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Sermon on the Mount - Matthew 6:1-13
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Are you interested in becoming the best version of yourself? Are you interested in allowing my story to slowly become your story? Are you interested in learning how to ride for yourself? Or are you just here to look the part? Welcome to the commons cast.
Speaker 1:We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Today, however, I wanna reach back to where we talked about the law because I ran out of time to hit on a couple important things there. So we're gonna do one mini sermon, and then we're gonna pray, and then we're gonna do a whole another one.
Speaker 1:So, basically, this is a buy one, get one free night at Commons. It's BOGO for everyone. However, I think this approach is actually gonna help us today as we follow Jesus' switch gears and move towards a conversation around prayer. However, two weeks ago, we looked at Jesus' relationship to the law. And the law in this context refers to the first five books of your bible.
Speaker 1:So Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the oral interpretation of those same laws. This is one of the big differences between the Jewish culture of Jesus' world and some of our modern assumptions when it comes to the Bible. In Jesus' world, law was the rule and the interpretation. Mean, what good is a rule if you don't know what it means in your world? And so in Jesus' world, the written law, Torah Shebektav, was always incomplete without the interpretation, Torah Shebaal Pei.
Speaker 1:It needed to be fulfilled. And so when Jesus comes on the scene, he will say things like, you have heard it said, don't murder. But I tell you the real intent behind that law is that you would learn to live at peace. You would let go of your anger. He will say, you have heard it said, don't commit adultery.
Speaker 1:But I tell you the intent behind that law is that you might stop treating each other as objects to possess. He will say, you have heard it said, love your neighbor, hate your enemy, but I tell you that is just the beginning. And the ultimate intent behind that law is that we might actually begin to see everyone as our equal, everyone as our neighbor, everyone is worthy of the divine love that has been extended to each of us. So, don't get caught up on trying to fulfill the letter of the law. Learn to begin reaching toward the spirit that sits behind all of it.
Speaker 1:Now that's as far as we got when we talked about law, but I do wanna go back there because I think looking at some of the specifics of how Jesus interprets certain laws can become foundational for us when we start to move forward with him. And for that, we need to go back to chapter five verse 38 in Matthew where Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. Now, we are gonna have to look at what Jesus means by do not resist here because it absolutely does not mean that you allow yourself to continue to be abused. It's really important we understand that from the outset. But first, he says, you've heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Speaker 1:Now, this comes from Torah, specifically Exodus chapter 21, Leviticus 24, and Deuteronomy 19. So this is not a one off. This is a law that is repeated multiple times in multiple books. It is a foundational part of Jewish thought. And in fact, it goes all the way back to before the Jewish people to at least the Babylonian code of Hammurabi, and we call it the lex talionis or the law of retaliation.
Speaker 1:Now, the law of retaliation is, according to some, one of the foundational innovations that allowed human societies to function. Now, before this, injustice was met with unmitigated violent injustice. So any offense, any infraction, any perceived slight could lead to an all out war. But the innovation of proportional retaliation or the lex talionis, this is what limited all of that. It held our violence in check.
Speaker 1:It took our rage and it filtered it through the presumed impartiality of the group. Someone took your hand, you took theirs, and at least it stopped there. Now granted, still kind of gruesome, definitely violent, but at least it was limited. Except, what's really interesting here is we actually have no record of the Jewish people ever carrying out the lex talionis as it's recorded in Torah. The Jewish people did not gouge out eyes.
Speaker 1:They did not cut off hands. They did not pull out teeth under the guise of justice. In fact, it would appear that at no point in Jewish history was this law ever applied literally. All of the evidence seems to suggest that the application of the law was always monetary. Meaning, if you injured someone or you stole from them or you took a livelihood from them, you were forced to compensate them.
Speaker 1:And what that means is that everyone knew what this law meant. Everyone knew what the intent of it was. Everyone understood that design was to limit the violence of our retaliation, but everyone knew that it had to be interpreted. And of course, God doesn't want us going around dismembering each other. God wants us to learn how to be fair even in the face of injustice.
