The Gospel of Matthew

This is going to be a short post. I just finished reading the Gospel of Matthew and these are a few thoughts I had while reading it.

1) An overwhelming feeling of how revolutionary Jesus's teaching was to the people of the day. The ideas that he presented must have been shocking to the people. He recreated their paradigm, committing them to "the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the others undone." (23:23) It's nice that he includes that little line at the end, like saying "I'm not saying the stuff you're doing right now is bad, I'm just saying that when you have to really choose what stuff is most important, you're looking at the wrong things."

One of my favorite line's from Holzapfel's New Testament class was in response to Jesus's attempts to reverse the deeply-engrained social custom of the time that had no doctrinal root. "Jesus is saying 'I just need you to know that what our culture says about cleanliness is bologne.'"

2) Matthew really felt strongly about getting some points across to his readers. He hammers some of these points in so strongly in attempts at making there be no doubt what the facts were. These are:
a) that the life and ministry of Jesus, including his miraculous birth, his crucifixion, and his resurrection, were nothing more than what was foretold by the prophets, and need not have been a surprise to his disciples or his enemies. Furthermore, every last prophecy that was made prior to that time about the Messiah was fulfilled or will be fulfilled. There are no surprises in this regard.
b) that Jesus's life was miraculous. The text fits resembles the form of other biographies of a similar era. When I read with these eyes, sometimes I do feel like I could be reading about Buddha or Mohammed, the constant travels, the deliberate, intense, short statements of teaching, the miracles, the surprised reactions of followers and dissenters, the followers who accept the invitation to pattern their lives after him. The reason I say this though, is to make just one point. I really do believe that these things all happened, and they are incredibly remarkable! Imagine being there at the time and seeing this man who in the space of three years you watched raise people from the dead, heal the sick, confound the wise, minister to the weak, and teach revolutionary doctrine focusing on kindness and faith. It's impossible for me to imagine! Matthew does a great job getting this point across.
c) Jesus understood the whole time what was going on. Everyone else didn't get it, or was trying to figure it out the whole time and finally did at the end. Even the apostles, over and over again, profess their devotion to Jesus but are reminded that he knows them better than they know themselves. They don't understand that he will rise again after he days, so his death is worse than the death of a friend, because they thought it was impossible. Finally, at the end of the Gospel, they start to understand the Gospel they preach and the Savior they are witnesses of.
d) Confusions cleared up that Jews of the day would be worried about, or would find fault with. For example, Matthew dwells a lot longer in explaining Jesus's birth and again later, to make sure the reader knows that Jesus was not born from an illicit relationship.

3) A feeling that Matthew is really writing to the Jewish people of his day. I like reading the text as if I were part of his target audience. This doesn't mean the text isn't helpful to me. It just means that when I read from the perspective of a 1st century Jew, the stories Matthew includes make so much more sense. I find it a lot easier to understand why Jesus did the things he did.