Matthew 5–7: The Sermon on the Mount (1)
Setting
Remembering that
the Synoptic gospels focus on the first stage of God reasserting his rule which
is offering Israel one last chance to be the Israel God wanted it to be or face
the judgment for refusal, this inaugural sermon of Jesus that Matthew has
assembled around the theme of life in this tumultuous and conflicted time under
the rule of Jesus is a sermon for that time and place. Andrew Perriman draws
the necessary conclusion from this fact:
“The
sermon on the mount is addressed to first century Jews in Israel. The
Beatitudes define that small community of first century Jews in Israel through
which and for the sake of which YHWH would restore his people at a time of
severe political-religious crisis. It is a community of the helpless, of those
who suffered and mourned because of Israel’s wretched condition. They would be
persecuted. But they would be the beneficiaries of the impending intervention
of YHWH as king to judge his people. They would inherit . . . not the earth but
the ‘land’ of Israel. It has nothing to do directly with the church today.”[1]
That means we
must be careful to interpret this sermon in that context and against that
background before we make an attempt to discern its meaning for us
today. This is, of necessity, a unique time for the Jewish nation. There may
well be parallels or analogies we can make between our time and their’s but we
can never simply assume that Jesus was addressing his audience as potential
Christians just like us and that what it means to us must be what it meant for
them as well. We must read it as best we can from this situation which is not
ours and make appropriate applications to our own.
N. T. Wright
offers some guidance for us though he does not operate from quite the same
framework I am. He writes:
“Jesus
is not suggesting that these are simply timeless truths about the way the world
is, about human behaviour. If he was saying that, he was wrong. Mourners often
go uncomforted, the meek don’t inherit the earth, those who long for justice
frequently take that longing to the grave. This is an upside-down world, or
perhaps a right-way-up world; and Jesus is saying that with his work it’s
starting to come true. This is an announcement, not a philosophical analysis of
the world. It’s about something that’s starting to happen, happen, not about a
general truth of life. It is gospel: good news, not good advice.”[2]
As I am, Wright
rejects a general application of Jesus’ teaching to the general public. And he
claims that what Jesus teaches here is a “right-way-up world” in an
“upside-down world,” the world as it is like the store a thief broke into one
night not to steal but switch all the price tags around so that expensive items
were priced cheaply and cheap items priced quite high. Shoppers are thus
persuaded of the shape of the world of the price tags on the items in the shop
promote. Jesus would be the one who comes and knows what has happened in the
shop and announces to the crowds what the true price of the items is and
encourages them to join his movement to promote fair and equitable prices in
the people’s shops. This is the kind of world God intends and to be God’s
people it’s the kind of world God’s people should work toward. To continue is
some version of the “upside-down” world is non-negotiable. Now is the time to
embrace the “right-way up” world because God is ready to set all things right!
Further, all this
is not good advice, something we ought to take under advisement to consider in
a program of self-improvement. No, Jesus says, this is the future, the only
future of the world; the destiny of those who follow Jesus into this “right-way
up” world. The “upside-down” world will be undone. Those who remain committed
to it will suffer loss and destruction. God will rule and those resisting or
uncommitted to that rule are in trouble. This trouble (the catastrophic war
with Rome in 66-70 a.d. with its destruction of the temple in the case) is
God’s judgment on them for centuries and centuries of preferring and
implementing an “upside-down” world to the “right-way” up world he had saved
them for and graced them with.
So Wright is
correct, “It is gospel: good news, not good advice.” God’s doing, God’s gift.
Context of the Sermon on the Mount (SoM): Mt.5:1-2
Jesus ascends a
mountain (see below “Matthew and Mountains”) to pronounce blessings on the
people of the covenant even as he later ascends a mountain to announces woes
and curses on Jerusalem (chs.23-25). These mountain pronouncements draw their covenantal
significance from their precedent in Deuteronomy where upon entering the land
the people are divided and line up opposite each other on two mountains. One
side shouts the blessings for the people consequent upon obedience and the
other side the curses consequent on disobedience. This sets the gospel of
Matthew solidly within a covenant context.
This material
(chs.5-7) represents the first of five blocks of teaching in Matthew, which
distinctly recall the five books of Moses. Jesus here functions as a New Moses.
“In Exodus, God calls Moses to ascend Mount
Sinai to receive the law. Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, and the whole
mountain trembled with the presence of God and the thunder of his voice. The
Lord summoned Moses to join him on the mountain, warning that no others, except
Aaron, were permitted to accompany Moses up the mountain (Exod. 19:16–25).
It is, therefore, remarkable that the disciples had the courage to join Jesus
on the mountain in order to receive his teaching. Jesus, the new Moses,
is surrounded by his disciples so that they may be taught, as Israel was taught
by Moses, to be holy.”[3]
The disciples come up the mountain to Jesus
separating themselves from the larger crowd remaining at the foot of the
mountain. This took courage, as Hauerwas suggests in the quote above, because
of what we now know Jesus was doing. Calling Israel to be God’s Israel, its
last chance to do so in the face of coming and certain destruction, these
disciples were making a pledge of allegiance to him, acknowledging that they
were casting their lot with him, betting their lives that he was, indeed,
Israel’s last and only hope.
