Matthew 5-7: The Sermon on the Mount (5)
The Fourteen
Triads: Practices
The great barrier
to taking the SoM seriously is, as we observed earlier, their seeming lack of
contact with our daily reality. We noted the various attempts to account for
this each of which ended up treating them as anything but what on the face of
it they appear to be. That is, practical instruction for Jesus’ hearers about
living faithfully through the crisis of that time, God’s coming to judge his
people for their default on the very reason for which he brought them into
being.
I introduced Glenn
Stassen’s way of resolving this seeming unreality or impracticality by treating
Jesus’s teaching as triadic rather than dyadic, that is having three elements
rather than just two. Instead of traditional teaching – Jesus’ prescription
Stassen believes they consist of traditional teaching – vicious cycle – Jesus’
prescription. This means the parts that seem the most difficult and remote from
reality to us are not what Jesus says we ought to be doing but rather vicious
cycles we need to avoid! Jesus’ prescription for us begins with the imperatives
following the vicious cycle.
This way of
reading the SoM doesn’t necessarily make it any easier but it does make it
practicable. It makes it possible to read it as the practical guidance it was
intended to be. So that’s the way we’ll read it and see where it goes.
This section of
the sermon introduces us to the practices that enable God’s people to not only
survive but also thrive during the tumultuous upheaval they must endure. The
Beatitudes give us the passions that drive us. The section we just considered
gives us the priorities that direct and shape our lives. And now we get the
practices that express those priorities driven by the passions that move us.
The Six Antitheses (5:21-48)
Just calling these
statements antitheses (as is usually done) locks us into to reading them as
having two elements: the “You have heard that it was said . . .” and the “But I
say to you . . .” But as we just saw, this gets us off on wrong foot
altogether.
These six
statements, interestingly enough in light of Jesus immediately preceding
comments on keeping the commandments, follow the order of last five of the Ten
Commandments (those dealing with our relations to others:
-murder (6th
commandment),
-adultery (7th
commandment),
-divorce
(linked to the 8th commandment in Dt.23),
-false oaths (9th
commandment), and
-a statement on
vengeance, related to the 10th commandment.[1]
This can hardly be
coincidental. Jesus is exegeting the law in light of the reality of his
presence and the crisis and possibilities that he presents.
Murder (5:21-26)
Here’s what we said about this
first teaching earlier:
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You
shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 But
I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable
to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be
liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the
hell of fire. 23 So when you are offering your gift at
the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against
you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go;
first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your
gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while
you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you
over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into
prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out
until you have paid the last penny.”
The traditional righteousness is in v.21. Jesus’ teaching begins
in v.22. Murder is prohibited and leads to judgment according to the law. Jesus
then intensifies the law’s prohibition by outlawing anger, insults, or calling
another a fool. Since everyone gets angry, hurls insults, and speaks in
dehumanizing ways to others, his teaching can’t be kept. We must apply one of
the methods of dealing with this
hard, unreachable, “impossible ideal” discussed earlier.
But
what if, as Stassen argues, instead of two elements each of these statements
has three: the traditional righteousness, a vicious cycle, and Jesus’
transforming initiative.[2] In this understanding the
traditional righteousness is in v.21. But v.22 is not Jesus’ command but a
description of a vicious cycle. It is not an imperative but a participle of
continuous action: “don’t keep on being angry, insulting, calling someone a
fool, that only leads to judgment.” Anger undealt with leads to worse and worse
action and finally to condemnation. Then beginning in v.23 we meet Jesus’
transforming initiative. It is here we find the imperatives Jesus brings to
bear on the situation. There are five of them in thus case: “leave” your gift,
“go,” “be reconciled,” “come,” and “offer.” These, according to Stassen are the
climax and point of the teaching.[3] It’s not about avoiding anger. Scripture itself does not prohibit
all anger (Eph.4:26; see also Mk.1:41; 3:5; Mt.21:12-17; where Jesus is angry;
and Mt.23:17 where Jesus calls his opponents “fools”). It is how we deal with
anger, not the fact that we are angry, that is at issue in the Bible. The
climax of these teachings, these third members of the triad, are “transforming
initiatives in three senses: it
transforms the person who was angry into an active peacemaker who comes to be
present to the enemy and to make peace. It transforms the relationship as
merely being angry into a peacemaking process. And it hopes to transform the
enemy into a friend.”[4] Such is the “wisdom” of Jesus’ teaching
in this sermon. And as a wisdom writing it is intended to provide on-the-ground
instruction for daily faithfulness.
