The Bible's four Gospels include unique perspectives on the days leading to Jesus' resurrection, each one revealing different facets of Holy Week. In his new book, "The Final Days: A Lenten Journey through the Gospels," the Rev. Matt Rawle invites us to explore the themes of justice, poverty, freedom and love woven throughout the sacred stories of Jesus' final week on earth.
Guest: Rev. Matt Rawle
- Rawle is pastor at Asbury United Methodist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana.
- You can learn more about and/or purchase "The Final Days: A Lenten Journey through the Gospels" at Cokesbury.com.
- Discover other books written by Rawle, including "The Grace of Les Miserables," "The Redemption of Scrooge" and "The Heart that Grew Three Sizes: Finding Faith in the story of the Grinch."
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This episode posted on Jan. 17, 2025.
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Transcript
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Prologue
The Bible's four gospels include unique perspectives on the days leading to Jesus resurrection, each one revealing different facets of Holy Week. In his new book, “The Final Days: A Lenten Journey through the Gospels,” the Reverend Matt Rawle invites us to explore the themes of justice, poverty, freedom, and love, woven throughout the sacred stories of Jesus' final week on Earth.
Crystal Caviness, host: Matt, welcome to "Get Your Spirit in Shape."
Rev. Matt Rawle, guest: Hey, thanks Crystal. Thanks for having me again.
Crystal: I know you are a frequent flyer on "Get Your Spirit in Shape" and we love that. And it's just because I commented last year when you were here about you being such a prolific author and you dismissed that, but it's proven to be true. Here we are yet again talking about
Matt: A new book.That's right.
Crystal: Yes, that's right. So before we jump into that though, can you just give us a brief overview of who you are, what you do, all the things?
Matt: Yeah, yeah. So I'm currently the lead pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana, a very proud New Orleans native. And Christie and I have four children. One of them is a senior in high school, which is hard to believe. So we've been visiting college campuses and all that fun senior year stuff. And we're currently recording in the Advent season. So it's the hustle and bustle of welcoming Jesus into the world. So we are never bored, my friend. We are never bored.
Crystal: I was going to mention that as well, Matt, that yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent and we're actually going to talk about Lent. So we're in one season and we're going to just jump into another season of the church. But thank you for taking the time because it is such a busy church season, especially for church leaders. So thank you for spending some time with us.
Matt: Absolutely.
Crystal: We're going to talk about your new book, which is called , "The Final Days, A Lenten Journey through the Gospels." And that word "through" is important to this study. I will tell you there were so many aha moments for me just in the introduction. I was just stopping and underlining things. And one of the first things that caught me was you wrote that this book is a combination of years of thought, exploration and relentless pursuit of theological truth. And because I know you and I know your ministry and you have such unique and thoughtful presentations of things in the Bible and the church that really caught my eye that this is something that you've been relentlessly pursuing for years. Tell me about that.
Matt: Yeah, and thank you. That's really kind of you to say. At Asbury here, we have three Bible studies a week, Sunday night we do Christian Believer. Monday night I do an online Jesus in the Gospels. And then Wednesday we have some kind of book study and we recently did the widening of God's mercy, like a post general conference, who is the United Methodist Church and what are we to do about that and how are we to practice our faith and lift things out? So yeah, there's a constant pursuit of mine of looking through scripture. And every time I enter into and I say enter into literally I enter into scripture, I learned something new every time. I've never been bored chasing these rabbits of these details of scripture. And this particular book really started back in high school or the idea of it back in high school as my junior year of high school.
My friends were praying at the flagpole on Wednesday mornings and I was with them and it was lovely. But my junior year I had a conflict. I was with another organization, it was Kiwanis, so it's Key Club for high school. And so I couldn't meet with them at the flagpole, and I found out that they started praying for my soul because I was not praying with them. And I was like, wait a minute, I've been going to church since I was baptized as an infant, as a good United Methodist infant one month after I was born and never stopped going, why are you praying for my soul? Well, I wasn't worshiping their Jesus in their way. So I got back at them by reading scripture for myself, like what a vengeful way to repay someone. But it was junior year, holy week, I read the gospel of Mark and I got to Jesus standing before CAAs.
And in Mark's gospel, Caiaphas says, I charge you under oath. Are you the Messiah, the Son of God? And in Mark's gospel, Jesus says, yes I am. And you'll see the son of man sitting at the right hand of God and coming in the clouds. I was like, Hmm, yes I am. That's pretty definitive. That's a definitive answer. I knew enough to know that Matthew, Mark and Luke are relatively similar. So I looked up the same passage in Matthew and I charge you, I'll put you under oath. Are you the Messiah, the Son of God? And in Matthew, Jesus says, you say that I am, but I say to you, you'll see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of God and coming in the clouds. I'm like, wait a minute. That's not the same answer. That's a different answer. So I looked it up in Luke.
