Matthew 5-7: The Sermon on the Mount (2)

A Timely Word from Bonhoeffer                                                                                                                                        or                                                                                                                                                                                  Just Who Do We Think We’re Dealing With?

To put it bluntly, Jesus’ teaching in the SoM is as famous as it is regularly rejected as being in some sense out of touch with the reality we know as ordinary human beings. Just as bluntly Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers that accusation with a statement we can best summarize as the question “Just Who Do We Think We’re Dealing With?

“What is overlooked here is the fact that the Sermon on the Mount is the word of the one who did not relate to reality as a foreigner, a reformer, a fanatic, the founder of a religion, but as the one who bore and experienced the nature of reality in his own body, who spoke out of the depth of reality as no other human being on earth ever before. The Sermon on the Mount is the word of the very one who is the lord and law of reality. The Sermon on the Mount is to be understood and interpreted as the word of the God who became human. That is the issue at stake when the question of historical action is raised, and here it must prove true that action in accord with Christ is action in accord with reality.”[1]

If Jesus speaks as if what he says here is practical guidance in living through a crisis time in the life of their people and there are no signs in the context that we are to take it as anything other than that, then we take it as that. If this teaching seems hard to relate to reality as we know it, its teacher Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God incarnate, is no stranger to the reality he teaches. He is indeed its ground, our guide to it, and the goal toward which this reality moves. If he says this teaching can be lived, it can be lived. Even if the triadic form proposed by Stassen we discussed in the last post eases our sense of the SoM’s relation to reality by correcting common mistakes in reading it, this teaching remains difficult, to say the least. But Bonhoeffer reminds us that we must always remember who it is we are dealing with here.

The Beatitudes as Those Who Survive and Thrive Israel’s Crucible Faithfully

Jesus is gathering as many Jews as will to join with his movement or way of being Israel to survive and thrive through the divine judgment coming upon the nation for their default on their mandate to be an Abrahamic people bearing the blessing of God to the world. In this conflicted situation with opposition from other Jewish groups with their different ways of being Israel and the coming clash with Rome Jesus limns out the kind of life that those faithful to Jesus can expect. In such a situation a way of comfort, ease, risk-free living is not to be expected. And indeed we do not find such a way in the Beatitudes. But despite the hardships of this way, it is the way of flourishing in a world hostile to God’s plan and purpose.

Our task as readers for whom this crisis is not ours must first read as carefully as we can to hear what the Beatitudes’ first hearer heard. And then attempt to restate that meaning in terms of our own efforts to be faithful in our time and place that do not capture or diminish the counter-cultural, counter-intuitive, even shocking character of this teaching.

I use a simple way of identifying what’s involved in living Christianly. We are a bundle of three strands which form the cord of who we are. These three strands are our passions, priorities, and practices.

-What moves or drives us to action (our passions)

-Our deepest convictions and commitments (our priorities), and

-What we do (our practices) 

Jesus addresses all three strands in the SoM. The Beatitudes are his teaching on our passions. What he says here is the “why” we do what we do; what motivates and drives us to act.  What is the “heart” from which we live?

 Mention of “heart” brings to mind worship and for a 1^st century Jew worship means temple. Therefore it can hardly be coincidental that the setting of the SoM is typologically related to the worship places of ancient Israel.[2]  The arrangement of Jesus atop the mountain, the disciples a bit lower down, and the crowds at the foot of the mountain parallels the arrangement of these worship spaces: the Outer Court where all people may gather, further in the Holy Place where the priests gather, and yet further in the Holy of Holies where God dwells and only the High Priest may enter but once a year on the Day of Atonement.

-Jesus, typologically, is in the place of authority, the place of God. His words are creative divine words (remember what Bonhoeffer said above).

-the disciples stand in the place of priests, what all Israel (Ex.19:6) and all followers of Jesus should be.

-the crowds are in the Outer Court, listening, hearing Jesus’ call for them to come forward and join those who have already embraced his way of being Israel in face of the coming crisis.

What we hear in the SoM, then, comes from the worship center of Israel’s life, here in addressing the passions, or affections,[3] and the priorities, the deep convictions about God, the world, and our lives in it that frame the way we see and respond to what we encounter (5:13-20), and the practices that express those passions and priorities (5:21-7:6).

So let’s get started.

The First Beatitude

The “poor in spirit” has suffered from a plethora of diverging interpretations. So when Jesus pronounces such as living a “flourishing” life it behooves us to look carefully at what he means. The Jews he addresses, as I have repeatedly said, are facing the decision that will determine the rest of their lives. They were to become in and with Jesus the Abrahamic Israel they always should have been. Yet they weren’t, wouldn’t, and indeed, couldn’t be such on their own. And only those who knew that could faithfully participate in it.

