Matthew is known for organizing his gospel around five discourses: 5-6-7, 10, 13, 18, and 23-24-25. Each discourse concludes with a formula in the form, “when Jesus had finished these sayings…”
The similarities between the big 3-chapter “bookend” discourses invite comparisons and reflection. Thus, the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5 begins with 8 beatitudes, while the last discourse in chapter 23 begins with 8 woes. The Sermon on the Mount concludes with a story about two houses, one which stands and one which is destroyed. When you look at the last discourse, you are not surprised to see the 8 woes followed by a note to Jerusalem, “your house is left to you desolate”, which certainly has the destruction of the temple in view.
But I have wondered if there isn’t another “neater” parallel in the final discourse with the two houses at the end of the sermon on the mount. And so I wonder about something that immediately follows the conclusion of the final discourse. At the beginning of chapter 26, I think Matthew puts two houses “next door” to one another in the narrative, and invites us to look inside and compare. In one house, at the palace of the High Priest in Jerusalem, the leaders consider how to take and kill Jesus, “but not at the feast.” Meanwhile in Bethany, in the house of Simon the Leper, a woman comes to anoint Jesus with precious ointment, preparing him for his burial, which as it turns out, does happen at the feast.
This is a stunning contrast, and when viewed in light of the two houses in Matthew 7, the conclusion has to be that the palace of the high priest in Jerusalem is built on sand and will not survive the coming storm of judgment, while the house built on the rock is that of Simon. A leper. What an unnamed woman did in the house of a leper will stand every storm until the end of time, everywhere the gospel is told.
Truly the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.
The Presbyteer 