.”[17]

Bailey says that the oratory performer took the raw material of daily life and fashioned it into a verbal performance much like a composer crafts a grand musical composition, “I discovered that the Oriental story teller has a “grand piano” on which he plays.

The piano is built of the attitudes, relationships, responses, and value judgments that are known and stylized in Middle Eastern peasant society.

Everybody knows how everybody is expected to act in any given situation.