This article was first published in Jan 2009

In my reading so far I’ve claimed that Matthew has set up a formidable case to his first Jewish readers for Jesus’ credentials as the Messiah. I’ve also claimed that he leads those readers into unfamiliar territory, a path between extremes: Jewish religion on one hand (with the Pharisees and Sadducees and their moral oppression) and Herod on the other (with his Roman collaboration and military oppression). Here in 8:1 – 16:12 we follow that path over the crest of the mountain of Jesus’ sermon and see a narrative vista unfurl into the distance that continues to confound and subvert. The fulfilment of the Law strolls down into the story-valley below as the character of the Galilean rebel.

Last night Barack Obama was inaugurated as the president of the United States, hailed as the first black leader of the free world. It was an historic moment; the dreams of activists like Martin Luther King jr became real on a balcony on Capitol Hill. But really, calling Barack Obama a ‘black’ president is somewhat misleading. His father was a black Kenyan, his mother a white American. He is of ‘dual heritage’, neither white nor black (or both black and white). Why then is Barack Obama described as ‘black’ the world over? He could just as easily be called ‘another white president’.

In first century Palestine, religion divided Jew and ‘gentile’ (non-Jew) as ‘black’ and ‘white’ has historically divided America. Those Jews with political power (like Herod and the Temple-based Sadducees) were chastised by the Pharisees for their involvement with gentile Roman rulers. To associate with a gentile was to become ‘unclean’.

Jesus’ first encounter down the mountain is a man with leprosy (8:1–4). As unclean as they come, a leper was literally an ‘untouchable’. Yet Jesus flouted all convention by touching this man, healing him. Immediately after in 8:5–13 Jesus meets a Roman centurion. As a gentile and a commander of foreign oppression this man is equally repulsive to the Jewish mind. But Jesus heals his servant. Both ‘unclean’ men show faith and are included in the kingdom of heaven.

In the episode with the centurion Jesus has a little outburst about the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (8:10–12). This is playing on an expectation that when Yahweh established Israel as the new dominant power all good Jews would come to Jerusalem from the east and the west and take their place as rulers while the surrounding nations arrived to pay homage as subjects of the kingdom. Jesus’ words are explosive, however. He’s just praised a gentile for having greater faith than he has found in all Israel. Could the people from the east and the west be gentiles and those subjects thrown outside into a living hell be Jews?

This theme continues throughout the following chapters. The only sign given will be that of Jonah: ‘as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ (12:40, see also 16:4). (And as Jonah showed his true colours with the gentile Ninevites, so those who would keep the gentiles excluded will be exposed by Ninevah's - i.e. the gentiles - repentance).

Most notably, Jesus feeds five thousand and twelve baskets of crumbs are collected. Every one of Matthew’s readers knew the meaning of the number twelve: the tribes of Israel; this symbolised the gathering in of the entire Jewish people. But then Jesus moves to the gentile region of Tyre and Sidon and feeds four thousand with seven baskets left over. Seven, everyone knew as well. The number of creation, of the whole world, all humanity. The gathering of the gentiles is just as important to Jesus.

And so we end our section of readings with Jesus banging his head in despair that the disciples do not understand the significance of the twelve baskets and the seven baskets (16:9–10). The yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees will work its poisonous segregation through the doughy Jewish psyche. But Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of heaven crosses racial and religious boundaries; it is a gospel for the whole world.

I honestly believe that the reading of Matthew’s gospel would have been a shocking experience for his first Jewish readers. Having built Jesus up as a credible Messiah and the fulfilment of Moses’ Law, Matthew spins his readers till they are dizzy. Confidence in being part of the family – of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – counts for nothing according to this teaching. Those true to the kingdom of heaven will be everywhere, in and amongst the weeds; not until the final harvest will the reckoning come (13:30). A new 'humanity' is the goal of this kingdom.

With British and American slavery gone, US segregation ended and South African apartheid abolished it is easy to believe that our racist days are behind us, especially with a Son of Kenya in the White House. But Barack’s black-ness causes me some concern. As only in a Jewish world would anything not-Jewish be ‘gentile’, so only in a ‘white’ world would anything not-quite-white be called ‘black’.

Matthew’s story of Jesus is opening up for us a world in which ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew’ become irrelevant. I’m tired of living the lie of a ‘white’ man. I’m a peachy pinkish hue. And a human desperate for a kingdom of heaven.