This event is prophesied in Isa.61:1-3.   

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and release to the prisoners;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;
³ to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.”

Here one filled with God’s Spirit will bring salvation and restoration to the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captive, and the mourners returning from the Babylonian exile to a razed temple and the walls of the city broken down. In a word, the “poor in spirit.” Those who know they are beyond the help of any but one. That help did not come for some centuries down the road. Meanwhile the walls of the city were repaired, though it was ruled by foreign overlords. The temple was rebuilt but it a shabby replica of Solomon’s great temple. And the presence, the glory, of God never returned to it. At least not until the 1^st century a.d., so claimed one Jesus of Nazareth. His assertion of the near presence of God’s kingdom catalyzed the fulfillment of this prophecy. “Poor in spirit,” then, means a poor, downtrodden, broken people who had no help for themselves in this regard.

That being the case, we today must hear that message in our context. What, as North American Christians, can this mean for us. Again, we don’t face the specific crisis and its dynamics those first readers faced. But we can ask ourselves some questions.

-as heirs of these 1^st century followers of Jesus we don’t stand in their shoes in an identical situation but we stand in the historical movement they initiated through Jesus, the Spirit-filled one of Isa.61. That history has had different seasons and dynamics through the centuries. For the first three hundred years Jesus followers pretty much followed his lead embracing their weak and poor social location as the context of their discipleship. That all changed in the 4^th century when the Emperor Constantine set in motion a process that led to Christianity being transformed from an outlawed Jewish sect to the official religion of the empire. For 1500 years Christian faith sat atop the social and political heap, the right hand of political power, sometimes that power itself. This is called Christendom. That all changed, or is in the process of changing, again. Now that situation of power, prominence, prestige, and prosperity has collapsed. We stand in the ruins of that arrangement. We don’t know what to do, how to do it, or even if it can be done.

The question we must ask is the one Dietrich Bonhoeffer posed after ten years of futile ecclesial struggle against Hitler’s Nazi regime. In that twelve years of hell Bonhoeffer, in my opinion, experienced the full collapse of that Christendom arrangement.[4] We are experiencing it piecemeal over a longer period of time. Because of his compressed experience Bonhoeffer is an invaluable guide for us. He wrote a piece titled “An Account at the Turn of the Year 1942–1943, more popularly known as “After Ten Years.”[5] In this text he wonders aloud about the abysmal failure of the church to cope with Nazism and asks

“Who stands firm? Only the one whose ultimate standard is not his reason, his principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue; only the one who is prepared to sacrifice all of these when, in faith and in relationship to God alone, he is called to obedient and responsible action. Such a person is the responsible one, whose life is to be nothing but a response to God’s question and call.”[6]

The great achievements of the Western world, of Christendom – “reason, principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue” – all proved insufficient. Our strengths proved weak and feeble, unable to withstand the onslaughts of the evil that overwhelmed it. Only those who eschew these strengths, become “poor in spirit,” depending on God alone, can become one who “stands firm.”

Alongside this question, its underside (so to speak), is another Bonhoeffer raises later in that essay: “Are we still of any use?”[7] Can a church so thoroughly accommodated to its culture, and those who tried to resist without support of a community of faith, still be of use to God?

Those of us in post-Christendom settings must read this first beatitude as asking us whether we too will become “poor in spirit.” Or rather be made “poor in spirit.” Only God can do this. And will. But only if we trust ourselves to him for it. Jesus did. And we see him in Matthew’s gospel self-present as “gentle and humble in heart” (11:29) and Matthew presents him as the fulfillment of Zec.9:9, the king who comes to his people humble, riding on a donkey. Not a warrior steed as befits a king but a donkey!

The Second Beatitude

Mourning is not usually thought of as a part of a flourishing life. Yet here it is. But this mourning is not sorrow over our sins, grief over loss or death, or even the state of the world. It goes back to that prophecy in Isa.61 where those who mourn over the condition of God’s people are promised comfort from the one filled with the Spirit. Continuing on in that prophecy we read (vv.3-4),

“They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
    they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
    the devastations of many generations.”

