by Neil Earle
Usually considered the “acme of Christianity” the Sermon on the Mount is harder to decipher than most suppose. Three interpretations across the century have misled scholars and teachers who attempt to unravel its secrets. In the end one interpretation seems to make the most sense.
Here is a crux issue. Even outsiders know there is nothing more like Jesus than the Sermon on the Mount’s oft-cited text, “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). This is the Golden Rule and it has reverberated down through time. It is one of those “verbal lightning flashes” that William Barclay says lightens up Matthew 5-7.
However, it is just there that we meet our first anomaly in this illustrious text. And that is the fact that Jesus is restating a principle that was well known in the Ancient Near East. Confucius and the Greek Stoic philosophers all coined statements that were very similar, though cast in the negative. In the Jewish Talmud the great rabbi Hillel, who lived just before Jesus, was asked to define the Law while the questioner stood on one leg. He answered, Whatever is hateful to you, do not you do to others.
Pretty good, Hillel. But Jesus – the Master – went him one better. Still, there are other peculiarities here. Luke gives us a much shorter version that scholars call “the Sermon on the Plain.” This is in Luke 6 and offers slightly different remembrances of Jesus’ teaching such as Luke’s stark (and revolutionary) “Blessed are the poor” rather than Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
There is also the “problem” that Jesus seems to begin by addressing his disciples (Matthew 5:1) and ends up challenging “the people” in Matthew 8:28. This is easily if somewhat arbitrarily explained by many teachers that by the end of the sermon a crowd had gathered around on the hillside. That is ingenious reasoning but more importantly points out the different layers in the sermon. Clearly Mathew is giving words of instruction to new Christians and yet he speaks to “whoever hears these words” as well. This multi-layered style illustrates the marvelous complexity of the message. Many have seen how the well-organized Matthew presents the Sermon as a teaching manual. Yet it is a visionary call to Kingdom living at the same time. This should keep readers challenged, which was one of Matthew’s points – Jesus is always ahead of us.
These dichotomies that underlie the text are examples of Middle Eastern teaching methods. As the Presbyterian writer Richard Lischer says, Matthew chose incidents from Jesus’ teaching that are designed to produce an imaginative shock to our everyday slumbering consciences. They resemble Eastern Wisdom Literature in that they are indirect, seemingly unimportant verbal prods to help us see our lives and life choices in radically different ways (Proverbs 30:28). Thus, “consider the birds,”observe the lilies of the field,” look how the hypocrites give offerings.”
This polished teaching manual also shows Christians how to navigate persecution in the First Century and beyond. This urgent reality explains the references to “your adversary” and being struck on the cheek and being forcefully conscripted. Then we are even advised how to talk to the police (Matthew 5:38-42), still applicable to house Christians in China or Bangladesh. There are other dualities: For his Jewish-Christian audience Matthew also gives warnings against the wrong kind of prayer – natural for a Jewish audience accustomed to ritualistic intercession. By contrast, Luke writes to Gentiles who are just beginning to wrestle with the thought of how to pray (Luke 11:1).
This should keep us on our toes as we plunge into Matthew 5, 6 and 7. Like reading any ancient text there are at least three horizons in view: What did it mean to the first hearers? Why did the transcriber select these particular passages? What is of lasting significance to those of us who live twenty centuries later?
The “problems” are there if we want to call them that. But New Testament scholarship has made amazing advances these past thirty years. According to the noted German missionary son who grew up in Palestine, Joachim Jeremias, three slightly misleading interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount have arisen. These are:
The Legalistic. This is the view that Jesus is laying down the law to his New Testament church. “Moses said/But I say” is the most common refrain. Some think that Isaiah’s prophecy that the messiah would “magnify the Law” must mean he made it even more binding and authoritative. But, says Jeremias, Jesus always puts Gospel ahead of Law, else it would be hard to understand why the Pharisees put Jesus to death. He was clearly taking things beyond the barebones statements of the Law and yet in a way that fitted the Kingdom message
For one thing, Jesus being a Middle Eastern teacher, loved hyperbole. Matthew 7:27-30 talks about plucking out eyes and cutting off hands to avoid the whole body cast into gehenna fire. And yet, on the other hand we see Jesus making statements he himself does not follow through on. For example, the famous “turn the other cheek” passage in Matthew 5:38-40. Some have given fascinating and ingenious explanations, yet when arrested and slapped on the face illegally, Jesus did not offer his face again. Rather he non-violently protested and asserted his rights. Even with hands laid on him he calmly engaged in non-violent protest. See Matthew 26:55 and John 18:19-24.
What is going on here? Is Jesus hypocritical in his most famous message? Not at all. It is just that his love for striking and arresting phrases helps him present his core message – the Kingdom of God – in terms of his disciples bearing forth the values and virtues of the inevitable Kingdom of God. This is Christian living as evangelism – as well as expressing the nature of the Father in heaven.
Jeremias lists the second objection as “the Impossible Ideal,” an idea tracing to Martin Luther. Matthew 5:48 says forthrightly to “be perfect as my heavenly Father in perfect.” Many expositors from Martin Luther onward shows the Sermon on the Mount is designed to create a need for radical grace. We simply cannot measure up to God’s demands. The assumption here is once again that Jesus is the New Moses, the even more exacting Lawmaker who was to come. Martin Luther used the phrase “Mosissimus Moses” of Jesus in these texts. This expresses his Reformation emphasis that we have no veracity of ourselves; we can only fall at the foot of the cross and beg for mercy and rejoice in grace.
