For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus of Nazareth
The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ description of the sort of lifestyle that is pleasing to God. It develops his foundational principle that we should love God with our entire heart, soul, strength and mind and love our neighbours as ourselves, and it sows the seeds for everything else he taught. There may be some exceptions, but it seems to me that everything taught about lifestyle in the New Testament epistles – in passages such as Galatians 5-6, Ephesians 4-6, Colossians, Titus, James and 1 Peter – is the application of what Jesus taught in the Sermon.
Some scholars think that the Sermon was not delivered exactly as Matthew records it but that he collated things that Jesus said on different occasions. My view is that Jesus delivered the Sermon more than once and, like many preachers, said it slightly differently each time, but what Matthew records is an accurate précis of what Jesus said on one particular day.
We’ve looked at parts of the Sermon already in this series of Reflections but I think it useful to spend five weekends getting an overview and looking in particular at the financial consequences, so that we can become shrewd with money in the ways of the Kingdom of God. The quotation at the start of this Reflection expresses what Jesus was trying to impress on his disciples in the first section: that the lifestyle of his disciples is not adherence to a set of rules governing behaviour but attitudes that radiate from within to stimulate all of life.
The Sermon begins with a stunning reversal about who is society is blessed. It was as radical to Jesus original audience as it should be to us. On that hillside in Galilee, the people would have been familiar with the blessings God promised his people if they were faithful to him: ‘Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out…The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. (Deuteronomy 28:3-8)
Compare that to what Jesus said. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… Blessed are the merciful… Blessed are the pure in heart… Blessed are the peacemakers… Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake... Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account…’ (Matthew 5:4-11).
Those two lists are not incompatible but they do create very different impressions and I expect that a lot of people wanted one but not the other and were unhappy with what Jesus said.
We can, for example, enjoy material blessings such as a good harvest and healthy, productive cattle, and still be poor in spirit and meek. To be fully human, our practical living and enjoyment of life must be based on spiritual insight, knowing that we do our best and use all the technical skill we have but are nevertheless dependent on God alone for the blessings. Moreover, not only can we hunger and thirst for righteousness but our abundance is the means God gives us to be righteous. But I imagine that Jesus’ words were not what many of his audience wanted to hear! Perhaps this is why Jesus immediately assured them that living this was would make them the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
Salt prevents corruption and adds flavour; light exposes deceit and danger and illuminates a right, safe way forward. That is the role of Christians in every age. It may sound noble, and we might think it is a service that everyone would welcome, but it is why Christians are so very often not only out of step with the rest of society in which they live but at odds with it.
Before interpreting key sections of the Torah, Jesus warned his disciples – and the crowd around them who were listening – that their righteousness had to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were in many ways the most religious people in Israel but in sticking ‘religiously’ to the rules most of them failed utterly to please God. ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ Jesus said on another occasion. ‘For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.’ They made sure they gave to God one tenth of every herb they grew but they abused people terribly. They were lovers of money, as Luke records, and under cover of their religion ‘devoured widows’ houses’.
A lot of teaching about giving and stewardship by Christians that I have seen stops short at setting out principles and standards for making the most of God’s material blessings and fails to touch the deeper recesses of our avarice and covetousness. Much of this teaching is very helpful, and I have often learned a lot from it, but there is a risk that in keeping to rules that govern behaviour we might end up behaving more like the Pharisees than we would want to admit. And we would and fail to be salt and light in the world as Jesus intended. I plan to explore this further next weekend.
© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.
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