I. Introduction A. In Matthew, Christ gives this sermon on a mount, while in Luke, Christ gives it on a plain. Matthew is speaking to Jews, so by putting Jesus on the mount, he makes a connection between Jesus and Moses. Luke’s Gentile audience does not have access to the Jewish story, so they would miss the point. B. Jesus is the New Moses. Through him, God calls together a New Israel that will fulfill the purpose of Israel - to make God known to the world. 1. The metaphors of salt, light, city on a mountain, lamp all point to this fact. 2. God has a purpose for Israel: “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (Mt 5: 16). C. This plan is brought to completion by Christ who calls together a nonviolent community that subverts the powers of the old evil age. He is the solid foundation, not the one built on sand. II. Beatitudes A. Origen called Christ the “autobasileia” or the kingdom in a person. The beatitudes speak to what the people who inherit God’s kingdom will be like, but ultimately they describe Christ’s person. 1. He is poor in spirit - He is the eternal Word who humbled himself by taking on our human nature and submitted himself to death. 2. He mourns because he has compassion for those who are negatively affected by sin, both those who are oppressed and the oppressors. 3. He desires righteousness because he wants God’s will to be followed. 4. He is merciful, and he is clean of heart. He loves and does not sin. 5. He is the peacemaker - he heals sin and reconciles us with one another and God. This reconciliation occurs because Jesus is persecuted for the sake of righteousness. B. These are not laws that we must follow, but rather gifts that God gives to us. Being part of God’s chosen people is a gift. Not everyone in the community will possess all the beatitudes in spades or even all of them. Since these are gifts, we should not think that we do them in order to receive the “reward”. If Jesus is who he claims to be, then by receiving these gifts and being his follower is possessing the kingdom. C. Luke only has four beatitudes. 1. a) poor b) hungry c) weeping d) persecuted for Jesus’ sake 2. Jesus and his followers cause conflict. Their way of existing runs counter to the normal ways of doing business in the world. 3. Followers of Christ are kicked out of their families when the rest of the group does not accept Jesus as well. In the society in which Jesus lived, honor and shame played a major role in everyday life. Jesus’ way of life calls into question how we understand honor and shame, and those who disagree with him find his teachings to bring shame. A family cannot have one its members bring shame to the family. If the person persists in that behavior, then he or she must be kicked out, which brings poverty, hunger, and sadness. D. Why all this suffering if Christians live in the time of the kingdom? We have to modify that understanding of the apocalyptic timeline to make sense of it. Christ’s first coming inaugurates the kingdom, but the evil age remains in its death throes. At Christ’s second coming, the kingdom will be definitively established with the final destruction of the old evil age. III. Jesus and Non-Violence A. Teaching about Anger 1. You cannot be angry with your brother. Raqa means idiot. How often are we upset with someone because he or she has made a mistake that is so obvious. 2. Jesus is saying that we need to be merciful and patient with one another, and before offering anything to God at the altar (how easy is it to believe we’re in the right, and we’re on good terms with God, meaning we can worship.), we should reconcile with our brother or sister. This reconciliation and community is what God wants. 3. A person can get angry over injustice, but this is different than getting angry at a person. B. You cannot retaliation - Don’t do it! Do not return violence for violence. This goes against the way of the world of the present evil age and its game. C. Love your enemies. God loves everyone, even sinners. Jesus is the incarnation of God, and his love for his enemies is a person living his humanity, divinely. We are called into Jesus’ community to receive his life and his spirit. When we receive these gifts, we can love our enemies too. D. IV. Jesus and the Law A. Matthew 5:17-18 - “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” B. What does he mean here? Does Matthew contradict Paul, who said that Gentile Christians do not need to follow Jewish dietary laws or be circumcised? C. Aquinas divides the Jewish law into the moral law, juridical law, and ceremonial law. Christ fulfills the juridical and ceremonial laws in his life, death, and resurrection, leaving Christians only responsible with the moral law. D. Other questions are what exactly is the law and what is its purpose. It was not entirely clear then (why else do we need the Pharisees and Sadducees?). This might help us understand what Mark was saying about dietary restrictions and what does and does not defile. 1. The purpose of the law is for the acceptance of one’s status in God’s chosen people. God calls his people so that they may reveal him to others. 