Greetings Friends,
It’s that time again - time for another top secret excerpt of my next book. The book walks the reader through various stories from the Gospel of Matthew (one story from each chapter, but two stories from Matthew 1 because it’s my book and I can do what I want - HA!) and looks at those stories through the lens of Matthew’s original readers (or, more likely, listeners).
The context of the Gospel?
Scholars believe the Gospel was written shortly after the Romans ransacked Jerusalem and leveled the Temple, leaving nothing more than puddles of blood and a pile of smoking rubble. Many who survived the assault relocated to a place called Antioch where a sect of Jews (the Messianic Jews or the Jewish Christians who believed that Jesus was the Messiah) separated from their Mother tradition and set out on their own.
It’s to these people (to these early Christians) that Matthew wrote his Gospel - to encourage them in the Way of Jesus The Christ as they navigated through unimaginable loss.
And so that makes me wonder all sorts things, right?
Like, why Matthew included some stories and left some out?
Or why Matthew told some stories differently than Mark, Luke, or John told them?
Or why Matthew positioned certain stories the way that he did in his telling of the Jesus story?
… So many questions.
And so in the book I pull one story from each chapter of Matthew’s Gospel and look at it through the lens of those questions and explore and wonder why on earth these stories have passed the test of time to endure 2000+ years and make it into our hands all these centuries later.
Why were these stories so important?
Why were they important to Matthew?
Why were they important to his readers?
The idea is to read one chapter a day and then there are some reflections questions at the end of each chapter with plenty of white space to write whatever is on your heart after reflecting on that day’s story. The book encourages you to get in touch with the “collapsed temples” of your own life (the disappointments, the unmet expectations, the broken dreams, the dead ends, the disasters, the losses, the grief) and leads you along a path to find some hope in the stories that Matthew includes in his retelling of the Jesus story.
And so here’s chapter 26 (raw and unedited, by the way!), I hope it encourages you. Thanks for supporting my work and my family - we are forever grateful.
The Coexistence of Grief and Hope
Matthew 24:1-14
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” 3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” 4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains. 9“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
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I Bet That Hit Home
Can you imagine being one of Matthew's readers and coming across these words from Jesus? - "Not one stone will be left on another; every one will be thrown down." Considering that his readers were literally still covered in the ash and dust of the Temple stones that really did come down, I would have to imagine that these words would have evoked all sorts of feelings ... right?
Now.
Did Jesus actually say this?