Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us.18

  There is an important caution we must use in talking about rewards because it can suggest to some that we earn our way into the kingdom of God. But what the Jewish context above has shown, and what Lewis then develops, is that only a flat-footedness leads us to works righteousness when we see the word “reward.” A fuller theology, one that balances the rhetoric of motivation, a theology of grace and demand, as well as a recognition of the thirst within us to live out what God is doing in us, leads us to a renewed embrace of the rhetoric of reward.

  Thoughts on Hypocrisy

  There is nothing peculiar about Judaism when it comes to hypocrisy, and Jesus’ warnings to his contemporaries deserve our hearing today. There lurks in each of us a desire to be congratulated for our religious deeds. Social approval, whether it comes from an entire community (your local church) or from the religious authority (a pastor), because it is religious, functions as divine approval. As disapproval can be deeply wounding to a church member, so approval can be just as deeply rewarding. We must not forget the ecclesial power of disapproval and approval. While psychologists are teaching us that approval forms a healthy ego and a strong self-image, Jesus warns us of the danger of seeking the approval of others because of its intoxicating and self-deceiving powers.

  What Jesus has in mind is not simply fakery, as if hypocrisy could be reduced to the alarming contrast of who we are and how we want to be seen. What Jesus aims at is the self-deceit that weaves itself into the fabric of a person’s spirituality in which there is not only a notice-me approach, but also an inability to know that the problem is present. This sense of hypocrisy ought to warn us. This is why spiritual directors or close friends or leaders need to be attentive to the codes of our actions.

  Jesus is infallible and we are not. In fact, we are particularly fallible, and our judgment of when someone is hypocritical in their piety should be subjected to severe constraints. Not only that, but we need to work at seeing the good in the other instead of developing a cynical approach to the pious deeds of others. What may bother you, say someone’s dancing in the worship team that you find to be showy, may be a genuine expression of piety—not unlike David’s dancing in public before the Lord—and we may simply be off base in our judgment.

  Jesus wants honesty and self-awareness of our own fallibility and our own selfish desires. Telling the truth about such things is participation in the goodness of the gospel. Contrast that with this story. A friend of mine combed through the recent archives of a library and in going through one set of files found some particularly unflattering observations about some Christian leaders. The most recent report is that many of those files have since been removed into a set of private files known only to … well, whomever that archivist decides to make them known. The sad reality here is that there is a tandem relation of leaders not wanting their sorrier traits known to others and an archivist who is complicit in such squelching of information. What is happening here embodies what hypocrisy is all about: the nurturance of image, the protection of image, the use of power to protect that image, and the refusal to live in the light.

  But hypocrisy, that cruel combination of publicly motivated actions that are out of sync with our inner realities and the self-deceit that masks that reality from the person doing the deeds, is real, and it is the pastoral and loving task to point it out and to help people get through it and over it. We are to be more merciful than just, as James 2:13 reminds us, but we are to be firm and to be a blessing of development when we are called to this pastoral task.

  A Theologian’s Story

  Stanley Hauerwas, who tells his own story in Hannah’s Child,19 is a titan for American theologians. His books on ethics and the relation of church and state, not to mention the opportunity to give the celebrated Gifford Lectures, along with his colossal status for many of his former students, have each contributed to his “fame” as a theologian. On top of this Hauerwas has stubbornly argued for an Anabaptist theology in so many areas that I had developed an image of the man’s life that made me think I knew how tranquil his life must have been.

  Far from it. Hauerwas’s first wife was mentally ill and created chaos in his home. Hauerwas somehow managed to double down on his work, concentrate with powers that would have been incapable for most of us—and I say this as one who comes from a wonderfully tranquil home—and show tender care and nurture for his son Adam. What amazed me as I read his life story is that, though I know some of his students and plenty more who admire him and read all his books, no one I know had ever said a word about the daily strife of his life. And here’s my point: few of us could have gone through those kinds of decades in life, in the heat of our developing academic years without saying something aloud about how hard life was. It is precisely here that the words of Jesus strike home in our own souls: it is often challenging to keep our good deeds to ourselves.20

  On Giving

  Danger lurks when we conclude that Jesus is against public piety, since 5:13–16 has taught that others are to see our good deeds and those good deeds will lead to their glorifying God. Furthermore, Jesus went to the synagogue and read Scripture there, and those are public deeds; Jesus also went to temple and celebrated the feasts of Israel, and those too were done in public. He praised the widow who gave all she had, and for him to praise her he had to see her. So these statements do not prohibit public deeds but warn about the temptation to use publicity of our deeds as a form of gaining approval from our religious community. The ideal, then, is to do things that have to be done publicly in such a way that we focus on God and are not driven by public congratulations.

