Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Introduction (6:9a)

  The introduction to the Lord’s Prayer, when compared with Luke’s version, introduces us to the world of Jewish prayer at the time of Jesus. Matthew’s text reads: “This, then, is how you should pray.”

  Matthew’s “this” and “how” translate houtōs, an adverb. One could translate, “Pray thusly.” That is, the Lord’s Prayer is how the disciples are to pray, and this would throw emphasis on the brevity and directness of the Lord’s Prayer in contrast to the length of Gentile prayers. The Lord’s Prayer is a model of how to pray; some infer that the Lord’s Prayer is not a set of words to be recited.9 Such a view ignores the plain meaning of Luke’s text. Here is Luke 11:1–2.10

  One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

  He said to them, “When you pray, say….11

  The disciples approach Jesus and ask him to teach them to pray, and they ask to be taught the way John taught his disciples to pray. But the next words clarify what they are requesting and make the request much more concrete. Jesus says to them, and now I translate more literally to bring out the nuances of the Greek text, “Whenever you pray, recite this.” Jesus’ words show that he is thinking they are asking for a set prayer—something very Jewish to do—and he gives them just that. Then he says they are to pray this prayer whenever they (perhaps only as a group but probably whenever any of them prays) pray. And the word “say” can be translated “recite.”

  These verses, then, don’t teach so much how to pray but what to say whenever they pray. Jesus taps into the great Jewish prayer tradition of memorized prayers and gives a new template of prayer,12 but the kind of template that is recited over and over as a form of spiritual formation. We have the book of Psalms because these were prayers deemed worthy of recitation in public, and we have the Lord’s Prayer as another instance of recited prayer.

  What is for me the clincher in this issue: the church has always recited the Lord’s Prayer. The recitation of the Lord’s Prayer among Catholics, the Orthodox, the Protestants (the Reformers emphasized the Lord’s Prayer as template and as recited), and among all Christians occurred until the informality of prayers became the rule in the twentieth century for some groups of Christians. It’s time for many of us to regain what we dropped. Informality has had its day; it’s time for some formality too.

  Our Father (6:9b)

  Those who love God know God as Father. Jesus includes the disciples and excludes the hypocrites and Gentiles in the model prayer by saying “our” (making it a public prayer). By calling God “Father”13 Jesus focuses on his own relationship—he is Son—and the kind of relationship he wants his followers to have (John 10:30). But the first comes first: our “sonship,” or “familial relation with God as Father,” derives from and participates in the Son’s relationship to the Father. We are not equal children but sons and daughters through and in the Son’s filial relation with the Father (cf. Matt 5:45; Gal 3:26; 1 John 5:1).

  Long ago Joachim Jeremias explained at length that calling God “Father” was profoundly important to Jesus and should be connected to justification and adoption in Pauline theology.14 The heart of the message of the term Abba meant something like “Daddy,” partaking as it did in the intimacy of the Jewish family. Jeremias was right to point to the intimacy dimension of the term. But he also pushed harder to suggest that this was not only innovative and unique on the part of Jesus but transcended Jewish religion, and on this scholarship has firmly pronounced Jeremias mistaken. Calling God “Father” (Abba) is not unique to Jesus,15 and neither is it a revelation of a religious profundity that Judaism had not yet comprehended (what can be more intimate than Hosea 1–2 or 11:1–4?).

  Instead of its being unique, “Father” is characteristic of Jesus but would not have been at all offensive in Judaism. All of Jesus’ prayers, except his cry of dereliction (Mark 15:34), begin with “Father” (e.g., Matt 11:25–26; John 17). The term “Father” brings together at least two attributes of God: his intimate love for his children as well as his sovereign power, which is evoked with “in heaven.” To call God “Father” in prayer is to receive that love, to know his power, and to seek to embody his will, which are expressed in the You petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

  The Name (6:9c)

  Those who love God long for God to be honored. The “name” of God is often referred to as the sacred tetragrammaton (the holy four letters), often spelled YHWH and sometimes as Yahweh. Many Christians are sensitive to Jewish scruples, so they write the unpronounceable YHWH. This name is said to derive from God’s conversation with Moses in Exodus 3:13–15. There are interesting variants on the Name in the New Testament, including both a focus on the name of Jesus (Yeshua; Phil 2:9) and the Trinitarian formula (Matt 28:18–20). Anything said of YHWH can be said of Jesus, or of the Trinitarian God, but YHWH remains the Old Testament name for God.16 In the “lexicon” of the Bible and ancient Judaism, the “name” represents the person and that person’s character. Not using the Name is not simply about protective speech but is about God—to honor God’s Name is to honor God, the God who is so impeccably perfect that language is to be given full consideration when speaking to and about God.