Speaker 1:And so when Jesus comes along with his interpretation, the shocking part isn't that he interprets. Because no one in the long history of Judaism had ever taken this law literally. The scandalous part is not that Jesus interprets the law. It's how Jesus interprets the law. And that brings us to do not resist.
Speaker 1:Because from there, Jesus goes on to say, if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other also. If anyone wants to sue you to take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go a mile with them, go too. And these are all examples of what Walter Wink calls direct nonviolent action. Because if the letter of the lex talionis was designed to limit the violence of our retaliation, and if the Jewish interpretation of that law was always to move away from physical violence towards an economic deterrent, then Jesus here advocates for a new interpretation.
Speaker 1:One that points us toward social action. Because you see each of these three examples have a very specific meaning for Jesus' audience. In ancient Semitic cultures, your left hand was always considered unclean. That's because it was used literally for some unclean practices that related to your personal hygiene. Your right hand is what you were used to using for eating, for greeting, and for interacting with the world around you.
Speaker 1:But that means that if you're going to slap someone on the right cheek with your right hand, that this would have to be a backhanded slap. So this is not meant to be a knockout blow. This is a way to be dismissive of someone. It was a way of showing someone that they were beneath you. In other words, what Jesus is describing here isn't a fight, it's a form of social degradation.
Speaker 1:However, if that person then were to turn their left cheek to you, and you know you can't hit them with your left hand because that's shameful for you, well now you're forced to at least consider hitting them with your open hand. And as crazy as this might sound, in this culture that forces you to acknowledge their dignity, to see them as an equal and a human being worthy of your respect. This isn't actually about allowing yourself to be slapped again. This is about forcing us to confront the assumption that victims are somehow beneath their abusers. To turn your cheek is a way of saying you might act violently toward me, but you may not continue to believe you are entitled to.
Speaker 1:K. If anyone tries to take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. And this one suffers from a little bit too much translation. Because this is not about shirts and coats. This is about tunics and cloaks.
Speaker 1:Specifically, your outer garment and your underwear. And Jesus says, if someone tries to sue you, to take everything from you, if they are so intent on humiliating you that they would gladly leave you standing in the street in your underwear. Then you hold your head high, you strip down to nothing, you hand everything over, and you show them how naked their greed has become. In other words, when the justice system has lost sight of what is just, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Finally, if someone you ask you to go a mile, you go too.
Speaker 1:Literally during the Roman occupation of Palestine, a Roman centurion, Roman soldier, by law, could force a non citizen, basically almost any Jewish person at that point, to carry their bags for a mile or literally for a thousand steps. Now remember back to when we started this series five weeks ago, and how this audience that Jesus is speaking to is full of Romans who may have taken advantage of this law. And certainly Jews who had been subjected to it. Well, now Jesus says, unjust laws may try to rob you of your agency, but that does not mean you relinquish the right to choose your own steps in the world. And all of these examples are set against the word resist, which in Greek is the word enthistome, which generally means to violently oppose.
Speaker 1:And so what Jesus is doing here is taking the foundational law of the lex talionis. But now he's saying, you know what? Maybe we can actually do better than simply limiting our retaliation. That's a bare minimum. Maybe when this finally really sinks in, maybe when we really become who we were meant to be, we can do more than limit.
Speaker 1:We can actually choose nonviolent ways of challenging the injustice that surrounds us. Do not resist an evil person does not mean you allow that person to continue to abuse you. It means you will never change the world by becoming like the worst of it. And so instead, you understand the intent of the law. You let God's story become yours.
Speaker 1:You begin to believe that things actually can be transformed in the world, and then you confront injustice with direct nonviolent action the way that Jesus embodied. In other words, to fulfill the law, you have to be willing to completely reimagine all of it from the ground up. Now, today, we move towards the practice that helps us shift our imagination from performing that to actually living out of that intent. And for Jesus, that is prayer. But that's part two, so let's pray.
