This week I have the privilege of taking part in—and ending—a 2-week blog tour for an important new commentary/book for the Church. It’s called The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us
I am very thankful for such a series that takes both the Text and Tradition deeply seriously, while connecting both to a culture that is anxious, doubting, and troubled. And the thing that this anxious, doubting, troubled culture needs are a People that are connected and present with them in their anxiety, doubts, and troubles. The Church is such a People, because God Himself was such a Person. And what this Matthew commentary makes incredibly plain is that God is with us, “Jesus shows up and offers us God’s personal presence” (18), even in the gritty drama—anxiety, doubts, troubles, and all—that is our collective pilgrim story.
The commentary book begins like most by helping orient the reader to the Gospel of Matthew with a short introduction, attending to some of the normal intro material like authorship, dating, and audience: Woodley agrees with the consensus of the early church that Matthew the tax collector and disciple of Jesus wrote the book—in contrast with the modern church that posits a non-apostolic early Jewish Christian; he concludes a range of possible dating extends from 65 to 85 AD—which of, course, centers on the pivotal 70 AD date, whether the Temple was still standing; and the author agrees with the common consensus that Matthew was writing to encourage and instruct Jewish Christians. (19-20) He ends with an overview of his division for Matthew, which are based on his assessment of the overarching theme: God with us. The division include:
I) The Identity and Mission of Jesus (1:1-4:11)
II) The Public Ministry of Jesus (4:12-11:1)
III) The Varying Response to Jesus (11:2-16:12)
IV) The Growing Conflict with Jesus (16:13-25:46)
V) The Climax: Death and Resurrection of Jesus (26:1-28:15)
I found this to be a suitable division scheme, even though it ignores the understood three-fold “Galilee, Galilee to Jerusalem, Jerusalem “ scheme.
One more point: I love it that the commentary book is based on the updated NIV text, one of the first from what I understand. Though my wife works for Zondervan Bibles, I think this updated translation is the optimum combination of accuracy and clarity, which serves such a commentary and commentary series that seeks to help illumine the ancient Scriptures, while accurately applying them to our contemporary context. I think this is a big plus!
Now on to the end, which really is a recapitulation of the beginning: God with us. Woodley makes the point at several points in the end that the Gospel of Matthew ends like it begins: “Throughout this Gospel Jesus has repeatedly presented his vision for reality: at the center of the cosmos there is a personal God, a heavenly community of Father-Son-Spirit who dwell in loving relationship, who also love us and who were willing to spend and risk everything to be present with us.” (249) Matthew 1:23 we see “God with us” and in the end we see this gritty picture of God with us, which comes into sharp focus at the Cross, and I like what he does here in helping explaining the Cross.
The drama of “God with us” comes to a resounding climax in Jesus’ cry of forsakenness in 27:46: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Woodley defines the contours of this cry thus: “the promise of God with us in Matthew 1:23 finds its full expression in Jesus’ anguished cry…Jesus does not die in glorious triumph. Instead he dies with a question on is lips: Why have you forsaken me? Why did you ditch me.” And then he connects this existential moment of Christ with our own, because this question is “the question found on the lips of most fellow sufferers…he asks our most painful, perplexing question. By living and asking our questions, Jesus can’t be any more ‘with us.'” (251)
“By living and asking our questions, Jesus can’t be any more ‘with us.'” What a powerful statement, which he follows-up with this: “astonishingly, Jesus not only provides answers to life; he also asks our questions, even our most anguished, doubt-riddled questions…Matthew wants us to know that love drove Jesus to be with us, bearing not only our sin and guilt but also our questions, heartaches, betrayals and dislocation.” (251 252)
What I like about this depiction of the Cross is that Jesus as both fully human and fully God (252) fully identifies with our human condition, with the results of our human condition. Hebrews 5 teases out this aspect of the cross, which Woodley magically performs for us in this book. But lest the reader think he simply leaves the Cross as hyper-existential identification—meaning the Cross is simply about Jesus’ identification with our sorrow and pain and desolation—you’d be wrong, which was a surprise.
When I’ve read other more existential writings regarding Jesus and his crucifixion, statements like “our God has wounds; our God has even felt our desolation and asked our most painful questions,” (253) replaces the reality of Jesus taking upon Himself the wrath of God and dying for our sins. Not this book, where Woodley forces the reader to grapple with the reality that all of us are a “slave to sin; sin implies living like a slave.” (254) And through the dual event of the cross and resurrection, we are freed.
