Through the Flaming Sword

I tend to read the Bible as though what I am reading is addressed to me. I suspect that we all tend to do this. But it never is addressed to us in the 21^st century. Every passage in the Bible is always addressed to someone besides us, who lived in a completely different time and cultural milieu.

In fact there are at least three timeframes at work in Matthew 18:14–20:

1. Jesus speaking to his disciples;
2. Matthew writing for his audience; and
3. us reading the passage for ourselves today.

Or put another way: What did Jesus mean by this passage? What was Matthew trying to say—why did he include it in his gospel? What does it mean to us for our attempts to apply the passage to our situation as readers today? In particular, how do we understand its value in fostering the gathered meeting?

So the timeframe questions are: Who is speaking, whom are they addressing, and why?

Jesus speaking to his disciples

In Matthew 18:20, on the face of it, as the sentence comes to us, Jesus is speaking to his disciples while he is still alive, during his living ministry. He is laying out a protocol for dealing with conflict between his disciples. Presumably the church he refers to in verse 17 is one of the household churches he had set up during his ministry, like the one in Bethany in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.

So when he promises to the disciples that he will be “in their midst,” he doesn’t mean literally, physically, because he couldn’t be everywhere that such a conflict occurs when it occurs. So he must be promising to be present in some other way—some “metaphysical” way.

The key to the answer seems to be in whatever he means by gathering “in [his] name” in verse 20. What does “in my name” mean?

I see two sets of possibilities here (though we will return to this matter of the name in a later post). One set is “secular” in nature; the other is magico-religious.

One’s name is one’s reputation, especially in Jesus’s time; see Matthew 10:22 and 24:9, for instance. Or “in my name” could mean upon his authority—a “tell them I sent you” kind of authority; see John 14:13. Or “in my name” could mean “as I have taught you.” Jesus might have meant this promise in all of these ways.

But the fact that the second promise invokes the Father’s authority through the use of prayer suggests another dimension to this passage, a metaphysical one, if you will. Jesus repeatedly associates himself with the Father, even almost equates himself with the Father, especially in the gospel of John. In this regard he often speaks of being sent by the Father.

Meanwhile, ancient Israelite tradition has a rich and complex theology of the Name as God’s presence.

The writers of Deuteronomy, who had close ties to Jeremiah and Hosea, and who compiled the so-called Deuteronomic history—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings—considered Yahweh’s name as his presence on earth. A number of extra-canonical and inter-testamental Jewish texts went to town with this theology of divine presence in the Name. And Jesus seems to have adopted some version of this magico-religious understanding of the power of the divine name: “hallowed be thy name,” reads the Lord’s prayer, for instance. The name also has power to cast out unclean spirits in a number of accounts.

I think it is possible that Jesus’s promise in 18:20 ties the presence of the Father and his authority promised in verse 19 to the authority Jesus exercised on the Father’s behalf with this teaching regarding this protocol: through prayer during the proceedings of the protocol, the church invokes the presence of the Father, and also of his son by virtue of following his teaching, invoking Jesus’s name for authority—because, for these purposes, at least, the name/power/authority of the Father and of the son were one and the same, for, as his son, Jesus was his Father’s presence in the world. (Let’s put aside what being the “son of God” meant.)

I think Jesus was saying: conduct this matter as I have instructed you and pray to the Father as I have taught you, so that he will know that I sent you, and he / I—we—will answer your prayer; that is, your decision will have his / my—our—authority.

We will return to the theology of the Name in a later post.

Tagged: Jesus