Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Alternative Observance (6:6a)

  “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” As with blowing trumpets, so with closing doors and praying in closets: they are hyperbolic for privacy. Jesus prayed publicly (e.g., Matt 6:7–13; 11:25–27; John 17). The language of Jesus is graphic if not comic: as the hypocrites sought the most public of places, so Jesus urges his followers to find the most private of places. The word “room” can be translated “closet, inner room, or pantry.” To live this out does not mean we have to construct an inner closet in our homes to which we retire in utter privacy. Rather, we take Hannah, Daniel, and Cornelius as our examples (1 Sam 1:13–17; Dan 6:10; Acts 10:1–4) and add to them Jesus’ withdrawals in order to focus on prayer (see Matt 26:36–37; Mark 1:35).

  Father’s Reward (6:6b)

  “Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Jesus believes in the omniscience and omnipresence of his Father and knows the Father knows the unseen places of one’s home. The hypocrites and the judges of hypocrites and the public may not see the person who prays in a home closet, but the Father does—and that’s before whom all our pious deeds are to be done (6:1).

  LIVE the Story

  Years ago a friend gave me a copy of a little book called A Guide to Ecclesiastical Birdwatching.8 It was a set of short chapters with a drawing of a kind of “bird” in the church that could be satirized. In that it was done humorously and not overly seriously, it has served a good purpose: to hold our foibles up to evaluation in order to make us more self-conscious of our sins.

  So we begin with some fun. I want to play off of Ecclesiastical Birdwatching and apply it to how people pray in church. There is a bird in church we can name Pious Paddy. When he prays, everyone knows he’s serious and pious because he says Lahwwed and Gawwed and Geez-uussssssssssh.

  Then over there sits Repetitious Rollie, who can’t quite take the impiety of silence, so he says either “our heavenly Father” or “and Lord” between every sentence, and sometimes between clauses and by the time he’s done he’s really Father-ed and Lord-ified his prayers.

  Next to Repetitious Rollie is his buddy Focused Frederick, who somewhere got the idea that the word “just,” as in “we just thank you, Lord,” doesn’t mean “only” and doesn’t limit what he’s saying but instead expresses just how focused he is in prayer requests.

  Sitting all alone in the front, and known for his intelligence, is Highfalutin’ Harold, whose prayers are loaded up theologically, and sometimes he even uses the word “eschatological” or “soteriological,” and sometimes says “our exegesis has grounded us in a biblicism and theology that makes you proud.”

  Born and bred in the 60s, Informal Isabel and Authentic Adam have a style of public prayer noted by saying whatever is on their minds and in their hearts, irreverent or not. Isabel once prayed, “I’m so frickin’ mad about poverty, God …” and after Adam amen’d her, he upped the ante a bit with his own prayer: “God, I’m with Isabel, ‘Like what the hell’s going on in Rwanda?!” They enjoyed the provocation but blanketed themselves with the good Christian idea that prayer that is not honest and authentic is not real prayer. “Like David” is one of their defenses.

  At the other end of their pew is Cliché Clarissa, who somehow has accumulated a storehouse of Christian expressions for each of her prayers, like finishing off her individual requests with “and we’ll be careful to give you thanks,” or beginning her prayers with “And Lord, bless the missionaries and the starving children of this world.”

  Quotatious Quentin, friend of Highfalutin’ Harold, likes to quote books and authors and Bible verses when he prays. One time he said, “As Richard Foster taught us, ‘We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer.’ ” He lifted his voice a bit on the “and” to give it that bilateral problem. He continued, “But Jesus knew what Richard Foster would say, so he taught us ‘For your Father knows the thing you have need of before you ask him,’ as my translation reads.” [He is known for his use of the KJV and NKJV because of their quotatious powers.]