Adultery (5:27-30)
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not
commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who
looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his
heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it
out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than
for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if
your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better
for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
V.27 contains the
traditional teaching against adultery. The vicious cycle begins in v.28: just
lusting after a woman constitutes adultery in one’s heart. Again, if this is
the commandment who can possibly obey it. Everyone has such thoughts. They come
unbidden and unexpected and we cannot stop them. If Jesus is teaching us not to
lust, to have such thoughts, then judgment is all that awaits us.
But instead of
trying not to lust, Jesus tells us how to take an initiative that transforms us
from victims of our thought world to proactive actors in dealing with lustful thoughts.
Robert Guelich writes: “These teachings
appear to represent largely preventive measures to protect oneself from
transgressing the seventh commandment.”[5]
Jesus issues four imperatives here:
take it out your right eye and throw it away; cut it off your right hand and
throw it away. Notice the emphasis on action here and not intention. This is
the case throughout these triads. Jesus does indulge in an intention/action
dichotomy. That’s what one has to do if the vicious cycle is taken for Jesus’
prescription. But Jesus counsels action, action that involves developing a
self-awareness of the situations which make one vulnerable to attack by lustful
thoughts and plans to avoid them (“cut them off”). And when they do occur we
“cut them off” by refusing to indulge them and nurturing them into full
fantasies. But most important and transforming is this initiative’s call for us
to change our way of relating to others, “tak(ing)
an initiative to get rid of the practice that causes the lust— leering while imagining sexual possession, touching with
lust in mind, meeting surreptitiously, treating women as sex-objects.”[6]
Such
transformation would transform Christian culture, not to mention the wider
world in the most profound ways!
Divorce
(5:31-32)
31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a
certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that anyone
who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit
adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
The traditional
teaching is in v.31. The vicious cycle is that divorcing and remarrying causes
adultery (v.32). But surprisingly, there is no recorded transforming initiative
from Jesus here. How can we account for that?
Given that we have
such a transforming initiative from Paul in 1 Cor.7:10-11 that he attributes to
the Lord Jesus. Stassen writes,
“to the married I give this command— not I but the
Lord....” It comes, says Paul, from the Lord— a teaching of Jesus. First he
names the vicious cycle twice, using χωρίζω (“to separate, divide, divorce”),
as Matt 5.32ab names divorcing or leaving twice, using ἀπολύω. Then Paul gives
the command, an imperative, καταλλαγήτω (“be reconciled”).[7]
If Jesus gave such a
transforming initiative, why did Matthew not include it here? We’re in the
realm of speculation here but it a fair question that deserves a reasonable
guess. Stassen’s is as good as any, I think: “I hypothesized that a teaching such as ‘Go, first be
reconciled to your wife’ would place the responsibility for reconciling on the
man and would imply more equality in talking the problem through than the
patriarchal culture would readily allow.”[8]
Further,
Stassen speculates,
“My hypothesis of the resistance of the patriarchal
culture to this command of Jesus to the man is possible. Jesus likely taught an
initiative something like “be reconciled.” But what the hearers most remembered
was the shock- ing rejection of divorce. The initiative “be reconciled” was not
handed on to Matthew because of that shock or because of its challenge to male
prerogative. By the time of 1 Corinthians, about twenty-five years after Jesus,
the oral tradition still gave Paul the teaching, but it had been changed to the
woman’s responsibility. By Matthew’s time, fifty-five years or so after Jesus,
it was missing from the tradition. Since Matthew was not inclined to make up a
teaching he had not been given, he had nothing to put in the third member.”[9]
I can go with that, how about you?
The call to reconciliation
lies at the very heart of Christian faith. How could we imagine it would not
lie at the heart of the marriage relationship. And remembering that these are
grace-driven directives their possibility derives from that already
grace-achieved salvation Jesus accomplished. As he himself reminds us later in
this gospel: “For mortals it is impossible, but
for God all things are possible” (Mt.19:26). Even seemingly irreparably broken marriage do not lie
outside the scope of this possibility. I told you this teaching rightly read
remains difficult![10]
Truth-Telling (5:33-37)
33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times,
‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the
Lord.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either
by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the
earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the
great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you
cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let your word be
‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”
V.33 carries the
traditional teaching here. The vicious cycle is found in vv.34-36 with its
negative injunctions. They are not participles here but their negative cast
highlights their character as the vicious cycle. Donald Hagner explains: “In the explanation that follows, i.e.,
particularly in the ὅτι (because) clauses, it seems to be assumed that oath
taking is in practice more often a means of avoiding what is promised than of
performing it (cf. the polemic specifically against the Pharisees in 23.16-22).”[11]
Jesus’ transforming initiative is
to eschew all such game-playing with the truth and be straightforward (v.37).