Jesus always has a
people. A visible corps of followers who give tangible witness to the urgency
and necessity of responding to his message. The visibility of this corps of
followers, is not simply in the saluting Jesus’ flag when it is raised, but in
living lives reflective of the covenant and appropriate to the crisis situation
they were in. Lives like that Jesus will soon describe in SoM. This is not a
battle of ideas about Israel but of ways of life characteristic of the
differing visions of Israel vying for the people’s allegiance at the time.
Chief among these
other competing visions in the 1st century were:
-the Sadducees: supporters and
collaborators with the Romans
-the Pharisees: taught and inculcated
comprehensive obedience to torah as the way to be faithful Israel
-the Essenes: withdrew to the desert to
escape corrupt temple establishment and practice their faith there in
preparation of God’s intervention and return to the land
-the Zealots: their hatred of Rome
brooked no patience of delay and they undertook guerrilla warfare against them
As we read Matthew
we recognize that we are not in that unique situation Jesus’ designed his
message to address. But we can, perhaps, see an analogy to it in the situation
of our church in North America today.
-We too struggle
to discover an identity and vocation in out post-Christendom, post-Christian,
world.
-We too wrestle with the church’s
accommodation and assimilation to our nation’s values, vision, and ethos to
such a degree that the church’s life and mission have been fundamentally
distorted (the Sadducee option)
-We too have those who claim that assiduous
attention to living out to living by the rules and details of the Bible is the
best way to live out our gratitude to God for his love and grace toward us (the
Pharisee option)
[And BTW the Pharisees were not the
legalists of beloved and time-honored caricature – they believed and trusted in
the grace of God for the people’s salvation and faithfulness. They believed
that comprehensive compliance to Torah was the necessary show of gratitude for
God’s grace. With this, Jesus certainly agreed. His difference and source of
conflict with the Pharisees was their attempt to treat him as simply another
Jew subject to that same kind of compliance to torah as they were. But he was,
in fact, as Messiah, not subject to torah as they were but rather its decisive
embodiment and interpretation. He clarified what torah truly was and corrected
accretions and distortions of it acquired over the centuries. The Pharisee
option today is similar. Their attention to the detail of what they believe to
be “biblical” practice suffers from a similar failure to relate to Jesus as the
Bible’s living Lord who today guides and teaches his people how to discern and
best practice biblical teaching in a very different time and place. It won’t
look the same as 1st century Christianity though the basic structure
and impetus of it will be the same.]
-We too those who would have the church
withdraw into own enclaves and spend its life within and for that community
(the Essene option). These folk do see dealing with the world and its issues as
anything but a distraction to what the church should be doing – praying,
studying the Bible, caring for each other, and anticipating the Lord’s return
from heaven to take them home.
-we too have some (few thankfully) who
believe they serve God faithfully by physically eliminating those they believe
the worst purveyors of a godless culture (the Zealot option). In particular,
they focus their rage on abortion clinics and the doctors and nurses who staff
them.
While Jesus had no
interest in the Sadducee or Essene options, he shared with both the Zealots and
Pharisees that passion for God to be king over his people. He rejected,
however, the former’s allowing that passion to drive them to violent attack
against Rome and the latter’s failure to discern his identity and the radical
change he was bringing to the life and witness of God’s people. Pharisees
remained committed to interpreting being God’s people within a nation of Israel
framework focusing in particular on what in torah most clearly distinguished
and marked out Israel as distinct from the rest of the pagan world. Those who
practice the Pharisee option in our time also want the church to be distinct
and different from the world but do it with a framework that includes trying to
make the US a “Christian” nation.
Jesus, though,
operates from an Abrahamic Israel framework in which Israel’s faithfulness to
God is in service to his ultimate plan to welcome the pagan Gentiles into his
people and extend his blessings to them as his people within their own nationalities
and practices as reoriented around faith in Jesus Messiah. Jesus goes teaching,
preaching, healing, and exorcizing his way through Galilee and empowering his
disciples to do the same throughout Israel (as we will see) in order to recall
and gather as many Jews as will to become this reconstituted Abrahamic Israel
of God’s plan and purpose. This is the decisive factor in understanding Jesus.
We today are heirs
of that Abrahamic mandate as a largely Gentile/Jewish church. As we seek a
fresh articulation of identity and vocation for this post-Christendom time we
will need to read Matthew, and the SoM, within that context which will give us
a fresh read of it fit for our context. We must search for what it meant in its
original context but if stop there we are stick with the “Pharisee option.”
Only as we move on to listen to this word as Jesus’ living word for our time
and place will we learn the practices of discernment necessary for faithfulness
today.