  Some preachers, too, have a preacher’s habit. Like Summarizing Stefan, who sums up his sermons in the first two minutes of his postsermon prayer, or like Preaching Peter, who doesn’t make a good transition from his sermon to his closing prayer and rams home his points one more time in his prayer. We close with Sendoff Sam, who has developed the Old Testament habit—at least he thinks it’s Old Testament—of loading up his prayer at the end. Some people load up front, but he loads at the end. One time he finished his sermon something like this, and it was hard to get it all down but I did my best: “ … in the glorious and majestic and everlasting and beautiful and everlovin’ and glorious [he goes on so long sometimes he repeats words] name of our One and Only Lord, Savior, your Son and our Savior, the Lord Christ Messiah and God of our fathers, to whom be glory and majesty and honor forever and ever … in the matchless, unconquerable, victorious, glorious name of Geee-zuss. Amen. Amen. Amen.”

  It is much easier to satirize than to instruct, and so we move into some practical suggestions for living the story of this text in our world.

  But How?

  I want to make two suggestions about what we can do, and these two are the ones that have helped me the most in public prayers. One of the finest lessons I ever learned about prayer was never said but was acted. Murray Harris, one of my seminary professors, was known as much for his preclass prayers as he was for the brilliance of his lectures. While Murray’s prayers were eloquent, soaked in a theological understanding of Scripture, and bathed in personal piety, what some of us observed was how he began his prayers. First, he gathered himself physically with his head down, said, “Let us pray,” and then … in an almost uncomfortable duration of silence, waited and out of that collection of his thoughts, his reverence, and his disposition toward God, he prayed. I learned public prayer ought to begin with a time of collecting our thoughts in silence as we prepare ourselves to approach God. (Of course, the same applies to private prayer.)

  Second, I believe public prayers ought to be both spontaneous and recited and in both forms the pray-er needs to pray slowly (and loudly) enough to be understood by everyone. Slowing down has a way of concentrating our attention, while rattling off a recited or written prayer has a way of turning something into rote or routine. Pausing to collect our thoughts and speaking slowly in prayers are the best patterns I know to praying in public in a way that we are speaking to God.

  I end with Luther’s pastoral words for us: “In the morning and in the evening, at table and whenever he [or she] has time, every individual should speak a benediction or the Our Father or the Creed or a psalm.”9

  Notes

  1. The Amidah, also called Ha-Tepillah or Shemoneh Esreh, is a traditional prayer recited by Jews two or three times per day. It is not easy to know what form it had in the first century. The prayer can be found by googling “The Amidah.”

  2. P. D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); W. Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). For prayers in Judaism, see M. Riley et al., Prayer from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology (London: Routledge, 1997).

  3. Here is one modern English version: http://tzion.org/articles/EighteenBenedictions.htm.

  4. S. McKnight, Praying with the Church: Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2006).

  5. See m. Berakot 1:1–2.

  6. See esp. her The Divine Hours (New York: Doubleday, 2000–2001).

  7. There is an exceptional article on “Synagogues” in EDEJ, 1260–71. For an ancient text calling the synagogue a proseuchē, see Josephus, Life 277–98.

  8. LeRoy Koopman, A Guide to Ecclesiastical Birdwatching (Glendale, CA: Regal/GL Publications, 1973).

  9. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 139.

  Chapter 13

  Matthew 6:7–15

  LISTEN
to the Story

  7“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans,1 for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

  9“This, then, is how you should pray:

  “ ‘Our Father in heaven,

  hallowed be your name,

  10your kingdom come,

  your will be done,

  on earth as it is in heaven.

  11Give us today our daily bread.

  12And forgive us our debts,

  as we also have forgiven our debtors.

  13And lead us not into temptation,

  but deliver us from the evil one.’2

  14For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: Exodus 32; 1 Kings 18:16–46; Isaiah 44:6–20; also Deuteronomy 6:4–8; the Psalms.

  You may well be preparing to preach or teach this passage and so may feel as I do. Thus, I will ask your question: How does one say anything fresh about the Lord’s Prayer? The first thing to say is this: Don’t try to say something new because you’ll be wrong. The second thing to say is this: Let traditional significance shape what you say. And third is this: Say what it says. Its value is its heritage, and its heritage will guide you.