Mourners are those who are brokenhearted at the condition of God’s people. They look at it with utter realism, yet at the same time, with extravagant hope (as in the text from Isaiah just cited). Today, however, is the day of mourning. It’s come to zero hour for Israel and they are in bad shape. The vision of honesty is part of a flourishing life because it rests on the hope of God’s promise. Jesus lived this beatitude too. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Mt.23:37). Hauerwas, following Bonhoeffer, comments: “Perhaps no beatitude is more christocentric than Jesus’s commendation of those who mourn, for they are, like him, prepared to  live in the world renouncing what the world calls happiness and  even peace.”[8] Hauerwas, 99

The poor in spirit, dependent on God alone and living for him share God’s heart. With God they mourn the condition of his people. For those who live in post-Christendom in North America the condition of God’s people is worthy of deep mourning. Bonhoeffer indicted his German Christian church with these tragic words: “Our church has been fighting during these years only for its self-preservation, as if that were an end in itself. It has become incapable of bringing the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and to the world.”[9] It is hard to deny that his indictment applies with mournful aptness to the North American church as well. There is much to mourn over the condition of God’s people today as yesterday.

The Third Beatitude

“Meek” is too often identified with that with which it rhymes, weak. We think doormat, Caspar Milquetoast, or a shy, retiring introvert. But biblically the word means nothing like that.

Psa.37, which underlies this beatitude concerns this beatitude, is about repossessing the land from evildoers. I use ”land” here rather than “world” because the point at issue in Jesus’ ministry concerned which Israel should rightfully possess the land of Israel. And who rightful Israel is, as we have seen, what Jesus is all about.

Andrew Perriman notes :

“The point of the saying is not that ‘meekness’, as a general moral or spiritual quality, is a prerequisite for personal salvation. In Psalm 37 the meek are differentiated[LW1]  from the ‘wicked’, who plot against the righteous and ‘bring down the poor and needy’ (vv. 12, 14). Written on the back of these words of blessing, therefore, are words of judgment on the hypocrisy of establishment Judaism, which is why in Luke the beatitudes are matched by equivalent woes. The fate of the wicked will be destruction; they will be ‘cut off’, but ‘those who wait for the Lord shall possess the land’ (v. 9) - this is where Israel’s hope lies.”

The ”meek,” then, as opposed to the “wicked,” are righteous Israel, the Israel that focuses itself on God’s will and purpose. They “trust in the Lord, and do good” (v.3), entrust the vindication of their integrity and hopes to him (v.6), “refrain from anger and forsake wrath” (v.8). The meek set themselves against those who have perverted the practice of Israel’s faith into a bastion for injustice and oppression. At one with the poor in spirit and the mourners the meek are anything but weak. In fact, Moses, not a weak man by anyone’s reckoning, is called “very meek” in Num.12:3 (KJV). Meekness is akin to humility, the willingness to put one’s own agenda first but to follow and promote someone else’s. In this case, God’s. Jesus too lived for the sake of his Father’s will and not his own (Mt.26:39). This locates him among, indeed, at the head of the meek as well.

The Fourth Beatitude

Psa.107:2-3 locates those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” within the context of the return from exile that Jesus came to effect. Israel’s injustice and oppression so permeated the people that those (the poor in spirit, the mourners, and the meek) who stood against these things grew famished for lack of them. Only as God reasserts his rule over a rebellious people in and through Jesus will this hunger and thirst be slaked.

“Righteousness” is God’s order, the right ordering of all things to each other. This passion of God’s people completes the profile of the first half of the Beatitudes which like the Ten Commandments begins its first table of commands directed toward God:

-poor in spirit

-mourning

-meekness

-hungry and thirsty for righteousness

Faithful, Abrahamic Israel, living amid a rebellious and “unrighteous” Israel, draws its life from and shares God’s heart, however painful and costly that may be for them. And oddly and paradoxically enough, that is why their lives flourish. They share the kingdom heaven, God’s rule, even now and will live in its fullness (comfort, land, righteousness) when it is fully established. In all this Jesus is their forerunner and prototype.

The remainder of the Beatitudes direct our attention to how this Abrahamic people deal socially and politically with their conflicted minority status within the larger nation.

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ethics DBW Vol 6 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works), Fortress Press. Kindle Edition, 231.

[2] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 1492.

[3] Jonathan Edwards term for the basic dispositions that shape and direct our lives.

[4] Lee Wyatt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: What He Would Say to the North American Church, Amazon, 2018.

[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison: DBW 8 (Kindle Locations 1374-1375). Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.

[6] Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers: 1430-1433.

[7] Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers: 1639.

[8] Hauerwas, Matthew, 99.

[9] Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers: 10999-11000.

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 [LW1]