Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Notes

  1. It is good to learn to read this Sermon well for public hearing. See D. Dewey, “Great in the Empire of Heaven: A Faithful Performance of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount,” in Preaching the Sermon on the Mount: The World It Imagines (eds. D. Fleer and D. Bland; St. Louis: Chalice, 2007).

  2. Carter, What Are They Saying, 35–55.

  3. Augustine, Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (NPNF; ed. P. Schaff; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 3 (1.1).

  4. See introduction, pp. 8–10.

  5. J. R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (The Bible Speaks Today; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 205. On Stott, see Greenman et al., The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries, 266–79.

  6. R. M. Dowsett, “Matthew,” in IVPWBC, 525.

  7. On other occasions there is a contrast of crowds and disciples in Matthew (cf. 13:10–11, 34, 36; 17:14, 19). The term “disciple” is best seen as a “mirror” of all followers of Jesus. While most of the instances of this term refer to the Twelve, there are others that clearly don’t (e.g., 27:57; 28:19). On this, Guelich, Sermon on the Mount, 53.

  8. For “hills,” France, Matthew, 156–57. KNT: “hillside.”

  9. M. Simonetti, Matthew 1–13 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture; ed. T. Oden; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 77–78. Jerome: “The Lord goes up to the mountains to draw the crowds toward deeper matters with himself, but the crowds are not capable of ascending” (from Jerome, St. Jerome: Commentary on Matthew [The Fathers of the Church; trans. T. P. Scheck; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008], 74–75).

  10. David E. Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 51–52. Garland cautions against seeing too much Moses.

  11. D. C. Allison Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 172–80; Keener, Matthew, 164. For an opposing view, see Guelich, Sermon on the Mount, 52.

  12. For more texts, Allison, New Moses, 103–6.

  13. www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/eusebius_de_05_book3.htm (accessed 7/27/2010). The boldfaced type emphasizes comparisons with Moses.

  14. The belief that the church has absolutely replaced Israel as the people of God in such a manner that God’s covenant with Israel is no longer viable.

  15. W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (BJS; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).

  16. Stott, Message, 212–22.

  17. R. Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 93–94.

  18. The NIV: “I studied under Gamaliel” translates what could be more literally translated as “educated at the feet of Gamaliel.” See also Luke 8:35, 41; 17:16; Acts 10:25.

  19. Hauerwas, Matthew, 67–68.

  Chapter 2

  Matthew 5:3–12

  LISTEN to the Story

  1His disciples came to him, 2and he began to teach them.1

  He said:

  3“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  4Blessed are those who mourn,

  for they will be comforted.

  5Blessed are the meek,

  for they will inherit the earth.

  6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

  for they will be filled.

  7Blessed are the merciful,

  for they will be shown mercy.

  8Blessed are the pure in heart,

  for they will see God.

  9Blessed are the peacemakers,

  for they will be called children of God.

  10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  11“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: Leviticus 26–27; Deuteronomy 28; Psalm 1; Isaiah 61.

  Beginning Jesus’ greatest Sermon with a list of the good guys implies (and the parallel at Luke 6:20–26 makes it explicit) a corresponding list of bad guys. Matthew will provide for us in Matthew 23’s “woe” sayings an alternative list of bad guys. Not only that, Jesus finds all the “wrong” people on God’s side and all the “right” people against God. Dallas Willard calls this a list of “God-based inversion” and the “hopelessly blessables” and finds at work a “gospel for the silly world.”2 Such a list is the way both to get your audience’s attention and to force introspection. Or as Tom Wright cleverly put it, Jesus here takes us through the sound barrier, where things begin to work backwards.3 Rosemary Dowsett observed that these blessings do not call attention to your typical manly characteristics but instead to those that in some cultures would be called “womanly.”4 Those who first heard this list of the truly blessed by God immediately began to wonder about themselves by asking, “Am I in or out?” The Beatitudes are a radical manifesto of a kingdom way of life because Jesus reveals who is in and who is not.

  Two mutations of Israel’s story occur in the Beatitudes. First, Jesus joins the prophetic voices, like Isaiah, who contend that not all of Israel is on God’s side and that the remnant, or the faithful, are the true Israel. Jesus redefines who the remnant are. Second, Jesus stands here at least as more than a prophet. Jesus is the Lord, and Jesus pronounces who is on God’s side. The natural response to Jesus’ list of the blessed is to ask, “Who does this man think he is?!”

  Listings like this at the time of Jesus had two basic orientations: one list rolled out the names of the saints, usually describing their behaviors, while another list focused on the characteristics of those who were observant of Torah and approved by God. For the first, I mention the list of noble ancestors in the Old Testament apocryphal book, Sirach 44; later in the New Testament we find a similar listing of saints in Hebrews 11. The other way of categorizing people, by characteristics of piety, can be found in later rabbinic texts, like Mishnah ʾAbot 5:12:

  A. There are four types of disciples:

  B. (1) quick to grasp, quick to forget—he loses what he gains

  C. (2) slow to grasp, slow to forget—what he loses he gains;

  D. (3) quick to grasp, slow to forget—a sage;

  E. (4) slow to grasp, quick to forget—a bad lot indeed.5

  Jesus’ list diverges from both of these lists and blesses the most unlikely of people. Instead of congratulating the Torah observant or the rigorously faithful or the heroic, he blesses the marginalized who stick with God through injustice.