Speaker 1:God of grace and peace, who welcomes us to know your heart, to embody your story, to become your hands and feet in the world as we work for righteousness and justice. May we become so captured by your imagination that we begin to move freely through your world. Unburdened by expectation, unweighted by wondering if we're doing it all right, instead actually living in the invitation of your grace. If we are still wondering about your love for us tonight, would you speak by your spirit to the deepest parts of our heart? Would you help us to lay down our anxieties and baggage?
Speaker 1:Would you help us to know ourselves as you know us? If we are trying to do our best and yet still finding ourselves stumbling and falling over and over again. And God, would you pick us up and dust us off? Would you remind us that trying harder isn't the answer? And that when we learn to lean into you, that when we find ourselves carried along by your story, we can carry ourselves in the momentum of your grace through the world.
Speaker 1:May our intent always be you in the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. I know that I used up a lot of time in our opening, but I think that's gonna help us as we begin to shift gears now. Because this next section leads us directly into the Lord's prayer.
Speaker 1:And we are gonna focus tonight more on Jesus' approach to prayer than the specific prayer itself. However, if you are interested, I did do a three week series on the Lord's Prayer last year. That series is called the problem with prayer, and it's available wherever fine sermons are found, mainly commons.church. But today, we are gonna talk about learning to ride, practicing our righteousness, virtue signaling, and knowing what our intent is really all about. And we are going to jump into Matthew chapter six tonight, but first, a story about bicycles.
Speaker 1:See, I have a six year old. You know this, and he thinks he's as famous as you do. But this summer, we really wanted to get him on a bike. You see, I ride a decent amount, and we live close by in the neighborhood. And other than the fact that we live at the top of the McHugh Bluff above Sunnyside, which means I have to ride up the hill when I want to get home, biking really is a great way for us to get around the city living in the core.
Speaker 1:And my son likes my bike too. We have one of those trailer bikes that attaches to my seat post, and he loves going for bike rides on this thing. I think mainly because he doesn't have to do the work to climb up the hill to get to the top of the McHugh Bluff, and he can just watch me drag him up the hill and laugh about how out of breath I am as I do it. Actually, true story here. We were riding home from the Central library a couple weeks ago, and we were climbing up Edmonton Trail.
Speaker 1:You know that really steep part when you leave Bridgeland? And out from behind, he calls to me and he says, dad, it's so funny because when you climb the hill, you can barely even talk. And if I had any breath in that moment to talk, I would have had some words for him. But, sadly, he was very right in that moment. However, this summer, we wanted to get him on his own bike, like riding without training wheels.
Speaker 1:We did not have a lot of success with this yolk. It could have been my coaching, apparently pushing him down a hill and yelling, pedal is not enough. There's more to it than that. I don't know. Or it could have been the fact that we had a perfectly good trailer bike five feet away.
Speaker 1:And if dad can do all the work for you, I mean, why are you not gonna do that? But if you remember back to the time when you learned to ride a bike, there is this weird moment for all of us where everything is awful, and then all of a sudden it just sort of clicks. Right? Like someone has explained it to you. They have walked you through it.
Speaker 1:They've given you the instructions. They've sent you off down the hill by yourself. And someone has watched you crash and burn over and over again. And every time they just keep telling you, do the same thing. It's easy.
Speaker 1:Just pedal. Obviously, it's not that easy, dad, because this isn't working. Of course, that's not all you have to do. Right? You have to pedal.
Speaker 1:You have to steer. You have to balance. You have to watch where you're going. You have to make sure your helmet is strapped on right. There are actually thousands of calculations and corrections that we make constantly every second to ride a bike.
Speaker 1:It's incredibly complex. And yet, there's also that moment where all of it just clicks. And what happens is all of our language, and all the instruction, and all the rules, and all of this teaching that's been happening about how to ride a bike, it coalesces into this instinctive response where all of a sudden you're just doing it. And your momentum is carrying you, and you're not thinking about any of the rules anymore. You're just riding.
