Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  “If anyone forces you to go one mile …”: Once again, a social custom is at work. Roman soldiers had the legal rights to requisition occupied people into compulsory work to aid the Roman military. So we are to imagine a Roman soldier approaching one of Jesus’ followers, demanding transportation for a mile; Jesus’ radical go-beyond-their-expectations response is to help for a second mile. This approach to a Roman demand, so unlike the violent-minded Zealots, subverts the powerful. This may all have been parodied later by Jesus when he entered Jerusalem on a mule with his followers throwing down their robes—all of this mocking the Roman victory march.10

  “The one who asks you …”: Jesus urges his followers to give to those beggars who ask for something, and there is no indication here of exacting payment back or even at interest.

  “The one who wants to borrow from you …”: Once again, in parallel fashion, Jesus urges his followers not to demand back what one loans to another. The operative category is avoiding the world of the court and of retribution or payment for offenses. Jesus subverts that system by creating a system of grace, compassion, and love because he seeks to create a culture of generosity. He operates in a kingdom world and reveals an Ethic from Beyond.

  LIVE the Story

  Our antithesis on the lex talionis is a watershed when it comes to how to live out the Sermon on the Mount. Luther contended famously that the problem here is the failure to “to distinguish properly between the secular and the spiritual, between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world.”11 Some of the saddest lines I have ever read by a Christian, let alone one of Luther’s status, are these:

  [In speaking of “holy martyrs” …] When they were called to arms even by infidel emperors and lords, they went to war. In all good conscience they slashed and killed, in this respect there was no difference between Christians and heathen. Yet they did not sin against this text. For they were not doing this as Christians, for their own persons, but as obedient members and subjects, under obligation to a secular person and authority. But in areas where you are free and without any obligation to such a secular authority, you have a different rule, since you are a different person.12

  Utter nonsense. Another Lutheran responds: “But this distinction between a private person and bearer of an office as normative for my behavior is foreign to Jesus…. ‘Private’ and ‘official’ spheres are all completely subject to Jesus’ command. The word of Jesus claimed them undividedly.” Is this realistic? Of course Jesus knows the reality of sin and “Jesus calls evil evil and that is just why he speaks to his disciples in this way.”13 This command, as Bonhoeffer routinely observes, is anchored in the cross that Jesus himself bore. This is why Bonhoeffer can also say, “Only those who there, in the cross of Jesus, find faith in the victory over evil can obey his command.”14

  One of the main thrusts of the ethic of Jesus is the radicalization of an ethic so that we live consistently, from the so-called “private” to the “public” spheres. There is for Jesus no distinction between a secular life and spiritual life: we are always to follow him. His ethic is an Ethic from Beyond. But others, in words not so wrongheaded as Luther’s, have continued Luther’s personal vs. public or spiritual vs. secular distinction when it comes to ethics.15

  Thus, Peter Craigie, himself a Mennonite, writes: “Contrast the different spirit in the … teaching of Jesus, though the context there has to do with personal behavior and attitudes and not with the courts of law.”16 Oddly, the lex talionis antithesis is a public (not private) framework, and that is what Jesus is stopping. Although he is exploring rather than expressing his view dogmatically, Dale Allison approaches this Lutheran view when he says Jesus is “speaking about interpersonal relations and declaring that it is illegitimate for his followers to apply the lex talionis to their private problems.”17 And I would add: “and to their public problems as well.” Along the same line Charles Quarles can somehow manage to convince himself of this: “No evidence suggests that Jesus intended to contradict the lex talionis of the Mosaic law.”18 Let the word be as rugged as it really is; its ruggedness carries its rhetorical power to call his disciples into the kingdom where retaliation will end.

  The question that confronts any serious reading of the Sermon on the Mount is this: Would Jesus have seen a difference between a kingdom ethic for his followers in their so-called private life but a different ethic in public? I doubt it. Why? Because Jesus’ Messianic Ethic, an ethic for his community of followers, is an Ethic from Above and Beyond. The question every reader of the Sermon must ask is this: Does that world begin now, or does it begin now in private but not in public, or does it begin now for his followers in both private and to the degree possible in the public realm as well?

  Show No Mercy

  Perhaps the most neglected element in interpreting this text is what is said in Deuteronomy 19:21: “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (italics added). The judicial posture in the Torah for the lex talionis was this: retribution was not an option. Israelites soon converted the equal retribution dimension of this law into financial fines, but justice was required, and the requirement was “show no pity” even if the punishment was converted into economic value. What a person has done wrong needs to be undone by doing that same wrong back to them in order to balance the social scale of justice.

  But Jesus’ posture is the opposite, and it cannot be seen as a form of exaggeration. His revolutionary preface, in effect, to the lex talionis was: “Show mercy.” While he doesn’t say this explicitly when he quotes the Old Testament, his own words that form the antithesis are clearly a variant of “show mercy”: “Do not resist an evil person.” Instead of prosecution and instead of exacting retribution to redress the imbalance of justice, Jesus forms another way: show mercy and unravel the system of retribution that pervades our society.

