Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  He then told me how he had “discovered” he was gay, how he did everything he could—prayer, counseling, and the like—to get rid of it, but nothing was working. He admitted to a few casual relations that went too far, and then said again, “But we can be friends, right?” I said, “Yes, we can be friends. You are my neighbor.”

  For nearly four years we met. The subject of his homosexuality never came up again, and that was all right with me as long as it was all right with him. Occasionally he’d say something about his “struggle” or allude to it, but we met to talk about classes, about my own writing, about his desire to be a public schoolteacher, about his family, and about my family. When he graduated, he came up to me in his gown, hugged me, and said, “Thanks. You’ve been my friend.”

  I have never wondered why his question was asked—his question was: “Can we be friends?”

  It’s about Neighborliness

  Enemy love is not a magic formula. It’s not a trick. It’s a posture toward every human being we meet. We are challenged in this passage to discern who it is whom we treat as enemies—those we claim to love but don’t, those who never sit at table with us, those we label and libel—and to convert enemies into neighbors by simply extending love to them. Love is to treat others as we treat ourselves, and it is the rugged commitment to be with someone as someone who is for them in order to foster Christlikeness.

  We can’t do this by saying we will do it or saying we believe it, but by extending in concrete actions the love of God for all to others. We need to ask who our enemies are and get busy converting them into our neighbors. We will discover God is already there.

  Notes

  1. G. Gilbert, “Gentiles, Jewish Attitudes toward,” EDEJ, 670–73.

  2. The word “neighbor” means one’s fellow human being with whom one has some kind of relationship: next-door neighbor, fellow townsperson, person in the adjacent village, government official who works in your community, etc. But the term was usually exclusively viewed as one’s fellow Jewish “compatriot.” Hence, “neighbor” often lacked any sense of diversity. This is where Jesus alters the meaning of the term.

  3. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:551–52, who say, “Despite all the parallels just listed, the succinct, arresting imperative, ‘Love your enemies,’ is undoubtedly the invention of Jesus’ own mind, and it stands out as fresh and unforgettable.”

  4. Garland, Reading Matthew, 76–77.

  5. Lapide, Sermon on the Mount, 85–95.

  6. Notice Luke 6:27–28: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” And 6:35: “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”

  7. See 5:12, 46; 6:1–2, 5, 16; 10:41–42; 20:8.

  8. On this, Anderson, Sin: A History.

  9. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 290–91, for a brief sketch.

  10. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 129.

  11. Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, 1:200.

  12. Guelich, Sermon on the Mount, 255.

  13. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 289–90.

  14. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 135. So also Stott, Message, 122; Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 96–98.

  15. Keener, Matthew, 205.

  16. Strecker, Sermon on the Mount, 94.

  17. Wright, After You Believe, 109 (all in italics in original).

  18. Gale, in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, at 5:48 (p. 12).

  19. This view was common in the early church, as can be seen in Chromatius in ACCS: Matthew, 122.

  Chapter 11

  Matthew 6:1–4

  LISTEN to the Story

  1“Be careful not to practice your righteousness1 in front of others to be seen by them.2 If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

  2“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites3 do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: Exodus 20:1–17; Leviticus 19; Deuteronomy 15

  In some ways this passage forces the Bible’s behaviors through the sieve of motivation. Thus, whether one looks at the Ten Commandments and the Book of the Covenant (Exod 20:1–17; Deut 5:1–21 and Exod 20:22–23:33), the tabernacle laws (Exod 25–31; 35–40), the Holiness Code or, perhaps better, the laws of Leviticus (Leviticus) and the various laws of Deuteronomy (Deut 12–26), Jesus’ words drive his followers to see that they are to seek the pleasure of God and not the approval of others. Jesus calls his followers to direct engagement, much as Martin Buber did in I and Thou.

  Direct engagement with God flows from the central theme of the Bible: Yahweh, the God of Israel, is the one and only God. This God has entered into a covenant relationship with Israel in order to bless the world through Israel, and this God ransomed Israel from slavery in Egypt, gave Israel its mode of being, led Israel to the Land, and sustained, protected, disciplined, and restored Israel. In Israel’s Story, God is preeminent. Observance of the Torah is to be done before God. God-centered obedience glorifies God by making God preeminent.

  But humans want to usurp the place of God, making themselves the center of the Story. This happens at two levels in our passage: on the one hand, humans have a proclivity to usurp the place of God by sitting in judgment on one another, which is why humans seek the approval of others; on the other hand, we seek the approval of others instead of the pleasure of God in our behaviors because, as it often turns out, they will give us what we want (whereas God gives us what is good and right).