Speaker 1:What happens is this incredibly complex process, involving thousands of unconscious decisions becomes now shorthand for something so simple you can never forget it. It's like riding a bike. Well, from everything that history tells me, I'm quite sure that Jesus never learned to ride a bike. Yet, from the way that he talks about the intersection of life and faith and law and prayer, it seems to me that maybe he understands this moment where things click more intimately than we might expect. Matthew chapter six verse one, he says this, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.
Speaker 1:If you do, you will have no reward from your father in heaven. When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others. Truly, I tell you, they have already received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what the right is doing so that your giving may be done in secret. Then your father who sees all of this will reward you.
Speaker 1: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. And truly, I tell you, they have already received their reward in full. When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees it all will reward you. When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
Speaker 1:Do not be like them for their father knows what you need even before you ask. So this then is how you should pray. Now, from here, Jesus flows right into the Lord's prayer. And, we are gonna say that together tonight as we close. But, let's look at this transition from law and righteousness to prayer and person that Jesus walks us through in this section.
Speaker 1:Because it's interesting to me that Jesus frames the law as having this deeper meaning below the surface, beneath the simple words on the page. He tells us that law is a story and that story is meant to shape you. And now he says, be careful not to practice that story. Remember, righteousness, justice, law, all of these are part of the same vocabulary for Jesus. He says, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others.
Speaker 1:And part of the reason I find this so compelling because at least for me, all of this is actually part of the same argument for Jesus. Don't get caught up on the letter of the law because the law isn't the point. The law is a pointer that moves you in the direction of the person you were meant to be. Except if that's the case, and if the law was always about the person you're becoming, then any attempt to use the law to artificially enhance your social standing is always going to inherently miss the point. Because it takes this external law that Jesus has worked really hard to drive somewhere deep inside of us, and then it puts it back on the surface of our lives.
Speaker 1:It's like working really hard to learn how to ride a bike and spending all your time talking about how much you love your spandex shorts. I mean, sure, they're great, but that's not really the point. Right? And here, if you listen through the surface of the examples that Jesus uses, you can almost hear him asking, are you interested in becoming the best version of yourself? Are you interested in allowing my story to slowly become your story?
Speaker 1:Are you interested in learning how to ride for yourself, or are you just here to look the part? Are you interested in becoming the most marketable version of yourself? Because those are two very different concepts of righteousness. One is the righteousness that clicks. Where all the skills and all the lessons and all the practice and the learning falls away and you stop thinking about the rules and you just start to ride.
Speaker 1:And the other is a righteousness where you are constantly consumed with pedal, steer, balance, look up, don't look down, keep your cadence, breathe in through your nostril, Scan for cars. Stay in your lane. Check your reflectors. And when you turn right in traffic, use your left hand and point to the heavens because you're probably gonna die. Of course, the irony of that is that constantly trying to perform our righteousness in front of everyone leaves us with very little energy left to actually become the person we want to be.
Speaker 1:Now in Jesus' day, the kind of public righteousness was defined by adherence to the Mosaic law. That's what Jesus is talking about. Commands to give alms to the poor, to fast, to pray. These are littered throughout the Hebrew scriptures. And these would have been some of the most visual, most public displays of fidelity to Torah you would see regularly in that culture.
Speaker 1:And to some extent, some of those markers still exist for us in our world. But today, there are all kinds of niche communities within which we signal our righteousness to those around us. Right? Now, the term virtue signaling has become really popular now. And often that gets levied against those who want to appear woke.
Speaker 1:No doubt, there are those who want to look progressive, but really don't want to do the hard work of personal introspection. But the truth is, all across the political spectrum, from every perspective and position and posture, all of us are drawn towards signaling our intentions to those we want to impress. Right? In fact, anyone who is out there on Twitter castigating others for virtue signaling is in fact signaling their virtue within their particular imagination of righteousness. The truth is we all do it all the time, and to all of that Jesus says, actually, if that is all you're interested in, a righteousness of rule keeping designed to signal your intentions to those who already agree with you for a little bit of praise, well then congratulations, it's yours.