  Beginning with this list shapes the entire Sermon because it jolts us all into listening more attentively. We ask, “If these are the people who are in, what does that mean for me? If this is how the in-group lives, how should I live?” Jesus does not stand foursquare with the tradition of listing the saints, nor does he stand alongside the rabbis who saw humans through Torah observance. Instead, Jesus approached morals through the lens of people who were (actually) living out the kingdom vision. The Beatitudes, then, are a radical revisioning of the people of God. As Warren Carter frames it:

  In the beatitudes, Jesus has the disciples imagine a different world, a different identity for themselves, a different set of practices, a different relationship to the status quo. Why imagine? Not because it is impossible. Not because it is escapist. Not because it is fantasy. But because it begins to counter patterns imbibed from the culture of the imperial world.6

  EXPLAIN the Story

  What the disciples hear in the list is a revolutionary new basis for approval. Jesus tells the world that this motley crew around him is the true people of God, those who will populate the kingdom and enjoy the bounty of that kingdom. Maybe it is because I am privileged in our world, but those chosen by Jesus for inclusion make me nod my head in approval of his list. But my nodd
ing is short-lived because as we proceed through this Sermon we will all eventually shift from nodding to wondering, if not disapproving. As Lucy Lind Hogan once asked us to consider as we read this Sermon, “When did the nodding stop?”7

  The Meaning of “Blessed”

  The word “blessed” is a blessed problem. Translations have done their best to find the perfect English word to translate the underlying Greek word (makarios) or sometimes the hypothetical Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus actually used (perhaps ʾašrê, as in Ps 1:1; 32:1, or bārûk, as in Gen 14:19 or Deut 28:3). Furthermore, the entire history of the philosophy of the “good life” and the late modern theory of “happiness” is at work when one says, “Blessed are….” Thus, this swarm of connections leads us to consider Aristotle’s great Greek term eudaimonia, which means something like happiness or human flourishing, but it also prompts us to consider modern studies of what makes people happy.8

  All of this gets bundled into the decision of which English word best translates the Greek word makarios (“blessed” in the NIV) now in the Beatitudes. An adventurous journey across the terrains of possible English words would be fun if this term were found in a subordinate clause in an otherwise insignificant verse in the Bible. But on this one word the entire passage stands and from this one word the whole list hangs. Get this word right, the rest falls into place; get it wrong, and the whole thing falls apart. We need to drill down to get it right.

  The secret is to see this term in light of the Bible’s story about who is blessed and who is not. Once we get that story’s perspective, we are given parameters and content for understanding this term in this context, and once that happens we can examine the history of the quest for the good life and happiness. There are at least five major themes at work in this word “blessed.”

  First, the one who is “blessed” is blessed by the God of Israel. The entire biblical Story is in some sense shaped by God’s watching over his elect people Israel, evaluating their covenant observance and either approving or disapproving of them in tangible ways. This theme has two primary points of origin: Leviticus 26–27 and Deuteronomy 28 as well as the Wisdom tradition, where it refers to a tangible, flourishing life rooted in common sense, hard work, and listening to one’s elders (Pss 1; 32:1–2; Prov 3:13; 8:32; 20:7; 28:20). The theme of God’s blessing on the obedient shapes the historical books like Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah; it clearly reverberates throughout the prophets and in many ways gave rise to the sectarian movements at the time of Jesus, like the Pharisees and Essenes, who were seeking God’s blessing.

  Second, there is a clear eschatological focus in the word “blessed.”9 If a focus of the Old Testament was on present-life blessings for Torah observance, there is another dimension that deconstructs injustice and sets the tone for Israel’s hope: the future blessing of God in the kingdom when all things will be put right; no text in the Old Testament fits more here than Isaiah 61.10 This second dimension shapes the Beatitudes because Jesus’ focus is on future blessing. The tense used in the promises for the blessing is often future, as in “they will be …” in verses 4–9. Notably, the present tense of the first and eighth blessing (5:3, 8), where we find the identical promise (“theirs is the kingdom”), surrounds the future tenses, perhaps indicating the certainty of those future promises.11 As Dale Allison correctly points out, “We have here [in the Beatitudes] not commonsense wisdom born of experience but eschatological promise which foresees the unprecedented: the evils of the present will be undone and the righteous will be confirmed with reward.”12 This blessing, while its focus is future, begins now (Matt 11:6; 13:16).

  A third theme at work is conditionality: those blessed are marked by specific attributes or characteristics and those who are implicitly not blessed (the Bible’s word is “cursed”; see Luke 6:20–26; cf. Deut 28) are marked by the absence of those characteristics and by the presence of the opposite characteristics. But a word of caution is in order: clearly these blessings of Jesus are not directed at ethical attributes, as if this is Jesus’ version of Paul’s fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23), nor is this a virtue list by which to measure our moral progress. Instead, these blessings are heaped on people groups who are otherwise rejected in society, which means the blessings console those whom many would consider hopeless.