To sum up, we live
in a time when the church needs a fresh articulation of identity and vocation.
Options abound, including “don’t rock the boat,” “stick with the letter of the
Bible,” “stick to faith and stay out of politics,” to “hit the streets and take
out the bastards.” Jesus rejects each of these options and in his SoM and other
teaching will reveal a different model. It is up to us to discern and act on
that model.
Structure of the Sermon
The Passions of
God’s People (5:3-12: Beatitudes)
The Priorities of
God’s People (5:13-20: Salt and Light)
The Practices of
God’s People (5:21-7:12: Fourteen Triads)
Matthew
and Mountains
We already met
one mountain in Matthew, the “very high mountain” on which the devil offered
Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in his temptations. We meet a second one
here. This is as good a place as any for a bit of reflection on Matthew’s
literary and theological interest in mountains. They’re everywhere in this
gospel. In Israel’s history mountains are important sites for its meeting with
God. And that’s because mountains with their peaks reaching into the heights
are believed to be places where earth and heaven meet. Thus they are sites of
revelation, divine self-revelation.
Matthew obviously
shares his people’s interest in mountains. But he uses them not simply as
places of divine-human but as literary devices to structure his account of
Jesus’ life. Seven key events in Jesus’ life take place on mountains and
Matthew places them in a stairstep fashion with each step going up
corresponding to one coming down. The one in the middle without a match serves
as the landing connecting both sides of the structure. In this kind of pattern
this middle item in the series is the point of emphasis for the whole series,
the point, as it were of the series. I’ve laid out this series of mountain
experiences in the chart below. They form, as you can see, a “mountain” of
their own, one that makes the mountain a central structuring device for
Matthew’s story.
The mountain
texts are in black while brief explanatory comments are in red. The feeding on
the mountain in 15:29-39 is “the” point of the gospel in this structure.
-The
first and last matching pair deal with Jesus’ authority: he is tempted on a
mountain to receive it from Satan at the price of bowing the knee to him. The
last shows Jesus, victorious, granted “all authority in heaven and on earth,”
for his undeviating loyalty to his father. With this authority he commissions
his followers to go and make disciples of all nations.
-the
second and fifth items shows Jesus “blessing” his followers (beatitudes) with
nine blessings in the second and in the fifth delivering eight curses on
Jerusalem. This reflects Israel’s experience under Joshua when they entered the
land of assembling before the mountains of Gerizim and Ebal for a ceremony
reaffirming their fidelity to the Lord and the law of the covenant (Deut 27-
28). Half the nation was to be on one mountain, the other half on the other.
After listening to Joshua declare all the law of Moses, the six tribes upon
Gerizim spoke the blessings that would be poured out as long as the nation
obeyed the law and the covenant (Dt.28:1-14). The six on Ebal announced the
curses that would befall the nation if they disobeyed the law
(Dt.27:15-28).
-Items
three and fifth are pairs of events in which Jesus ascended a mountain “alone”
(14:23; 17:8). The first is to pray after the feeding by the sea of the 5000.
The latter is the mountain of transfiguration.
-That
leaves the fourth and central item, the mountain of feeding, which we discuss
when we reach that point in our exposition.
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Mountain of Feeding (15:29-39)
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Mountain of the Separation (14:23)
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Jesus “alone” (14:23; 17:8)
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Mountain of Transfiguration (17:8)
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Mountain of Teaching
(5:1-7:28)
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Nine Beatitudes (“Blessing”) Dt.27
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Eight Curses vs. Jerusalem (Dt.28)
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Mountain of the Olivet Discourse (24:3-26:1)
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Mountain of Temptation (4:8-10)
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Eden on a mountain - place of Adam and Eve’s temptation; Jesus
offered all kingdoms of world
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Jesus does receive the world and all authority on heaven and earth
but on God’s terms not Satan’s
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Mountain of Commissioning (28:16-20)
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This imaginative mountain Matthew
has created out Jesus’ various experiences and interactions on mountains
creates a “magic eye” picture within Matthew’s story. Magic eye pictures
“look like a boring page of wallpaper patterns until you
look at them in a particular way. When you don’t look at the patterns, but
through the patterns, a 3D image that you couldn’t see before suddenly appears.
So long as you look for the image as though it was on the same plain as the
patterns, existing alongside of, or in competition with, the patterns, you
won’t see it. Only when you look through them and into a dimension behind the
patterns does the entirely different reality of the 3D image appear.”[4]
Looking at Matthew
“through the patterns” of his narrative enables to see this imaginative
mountain spanning the gospel and giving coherence and unity to his
presentation.
[1]Andrew Perriman, “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth: An Exercise
in Historical Restraint,” at https://www.postost.net/2015/11/meek-shall-inherit-world-exercise-historical-restraint.
[2]
Wright, Matthew for Everyone Part 1:
823-827.
[3] Hauerwas, Matthew, 89.
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