Matthew 12.9-14

Now we move on to the second controversy that occurs with Jesus and the Jewish Leaders. But before we get into that, there is something we need to understand for these two passages to really make sense. It is called honor/shame.

In our culture, what are the two things we value more than anything else?

Time and Money.

We want to make the most amount of money in the least amount of time. These are the two things that is the hardest to get a westerner to give up. It makes sense then that in the church the two lowest things are usually the offering and volunteers. We get a lot of people to show up and be entertained, but people don't want to give up their money or time, because we value these more than anything else in our culture.

Time and Money were just tools in the ancient world to get what everyone wanted...honor. Everyone wanted as much honor as possible. Yet the problem was that there was only so much honor to go around. If you acquire honor, that means someone else lost it. When someone gets honor, someone else automatically gets shamed. One way to get honor in the ancient world is called the challenge and response honor game.

There are four simple phases in this game:

The first is a challenge is extended. This can be done by a theological debate, or you could invite someone to your party and seat them in the lowest seat, shaming them. The challenge could occur in a number of ways, but whatever way it happens, someone challenges someone else for honor.

The second phase is the perception of the challenge. This is when the person being challenged has to decide two things: 1. is this really a challenge (sometimes people may not be meaning to challenge someone else) and 2. is the person challenging me a worthy opponent. If someone challenges you and they aren't in your same class, you don't have to respond at all. This shames them for trying to step outside of their class.

The third phase is the response. This is when the person challenged will respond. He could do this by arguing directly with the challenger, showing him why he is wrong. He could do this by asking the challengers disciples questions, showing them to be stupid thus their leader is stupid.

The last phase is the evaluation of the public. After the challenge, perception of the challenge, and the response occurs. The crowd decides who receives the honor and who receives the shame in the situation. It kind of reminds me of this:

I Love This!!!! In high school we had things like this going on all the time, and the crowd would determine who won by laughing and cheering the loudest for the person who had the best yo momma joke.

Now after talking about all of this, Let's hop into the text and try to recognize the challenge and response honor game in our passage.


⁹ Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, ¹⁰ and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
 ¹¹ He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
 ¹³ Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. ¹⁴ But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.


Wow. Do you not recognize the game all over this passage????!!!!!


The Jewish leaders challenged Jesus by placing a man with a shriveled hand in front of him. They knew that it was against their oral law (look at yesterday's post) to try to fix some physical ailment if it wasn't deathly. So if someone jumped off of a building and cracked their head open and broke their leg. You could path up the head because that could lead to death, but you had to leave the broken leg alone, because that consists as work on the Sabbath. 


So a challenge went out, and Jesus responds by making a "how much more" argument. This argument was a standard Jewish argument. It works basically like this, "if your oral tradition says its ok to rescue a sheep from a pit that it fell into on the sabbath, how much more important is a human being than a sheep?! Since they are, then how much more appropriate is it for us to meet the need of a person over an animal?!


Wow!!!!


So not only does Jesus totally win at the challenge and response game, he even heals the guys hand right in front of them all. 


And then we see, for the first time, what the Pharisees try to do to get back their honor. This is the thing with the ancient world, if you lost your honor, you would do ANYTHING to get it back. They recognize that they keep losing at the challenge response game. So they figured, if we kill the guy that is taking our honor, we will get it back from him, especially if it is the most shameful kind of death possible, perhaps a cross. 


And this is what they started to plan. 


You see, Jesus, by meeting the needs of people, by showing honor to the shameful, encountered conflict. And that conflict is what got him killed.


When we live the kind of life Jesus did, we will rub people the wrong way.


Is this something you are willing to sacrifice?