  Thus, the conditionality here is not to be seen as a covert command for something we are to do, as if those who want blessing need to work at poverty of spirit or meekness. We are not to go out and become poor or start mourning or get ourselves persecuted.13 Instead, Jesus here blesses people groups. The Beatitudes reveal that Jesus’ ministry, as can be seen so clearly in Jesus’ so-called inaugural sermon (Luke 4:16–30), focuses on the down-and-out and oppressed. Jesus is casting a vision so that his audience will come to know that things are not what they think they are. Instead, God’s eyes are on all and God knows those who are living properly, regardless of their circumstances and conditions. The Beatitudes force the listener to expand and contract who is in the kingdom of God.

  At the funeral of his father, Hauerwas preached a sermon on Revelation 7:9–17 and the Beatitudes of Matthew. He observed:

  Too often those characteristics [of the Beatitudes] … are turned into ideals we must strive to attain. As ideals, they can become formulas for power rather than descriptions of the kind of people characteristic of the new age brought by Christ…. Thus Jesus does not tell us that we should try to be poor in spirit, or meek, or peacemakers. He simply says that many who are called into the kingdom will find themselves so constituted.14

  The “conditionality” of the Beatitudes is a reversal of typical conditions because it has the omniscience of God in knowing who is in and who is out.

  Fourth, this list concerns the person’s relational disposition. It is easy to think of the “blessed” as those who are in proper relation to God alone. But what stands out in the Beatitudes is one’s relation to God as well as to self and others. When Matthew adds “in spirit” to “poor,” we find what we also find in the third blessing (“meek”): an inner disposition that relates to God and others because of a proper estimation of oneself. Furthermore, some blessings are for those who relate to others in a loving disposition: “mourn” and “merciful” and “peacemakers.” Others are concerned more directly with one’s relation to God: “hunger and thirst for righteousness” and “pure in heart” and probably those who are persecuted. But the blessed people are noted by godly, loving relations with God, self, and others.

  A final theme: reversal or contrast. Here we beg the reader’s patience in appealing to the way Luke records the Beatitudes. Luke lists not only those who are blessed but also those who are cursed (Luke 6:20–26). Anytime someone blesses a group as Jesus does here, one is non-blessing others. Luke’s curse list is implicit in Matthew, but this contention gains support from the oddity of those who are blessed: it is unconventional to bless those who are persecuted or those who meek. It gains even more strength from the radical presence of Jesus’ unconventional ways of relating to “all the wrong people” (e.g., Matt 9:9–13) and for the sorts of people he included among the apostles (4:18–22; 10:1–4). What Jesus blesses is countercultural and revolutionary and so turns culture inside out and society upside down. This can be seen simply by comparing Matthew 5:3–12 with a conventional list in Sirach 14:20–27 and 25:7–11:

  14:20Happy is the person who meditates on wisdom

  and reasons intelligently,

  21who reflects in his heart on her ways

  and ponders her secrets,

  22pursuing her like a hunter,

  and lying in wait on her paths;

  23who peers through her windows

  and listens at her doors;

  24who camps near her house

  and fastens his tent peg to her walls;

  25who pitches his tent near her,

  and so occupies an excellent lodging place;

  26who places his children under h
er shelter,

  and lodges under her boughs;

  27who is sheltered by her from the heat,

  and dwells in the midst of her glory.

  25:7I can think of nine whom I would call blessed,

  and a tenth my tongue proclaims:

  a man who can rejoice in his children;

  a man who lives to see the downfall of his foes.

  8Happy the man who lives with a sensible wife,

  and the one who does not plow with ox and ass together.

  Happy is the one who does not sin with the tongue,

  and the one who has not served an inferior.

  9Happy is the one who finds a friend,

  and the one who speaks to attentive listeners.

  10How great is the one who finds wisdom!

  But none is superior to the one who fears the Lord.

  11Fear of the Lord surpasses everything;

  to whom can we compare the one who has it?

  Clearly, Jesus goes against the grain. Instead of blessing the one who pursues wisdom and reason and develops a reputation as a sage, and instead of blessing the one who has a good family, who observes the whole Torah, or the one who has all the right friends and develops a reputation as righteous or as a leader, Jesus blesses those whom no one else blessed. The genius of the Beatitudes emerges from this contrastive stance: they are a countercultural revelation of the people of the kingdom.

  If we add all this together, we get something like this: a “blessed” person is someone who, because of a heart for God, is promised and enjoys God’s favor regardless of that person’s status or countercultural condition.

  This leads us back again to the translation issue: since no one English word will do the job in a completely adequate way, I prefer the word “blessed” because of its richer, covenantal, and theological contexts and because the only other real alternative, “happy” (CEB), often results in a focus on psychological happiness and gets associated easily with shallow discussions of happiness in contemporary culture and language.15 A fulsome translation would be “God’s favor is upon….”