Speaker 1:And this is the secret that Jesus has been driving toward from the very beginning. That whatever it is you want from your religion, this is what you will get out of it. You can see this in how many times he uses this word reward for both sides of the argument. They will have no reward. They have received their reward.
Speaker 1:Your father will reward you. It's actually in there five times in the short section. It's two different words in Greek. Mistos is the noun, and is the verb. But reward here is exactly the right technical word in English.
Speaker 1:Because the idea here is the natural normal consequence of your actions. It's not so much a gift, it's what's coming to you. But both of these words can actually be used for your pay or your wage at work. And what that means is what Jesus is saying is that with God, your outcomes are tied not to your performance like they are everywhere else. Your outcomes are tied to your intentions.
Speaker 1:If you want to signal your virtue and impress the people around you, if you want to be praised and looked up to, you might get it, but that's the extent of it. If you want to be transformed, if your intent is to find a new way of being in the world, if your hope is to discover life within you, surrounding you, moving you along through the world with momentum, then that is exactly what you will find eventually. See, generosity can get you some praise, or generosity can free you from greed. And fasting can win you some fans, Or fasting can remind you where your life comes from. Prayer can impress the people within earshot, or prayer can draw you into solidarity with all those who surround you always.
Speaker 1:But all of it comes down to what you want out of it. And all of a sudden, I find myself drawn all the way back to the very beginning, the beatitudes, where Jesus lays out his vision for the world. He tells us how things could be where Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. You see now, I think looking back we can realize that the purity there was never something to live up to. And Jesus doesn't talk about those who are pure in their righteousness.
Speaker 1:So it's not the well performing or the highly praised. It's not those who get it right or understand it or put it all together in exactly the right order. The purity here has nothing to do with your performance. It has everything to do with your heart. In fact, I might even be so bold as to paraphrase Jesus this way, blessed are those who want nothing more than to discover the divine for they will discover all of it.
Speaker 1:If you want some praise, if you want admiration, if you want someone to look up to you and make you feel good about yourself, if that's what spirituality is for you, then fine. Go for it. Just don't be disappointed when that's all there is to it. But if you want to see God, and if you want to discover life within you, if you want to stop thinking and start actually enjoying the ride, if you want to be righteous because you want to connect your breath to the lungs of the universe, And Jesus promises that this is what you will find on the other side eventually. For Jesus, your experience of religion is shaped not by how good you are at it, but by what you want to get out of it.
Speaker 1:And when taken seriously, this is an incredibly freeing proposition because it means that we can finally stop judging ourselves. We actually start riding the way that we were meant to. And so when Jesus finally teaches us to pray, and he pulls all of this together and he finally drags the law into conversation with God, his model for prayer is characterized by the invitation to align ourselves and our actions, our thoughts, our intentions to what God is already doing in the world. Our family in the heavens, help us to live as if you are the source of all that is good in the universe. May your desires be born in us so that we might help close the gap between heaven and earth with our choices today.
Speaker 1:Would you remind us of our daily dependence on you? Help us to want for just enough. Teach us where we need to let go of all hurts and wounds so that we might experience forgiveness fully for ourselves. Show us where we need to say no so that we can truly follow the path that leads us back to life and to you for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Speaker 1:See, everything about Jesus teaching here is about leading us to that moment where we finally stop thinking about the rules, and we just start to coast on the momentum of grace. So as we pray Jesus words together tonight, to close our time, may you come to know the one who sits at the center of all things. May God's goodness be born in you so that generosity flows naturally out of you. May trust spring up in you so that prayer spills out of you. May forgiveness surround you.
Speaker 1:So that when the rules fall away, your righteousness might become the natural reward for knowing yourself the way that God loves you. Let's pray together. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Speaker 1:And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.