Commentary  Matthew 6:24–34 can be understood as an interweaving of commands against anxiety and materialism with commands to believe that God will meet one’s material needs. Given the recurring theme of daily sustenance throughout all of this chapter of Matthew (6:8b, 11, 25, 31) one easily recalls the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us today our daily bread” (v.11) – but is there a particular context for Matthew’s community which heightens even the daily dependence upon God? The majority of scholars places Matthew’s community in the period after the destruction of Jerusalem/the Temple when rabbinic Judaism was seeking to assert it leadership upon the standard of orthodoxy. What is less clear is the degree to which this emerging Judaic orthodoxy considered the nascent Christianity as separatist and heretics (cf. Birkath ha-Minim). Assuming the local synagogue was hostile to the Matthew’s community, that would imply a separation from the community within which the Jewish-Christians has lived – socially and economically. To suddenly be separated (if that was what happened) then the anxiety levels about “daily bread” would have been heightened. Perhaps that lays in the background of the five-fold use of merimnaō (worry, be anxious) in our passage. Continue reading →