Matthew 26:1-16

The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus

 

Preparing for Jesus’ Passion

Matthew 26:1-5      The Jewish Leadership Plots to Kill Jesus

(Mk 14:1-2; Lk 22:1-2)
 
1 When Jesus had finished all that he had to say,

The comment was familiar.  Matthew had concluded his other major discourses in a similar way.  But this time, he added the word all.  Jesus’ oral teaching had come to an end.  In fact, in what remained of the narrative, Jesus would say surprisingly little.  From now on, he would teach even more eloquently by his actions.

In the four brief scenes that would follow:

  • Jesus would predict his death, clearly announcing its timing;
  • the chief priests and elders would plan his death, but get their timing wrong;
  • an unnamed woman disciple would anticipate his death, protesting her faith in both his suffering and his glory;
  • Judas would facilitate his arrest and thus set things in motion.
he said to his disciples,
2 “You know that in two days time, it will be the Passover,
and the Son of Man will be handed over and crucified.”

Until now, Jesus had not connected his death and crucifixion with the Passover.  The connection was significant.  Passover was the traditional annual Jewish feast that commemorated the Hebrew people’s liberation from the slavery and oppression of the Egyptian Empire twelve centuries before.  The Hebrew slaves had been spared from the “destroying angel” (which passed over Egypt killing all the firstborn) by having their doorposts sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed lamb eaten in a communal meal.

In shaping his narrative of Jesus’ infancy, Matthew had made the comment that Jesus would save the people from their sins [1:21].

Matthew wished to highlight that Jesus was in control of the coming events.  He would not be a helpless or unwilling victim.  He would go to death: 

  • when he decided,
  • freely, 
  • and with his eyes open.
3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled
in the courtyard of the high priest [called Caiaphas],
4 and consulted together how they might arrest Jesus by stealth
and kill him.  
5 But they said, “Not during the feast,
so there will no trouble with the people.”

The chief priests and elders were jealous of their power.  Yet, with all their sureness, they knew that they lacked credibility and authority in the eyes of the common people.  They needed Jesus dead; but, fearing the people, they needed to act by stealth.

Matthew’s use of the word assembled may not have been coincidental.  The verb “to gather/assemble”, when used as a noun, becomes the word “synagogue”.

Despite the confidence of the chief priests and elders in their power and astuteness, in fact, Jesus would be right about the timing of his death, and they would be wrong. 


Power and Fear

It is the way of the kingdoms of the world that power breeds insecurity.  In the interests of national security, worldly powers have to devote massive resources to military purposes.
 
Without genuine authority and credibility, power often needs to act by stealth.  Honesty and accountability are sacrificed on the altar of expedience.
 
In his story of Jesus’ infancy, Matthew had shown Herod, the would-be powerful king, in mortal fear of the infant Messiah[2:3].  He had highlighted: 
  • Herod’s need to resort to dishonesty to try to trick the magi,
  • Herod’s brutality in his indiscriminate murdering of the innocent children of Bethlehem.
Now, he would show Jesus, totally bereft of worldly power, calmly facing life and death.
 

Matthew 26:6-13     A Woman Anoints Jesus at Bethany

(Mk 14:3-9)
 
6 While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the leper, 

The scene changed: the chief priests and elders had assembled in the courtyard of the high priest; Jesus was in the home of a leper, a social and religious outcast.  (Matthew did not indicate whether Simon was still a leper, or had recovered, or had, indeed, been cured by Jesus; nor had Matthew introduced Simon previously.)

a woman came up to him
who had an alabaster vessel of highly valuable myrrh.  
She poured it out over his head
as he reclined at table.

The woman entered unannounced and unnamed, with no indication whether she was one of the family, a guest, an outsider, or even the hostess.

Myrrh had been one of the gifts brought to Jesus by the magi, in Matthew’s Infancy Narrative [2:11].  Myrrh was used in burial rituals (as Jesus would soon indicate).

8 When they saw what she was doing,
the disciples were indignant,
and said, “Why this waste?
9 This could have been sold
and given to the poor.”

In some ways, the disciples’ comment was not unreasonable.  They had heard Jesus consistently teach that wealth should be shared, and that the poor should have preference.  They were not, however, sensitive to the approaching drama of Jesus’ death, though they had been clearly warned.  