This does not mean, however, as Western Christianity has so often interpreted
it, a law against swearing oaths. “In church
history, again and again this teaching is reduced to the legalistic, ‘a
Christian may swear no oath.’” That “passes right by the actual intention of
Jesus: not on the not-swearing does he really aim, but on the truthfulness of
every word.”[12]
Hauerwas adds,
“Christians are, thereby,
committed to plain speech. We seek to say no more or no less than what
needs to be said. Speech so disciplined is not easily attained. Too often
we want to use the gift of speech as a weapon, often a very subtle weapon,
to establish our superiority. To learn to speak truthfully to one another
requires that we learn to speak truthfully to God, that is, we must learn
to pray. That is why the Psalms are the great prayer book of
the church because they teach us to pray without pretension. The Psalms
allow us to rage against God and in our rage discover God’s refusal to
abandon us. The Psalms, moreover, train us to speak truthfully because
they force us to acknowledge our sins or at least to have our sins
revealed.”[13]
This “plain speech” is neither a
brutal “telling it like it is” nor a mealy-mouthed equivocation that can be as
easily understood as a denial or the opposite of what one means to say. Rather,
it is truth that is “always be
gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer
everyone” (Col.4:6).
Peacemaking (5:38-42)
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist an
evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40 and
if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and
if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give
to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow
from you.”
As we can
easily recognize now, v.38 is the traditional teaching. V.39a is the vicious
cycle: “Do not resist an evildoer.” This translation is woefully inadequate and
misleading. It leads to a quietism and passivism that Jesus certainly did not
practice. Clarence Jordan noted many years ago now that this phrase can as easily
and accurately be translated “by evil means” as well as an “evildoer.”[14]
Context must decide. And it makes a good deal more sense and is consistent with
Jesus’ teaching throughout the gospels to take it as “Do not resist by evil (violent,
insurrectionary) means.” Nonviolent resistance is consonant with Jesus’
ministry and mission. Passive nonresistance to evil is not.
Violent
resistance, insurrection, the Zealot option, is here rejected by Jesus as a
dead end, a vicious cycle which does not lead where God wants his people to go.
How often have we seen revolutions replace one system with another only to
almost inevitably become an unjust and oppressive one itself.
The
transforming initiatives Jesus announced all call for surprising, creative, and
generous responses that upset the usual calculus by which humans conduct their
affairs. When God’s kingdom arrives it upsets all protocols and practices which
we previously believed were “the way things were.” V.42, “Give to everyone who
begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who begs from you, and do not refuse
anyone who wants to borrow from you,” seems out of sync with the rest of the
initiatives. It does not have to do with someone forcing or coercing another to
do something, it has to do with begging. And it’s just that out of sync-ness
that makes it the cover statement, or the point, for all the rest. These
surprising non-violent forms of resistance to evil capture the goodness and
grace of an unfathomably generous giving as in v.42 and open up transforming
possibilities for all the relationships detailed here[15].
-In Jesus’ context many of his followers were
slave. Slave-owners demonstrated their superiority and higher status over
slaves by slapping them on the right cheek (assuming a predominately
right-handed world). An equal, however, one would strike with a fist, usually
on the left cheek.
-someone might make a peasant a loan of land
to work and take their cloak as collateral. Without it the peasant’s health
might suffer and he would be unable to work the land as needed. He might then sue you to reclaim his land.
Having taken your coat, in court you strip off your undergarment as well
standing naked before the crowd, bereft of the means to support himself and his
family, shaming the one who forced you to nakedness.
-under Roman occupation, a Roman soldier could
require a Jew to carry his pack for one mile. To make them go further than that
could get the soldier in trouble with his superiors.
-When Jesus counsels his followers to turn the
left cheek to an opponent, to strip naked in court, and go the second mile,
these various tactics make the same three points: that you and your opponent
are actually equals, that your opponent must recognize he is treating you as an
inferior, and that they are treating you unjustly and ought consider changing
their behavior.
To demonstrate
creative, risky, innovative, and generous alternatives to legal, social, and
militant situations which seem to beg for a retaliatory response in kind is to practice
what Jesus teaches here. In the highly-charged atmosphere of 1st
century Israel to forgo such expected and even understandable is quite striking
indeed. Almost as if the kingdom of heaven had arrived, eh?
Love of Enemies (5:43-48)
Jesus caps
off this section, the so-called Antitheses, with instruction on love of one’s
enemies. This is not a citation from the Old Testament (which actually pushes
in the same direction Jesus goes though he takes it much farther; see Ex.23:4;
Prov. 25:21-22) but from some within Judaism who nurtured and propounded an
intense hatred of their Roman overlords (the Zealots, Qumran). Doubtless as
widespread sentiment.
