Gospel Notes by Michael Whelan SM
Jesus said: “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council” (5:20-22 – NRSV).
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart’” (5:27-28 – NRSV).
(This is the shorter version. The longer version may be proclaimed – Matthew 5:17-37.)
Introductory notes
General
We continue with the Sermon on the Mount. The focus is the new way of being, the kinds of attitudes, dispositions and behaviours that are characteristic of those who have become part of “the kingdom of heaven”. A feature of this presentation is the contrast Jesus draws between the way of “the kingdom” and the way presented by “the Scribes and the Pharisees”.
The contrast of Jesus’ way with that of the religious authorities of his day, is a theme in Matthew’s Gospel. Thus we have six contrasts in Matthew 5:17-37 – only two are present in the shorter version above. This contrast between the Way of Jesus and the way of the religious authorities, is also strongly present in the writings of St Paul – see for example Romans 10:3. This text of St Paul to the Romans – written about twenty years before Matthew’s Gospel, though obviously sharing in the same oral tradition – is one to which we must return.
We need to be very careful in our interpretation and application of this text. Here are two opinions of eminent scripture scholars that might help us in our efforts to reach a fair reading of the text.
The first opinion is from Daniel J Harrington SJ:
“The introduction to the Sermon on the Mount contains four sections: the setting (5:1–2), the Beatitudes (5:3–12), the identity of Jesus’ followers (5:13–16), and the teaching about the Law (5:17–20). …. The final part of the introduction (5:17–20) affirms an organic relation between Jesus’ teaching and the Torah. That relation is expressed as ‘fulfillment’ (5:17). There is no direct parallel to any other Synoptic text (see Luke 16:16–17 for a vaguely similar saying). Within the passage there are tensions (the two ‘until’ clauses in 5:18), and there are also tensions with the apparent abrogations of the Torah in 5:31, 33, 38. Nevertheless, the thrust of the passage as it stands is that Jesus’ fulfillment affirms and establishes the Torah rather than nullifies it. It uses the ‘light-heavy’ distinction among the commandments that is well known from the rabbinic writings only to reject it in practice (as Rabbi Judah did). It challenges Jesus’ followers to a righteousness superior to that taught by the scribes and Pharisees.
“Whatever the origins and history of the material contained in Matt 5:17–20, its present form expressed the convictions of the Matthean community. The Torah remains in force. Jesus came not to destroy it but to fulfill it. Jesus’ program for interpreting and practicing the Torah is superior to that of the scribes and Pharisees …..
“The Beatitudes (5:3–12) are often presented in preaching and teaching as Jesus’ distinctive contribution to defining the elements of good character or as a list of Jesus’ values in opposition to those of the world. Or they are sometimes taken as part of an ‘ethics of discipleship’ intended only for those who follow Jesus already. But the Beatitudes are neither philosophical nor sectarian ethics. The Beatitudes are thoroughly Jewish in form and content. They challenged those who made up ‘Israel’ in Matthew’s time by delineating the kinds of persons and actions that will receive their full reward when God’s kingdom comes. They remind Christians today of the Jewish roots of their piety and challenge” (Daniel J Harrington SJ, The Gospel of Matthew, Liturgical Press, 2007, 83-84).
The second opinion is from Dominic Crossan:
“It is hardly news that there was a very profound clash between Jesus and the Pharisees and that Paul’s conversion instigated a dialectic no less violent. But later Christian animosity has badly distorted the true nature of this confrontation. Pharisees are described as hypocrites or as uncaring legalists and inhuman externalisers who imposed on others burdens they themselves would not bear. Most of which is inaccurate, unhistorical, and purely polemical. If Pharisees were such, how is one to explain their tremendous power over people for whom they had only the authority of competence? In fact, the Pharisees were superb moral guides. But there precisely lay the problem which Jesus and Paul saw so clearly.
“Apart from the damage such caricatures have done to Judaism and the relationship of Christianity to it, there is another very serious result within Christianity itself. When Christianity is no longer aware of what Jesus and Paul were fighting against in Pharisaic Judaism, it can hardly be conscious of a similar presence within itself. The debate did not concern good law as over against bad law or even internal and sincere law as over against external and hypocritical law. The challenge of Jesus and Paul was this: obedience does not lead to God, but God leads one to obedience. The question is not God or law, covenant or commandment, faith or works, but, granting both, in which direction does the arrow fly from one to the other? It must be emphasized that this is not a debate between Judaism and Christianity but a conflict within them both, and a conflict ever ancient and ever new. So, according to Jesus and Paul, it was the gift of God’s presence that made a good life possible, not a good life that made the reward of God’s presence inevitable. …. as Ernst Käsemann has said so succinctly: ‘The righteousness of God does not presuppose our obedience; it creates it.’ The problem was not so much that one might not be able to obey the law’s excellence but that one might actually do so to perfection and thereby be unable to tell one’s own perfection from God. What exactly were Jesus and Paul fighting? In a final quotation from Käsemann: ‘the community of “good” people which turns God’s commandments into the instruments of self-sanctification.’ The enemy was neither stupidity nor hypocrisy but sincerity all too sincere and perfection all too perfect” (John Dominic Crossan, In Parables – The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, Harper and Row, 1973, 80-81).
