Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

Matthew should be read as a traditor, one who passes along his tradition ; as a theologian, one who thinks about what he is doing; and as a churchman, one who knows that a larger circle than his immediate friends will be influenced by his acts.

While the First Gospel certainly reflects ecclesiological concerns, it is principally the Christology of Matthew that has determined its character.

Simple decency, to say nothing of Matthew's law of love, demands that we allow our neighbors to define themselves rather than to impose a caricature on them ; and to speak today of the utter reprobation of the people of Israel is monstrous and obscene.

On the whole, the church of Matthew is characterized more by the portrait of the disciple community provided in the Sermon on the Mount than by charismatic activity itself. Nevertheless, the center for Matthew is neither charismatic action nor ethical concern, but Jesus Christ.

The temptation story in Matthew is a kind of warning. . . . If we take this warning seriously, then, we may be able to discern the features of a radically unique Messiah who acts and speaks in contradiction to the normal and the usual, who, therefore, denies in his work the best of human expectations as well as the worst of human characteristics.

The stringent demands of discipleship were not, therefore, presented by Jesus as a universally applicable ethic of heroic proportions—and still less as an esoteric avenue to salvation—but only as the preconditions for the work of the Kingdom to be done.

The transfiguration reminds us that Christian worship is on the way to the cross. . . . We rise from it to resume the way to the cross in a world full of suffering. But we have seen who Jesus really is and he has shown us that we do not need to be afraid.