  We do this in a variety of ways, and not all of them by ringing the collection plate, writing our names in ALL CAPS on the offering envelope, announcing how much we give, or enjoying being congratulated for what we have given. So, a few pieces of advice. One thing that has to cease among Christians is the appeal to an audience to give with the promise of getting something. Second, we need to cease appealing to the vanity of people when we solicit funds for some noble cause. Third in line is appealing to give, or simply giving, in order to gain a tax break. What we can encourage is that people do every pious action as close to the border of secrecy as possible. The more we give in private, whether it is writing a check to World Vision or donating canned goods to a relief shelter, the more we will focus on the person in need. Perhaps another way of saying it is that the more secretive we become, the more we are like lights, the more like a city on a hill that cannot be hidden (5:14–16).

  What are some signs that we need to back off and go more private with our giving? The first sign of a person having a motivation problem is grumbling when his or her actions aren’t noticed or congratulated. The second sign is envy and jealousy when others gain credit and they don’t. A third sign is irritation or volatile emotions when one doesn’t get one’s wishes—on, say, the choice of a pastor—in spite of how much one has given to that church. And a fourth sign of mismanaged motivations is counting heads or numbers when one is asked to do a religious deed like teaching a Sunday School class.

  Notes

  1. KNT: “practice your piety.”

  2. KNT: “mind you don’t do it with an eye on the audience!”

  3. KNT: “That’s what people do when they’re just play-acting.”

  4. This is why some Greek manuscripts, like L and Family 13, have “almsgiving” (eleēmosynē) instead of “righteousness” (dikaiosynē).

  5. See Rom 2:28–29, where Paul uses “inwardly,” but it is the same words as found in Matthew 6:4 (“in secret”). And the Letter of Aristeas has: “Practice righteousness before all men, being mindful of God” (168). A good collection of later texts is Luz, Matthew 1–7, 300–301.

  6. For a humanitarian study of this theme, W. I. Miller, Faking It (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

  7. ACCS: Matthew, 123.

  8. McKnight, Blue Par
akeet, 83–112.

  9. Two important studies are E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 107–47; Anderson, Sin: A History.

  10. See Kyong-Jin Lee, “Almsgiving,” EDEJ, 324–25.

  11. E. Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135) (rev. G. Vermes et al.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), 2:437. For a full discussion, see J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 126–34.

  12. See Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:579; Turner, Matthew, 183.

  13. The best study on this is David E. Garland, The Intention of Matthew 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 91–123. See also Garland, Reading Matthew, 78.

  14. On this, see R. A. Batey, Jesus and the Forgotten City (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 83–103.

  15. Allison, Sermon on the Mount, 110, which differs somewhat from his commentary (Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:583); Luz, Matthew 1–7, 300.

  16. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 136.

  17. Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, 1:202.

  18. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 26–27, 28, 29.

  19. Titled after his mother: Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir.

  20. The postmoderns among us will now point to the irony of Hauerwas’s silence now broadcast in a memoir; I would come back that he told this story because he thought it could be of help to others.

  Chapter 12

  Matthew 6:5–6

  LISTEN to the Story

  5“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: The Psalms. Deuteronomy 6:4–8 (with 11:13–21; Num 15:37–41; these three texts combine to form the full Shema said by orthodox Jews daily to this day); the Amidah. 1

  Prayer is as human as eating, and every ancient culture has its prayers. Whatever a contemporary philosopher of religion or a brain scientist might want to make of prayer, whether explaining it away as a form of manipulation of the gods or some relic of an ancient dimension of the brain, the fact remains that prayer is part of human existence.

  Especially so when it comes to the ancient Israelites. God conversed with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, the idyllic form of prayer (Gen 3:8). But prayer begins in the Bible with God’s speaking to humans to communicate with them (1:28–30; 2:16–17). Human prayer is a response to God’s word to humans. Because humans take the fullness of experience to God, prayer connects to everything. Thus, one form of prayer emerges from sacrifice, another from worship, another from intercession, another from petition and pleading, and yet another to managing a home or loving one’s husband or nurturing one’s children.