  EXPLAIN the Story

  Matthew 6:1–18 contains three illustrations—almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. They comically and incisively illustrate the principles of Matthew 6:1. Thus, Matthew 6:1 is a thesis statement for how specific Torah-observance behaviors are to be done. The fundamental elements of 6:1’s thesis look like this:

  God the Father engages you directly; you are to engage directly.

  God the Father knows what you are doing.

  God the Father is the judge; humans are not the judge.

  So do your acts of righteousness before God, not before others.

  Do these acts to be approved by God, not by humans.

  Jesus develops these elements in 6:2–18. Each of the three illustrations has a tidy organization. We will observe that the Lord’s Prayer (6:9–15) interrupts the flow, the theme—it concerns Gentiles and not hypocrites—and the organization (more of that in the commentary on 6:9–15). The organization of 6:1–18, excluding the Lord’s Prayer, looks like this:

  Almsgiving Prayer Fasting

  The observance

  6:2a

  6:5a

  6:16a

  Prohibition

  6:2b

  6:5b

  6:16b

  Intent

  6:2c

  6:5c

  6:16c

  Amen … reward

  6:2d

  6:5d

  6:16d

  Alternative observance

  6:3–4a

  6:6a

  6:17–18a

  Father’s reward

  6:4b

  6:6b

  6:18b

  Now for the almsgiving passage in 6:2–4:

  The observance (6:2a):

  “So when you give to the needy …”

  Prohibition (6:2b):

  “do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets …”

  Intent (6:2c):

  “to be honored by others. “

  Amen … reward (6:2d):

  “Truly I tell you, they have received their r
eward in full.”

  Alternative observance (6:3–4a):

  “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.”

  Father’s reward (6:4b):

  “Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

  This structure provides focus: each passage concerns an observance, human intention, and a shift from human approval to divine approval. Each of the three pious acts (almsgiving, prayer, fasting) makes concrete the fundamental thematic statement of 6:1. To get the three pious acts right, we have to get the thematic statement right.

  Thematic Statement (6:1)

  Jesus’ warning in “Be careful,” a term he uses in addressing the Pharisees (16:6, 11, 12) and the wayward (7:15; 10:17), concerns “righteousness” (dikaiosynē). This term, which in Hebrew would have been ṣ e dāqâ, can refer either to behaviors that conform to the Torah or to the paradigmatic act of the Torah at that time, giving alms.4 In 6:1 “righteousness” refers to pious deeds that express Torah observance.

  The warning is not to do these acts of righteousness “in front of others to be seen by them.” Taken literally, or better, taken flat-footedly, Jesus would be saying that no pious deed could ever been done in public. But how then would one pray for one’s family at Passover? Instead, Jesus here digs into motivation and intention, and what he says is as Jewish5 as it is antihypocritical. Jesus pounds the hammer down on hypocrisy.6 His instructions are designed not to create scrupulosity but to criticize the ostentatious behaviors of those who do things to be seen—like the Pharisees and teachers of the law (see Matt 23)—and to urge his followers to engage God and others directly. No one can improve on Chrysostom:7

  Alms may be given in the presence of others primarily to be seen by them, or

  They may be given in the presence of others but not to be seen, or

  They may be openly given in order to be seen but still not seen, or

  They may be given quietly and still seen.

  Hence Jesus’ next words: “If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Jesus is not attracted to the most common form of ethical motivation in the Western world: altruism, or doing good things because of their intrinsic merit. Rather, this text operates with an Ethic from Above (Messiah Jesus reveals God’s will) wrapped inside an Ethic from Beyond (the final judgment ushering in the kingdom). Modern ethical theorists often look down their nose at Jesus because he speaks of rewards, but a more biblical ethic faithfully pushes back. Since God is inherently meritorious as the all-glorious Perfect One, seeking reward from God is actually seeking something because of its inherent worth.

  But such an approach fails to walk on the ground of Jesus. His appeal is not to the inherent goodness of an action but to God, what God says, and to God’s people being listeners.8 The reward involves living in God’s world in God’s way, and such living brings glory to God and blessing and eternal life. Jesus motivates his followers to do good things on the basis of reward often (cf. 5:12, 46; 10:41–42; 20:8). We need to remind ourselves again that reward language emerges from a world in which sin was seen as demerit and an observant act was seen as a merit. This is not works righteousness but framing moral behaviors before a God who is judge.9

  The Observance (6:2a)

  “So when you give to the needy….” The first concrete kind of “righteousness” is almsgiving. The Torah itself ordered Israelites to care for the poor in the laws of gleaning (Lev 19:9–10), the Sabbath rules about harvesting (Exod 23:11), and the year of canceling debts (Deut 15). Prophets pound away at Israelite leaders for injustice toward the poor (Isa 3:14–15; Amos 8:4–6). A later text by Jesus ben Sirach virtually equates almsgiving with sacrifice (Sir 3:30). Following the New Testament period, the rabbis created piety around three nodes: Torah study, prayer, and almsgiving, and almsgiving was seen as the substitute of sacrifice once the temple was destroyed (cf. Mishnah ʾAbot 1:2).10 Almsgiving, at least in the minds of many, had become at the time of Jesus the singular act of piety. Schürer’s famous work observes:

  A distinction was made between the weekly money-chest [quppa, goods and clothing], from which the local poor were supported regularly once a week, and the “plate” [tamhuy, food like bread, beans, and fruit], from which any needy person (especially strangers) could obtain a daily portion.