  The Orthodox Jewish commentator on the Sermon on the Mount, Pinchas Lapide, toward the end of his book that develops what he calls a theo-politics of loving small steps, finds in these words of Jesus six pillars that can help each of us reshape our culture from hate toward love: (1) Jesus is a realist who knows a world of evil; (2) Jesus has a faith that humans can change; (3) Jesus humanizes haters and their hatred; (4) Jesus calls us to imitate God; (5) Jesus knows this is a battle to fight; and (6) this theo-politics moves in small steps:

  Away from conflict, toward empathy;

  Away from confrontation, toward cooperation;

  Away from dogmatic monologue, toward a dialogue of equals.19

  Going even further, Glen Stassen, ethics professor at Fuller Seminary, proposes ten steps in just peacemaking. They are worth proposing here because they show how the ethic of Jesus can foster peace on a global scale: (1) support nonviolent action; (2) take independent initiatives to reduce threat; (3) use cooperative conflict resolution; (4) acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice; seek repentance and forgiveness; (5) promote democracy, human rights, and religious liberty; (6) foster just and sustainable economic development; (7) work with emerging cooperative forces in the international system; (8) strengthen the United Nations and international organizations; (9) reduce offensive weapons and weapons trade; (10) encourage grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations.20

  Pacifism?

  It is hard for me to square any Christian military posture toward “our enemies”—the kind of label unworthy for the follower of Jesus—with what Jesus both performed in his last week and what he teaches here (as well as at Matt 26:52). Prior to Constantine, apart from a few exceptions, Christians refused to participate in the military.21 No theologian or leader supported participation in the military. Their nonparticipation was no ethic of resignation to Rome’s might but an ethic of resistance in the form of creating an alternative political society, the church. Beside their obvious denunciation of the pervasive presence of idols and false religions in that military, the earliest followers of Jesus did not enter the military because th
ey believingly thought Jesus meant business in the passage under discussion. The issue for the pre-Constantine church was killing those made in God’s image.

  They would have known that Jesus’ posture was the exact opposite of the Zealots, who believed God’s will for the Land could come through violence. Jesus spoke both into that viewpoint and against it when he summoned his followers to be peacemakers (5:9).22 The apostles tell us how Jesus’ words were understood, and they read Jesus’ words in a much more literal way than do many today. Thus, 1 Peter 2:21 reveals a radical nonviolent form of resistance: “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” And Paul in Romans 12:21 speaks about the outcome of such a posture toward those who act unjustly: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

  One of the themes of the Sermon is refusing complicity with a system that assumes corruption. Jesus urges his followers to end their complicity. So the “just-war theory” breaks down the words of Jesus because it too is a blatant compromise and is overtly complicit in the ways of violence. Both Augustine and Calvin, who each helped shape the just-war theory, admitted that Jesus is against revenge at the personal level. That admission undermines their just-war theory. Jesus knows of no distinction between what he wants his followers to do and what society should do. Society may be corrupt, but his posture is to resist corruption by forming an alternative kingdom community rather than become complicit in our fallen world. Jesus’ Messianic Ethic from Beyond may create ambivalence and even a feeling of anarchy over against the state, but the response of the followers of Jesus to such is not to capitulate or to moderate but to follow the Crucified One.

  Pacifism isn’t quietism or withdrawal or inactivity, and it isn’t simple submission. Pacifism’s root is connected to the peacemaking beatitude, rooted in love and expressed when the follower of Jesus actively seeks peace. Pacifism isn’t a lack of interest or noninvolvement, but the hard work of seeking peace. Pacifism is nonviolent resistance, not nonresistance. What Jesus teaches his followers to do illustrates the sort of pacifism he advocates: turn the other cheek, surrender even more clothing, go the extra mile, lend and do not charge interest or require a payment back. Hardly the stuff of the inactive. These acts subvert the Roman system.

  The dominating idea here is that following Jesus matters above everything else. My own posture is one of pacifism, and here is the logic that I find compelling:

  I cannot kill a non-Christian, for whom Christ has died and to whom I am called to preach the gospel, for the state; that would be rendering to Caesar what is God’s and deconstruct the kingdom mission.

  I cannot kill a fellow Christian for the state; that would be rendering to Caesar what is God’s. My first allegiance is to the King and to his kingdom people.

  I am called to cooperate with the state to the degree it is consistent with the kingdom; I cannot in good conscience cooperate with the state when it is inconsistent with the kingdom; that would be to render to Caesar what is God’s.

  I cannot ask in the first instance if this is practicable. I am to ask in the first instance what it means to follow Jesus.

  The Jesus Creed, which forms the bedrock for Jesus’ statement about the lex talionis, is radical beyond calculation: it calls us to love both the neighbor and the enemy. Love or violence are the two options.

  The cross reveals how God himself deals with injustice and violence; by absorbing and bearing it away, the sin is removed and the mask of injustice stripped away to reveal injustice. It was through the cross that Jesus was vindicated in resurrection and exaltation, and that same promise is given to his followers in Mark 8:34–9:1.