  Observe that Matthew 6:7–15 is an intrusion into what is otherwise a tightly organized section. If you regard 6:1 as the theme verse and then look at the units on almsgiving (6:2–4), prayer (6:5–6), skip the next unit (6:7–15), and then fasting (6:16–18), you will easily observe an almost obsessive organization of those sections. Matthew 6:7–15 doesn’t fit in two ways: first, thematically, it isn’t concerned with acts of piety done by Jewish “hypocrites” to impress others but with long-winded, gassy prayers by Gentiles designed to manipulate God into answering; second, grammatically and syntactically 6:7–8 isn’t like 6:2–4, 5–6, or 16–18, but varies significantly. Along this line, 6:9–13, the Lord’s Prayer itself, has no similar type of positive instruction in the other sections of 6:1–18; moreover, 6:14–15 is yet another intrusion—a parenthetical set of lines that form a “commentary” on 6:12. In our day, an author would have put 6:14–15 into a footnote at the end of 6:12.

  Our section, then, draws on the contrast between pagan piety and God’s design. The theology of the pagans involves a god who can be manipulated, against which view Jesus teaches a God who already knows and can be trusted. This unit draws out Israel’s strict monotheism (Exod 20:3–5; Deut 6:4–8) and the Story of Israel in their interaction with pagan gods, including the golden calf episode in Exodus 32 and Elijah’s challenge of the Baalim on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18 as well as the standard trope against idolatry in the prophets (e.g., Isa 44:6–20). Furthermore, what Jesus teaches here expresses again the ongoing Jewish denunciation of pagan gods and religious practices (e.g., 1 Macc 2).3

  God, the one and only true God, who loves Israel as a father loves his children, forms the foundation of the theology of the Lord’s Prayer. But the content of the prayer is shaped by hope: this is preeminently a prayer that expresses a longing for God’s promises for Israel and the earth to come true. It mirrors the Magnificat of Mary (Luke 1:46–55) and the Benedictus of Zechariah (1:67–79), but instead of announcing the dawn of the kingdom, this prayer teaches the disciples to orient prayers toward the dawn of that kingdom. As the Son of the Father, Jesus shows the disciples how he himself prays to the Father. Using this prayer, then, is one way of entering into the perichoretic, or inner-relational life, of the Trinity: this prayer reveals how God communicates with God.

  EXPLAIN the Story

  There are two natural parts: the setting (6:7–8) and the response (6:9–15).

  The Setting (6:7–8)

  The NIV’s “when you pray” is identical to “when you give to the needy” (6:2), “when you pray” (6:5), and “when you fast” (6:16), but “when” does not bring to the surface that the Greek construction in 6:7 varies from the Greek in 6:2, 5, 16.4 One way of translating this in a way that reflects the Greek variation from the pattern in 6:2, 5, 16 would be to translate it as “In your praying….” Such a translation tips the reader off to the variation and prevents one from thinking there are actually four identical sections in 6:1–18.

  Jesus has Gentiles in mind with their piling up of the names of their gods.5 Sometimes the Gentiles seemed to be hoping a god would be awake or listening—and it is not wrong here to humanize these gods because that his how they come off in texts like The Iliad and The Odyssey. Catullus wrote a poem about the goddess Diana; the fourth line from the end perfectly illustrates the problem Jesus sees in Gentile prayers (put in italics):

  Under Diana’s protection,

  we pure girls, and boys:

  we pure boys, and girls,

  we sing of Diana.

  O, daughter of Latona,

  greatest child of great Jove,

  whose mother gave birth

  near the Delian olive,

  mistress of mountains

  and the green groves,

  the secret glades,

  and the sounding streams:

  you, called Juno Lucina

  in childbirth’s pains,

  you, called all-powerful Trivia

  and Luna, of counterfeit daylight.