And in Luke it's slightly different. I mean it's really similar, but there's no coming in the clouds imagery in Luke because that's from Daniel. And Luke doesn't seem to be particularly concerned with Daniel as an author to the Gentiles. And then I thought to myself, do I dare look this up? In John's gospel, I knew that John's gospels all together different. And sure enough, in John's gospel, Jesus and Caiaphas never speak, or at least it's not recorded that they speak. So I had this moment as a high school junior saying, why did no one ever tell me this?
Whoever they is, are they keeping this from me? Did I just stumble upon a secret? I wasn't concerned, but I was just intrigued that these stories are quite different. And that started me. And really part of my calling in ministry I think, is to dive into the beauty and the nuance and the tensions that we find in scripture because I think we do a disservice to scripture when we see it as one unequivocal story, like a novel when it is a library of thousands of years of beautiful thought and sometimes horrific thought and some tensions that we have to work out. And in this particular book, using the season of Lent as a means of diving just into the passion, we're just going to study the passion in this book, these last few days of Jesus's earthly ministry and why Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John all tell the story in slightly different ways and why that's beautiful and why it's important. So yeah, in introduction from the beginning I'm like, Hey, this is a really long work. I've been working on this at least in my head for most of my life. So I'm really super proud of this particular work because I think I do. I think it highlights some really important things and what the cross means at the end of the day.
Crystal: There were a couple of things that really struck me, well there were a lot of things that struck me, but one is that you wrote that differences are not contradictions, but rather complimentary visions. And it's about embracing the uncertainties, which feels, I mean, I was raised in The United Methodist Church, I think I was taught, or at least I was, maybe it wasn't overt, but the implication is to be very steadfast in what you believe.
Matt: Oh, sure.
Crystal: But as you wrote this book or as I read the book, what I'm hearing is yeah, there are contradictions and that's okay. You can embrace that. That feels a little radical.
Matt: Yeah, and I do, I think we do a disservice to scripture when we either ignore, because there are contradictions in scripture, and that's okay. When you're dealing with a library from different traditions and different stories and different authors, there are going to be different pictures of God. For folks who say there are no contradictions or tensions in the Bible, that means they haven't read it. There are two different folks who killed Goliath. Noah's Ark lands on dry land more than once, and it's not that the ark landed on dry land more than once. It's that in that story is more than one tradition being preserved. I mean, we talked about it in our Bible study on Sunday, just this past week, that if, let's say there's one church that does a worship service the first Sunday of Advent, and they call it Hanging of the Greens, and there's another church that the act of decorating the sanctuary before the season of advent is called hanging of the greens.
So let's say these two congregations merge. Well, how are you defining hanging of the greens? It would be pastorally effective to preserve both of those histories and both of those traditions together in one community of faith. We see this all the time in scripture. Now, I will say that the gospels, I don't find that the passion accounts contradictory, even though there are contradictions in scripture and we have to wrestle with those and understand why they are the way they are, and we don't dismiss these things or somehow synthesize them through lots of hoops contrived. But in the gospels, they are complimentary stories. So for example, one of the things that I learned, I learned a lot about while writing the story is what happens at the Last Supper? So in a worship setting, in the liturgy, we say, for example, after dinner, he took the cup, he gave thanks to God, he poured it out, gave it to the disciples and said, drink from this all of you.
This is the cup of the new covenant which is poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins, do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me Liturgically, that is beautiful and poignant and on point that is also an amalgamation of Matthew, mark, and Luke altogether in one phrase. It's important in the worship setting. That's fine, and that makes tons of sense. As we look at the Bible and as we're studying the Bible, what does Matthew mean to say? What does Luke mean to say about Jesus? It's important to recognize that at the last Supper for Matthew, it says, this is the blood of the covenant for the forgiveness of sins. So in Matthew's Gospel and that language, that atonement language is unique to Matthew because Matthew is very concerned about our relationship with God being righteously fulfilled. That is Matthew's goal.
That is part of Matthew's goal. In Luke, the language is different. In Luke, there are two cups of wine. We don't have time to get into that, but there are two cups. But this is the cup that says every time you drink of it, this is the cup of the new covenant. So the language of new covenant is in Luke, and it says, this is the cup of the new covenant. Do this in a remembrance of me. So this idea of remembrance is unique to Luke. So whereas Matthew's goal in this moment is to recognize that there is atonement in the blood, and this cup is a reminder of our connection to God in Luke's gospel, it is much more focused about the community being reconciled with each other. So a simplified version of this is Matthew's gospel has Jesus concerned with the vertical relationship, and in Luke's gospel, Matthew's concerned with the horizontal relationship of the community, and you put them together and that's the cross.
If I were leading a youth ministry discussion, what I would say is that you have the horizontal and the vertical in Matthew and Luke, and you put them together not as contradictions, but you put them together and there you have the cross. But with that said, it's important to recognize that Luke has his own story that he's telling, and Matthew has his own story that he's telling. So in other words, if you lean into the importance of the atonement as being a driving force of your faith in your tradition, amen. If you lean into the reconciled community together as being a driving force and a movement of your faith tradition, so both of them are there and both of them can be quite beautiful. We get into really silly arguments when we say like, oh, you focus too much on the atonement, and someone says, well, you focus too much on building your own community and it's love of God and neighbor. Those two things come together when we begin to put these gospels together. So it's beautiful, it's complimentary, and it can give us a really full picture of who Jesus was and what these gospel authors are encouraging us to see in that story.
Crystal: And one of the points that you make is that the gospel accounts really do speak to, as you just said, different personalities. Even like how I would read or what might be important to me, and I never considered that as a reason. We have the different accounts. I thought that was really interesting too, and you bring up something that this personality typing by animal that I also never heard of and thought that was, and now I have to go find out what my animal is.
Matt: I tell you, man, there's few, and I'll get to this at the end when we talk about how I get my soul in shape, but there's almost no more fantastic practical tool than be dolphin, owl, fox. I might've said beaver, dolphin, owl, fox in the book, and I've recently changed that to be dolphin owl, like honeybee worker bee be dolphin owl fox. I do this almost every time I speak to a group one to read the room and to recognize there's diversity in the room, even if you don't think there's diversity in the room. And when you're working with people, it's really important to know what animal you are and also what animals you're working with. What area of the zoo do I find myself in today? And it's also super memorable. You have things like Myers-Briggs and you have Enneagram, and you have all these, when you have the four animal types, it's a really quick, easy go-to to be super effective in working with the people around you. For example, my admin assistant, who's right outside of my door, who can probably hear every word that I'm saying is a worker bee. She needs a to-do list and a detailed list, number one, number two, number three, I am not to get into the weeds of this, but I'm a foxy owl and that has nothing to do with my amazing hair. It has everything to do with the fact that I look at the big picture and I am very comfortable with improvising.
Improvisation is not a chore for me. It gives some folks great anxiety. So I have learned that if I send an email to Casey, my admin and say something like, Hey, I'd love to have a fellowship dinner in either two or three weeks for either young adults or youth, and let's have Mediterranean or Italian. She's going to that To her is anxiety producing, right? Well, is it young adults or youth? Is it two weeks or three weeks? Is it Italian or Mediterranean? Give you some specifics. And I think as an owl, I think I've communicated everything I need to right? Figure it out. We're going to have a fellowship dinner for some folks and pick some kind of flavor and tension builds. When we do these things, we don't recognize it because Casey's angry and she says, I haven't been clear, and I think I've been super clear Anyway, yeah, so the gospel author, I'm not saying it's a one-to-one like Matthew as a worker bee and Luke is a fox or whatever, but it is important.
One thing we tend to forget and discount is we are human beings. This gospel that we have inherited, like for example, the gospel that we have inherited is unique. It is uniquely read and interpreted. It's also uniquely shared within community. So for example, when Paul in one Corinthians says, I'm passing on what I inherited to you. Jesus took the cup of the new covenant, and this is do this as often as you drink it and remembrance of me. That's what he tells the Corinthians. Well, that my friend is the tradition that Luke writes about. Paul did not say the blood of the covenant is poured out for you and for for the forgiveness of sins. In other words, Paul and Matthew's tradition is distinct from each other. Either Matthew was unfamiliar with Paul's ministry or chose to ignore it or what have you. But Paul and Luke, and that makes sense because Paul, Luke is writing to Gentiles and Paul is involved in the Gentile church. It's fascinating to me that when Paul says, this is the Lord's supper, this is what I've inherited to you. It's not Matthew's version, which is just fascinating and fantastic.
Crystal: And also is so accessible.
Matt: Yeah.
Crystal: It's so accessible because there's going to be something there for all of us.
