Homily given at the morning Holy Communion on the Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2024

Beware of false prophets!

A straightforward statement, an unambiguous warning, repeated later in Matthew’s gospel: that false prophets will appear and lead people astray.[1]

Straightforward? Unambiguous? We need to dig a little deeper to understand what the author of this gospel is really worried about.

So, some background. In early Christianity, prophets were a distinct order in the Church, more important than even evangelists and teachers. In fact, Paul considered prophecy to be the greatest spiritual gift given by God and the role of the prophet was to reveal divine mysteries and God’s plan of salvation.

The church, however, was not as we now know it today. From New Testament accounts of people speaking in tongues, healings, prophecy and miracles, it was charismatic with little sense of anything resembling order. The Holy Spirit was at the centre of Christian life, and the Church at that time had little accommodation with official authority or responsible elders, organizational structure or formality.

In the period immediately after the Apostles, prophets continued to play an important leadership role in the church, sometimes being called high priests. They were the only ones permitted to speak freely in the liturgy, because it was understood that they were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Gradually, however, the liturgy became more and more fixed, denying that freedom and innovation brought to the liturgy by prophets; with the additional threat of false prophecy, such charismatic personalities were marginalised.

Now fast forward two or three centuries, and what emerges is a Church which is more institutionalised, with its organisation and its body of dogma, leadership retained within a hierarchical order of priests and bishops.

Matthew’s gospel was written in that liminal, in-between time: the Apostles have died and the Church is embryonic.

The writer of Matthew’s gospel was probably Jewish, writing from a Jewish perspective and with a Jewish audience in mind. The Gospel itself is Hebrew in tone; its theology has Hebraic resonances; Jewish practices are taken as read, and it draws heavily on the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). However, all is not straightforward.

This gospel is both the most Jewish and the most anti-Jewish Gospel. Just take a look at chapter 23 and its list of woes: ‘Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ It is a condemnation much more bitter here than elsewhere in the gospels.

The fact is that Matthew is writing for Jewish Christians: Jewish Christians who retain their Jewish identity and often continue attending their local synagogue well into the fourth century if not beyond.

Jewish Christians: why is it important to identify the community for which Matthew was writing as Jewish Christians. Forty years or so after the death of Jesus, the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, which as a building was a symbolic unifying factor within Judaism. With the loss of the Temple and its worship, Judaism had to re-invent itself and did this with a renewed focus on the Torah. Jewish Christians, on the other hand, sought to redefine Judaism with a focus on Jesus Christ.

All this would suggest that Matthew’s gospel is not antisemitic but a struggle between two Jewish groups as to what did and what did not count as Judaism.

And those false prophets? Could it be that the community for whom Matthew was writing were experiencing severe pressure from other Jewish groups and their leaders. Matthew was striking back with a clearly articulated view of why his form of Judaism was not only defensible but a proper way of worshipping the God of heaven and earth.

How was the Jewish Christian to know the difference between the true prophet and the false? Simply ‘by their fruits’, their lives, their faithful witness to the gospel. You and I may not be prophets, but the same test holds as a measure of our Christian discipleship. Is it genuine? Is it authentic? Is ours a lively faith, a faithful witness which will give us entry to the kingdom of heaven.