  Prayer was and is both a spontaneous act and a recitative act. Israelites recited prayers as a routine form of piety at prescribed hours of prayer (Ps 55:17; Dan 6:10; Acts 3:1). Two kinds of prayers are noteworthy. First, Jews prayed and in many cases memorized the Psalms.2 Second, Jews developed customary prayers, the most notable of which appears to be the Amidah, or the Eighteen Benedictions,3 which was accompanied by the recitation of the Shema and the Ten Commandments.4

  These recited prayers had one other noteworthy dimension: Jews prayed three times per day. When? Before going to bed (vespers or compline today), when they arose (lauds or morning prayer today), and at the time of the afternoon sacrifice (midday prayer today), roughly at 3:00 p.m. That means they prayed wherever they were at the hour of prayer, but it so happens that some hypocrites planned where to be at the hour of prayer—that is, they planned to be conspicuous at the time of prayer.

  Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:5–6 is about that kind of prayer, the publicly recited prayer at (roughly) specific times in the day,5 not about spontaneous prayers one uttered in the everyday bustle of life. Jesus zeros in on publicly recited prayers said by observant Jews in public places and excoriates the habit of praying publicly in order to be observed by others. The vast majority of Western Christians, and here we mean Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants, do not practice the hours of prayer. Furthermore, this text is taken even further from our world by the fact that few Christians pray publicly in a church setting. More pray in small groups and in Bible studies, so as we approach this text, perhaps we can keep our minds on such settings as well.

  EXPLAIN the Story

  As with the organization of the almsgiving passage (6:2–4), so with the prayer passage:

  The observance (6:5a):

  “And when you pray…”

  Prohibition (6:5b):

  “do not be like the hypocrites …”

  Intent (6:5c):

  “for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.”

  Amen … reward (6:5d):

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

  Alternative observance (6:6a):

  “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”

  Father’s reward (6:6b):

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

  The Observance (6:5a)

  “And when you pray….” One could translate this “whenever you pray,” but that nicety aside, Jesus focuses on how the religiously observant prayed in public places. A friend of mine was with a well-known author on prayer when they both entered a quick-food store. Smack-dab in the middle of the store her friend’s watch made a dinging sound and her friend said, “We’ve got to stop and say our prayers. It’s time for afternoon prayers.” My friend’s response was, “Here? In the store? Why not when we get to the car?” And these words came back: “Because it’s the time for prayer and we will pray.” So they did.

  The person praying was Phyllis Tickle.6 My friend’s response would have been mine and perhaps yours, but those responses are at the other end of the spectrum of the hypocrites of Jesus’ day. Growing up in a world where the dinging of the alarm in their minds meant stopping whatever they were doing, facing Jerusalem and praying, these observant Jews decided to use the custom to the advantage of their reputation. (Phyllis didn’t. She was letting her light shine.)

  Prohibition (6:5b)

  “Do not be like the hypocrites….” We discussed the word “hypocrite” at 6:2. The hypocrites think folks perceive them as pious when the person with insight observes blatant pretense and self-promotion. What Jesus wants is utter concentration. A story: not that long ago Kris and I received an incredible invitation to participate in the Easter breakfast at the White House. I will avoid the whole story and go toward the end: the moment of our being buzzed at the door on Pennsylvania Avenue to leave was the first time I thought about the other areas of my life. I hadn’t thought about our home, my writing projects, students, classes, or the school; I hadn’t daydreamed about playing golf or traveling. I realized I had been 100 percent consumed by our time in the East Room, and as we walked away Kris and I chatted about what it was like. We could remember in startling detail everything that happened. I use this as an analogy to something far greater: in the presence of God we should give ourselves in utter devotion to communicate with our Father. Nothing else matters.

  Intent (6:5c)

  “For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” The kind of prayer Jesus has in mind now becomes clear to his audience and readers, for the Amidah was to be said standing. The hypocrites seek conspicuous places the way contemporaries purchase items with labels (someone say UGG aloud) that draw attention to what we want folks to think of us. Hypocrites like places connected to worship and publicity. Synagogues were the place of prayer for Jews, and for th
at reason perhaps the most typical word in the Greek-speaking world used for synagogues was proseuchē, or “house of prayer.”7

  There is nothing wrong with praying in a synagogue or reading Scripture aloud in a synagogue (Luke 4:16–20). Nor is there anything inherently wrong praying in a place as public as a street corner. What is wrong here is praying in order “to be seen by others.” Jesus focuses on intent. Instead of talking to God, as Adam and Eve did in the garden as a form of fellowship and worship and petition or as David does in the Psalms, hypocrites prayed to be seen.

  Amen … Reward (6:5d)

  “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” These words are powerfully judgmental: to say they have their reward in full is to say they will have no reward from God. They got the good they wanted, but what they wanted was not good.