Matt: Yes, of course. Again, that is the beauty of paying attention to the nuance of scripture and really diving into it is that you, at least for me, you begin to see just how expansive and mind stretching God's grace is what for me, the more and more I study scripture, the wider I see God's mercy becoming, and that for me defies category. Well, do you read it traditionally? Do you read it progressively? Do you I read it expansively. I don't know what category that's supposed to fit in of just how wide God's mercy is when we read these stories and how nuanced and beautiful and that it is okay that Matthew might not have been familiar with Paul's ministry. That's okay. It's not univocal. There are different perspectives, and those different perspectives can be beautiful if we allow the spirit to move within us to see them as beautiful.
Right now, we're going to take a break from talking with Matt about his new book to share information from Cokesbury about his new book. This Lent, pause to reflect on the profound themes of justice, poverty, freedom, and love. Through the timeless stories from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each offers a distinct lens on Jesus' final week in Jerusalem, from his triumphant entry into the city to his suffering and humiliation on the cross, and to the joyful hope of the empty tomb on Sunday morning. In "The Final Days," Matt Rawle's latest book with study components, he shows that these different narratives don't contradict each other. Instead, they enrich our understanding and reveal a diverse and complimentary picture of God's work in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. Order your copy of "The Final Days" from Cokesbury.com and begin your transformative Lenten journey to discover hope, purpose and love unlike any other. Now, back to our conversation with Matt.
Crystal: I have the privilege of getting to read a lot of different books in this role and just so much rich information out there. But there was one line, Matt, in the entire book that I've been talking about for weeks to my friends. And it just has turned my faith on its head. And that was, I know, right?
Matt: Okay. The table of contents was amazing. Yeah, no.
Crystal: And it was in the introduction,
Matt: The dedication page. Yes,
Crystal: Yes. And you said, I felt a calling to become the answer to the prayers I was offering. And when I read that, I just started thinking about how I might very well be an answer to the prayer and how that makes me feel more like a partner with God's work, much more active than passively. Now, I know this is not talking necessarily about the four gospels and how we're discussing them through Lent, but it does definitely, part of the goal of this book was to expand how I read scripture and expand my faith. And I'll tell you that one line really did that for me.
Matt: Well, amen. Yeah, and that's the thing, because again, when I was reading this on my own and I was saying to myself, why did no one tell me this? Well, maybe that's my job to tell others. And this part, not the whole, but a big part of why I entered into ministry at all is because here I am as a teenager saying, why did no one tell me this? Well, there's a solution to that, is to enter into ministry and become a pastor and tell others what I've discovered, and I talk a lot about this to my kids. When you don't see someone being kind, that means it's your job to be that person. When you don't see hope, then be the hope in the situation. When people aren't lamenting appropriately, then don't be afraid to shed tears. Be the lament. So yeah, be the answer.
And that's rooted in, again, my friends, I say this tongue in cheek, but my friends would be at the flagpole praying for a wheelchair ramp while I was at Key Club actually designing it. These things are not mutually exclusive here, and you start praying for my soul. And that to me just really threw me out of alignment. Like, no, I'm building the wheelchair ramp you're praying for. And then that of course, that then set me on a trajectory to be an answer to the prayer of what I needed. Father, why is no one telling me how beautiful and nuanced these stories are? Oh, this might be my calling to do just that. What might it look like for us to be the answer to our own prayers, in a way? And I know that's not a hundred percent the case, but what a beautiful thought is, and Rachel Billups and I talk a lot about this with the Hub for Innovation, is what's missing? What's out there that isn't happening? Well, maybe that is your calling to do just that, right? That is the root of your curiosity, and you're being called to provide what you see that which is missing, right? So yeah, no, I'm thankful that was a helpful line to you.
Crystal: Absolutely. And so how can we use this period of Lent? And I want you to share the definition that you give for Lent that you have in the book, but how do we use this period of Lent to read the gospels in this expansive way and expand our faith? How can we use it so that when we get to Easter, we have been somehow transformed? There's a tall order for you.
Matt: Yeah, that's a big question, Crystal. Thanks. So Lent, much like Advent Lent is a time of preparation. In Advent, we get ready to welcome Christ into our life. Season of Lent is the time to prepare ourselves for resurrection to be realized in our life because resurrection on the surface doesn't make sense and neither does grace and neither does the last shall be first. The kingdom of God doesn't really make sense in terms of rational thought. Lent is the time to prepare for that. And I think it's really helpful to, number one, slow down and stay in the lane. And I talk to young preachers a lot. Sometimes we tend to combine the gospels to make the point we're trying to make. And again, I think that does a disservice to the stories that they're telling, like don't take a little bit of John and then a little bit of Matthew to make your point. I'm not saying that's cheating, but that's not really the intention here. So let's slow down, let's stay in the lane. What is the story that Matthew is telling? What is the story that Mark is telling, right? We have four gospels for a reason. So these, in the season of land, it's really helpful to slow down and read these.
