Commentators such as Davies and Allison note that Matthew tells this story in a kind of mirror. In the first half Jesus is the one acting: he enters, sees, touches, and the fever leaves. In the second half the woman is the one acting: she rises and serves. At the end...
Two weeks ago we watched Jesus stretch out his hand and touch a leper (Matthew 8:3). Now, at the other end of the same day, he touches again. Some traditions of that time frowned on a rabbi touching a woman, and others avoided contact with the feverish altogether....
Matthew wants us to feel the length of this day. It began on a hillside with the Sermon on the Mount, continued with a leper kneeling in the road and a Roman centurion stopping Jesus in the street of Capernaum, and now the sun is going down. Mark adds that it was the...
Step back and see the whole passage as one unit. Jesus is the King who sets the table and writes the guest list. He praises the faith of an outsider, promises a feast for the nations, warns the presumptuous insider, and then throws the door wide open with a word. The...
The same sentence that opens the door to the outsider sounds a blaring warning to the insider. It would be unfaithful to stop at the good news, because Jesus did not stop there. “The sons of the kingdom” is a phrase for those who assumed the kingdom was...