2. The laws can be perverted by sin so that instead of serving God’s purpose of revealing himself to others through those who follow his will, sinners use the law to show off their own ability to follow the law. 3. Prayer and almsgiving are so that people can strengthen their relationship with God and help those who are in need. These tasks can be used to promote oneself instead - that speaks to a problem with the person; he or she does not want mediate God’s love to the world by sharing it, rather he or she wants to increase the world’s love for himself or herself by doing things to get noticed and plaudits. E. Jesus also shows that an interior change really needs to happen if the person is going to be faithful to the law. 1. “You have heard it said, but I say to you . . .” - Jesus is not reinventing the wheel here. In fact, when it comes to killing and adultery, he is merely pointing out the obvious. If I hate a person, when I get the chance to kill him, I will. If I lust after someone, when I get the chance to commit adultery, I will. Rather, I should recognize that to be a member of the community Jesus is calling me to, I have to recognize God as my Father and everyone else as a beloved child of God. This stops me from hating and from lusting after my neighbors. 2. This new perspective is necessary. If I continue to see the world in a self centered way or a way according to the present evil age, I will miss out: “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be” (Mt 6: 22-23). 3. Oaths point to this fact too. If we belong to this community, we don’t lie nor do we expect others of lying. There is no need for oath taking. F. V. Our Father as Eschatological Prayer - Raymond Brown, “Pater Noster as Eschatological Prayer,” Theological Studies 22 (1961). A. Christ and his followers believed that they were living in the last days of the present evil age. The Our Father speaks to this belief, and even today, we can think of it in similar terms. B. Title - “Our Father who are in heaven” 1. The Beatitudes speak of how life will be for those in the kingdom. Those who are peacemakers will be children of God, so to call God Father for those desiring this kingdom makes sense. 2. Before the kingdom comes, God is located in particular places (Sinai, Jerusalem). Once the kingdom is inaugurated, God will be everywhere. C. First petition - “Hallowed/sanctified be your name” 1. The Greek verb here is an aorist verb - not a continuing action but rather a once and for all type of action. Additionally the passive verb implies God is doing the sanctifying. While Augustine and Luther believe man is the one who will sanctify the name, Brown is certain that God will be doing this action. 2. For the Israelites, God and God’s name are the same. God chooses Israel for the purpose of revealing this name/himself to the world, but their infidelity prevents this from happening. Christ comes to restore Israel for this purpose and to make known God name, and his life, death, and resurrection begin this process of restoration. 3. When we ask for his name to be sanctified, we are asking God to come and manifest himself and his holiness as his last saving action. D. Second petition - “May your kingdom come” 1. Here is another aorist verb, so it speaks of the once and for all coming of the kingdom. 2. Christians today can still pray this line in terms of eschatology. While Jesus inaugurated God’s kingdom with this first coming, the fullness and completion of the kingdom does not occur to his second coming. E. Third petition - “May your will be done on earth as in heaven” 1. God’s will can mean two things: his commands that expects humans to obey and his overall plan for creation. 2. Here God’s will refers to his overall plan of creation. We are asking God to complete his plan, which includes our living according to his will because we have been reconciled to him through Christ, who gives us the new spirit and new heart that Ezekiel and Jeremiah spoke of. 3. The first three petitions are all referring to the same thing. F. Fourth petition - “Give us today our daily/future bread” 1. In Matthew, the verb is another aorist, a once and for all giving of the bread. Luke, it isn’t, and therefore his prayer cannot be read eschatologically. 2. The adjective for bread is epiousios. The word is hard to translate, and depending on how one read its etymology, he or she derive two different translations. a) epi + einai (verb “to be”) = the bread for the existing day or the bread for existence, both daily bread b) epi + ienai (verb “to go, come”) = bread for coming day or future. 3. The community believed that when God’s kingdom definitively came, there would be a heavenly banquet. Catholics receive this bread in the Eucharist, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. In this sense, it is different from the bread I used for my salami sandwich. G. Fifth petition - “And forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors” 1. Again this verb is in the aorist - a once and for all forgiveness. 2. Christians expected an imminent divine judgment. This judgment is based on how they treated each other. Matthew 7: 2 - “For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” Later on, we’ll talk about this again in Matthew 25. 3. We address to this petition to the Father, on whom we depend for everything. In the final kingdom, we will all be sons and daughters of this Father. In a family, siblings have a right to the love of their siblings. In this sense, sinning against neighbor is considered a debt. Forgiving your neighbor of these debts anticipates the divine sonship of the final kingdom. H. Sixth petition - “And do not lead us into trial but free us from the evil one” 1. The aorist tense of the verb prevents us from understanding final test or trial as continuing temptations we face in our day to day lives. 2. At the end of time, there will be a final battle between the forces of good and evil. We are asking God to avoid this test and the evil one, Satan. 3. Christians aren’t being timid here; they are realistic. Satan is a worthy adversary, and we beat him when we put in the A team. Christ is the A team, and being on the bench with the rest of the B team while Christ wins the game is fine. VI.
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