  What Happens with Virtue Ethics?

  One’s posture when it comes to the way Jesus did ethics matters immensely in reading the Sermon. In particular, while not as bald-faced as one finds in Luther, virtue ethicists ground Jesus’ Sermon in character formation. In other words, sometimes what Jesus says is not what we are to do; rather, he is casting forth a moral vision, using what Talbert calls a “verbal icon” through which we are to see the world differently by becoming new people. I agree: the issue is which virtue is being formed.

  Our passage then becomes a classic location for virtue ethics and the Anabaptist or kingdom vision to part ways. “There may be occasions when love of one’s neighbor trumps one’s commitment to non-retaliation,” Talbert observes.23 When? “Confronted by an evildoer, the disciple, whose character incorporates both love of the neighbor and non-retaliation but privileges the former as more basic, would likely respond if necessary to defend, protect, and vindicate the neighbor.” He then asks what Jesus would have taught had the good Samaritan come upon the traveling man as he was being beaten and robbed. Would he have refrained from violence, or would he have taken physical steps to stop the violence? Talbert contends confidently, on the basis of virtue ethics, that Jesus would have cuffed the men, chased them away, and tended to the abused man. Talbert observes that it is from such considerations that the just-war theory emerges.

  This is a species of mitigating the words of Jesus, for the kingdom character of the Crucified/Resurrected One knew a different way. I contend that it is hard to know how to respond when what Jesus says is not what is to be done, but instead what Jesus would have said or what Jesus means on the basis of a hierarchy of values, values that are not mentioned in this text. Now we cannot expect Jesus to construct a casuistry of options and actions, but the point of Jesus here is to avoid violence, absorb injustice, and live in light of what the kingdom is like in spite of what the world is like now. Had Jesus followed Talbert’s advice, he would have encouraged Peter to use the sword in Gethsemane. He didn’t, and so we shouldn’t.

  What about the Old Testament and War?

  Let us ask ourselves this question in a more pointed way: Was Jesus not aware of the Old Testament war and lex talionis narratives when he said what he said in this (and the next) text? Indeed he was, which again is precisely the point: he did, and he still said what he said. Yes, one can justify war by appealing to the Old Testament. It’s all set out in gory detail with divine justification. But this begs the question of how to read the Bible.

  What the Bible’s Story does is this: it takes us from Moses to Christ and says, “Now, follow Jesus.” It doesn’t place Christ as an equal alongside Moses or Elijah, which was Peter’s temptation in Matthew 17. No, it says, “Listen to him!” Jesus is the one to whom we listen, and that means the lex talionis at work in the Torah and which prompted Israel’s wars has been set into a new cruciform reality. The wars of Israel say nothing to the follower of Jesus about how to deal with enemies. Again, “Listen to him” are the words of the Father to Peter and to us.

  Maddeningly Impractical

  Pacifists have been criticized as maddeningly impractical. “How,” many ask, “can such a posture by followers of Jesus be realistic in our world?” Some have quipped in clever rhetoric that the problem with Tolstoy’s and Ghandi’s idealism was not that they didn’t live it out but that they didn’t live in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany. I find the quip disrespectful of the radical lifestyle of each. Both would have been executed by Hitler, which is just the point. Unrealistic? The early Bonhoeffer talks back: “It is the great mistake of a false Protestant ethic to assume that loving Christ can be the same as loving one’s native country, or friendship or profession, that the better righteousness and justitia civilis are the same.”24

  Realism reveals the problem: Why would a follower of Jesus be driven by what is “realistic”? Luther drove this viewpoint to an absurdity when he said, “Personal safety and private property would be impossible, and finally the social order would collapse.”25 Perhaps collapsing the system was inherent to the kingdom vision Jesus had! But by driving these texts over the wedge of the public vs. the private or Christ vs. Caesar, Luther doesn’t solve this problem he finds. The impracticality of these verses is not resolved in the Lutheran false dichotomy of C
aesar vs. Christ. In fact, discipleship is crushed.

  The words of Jesus stand up on the page of the Bible we are reading. They stare at us in their rugged vision. The end of the Sermon makes it clear that Jesus expects his followers to take up his words and live them out regardless of the cost. I know of no alternative. Take them or leave them, is what I say to myself.

  I’ve been asked time and time again these two questions: Do you think the entire country should demilitarize? (What the country does is the country’s business. As a citizen I advocate following Jesus.) What about a person who invades your home? (I’d use force to the point of not murdering him.) These two questions get wrapped up in this question: Isn’t this incredibly naïve or maddeningly impractical? No and Yes. No, this is not naïve. This is kingdom behavior in the here and now. Yes, this is impractical because Jesus doesn’t spell things out. Perhaps that is Jesus’ point. Dale Allison’s expression emerges once again: Jesus summons us here to live in our world with the kingdom’s “moral imagination.” Those expressions of Allison’s are not so much impractical as they are countercultural. And that, reader, is the point of the Sermon on the Mount over and over. The kingdom is amazingly practical.