Curiously, though, what Woodley says we are freed from is “the captivity of shame, the captivity of ethnic exclusivity, and the captivity of self-centeredness.” (256) Really? I’m not so sure Matthew (or later Paul) envisions Jesus taking upon himself our shame—which Woodley defines as “that uneasy sense that we don’t measure up [to communal standards] and that our real self will cause others to reject us” (256)—or ethnic exclusivity or self-centeredness. Why isn’t what Jesus takes upon Himself our sin? Paul says in 1 Cor 15 that Christ died for our sins. Now sin certainly cashes out in the existential terms Woodley uses, like shame—which he curiously defines psychologically—in ethnic exclusivity—which is a major part of Paul’s Galatians and Romans undertaking—and self-centeredness. While I appreciated how the author rooted the description of the Cross Event existentially, to some degree it seemed like that description overtook the more biblical language, mainly “that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.” (1 Cor 15:3)
After describing the Cross Event Woodley moves to the Resurrection Event, which he says “completes the central hope of this Gospel: God is for us and God with us.” (262) It is in this event that we find our hope, which “hinges on three simple words: He is risen!” As Woodley describes this important even: “With one little word [egerthe in the Greek means ‘He is risen’] God turns the tables on evil, sin, death, injustice and tragedy. With one little word God does what we could never do with our many words and frenetic activity. With one little word Jesus escapes into freedom so he can lead us into freedom.” (261)
And because the cross and death wasn’t the end for Jesus, it isn’t for us either; Jesus was resurrected to new life and so can our broken lives be restores: “God the Father took every tragic, dead-end, broken thing and wove it into Jesus’ victor. Now through Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples are ushered into the same story. There are no dead ends for us, either. As he did for Jesus, God the Father takes the things destined to destroy us or at the very least cause us to hit a hopeless dead end—our failure, pain, suffering, even death itself—and weaves it all into our redemptive story.” (263)
Here, as with his description of the cross, Woodley existentializes the resurrection to some degree. Though he doesn’t make the mistake of a Tillich and strictly put the resurrection into the plane of symbolic representation of a revived and “resurrected” sense of life now, his description of the resurrection seems to fall short in neglecting the ultimate consequences for Jesus’ resurrection, which is our hope in the future. Perhaps he wanted to ground the resurrection in the “now” more than the Church typically does, which is much appreciated—I think his description of the meaning of the resurrection of Christ for our lives now is needed, for sure. In so doing, though, it overtook much of the future hope the NT typically assigns to the resurrection.
In the end, Woodley ends his commentary book the same way Matthew ends his gospel: a passionate invitation to join in with God’s “God with us” mission: “If Jesus is God with us who has all authority, and if Christ died for my sins and rose from the dead, then that good news compels me to spend the rest of my life fulfilling his words: ‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'” (265) Woodley points out that this verse quoted from Matthew 28:19 is our summons: “Someone with authority and competence has called you into action. From now on he will define your mission.” (266) Thankfully Jesus is with us, until the end of the age, which provides the book end to our theme God with us. Matthew started with “God with us” and ends with “I am with you always,” which, as Woodley says, “also provide the book ends for my life in and with Jesus.” (268) Indeed!
At times it may sound like I was hard on Woodley and didn’t like his book. I actually really did like this commentary and really appreciated how the author connected the Gospel narrative of Matthew to our own existential condition, while remaining rooted in the historic Christian faith. This may seem like an odd observation, but my experience with those who think existentially tend to make all aspects of the Christian faith—God, Christ, sin, cross, resurrection—symbols that express deeper meanings in our life. Not so with this book. Yes, there were times in the section I was given that the existential language overshadowed some important biblical and “traditional” concepts, but that doesn’t mean it is a bad commentary. Not at all. I think Woodley has done a tremendous service to the Church in connecting the magical, revolutionary story of God’s rescue in the “God with us” Jesus, while remaining rooted biblically and theologically.
Holding onto the Text and Tradition while connecting both to our 21st century culture is a difficult, yet an incredibly needed enterprise, one I think was modeled and accomplished well throughout Woodley’s “Gospel of Matthew” commentary book. This book is well-positioned to serve two audiences: as a wonderful resource for Christians in general who want to supplement their bible study with culturally astute and theologically sound commentary; and pastors who need a supplemental resource for sermon preparation when they need a different take on a passage or a real-life example that makes the Text sing.