In truth,
hating one’s enemy and seeking vengeance on them is a form of covetousness –
wanting to have what someone else has. In this case, rule over their own people
in their own land with their own God as king.
The
traditional teaching in in v.43. But then we have a variation in the pattern. Jesus’
transforming initiative comes next (vv.44-45) rather than as the third and
final element of the triad. The vicious cycle in in vv.46-47. Why this
variation of pattern. I think it is because this is the conclusion to a section
of the SoM and Matthew wants to end it with a summary statement which covers
the whole section as well as this part of it (v.48). So he reverses the second
and third elements to highlight this concluding statement.
What is
the vicious cycle that provides no bulwark against hating our enemies? “If you love those who love you, what reward
do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your
brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the
Gentiles do the same?” (vv.46-47). In-group loving, self-selected circles of “friends.”
An Us vs. Them mentality. Jews vs. Gentiles (Romans) is uppermost in Jesus’ mind
here for it most relevant to his situation.
Love
and prayer for enemies and persecuters is Jesus’ prescription. Sounds simple
enough in theory, right? But have you ever tried it? We don’t even want to do
this much less have tried and failed at it. Here in its starkest form is the
point where ethics and gospel embrace. Where we look away from ourselves as a
response to the sheer audacity of this teaching. It is here that we see clearly
the truth N. T. Wright puts so well:
“The Sermon on the Mount isn’t just about us.
If it was, we might admire it as a fine bit of idealism, but we’d then return
to our normal lives. It’s about Jesus himself. This was the blueprint for his
own life. He asks nothing of his followers that he hasn’t faced himself. And,
within his own life, we can already sense a theme that will grow larger and
larger until we can’t miss it. If this is the way to show what God is really
like, and if this is the pattern that Jesus himself followed exactly, Matthew
is inviting us to draw the conclusion: that in Jesus we see the Emmanuel, the
God-with-us person. The Sermon on the Mount isn’t just about how to behave.
It’s about discovering the living God in the loving, and dying, Jesus, and
learning to reflect that love ourselves into the world that needs it so badly.”[16]
Thus the concluding postscript over this and all the preceding sections
we have covered so far: “Be perfect,
therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is not about moral
perfection. It is about loving as God loves, reflecting his character, sharing
the family likeness of the Father whose children we are. Generous, risky, creative,
innovative love, a love we see and experience in Jesus Christ, and are called
to share with the world.
This was the message
of the SoM to its 1st century Jewish hearers in the Roman empire facing
a crisis of life or death as God’s people. And for us 21st century
hearers it speaks equally loudly and clearly about the crisis we face in our
day which also has to do with our life or death as God’s people (though in a somewhat
different way).
[1] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 1515-1519. He
further comments, “The Sermon also follows the order of the case laws in Exodus
21-23 to some degree.”.
[2] Stassen notes: “In fact, the Gospel of Matthew has
about seventy-five teachings with a threefold or triadic pattern, and almost no
teachings with a twofold or dyadic pattern. It would be odd if Matthew’s pattern
in the Sermon on the Mount were only dyads,
when everywhere else he
presents triads.”
[3] Stassen notes, “We can see that the third member is the climax in
three ways: It is where the commands, the imperatives, come. It is longer than
the other parts of the teaching. And in biblical teaching, the third member of
a teaching is regularly where the climax comes.”
[5] Robert Geulich, The
Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for
Under- standing (Waco: Word, 1982),
[6] Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads,” 276.
[7] Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads,” 277.
[8] Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads,” 276.
[9] Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads,” 277.
[10] This does not mean that divorce is impossible or
unforgiveable. Such divorce, while allowed under Old Testament law because of
the hardness of human hearts, and thus in some degree acceptable, is not so any
longer. With the arrival of Jesus Messiah and the kingdom of heaven, divorce is
no longer allowable.
Forgivable, to be sure, but not allowable, not reflective in any way of God’s
intention for marriage. It’s no worse a sin than anger or lust, as has to often
been the case in North America, but neither is it the thinkable alternative it
is under todays “no fault” divorce policies. Much more needs to said about this
but that is for any time and place.
[11]Donald Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (Word Biblical Commentary
33A; Dallas: Word, 1993), 127.
[12] Hans Weder cited in Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads,”
278.
[13] Hauerwas, Matthew, 109.
[14] Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith and Other Cotton Patch Ser- mons (New York:
Association Press, 1972), 69.
[15] See for these points Walter Wink, “Jesus’ Third Way of
Nonviolent Resistance” at https://sites.ualberta.ca/~cbidwell/DCAS/third.htm.
[16] Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: 1105.
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