Matthew: Christ in the Contrast

Listen along as we near the cross and see Christ shining through all the contrast of life and discipleship.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 26:1-29

A woman began the Christmas story; a woman now begins the passion story. Women will also begin the resurrection mission. The place of women in the Gospel stories has liberating ferment. Jesus is ahead of his time and his people, new and old, and is saying something by permitting so many records of—yes—women’s ministry. - Dale Bruner

The disciples are willing to hurt a woman who is there for the sake of the poor who aren’t; Jesus is unwilling to serve the plural poor at the expense of a single poor woman—he will not even let one human being be sacrificed on the altar of a principle. - Dale Bruner

“Agape love, perhaps the greatest contribution of Christ to human civilization, wills the good of whatever it is directed upon. It does not wish to consume it.” Dallas Willard 

Jeremiah 31:31-34

“Jesus was going to his death wounded by the wounds common to humanity. Greed, lust, ambition: all kinds of natural drives and desires turning in on themselves rather than doing the outward-looking work the creator intended them to do. When we say that Jesus died ‘ because of our sins,’ we don’t just mean that in some high flown, abstract sense. We mean that what put him on the cross was precisely the sins that we all not only commit but wallow in. “It isn’t me, is it, Master?” Only when you’ve said that, knowing that it might well be you, can you begin to appreciate what it meant for Jesus to sit at that table and share that Passover meal with them, with Judas too.”  NT Wright

We don't come to the table to fight or to defend. We don't come to prove or to conquer, to draw lines in the sand or to stir up trouble. We come to the table because our hunger brings us there. We come with a need, with fragility, with an admission of our humanity. The table is the great equalizer, the level playing field many of us have been looking everywhere for. The table is the place where the doing stops, the trying stops, the masks are removed, and we allow ourselves to be nourished, like children. We allow someone else to meet our need. In a world that prides people on not having needs, on going longer and faster, on going without, on powering through, the table is a place of safety and rest and humanity, where we are allowed to be as fragile as we feel.” - Shauna Neiquist