Christmas with St Matthew 8

16.
then we were so slow to understand – afraid even when we forgot bread, as though the last two miracle feasts weren’t enough. Were we really any better than the Pharisees with their demands for a sign? We had all the signs we needed, yet didn’t quite get it. He had come to serve, not to trample. He had come to die, the bread of life, filled with the new yeast of heaven, ready, waiting to be broken.

17.
Simon, James and John only vaguely understood that day on the mountain, still thinking they could contain and harness all that glory, reeling at the thought that He whom they had seen in all His splendor should hand Himself over to the Romans and die. Those of us left behind that day didn’t get it either, struggling with demons that didn’t submit to us, caught up in theological doubts and political questions. Even a curly question about tax couldn’t defeat Him. “Just go to the sea,” He told Peter, “and catch a fish with your tax and mine in his mouth.” It made no sense that power and surrender should go hand in hand with Him. Yet who could deny that power? And no-one could deny His face set like flint for death.

18.
Old rivalries died hard. Just like Judah, Benjamin and Levi used to vie for greatness (the other tribes already dead to us), now we also vied for top spot. And though we were no longer what we once were, we all still carried something of the strain. Did I catch something in His eye the time He said, “If your brother continues to sin, treat him like you would a Gentile or a tax collector”? But I knew only too well how He treated tax collectors. He had sat at table with me to eat only moments after I had left my counting tables. And if that was how He treated tax collectors, then what about Gentiles? Where was all our greatness then? No greatness but to come to Him needy, like a like child.