Of course there is much that is attractive here, as Jeremias the Lutheran mentions. But does this not pose a contradiction between Gospels and Epistles, between Matthew and Romans, Jesus and Paul? Some push this farther by arguing that Jesus was teaching these “impossible” demands before his sacrificial death on the cross and that the grace of Calvary frees us from such legalistic demands as not worrying, loving enemies, praying, fasting, and alms-giving. All that ended at the cross goes this newer version of Mosissimus Moses, an idea Luther himself would have condemned.
But, as Jeremias and other commentators have pointed out – wait a minute!
The truth is that there is much that is helpful, practical and doable in the Sermon on the Mount, as we have already seen. Tips on how to go to court is very practical (5:25). The Lord’s Prayer is a piece of counsel no Christian would want to be about and one that frees us from the legalism of “many words” in prayer (6:7). Everyone knows we should give God an offering (6:21), avoid looking at women lustfully (5:28) and fasting is now back in vogue as a spiritual discipline (see the writings of Dallas Willard and Richard Foster). So casting aside the Sermon because it represents a New Legalism seems a radical misunderstanding.
The third approach is the End-Time Emergency approach. Don’t worry about it now, it is only for the temporary emergencies. Now, Jesus’ teaching does have a distinctive end-time flavor about it and Jesus uses the favorite prophetic analogy of the rotten tree about to be cut down as a warning device to his Jewish cousins. There was, don’t forget, the holocaust of 70AD. Jesus knew his was a generation under judgment and seething hatred for the Romans was one major trigger – hence his exhortation to pray for your persecutors (Matthew 5:44). Once again we see Christian ideals and the Master’s teachings that have had practical effect. The end was near for the whole Temple system and Jesus knew it (Matthew 24:1-3). Therefore let the dead bury the dead, cut off your hand if necessary, and don’t worry about where your next meal is coming from (7:25-34).
There is much that is true here, even in context. But the fact that Jesus goes on to teach prayer, and to exhort us to ask, seek and knock (7:7) shows there is always a need for what is called “the spiritual disciplines.” This is paralleled in Matthew’s Olivet Prophecy where Jesus shows how the End is close but Christians have a job to do in spreading the gospel around the world.
So – where are?
Perhaps we are a bit confused. Well, Jeremias and Lischer offer us a way out. Jeremias insists that Jesus taught as a visionary. He set thing in the visionary mode with the Kingdom always in view, as in, “How good it will be for the meek. They will inherit the earth.” For Jeremias the Beatitudes are vital introduction to the Sermon. Rather then creating a check-list to make Christians feel guilty they are visionary congratulations for those who have an idea of what peace-making is all about. These are, in Barclay’s fine phrase, more a graduation celebration in advance for what the Christian life produces. Rather than a check-list for entering the Kingdom, Jesus gives the end-results of a life lived by grace.
Jeremias shrewdly observes that the congratulatory mood of “You are the Light of the world” hardly fits unsteady Peter, doubting Thomas, hot-tempered James and John, hardheaded Philip and treacherous Judas. Jesus’ disciples are the Light because he is the Lighthouse. As they live their lives by grace people will see the Light shine froth from them. How hopeful. How beneficent. How visionary.
Similarly, Richard Lischer sees three dimensions of the Sermon that must be kept in view if we are to understand it. These are:
The Futuristic – the way it will be when the Father’s kingdom appears in its fullness. You won’t need to worry about food and drink at that time so begin putting such thoughts behind you now. The Kingdom is coming; don’t sweat the small stuff.
The Evangelistic – Lischer writes that we reconcile with our brothers not to feel better psychologically (though we do) but because this is the way God is. We show by our actions, This is the way God is and that’s nice, eh? We don’t hold back on divorce because we are afraid of social embarrassment but because faithfulness defines God’s character. We pray secretly and give extra offerings quietly because sooner or later people figure out that we worship an invisible God, the God Who Is There. And all this makes an important witness to a jaded generation who think they already have tried God and he has failed them.
Thirdly there is a keen balance in the Sermon between the Individual and the Christian community – something badly needed in the day of the Internet Church and the Tweeting Congregation. The Kingdom is very much about relationships so if you know you have something against your brother, drop your sacrifice and go seek reconciliation with him first As Lischer summarizes, we do not hate, curse, retaliate, divorce, swear, brag, preen, worry or backbite for two reasons: That is not what God is like; This is not where we are headed. Where we are is this – striding forward by grace to the fullness of the Kingdom as sons of the heavenly Father (Matthew 5:45).
The Sermon on the Mount is just that optimistic. “Let your light shine before men” – you can do this. Lischer and Jeremias set the Sermon on the Mount’s instruction on Christian living in the overall context of Jesus’ main message: the Kingdom of God. In short, it is a visionary sermon laced with incentives towards true righteousness, perhaps one reason Christians feel it doesn’t apply to the here and now. It is evangelistic – it consistently shows us the way people are going to be in the godly society. It is also shrewd and realistic – it is possible to live by faith even when the rain falls on you as well as your nuisance of a neighbor. It applies very much to the here and now – the rain falls on the just and the unjust, but no matter. We are still the sons of the heavenly Father. That’s all that matters – that is Reality Plus!
The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest sermon ever preached, or if you prefer, compiled. It is multi-dimensional, which is why some Christian teachers over the years have missed its practical implications for the Christian life. It is much more exhortation than legalistic. It hovers like the Holy Grail supposedly did over the Arthurian knights – idealistic, shimmering and immensely appealing: the possible ideal. And some days we reach it. Some days we do not worry, we go to the doctor’s office with faith. Some times we refuse to yield to anger. Some mornings we have a rich experience of prayer. We actually do turn the other cheek to that obnoxious workmate. We drive home and on the way give a freewill offering to the poor. So we can do it. We can be the children of our Father in heaven. We let our Light shine because Jesus is the Lighthouse.