  Your monthly passage

  measures the course of the year,

  you fill the rustic farmer’s

  roof with good crops.

  Take whatever sacred name

  pleases you, be a sweet help

  to the people of Rome,

  as you have been of old.6

  Jesus’ observation about Gentile prayer is common in Judaism: “do not keep on babbling like pagans.”7 The Greek word behind our “babble” is a bit of a mystery when it comes to its origins, but that Greek word (battalogeō) creates the impression of mindless babbling.8 At the end of this verse the words “many words” (polylogia) is used, and it permits us to combine it with “babble” to see Jesus’ criticism directed at a nonstop prattling in the presence of God. Jesus focuses on intent. The pagan intent is the belief that if they are long-winded or pray long enough or if they show their sincerity by going on and on, God will hear them. Pushing Gentile anxiety in prayer was the offendability and capriciousness of the gods. Jesus teaches the goodness and love of God, here speaking of God’s loving care of all (5:43–48) and calling God “Father.”

  Contrary to pagan perceptions of who God is, Jesus’ Father knows needs before God’s people ask. Perhaps this idea is from one of the predictions about the new heavens and the new earth from Isaiah 65:24:

  Before they call I will answer;

  while they are still speaking I will hear.

  This does not say the Father knows what they will ask before they ask but that the Father knows their needs before they make them known. Jesus’ intent is not to discourage his followers from petitioning the Father but from thinking they can manipulate or cajole God. This means that the major intent of the Lord’s Prayer is to reveal a short prayer in contradiction to the long prayers of the pagans. Few prayers say so much in such few words, but good examples of “short” prayers can be found in the Psalms, none perhaps more notable than Psalm 23.

  The Response (6:9–15)

  Gentiles, because of what they believe about God, are defective in their prayers. Jesus knows God as Father and as good, kind, and benevolent and as holy and just. That theology empowers him to teach his followers to approach God in confidence. Prayer is not informing God of something unknown but drawing oneself in the divine life of the Trinity and into the very mission of God in this world—this God loves us and invites us into his presence with our petitions.

  Tradition has observed that the Lord’s Prayer is broken into two parts: You petitions and We petitions—those directed at God and those directed for others. The
Jesus Creed sharpens this tradition of seeing the Lord’s Prayer in two parts. With the Jesus Creed, the Lord took the Jewish Shema, rooted in Deuteronomy 6:4–8, and added Leviticus 19:18. Thus, his fundamental creed is to love God and to love others as ourselves. Jesus hereby adds a horizontal dimension to the Shema to supplement the vertical.

  The same sort of addition happens in the Lord’s Prayer. Many scholars observe that the Lord’s Prayer has notable connections to a Jewish prayer now called Qaddish, to which Jesus added concerns for others. I provide a common translation of Qaddish, though we cannot be sure about its precise form in the first century, and I have italicized words that show similarities to the Lord’s Prayer.

  Magnified and sanctified be His great name in the world which He created according to His will.

  And may He establish His kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the house of Israel, speedily and in the near future, and say Amen.

  Response: May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.

  Blessed, praised and glorified, exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded by the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all blessings and hymns, praises and songs that are uttered in the world, and say Amen.

  The parallels are notable, and they can’t be ignored. We have every reason to think the Lord’s Prayer builds on and modifies the Qaddish, with one notable difference: instead of the prayer/creed being focused solely on the vertical, the horizontal is added. The Lord’s Prayer adapts the Qaddish’s focus on God (the You petitions) and adds without parallel in the Qaddish the We petitions. True piety for Jesus transcends our relationship with God and becomes relation to both God and others. True piety is about loving God and loving others, and this works into prayer: prayer is about praying for God’s glory and for blessings for others. Those who love God yearn for his Name to be sanctified, his kingdom to come, and his will to be done. Those who love others yearn for their daily bread, their reciprocal forgiveness, their growth in holiness, and their deliverance from the evil one.