  And a rule developed:

  Whoever had food for two meals was to take nothing from the “plate,” and whoever had food for fourteen meals, nothing from the money-chest.11

  Prohibition (6:2b)

  Jesus: “do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets.” Interpretations boil down to two: blowing trumpets is either a physical activity (a trumpet blowing aloud or the shofar chest in the temple noisily clanging when someone’s coins hit them as they entered the chest), or it is a figurative expression for acts done to be noticed by others. The former preaches, the latter is almost certainly accurate—not the least of which reasons is that Jesus’ own words locate the almsgiving in synagogues and on streets and not in the temple (where trumpets were blown and the shofar chests were found).12 Jesus hereby prohibits giving alms in a way that draws attention to the giver.

  Jesus contrasts the right behavior of his disciples with the behavior of the “hypocrites.” In the gospel of Matthew this term refers both to those whose behaviors were out of sync with the heart as well as to those behaviors that followed the false teaching of the Pharisees and teachers of the law; in addition, there can be an element of self-deception on the part of the hypocrite. One simply needs to read Matthew 23 to see why the Pharisees and teachers of the law were accused of hypocrisy, and not all of it has to do with the inner versus outer inconsistency.13 The word “hypocrite” refers often in the Greek world to the masked actor, and it is not impossible that Jesus picked up this word from the actors and actresses on the stage of Sepphoris’s theater.14 The form of deceit in our text appears to be both self-deceit and the attempt to deceive others.

  Intent (6:2c)

  The intent of the feigned behavior rises to the surface in each section in this passage. Thus, “to be honored” (6:2c) stands alongside “to be seen by others” (6:5c) and “to show others they are fasting” (6:16c). A world of revelation is at work in these intent statements. The act itself is not the problem, nor even its visibility, but instead the act itself is transformed into hypocrisy and self-preoccupation when the intent is attraction to oneself.

  Amen … Reward (6:2d)

  These words, repeated in each paragraph, are damning words and are a form of incisive ironic indirection like the “least in the kingdom” in 5:19. Their reward will be what humans give the ostentatious givers in synagogues and on street corners.

  Alternative Observance (6:3–4a)

  Jesus both critiques and constructs. He goes once again to a metaphor: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.” There is a variety of interpretations, with the left hand being the weaker and the right hand being the stronger, but most likely the metaphor refers to direct engagement with the one in need (or the God who commands compassion).15

  How then does one give “in secret”? Luther’s words get to the point of Jesus well: it is about “singleness of heart” and means that “the heart is not ostentatious or desirous of gaining honor and reputation from it, but is moved to contribute freely regardless of whether it makes an impression and gains the praise of the people or whether everyone despises and profanes it.”16 Perhaps the finest commentary on giving in secret is Matthew 25:31–46, where disciples are surprised at the judgment because they weren’t aware that their actions were directed at Jesus.

  Father’s Reward (6:4b):

  The final end of Jesus’ combination of an Ethic from Above and Beyond is God’s blessing: “Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Pe
rhaps the stunning words here are that God “sees what is done in secret.” As Calvin puts it, “The theater of God is in the hidden corners.”17 We can infer that this “reward” is the same as the “blessing” of Matthew 5:3–12, the joy of entering into relationship with God that both sustains life, regardless of its conditions, and unleashes flourishing relationships.

  LIVE the Story

  The essence of the principle for piety that Jesus develops has to do with the one before whom we stand when we do righteousness. Do we stand before others or do we stand before God? To develop a before-God-alone approach to piety we must become more introspective, asking “Why am I doing this?” and “Who is watching me?” We also need to ask about our pleasures: “What is it about this religious deed that brings me pleasure?”

  The Language of Reward

  C. S. Lewis chased the criticism of appealing to rewards in Christian ethics into the hinterlands in these memorable words:

  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

  We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of rewards. There is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it and it is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man a mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it…. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity itself in consummation. There is also a third case, which is more complicated. An enjoyment of Greek poetry is certainly a proper … reward for learning Greek; but only those who have reached the stage of enjoying Greek poetry can tell from their own experience that this is so … enjoyment creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or an hour when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just insofar as he approaches the reward that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward….