Matthew 10:40 and Matthew’s (Jesus’s) concern with law obedience and conduct

This week the Revised Common Lectionary has continued reading from Matthew for the assigned gospel text. In this Sunday’s post, we land on a popular Matthean theme: righteousness, and I help us understand the connection of righteousness to law obedience and conduct. This is the consensus of academic commentary, and both for students of the biblical literature to locate these themes and for confessed followers of Jesus, I hope this focus on conduct reminds us that by the tradition of Israel, Jesus likely centered his teaching on actions that are consistent with the scriptures of Israel.

I am affiliated with a tradition that claims for itself to be non-doctrinal, and so, the Jesus of law obedience and moral conduct is one who connects with my lived experience:

The UCC has no rigid formulation of doctrine or attachment to creeds or structures. Its overarching creed is love. UCC pastors and teachers are known for their commitment to excellence in theological preparation, interpretation of the scripture and justice advocacy. Even so, love and unity in the midst of our diversity are our greatest assets.

Not to mention the two traditions of religious identity that color my perspective, I am inclined toward acknowledging the root of religious orientation in covenant codes to follow rather than creedal statements to believe. On to the text!

Matthew 10:40-42

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

⁴⁰ “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. ⁴¹ Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, ⁴² and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

In the remainder of this post, I offer a selection of other Matthean verses that connect Jesus’s instruction to righteousness, I provide two commentaries on righteousness in Matthew’s gospel, and I pull forward a few righteousness-related passages from the Hebrew Bible. Ultimately, my effort here is to remind us that Jesus and his tradition were deeply concerned with right-action over right-belief (my gloss).

Righteousness, in Text

Many readers of this newsletter first arrived here by the Amy-Jill Levine Lenten study that I’ve facilitated the past couple of years, using her text, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. If you came here by way of that asynchronous study, you’ll recall that we discussed righteousness pretty early on in our guided reading of that book.

As a helpful framing for the so-called triumphal entry in Jerusalem, we read how the gospel writers set Jesus within a call to righteousness. The ideas of triumphant, meekness, and righteousness are connected to obedience to God’s law and servanthood. Here’s a video from that series from last year. You’ll hear some about righteousness at the 4:45 mark. This is an eight minute video, and the remainder of this post is not in any way contingent on your watching this, so skip it if you’re short on time!

Righteousness as a Major Theme in Matthew

Within the gospel according to Matthew, the evangelist positions righteousness as a major theme through which we understand Jesus’s instruction—or at least the instructions placed in the mouth of Jesus by the gospel writer—to the disciples:

• But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented (Matthew 3.15).

• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled (Matthew 5.6).

• Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5.10).

• For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5.20).

What the People Smarter than Me Say: Commentary

From the Jewish Annotated New Testament (JANT, by my convention):

Matthew’s Gospel emphasizes the concepts of obedience and righteousness (see 119; 3.15; 5.10-11; 6.1, 33; 9.13; 10.41; 13.43; 21.31-32; 22.14; 23.35; 25.46). Righteousness (Gk dikaiosyne; Heb tzedakah, as in the term tzaddik, a righteous person) means, for Matthew, obedience to the divine will, often through Jesus’ interpretation of the Jewish mitzvot (“commandments,” as seen in the Sermon on the Mount, 5.10-11). Joseph is a “righteous” man in his resolve to divorce Mary quietly (1.19) and so not create a scandal. Jesus himself models this higher righteousness in insisting that John baptize him (3.15) and so submitting himself to John. Adherence to Jesus’ teachings (being “righteous”) and living a moral life ensured admission into the kingdom of heaven. As the parable of the sheep and the goats (25.31-46) makes clear, proper action in terms of care for others is mandatory (7).

The JANT is my go to resource week after week! But I also very much appreciated this doctoral thesis that connected ideas about righteousness in Matthew to ideas about righteousness in texts preserved in the Dead Sea Scroll community (Qumran community). I trust this thesis because this PhD candidate’s advisor was E.P. Sanders, a giant in NT scholarship.

Contrary to the opinion of numerous scholars, this study concludes that in the Gospel of Matthew, righteousness does not refer to the gift of god for man but rather to the demand of God upon man. Righteousness refers to right conduct based on an extremely meticulous interpretation of the law; an interpretation based on a hermeneutical principle reminiscent of the Rabbinic practice of “making a fence around Torah” (Przybylski, iii).Righteousness in the Hebrew Bible

Righteousness in the Hebrew Bible

We may identify a major theme shared by the two selected commentaries: Obedience to God’s law, deriving from Torah, referring both to the first five books of the Bible and the written law for the tradition of Israel. This is developed in further accounts in Psalms and even the prophetic tradition. This is not an exhaustive listing! Only a taste of this critically important theme:

• These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God (Genesis 6:9).

• You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live: I am the Lord (Leviticus 18:5).

• If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right’ (Deuteronomy 6:25).

• Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky (Psalm 85:11).

And this especially dramatic appeal in Isaiah 1:2-5:

² Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth,
    for the Lord has spoken:
I reared children and brought them up,
    but they have rebelled against me.
³ The ox knows its owner
    and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know;
    my people do not understand.

⁴ Woe, sinful nation,
    people laden with iniquity,
offspring who do evil,
    children who act corruptly,
who have forsaken the Lord,
    who have despised the Holy One of Israel,
    [[who are utterly estranged!]]

⁵ Why do you seek further beatings?
    Why do you continue to rebel?
The whole head is injured,
    and the whole heart faint.

Conclusion

To walk with God and to not rebel against God; to hunger and thirst for righteousness and to bless those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, it is clear to me that Jesus’s purported instruction is not merely central to Matthew’s presentation, it is a theme consistent with all the scriptures of Israel.

Love mercy, do justice, walk humbly with God. While we may disagree about doctrine or Jesus’s status as messiah or divine, a commitment to moral action and living in alignment with Torah are themes that should inform our understanding of the historical Jesus. If that is your tradition, I submit that it should inform your confessional stance as well. As a person whose background includes both Judaism and Christianity, this continuous thread that connects Torah to New Testament is affirming and instructive.