Here was an unrepeatable, symbolic opportunity, requiring an urgent response.  Occasions for helping the poor would be continual.

10 Jesus knew what was going on, and said to them,
“Why do you make trouble for the woman?
She has done me a good deed.  
11 You have the poor with you all the time,
but you do not have me for ever.  
12 In pouring out the myrrh over my body,
she has done this in anticipation of my burial.

Jesus saw the woman’s gesture as a symbolic anticipatory response to his approaching death.  The extravagant use of the highly valuable myrrh could be read, perhaps, as the woman’s confession of Jesus’ unique status in relation to God, a confession that he was indeed Lord.  Unlike the disciples, she could hold in tension her faith in his identity as Son of God and Messiah, together with the fact of his pending suffering and death.

Consistently, when, after his death, the women would visit the tomb of the crucified Jesus, Matthew would clearly note that their purpose was not to anoint his body – they did not bring spices or ointments to the tomb [28:1].  The anointing had already been done in anticipation.

13 I tell you, wherever in the whole world
this good news is proclaimed,
what she has just done will be told
in memory of her.” 

Jesus, and the early Church, obviously attached great importance to the woman’s gesture.  She was the first disciple to “hear” the message that Jesus had clearly given many times before – that the Son of Man would suffer and be crucified, and would then be raised “on the third day”.

Sadly, while her deed would be remembered, her name was not.  Like so many of the women disciples, she remained nameless.

Matthew 26:14-16     Judas Contracts to Betray Jesus

(Mk 14:10-11; Lk 22:3-6)
 
14 Just then, one of the twelve,
the one called Judas Iscariot,
went to the high priest
15 and said, “What will you give me,
and I will hand him over to you?”  
They ‘settled on paying him thirty silver pieces’.  
From then on,
he looked for a suitable opportunity to betray him.

On the only other occasion that Judas had been named in the narrative, he had been identified as the one who betrayed him [10:4].  

Matthew so worded the story as to attribute his motivation to a desire for money (in fact, a fairly paltry amount).  His greed stood in stark contrast to the extravagance of the woman who had just poured the highly valuable myrrh on Jesus’ head.

Matthew’s reference to the thirty silver pieces may have been his own addition.  According to Exodus, it was the amount of compensation paid for injuring another’s slave.  

If the ox gores a male or female slave,
the owner shall pay to the slave owner
thirty shekels of silver [Exodus 21:32].

Judas’s initiative would have been of considerable help to the conspirators.   Since Judas knew where Jesus stayed, he would be able to lead them to him by night – when there was no likelihood of the crowd’s knowing, and so being able to protect him. 


Judas’s Motivation

Matthew suggested greed as Judas’s reason for betraying Jesus.  His attitude expressed the deep disdain felt for Judas in the early community.  Yet, perhaps, the highlighting of Judas’s betrayal served, at the same time, to deflect attention from the denial of Peter and the desertion of Jesus by the rest of the male disciples.  (Scapegoating another is a classic way for people to evade facing their own guilt.)  Certainly, Judas’s betrayal was crucial in the timing of Jesus’ arrest and subsequent death (though, even without his cooperation, the authorities would eventually have found and arrested Jesus).  Peter’s denial and the disciples’ desertion were peripheral.  Yet, as Jesus forgave Peter and the other disciples, no doubt Jesus would just as readily have forgiven Judas.

Why had Judas lost faith in Jesus? 

  • Had Judas expected, not unlike Peter earlier in the narrative [16:22], a Jesus who would come into his glory without first suffering death and humiliation?  
  • Had the experience of the past week, when Jesus had so blatantly confronted and alienated the chief priests and elders, and dishonoured the temple as well, proved too disillusioning for Judas?
  • Or had he been disappointed by Jesus’ failure to capture the moment and to exploit the obvious support of the crowds when he entered Jerusalem on the previous Sunday? Did Judas hope that Jesus would mount a coup and, then and there, declare himself the real Messiah and political saviour of the nation?
 Matthew (and the sources on which he drew in compiling his narrative) showed no interest in such questions.
 

Next >> Matthew 26:17-30