Crystal: So really kind of the last question I have for you, Matt, is I spent a lot of time talking about what's you read in the introduction, but then there was also this really jewel in the epilogue. I got to tell you, when you just kind of came in and reminded us that it really is about resurrection and how this mini commentary on Mary Magdalene, I love that.
Matt: Yes.
Crystal: I'll tell you, my 20-year-old nephew said to me yesterday, wouldn't it be better if we wore necklaces that were like a cave with a stone rolled to the side? Wouldn't that be better if we wore necklaces with that instead of the cross?
Matt: Yeah, sure.
Crystal: I'm like, that tracks. So just in real quickly, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that. That also was really impactful to me that we do, I mean, it's a Lenton study. It's so rich, and it really, for me anyway, it changed the way that I read that whole story through these different lenses.
Matt: Yeah. Well, I spent a lot of time in the book talking about the differences of the gospels, but one thing that they all agree on is Mary Magdalene was there, and that's important because there's such disagreement in the passion accounts of who said what and what happened and when and what day. But for them to all agree that Mary was at the tomb, that should communicate something to us, that the first evangelist was a woman. God entrusted the communication of the risen Lord to someone who at the time was considered to be property and considered to have a very low status in the world. And we should not forget that the story of resurrection, the announcement of this is given to this Mary figure who is very close to Jesus, and she is the one, and it was even received as an idle tale by the other disciples, and only unique in Luke, was it an idle tale, but also in Luke, he emphasizes women's role in the movement.
So this idea that at one time there was only one evangelist, the church was a person of one, or the resurrected body was a person of one, and it was Mary. And maybe what these gospels ultimately are pointing to in terms of what it looks like to be a disciple, we have James and John and Andrew and Peter and all of these guys that never quite get it. And then there's Mary at the end of the story. So maybe all of these gospels are pointing to, if you want to be a disciple, look to Mary at the end of the story. And I think that's a powerful reminder of our role in announcing the risen Lord, is to look to Mary as the model of discipleship.
Crystal: Yeah, I thought that was very, just very poignant and also just a great reminder to all of us. And also wondered if it was foreshadowing the next book.
Matt: Uhh, no. Okay.
Crystal: Alright. I just had to ask.
Matt: There are a couple of ideas that are being tossed around at this stage of, there may be a stewardship for tomorrow kind of idea. There may also be a book called Think Twice, which dives a little more into the Old Testament tensions and how we are to make sense of that. But no, currently I'm not writing a book on Mary Magdalene, but that's not a bad idea. That is not bad. You heard it here first. Friends, you heard it here first.
Crystal: I love that. As we finish up today, Matt, I do want to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests on "Get Your Spirit in Shape," and that's how do you keep your own spirit shape?
Matt: Yeah, so I'm super proud of myself. I set an automation to my phone. If you have an iPhone, there's a little deal where you can set automations, like when you arrive at home, it texts your friend that you're there or whatever. So I have set my phone to text me every day at Sunset, and the text said, what was a blessing today? So every day it causes, and I get surprised every day, just the kind of world I live in. I'm like, oh, I got a text who texts me? Oh, I did. I text myself. It always surprises me because Sunset is at a different time every day that it automatically causes me to stop and to ponder and to consider what was a blessing. Today, I do think it's helpful, even at midnight, even in the darkest of time, is there something, is there some way we can remember hope? Is there something over which to be thankful for? It may be small, it may be hard to see, but at least every day when the sun sets, I'm reminded to think of a blessing of the previous day, and that's just been for me in my own soul, that's just been really, really helpful.
Crystal: That's a great practice and a great use of technology. So well done there.
Matt: There it is. Yeah.
Crystal: Well, Matt, thank you so much for being a guest. We'll definitely link to on the episode page how anybody that wants to get the book can get it. There are a lot of things, a leader's guide, there's all kinds, all the accessory pieces, so it's ready to go.
Matt: Crystal, so good to be with you.
Epilogue
That was the Reverend Matt Rawle discussing his new book, “The Final Days: A Lenten Journey through the Gospels.” To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you'll find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for "Get Your Spirit in Shape" listeners: gysis@umcom.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a "Get Your Spirit in Shape" listener. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
We thank today's podcast sponsors, Cokesbury and UMHEF, who shares this final message: Unsure how you're going to pay for college or an advanced degree? Every year, the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation awards more than $2 million in scholarships to students attending United Methodist- related colleges, universities, and seminaries. Learn more and apply today at UMHEF.org.