Specific
unless your righteousness etc: The Pharisees were renowned for their focus on fidelity to the Torah. Jesus is not asking for that kind of righteousness but something deeper. Jesus’ words should not be taken as a demand that his disciples should try harder than the pharisees and keep the precepts of the law more meticulously. These words must be taken in the context of the whole Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 5:1-7:29 – and especially The Beatitudes – Matthew 5:1-12. The “kingdom of heaven” is not about keeping laws and observing precepts – though, as a matter of fact, it will include that. It is about love, more precisely, it is about being in love. One commentator writes: “Jesus calls for his followers to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. He is surely using the term righteousness in a sense different from that which the scribes and Pharisees attached to it. They looked for strict legal correctness, whereas Jesus looked for love. They stressed the keeping of the law, and from the standpoint of the lawkeeper it is not easy to see how anyone could exceed their righteousness. Along the lines of lawkeeping who could possibly exceed the righteousness of those who tithed mint, dill, and cummin (23:23)? But Jesus has already spoken of a different kind of righteousness (3:15), and it is central to the Christian gospel that Jesus would fulfil all that Scripture means in making a new way, a way in which he would bring those who believe in him to salvation. This does not mean cheap grace, for the words of this verse bring out the truth that those who have been touched by Jesus live on a new plane, a plane in which the keeping of God’s commandments is important. Their righteousness is a given righteousness. Nowhere do we get the idea that the servant of God achieves in his own strength the kind of living that gives him standing before God. But when he is given that standing, Jesus looks to him to live in accordance with that standing. Later in this sermon Jesus will emphasize the spirit rather than the letter of the law. The Pharisees put a tremendous emphasis on the letter of the law, but Jesus was looking for something very different from the Pharisaic standard. For them it was a matter of observing regulations (and softening them where possible), but for him it was keeping the commandments in depth; he taught a radical obedience” (Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1992, 111).
Reflection
Central to the Gospels is the promise of a new way of being human. In John it is spoken of, for example, as a new birth (see John 1:51) and a mutual abiding (see John 15:1-17). In the Synoptic Gospels it is referred to variously as “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven” or, simply, “the kingdom”. This new way of being human is not achieved through mastery, it is received as gift – unmerited gift! It is not a moral conquest but a free gift. Today’s Gospel – Matthew 5:20-22 & 27-28 – opens with the challenging declaration: “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. What are we to make of this?
On the face of it, it seems like Jesus is summoning us, much as Lady Macbeth summoned her vacillating husband. Although the wanted outcome was clearly nefarious in their case. However, the attitude was not that dissimilar to that which is sometimes passed off as Christian commitment. In the face of Macbeth’s timid question, “If we should fail?”, Lady Macbeth says: “We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail” (Macbeth Act 1, Scene 7).
The triumph of the human will! Where is grace and graciousness? Where is gratitude and joy? What happens to our humanity? It is not insignificant that Lady Macbeth has death in mind when she evokes this wilful attitude. It is an attitude calculated to kill – even when it is said to be about goodness and truth and holiness.
St Paul, in his Letter to the Romans writes: “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for (the Jews) is that they may be saved. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Romans 10:1-4).
The fact that this Letter was written a generation before Matthew’s Gospel, and that Matthew’s Gospel is acknowledged to be the result of a longstanding oral tradition, imply that there was in the early Christian community an understanding of righteousness, virtue, moral goodness – call it what you will – that was very different from that generally taught by the religious authorities of the time.
So how might we interpret Jesus’ declaration? I think it is reasonable to say that Jesus has the best interests of his listeners at heart, that he wants more than anything to share with them this new way of being – a being in love. He is therefore pointing out here and elsewhere how they might open themselves up to receive the gift of being in love, the kingdom of God. Meister Eckhart would say: Get out of the way and let God be God in you! In this way, we become witnesses to the kingdom.
Becoming human together
In today’s Gospel – Matthew 5:17-37 – we move more deeply into the Sermon on the Mount. Some questions arise: Was the message just promoting change in the Jewish religious practice? Was the intended audience of the Sermon on the Mount just the disciples? Surely, the Sermon on the Mount – like the Good News – is for the human family. Jesus presents a vision of our becoming human together, fulfilling our best possibilities together as creatures made in the image and likeness of God.
The Sermon on the Mount is open to multiple interpretations. But there is one thing that seems inevitable: This vision for our becoming human together implies living-as-conversation. Conversation – as distinct from discussion or debate or mere chatter – is an engagement with people, events and things in a mutual search for truth beyond ideologies and anything we already know and are. True conversation is always potentially an event of grace, always open to gift and surprise. When we enter such an engagement we expect to be changed. Something “other” is at work here, something that belongs to everyone. Living-as-conversation is central to the way of being envisaged in the Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon’s invitation to live beyond resentment in forgiveness, beyond lust in care, beyond judgment in respect, beyond vanity in humility, beyond hatred in love, is available to all people of goodwill. We may find light and inspiration for this new way of being in people who do not share our culture or faith or religion, in events that are secular and in things that are (apparently) not sacred but profane. So, this way of being can never be reduced to a creed or a set of laws, moral imperatives or doctrinal statements and certainly not an ideology.
This way of being is transmitted to others the same way it was transmitted to us – by presence. Often enough this presence is most eloquent in silence. Sometimes words are an encumbrance, they get in the way. In silence, quiet commitment, patience, compassion, forgiveness, generosity and endurance speak for themselves.
For those of us baptized into Christ, our primary conversation is with Jesus, Emmanuel, “God is with us” (1:23). It is his presence in our daily lives that transforms us in ways we could not achieve on our own. It is his presence that brings about the new way of being. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ puts us in conversation with everyone and everything in our world. Those conversations will be shaped by our membership of the Church. They will also be shaped by our openness to learning from the other person, event or thing.
The transforming moral vision in the Sermon on the Mount arises from the truth that we are incomplete beings until or unless we find communion with the people, events and things of our world. Their otherness may appear irrelevant, even threatening. In fact, that otherness holds an essential key to our humanity.