We’ve spent a long while away from the narrative in Matthew. The Easter season through Holy Trinity is often all over the place and does little to focus on the themes of the Synoptic Gospel of the year. So, because of that, it’s easy to jump into a text like the one we have this week and ignore where it falls in the context of the Gospel and why Matthew is introducing this story. So, I’d like to set that context for us today and really lean into the tension of it all. Our text today is a continuation of a long line of interactions that immediately happen after the Sermon on the Mount. To read this Gospel text today as an isolated story would miss a massive movement happening in chapters 8 and 9.