  Nothing in the Old Testament prohibits pronouncing the sacred Name, though the strict warning about “misusing” it in the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:7) led to restrictions. One sure way of never taking God’s name in vain is never to use it, and not saying the Name was Jewish custom at the time of Jesus. The Lord’s Prayer is a good indicator that Jesus joined his fellow Jews in not uttering the sacred Name. Jesus routinely uses language that reveals respect for God through indirect mention (as in “the Mighty One” at Mark 14:62),17 and he seems also to have substituted “the Name” (HaShem) for the sacred Name when speaking (Matt 23:39).

  It is customary, and I have said this myself, to say that Jesus exhorts his followers to “hallow” the Name in how they live, but this is not accurate: the first three petitions are aimed at God in prayer.18 Thus, Jesus here petitions God to hallow God’s Name.19 To be sure, if God acts to honor God’s Name, then surely the followers of Jesus will too, but this text actually speaks of a divine action and in this evokes a common theme in the prophets. Note Ezekiel’s words:

  Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. (Ezek 36:22 NRSV)

  … when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies’ lands, and through them have displayed my holiness in the sight of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the LORD their God because I sent them into exile among the nations, and then gathered them into their own land. I will leave none of them behind. (Ezek 39:27–28 NRSV)

  The word “hallow” translates the Greek word hagiasthētō, which means to honor, sanctify, set apart, and treat with the highest of respect. In this context, since it refers to divine (not human) action, this petition is a prayer that God will act in a way that glorifies himself (cf. John 12:28). What Jesus has in mind is clear: he wants God to act to bring in the kingdom in order to display God’s rule. Humans, particularly Israelites or the Romans occupying the Land, defile and profane the name of God in sinful living (Lev 18:21).20 Again, focusing on how we profane God’s name is not the point of Jesus’ words; this petition is not a veiled act by the pray-er to get more Torah observance, nor is it a side glance at others to become more obedient. This is a petition for God to act.

  The opposite is our cold, shallow choice not to desire or pray for God’s glorious name to be established above all names. This, then, is more about our hopes, our desires, our affections, and our aches than it is about what we are doing or not doing in the realm of behaviors. Again, this request casts light on what we most want to be raised on high—God’s name or something
else? The petition is about priorities and a request for revival.

  Pastors, theologians, and writers reflect on the significance of beginning the Lord’s Prayer with this petition to hallow the name as the model for prayer; that is, all prayer should begin with God. However sound theologically, there is a difference between beginning with God and teaching us always to begin with God. Jesus does begin with God, but he is not teaching that here.

  The Kingdom and Will of God (6:10)

  What Jesus meant by “kingdom” has a long history. Some focus on the time element. One group of scholars, teaching what is often called “consistent” eschatology, focuses on the kingdom as on the verge of arrival at the time of Jesus. That is, Jesus believed the kingdom was about to arrive. Two elements are at work in this view: that kingdom would entail a total restoration of creation and the redemption of Israel; also at work here is the view that Jesus was at least in some sense mistaken.21

  Resistance to this interpretation surfaced in the English scholar C. H. Dodd. His tiny book The Parables of Jesus 22 was the beginning of his exposition of the eschatology of Jesus under the lens of what is now called “realized” eschatology because for Dodd the kingdom was already present in Jesus. What remained was only the apocalyptic completion of history.

  Between these poles of eschatology, one emphasizing imminent arrival of the kingdom and the other its “already” manifestation, lies a host of scholars in what is probably the consensus of scholars today: the kingdom of God for Jesus is both present and future. It is present but without consummation; it is both now and not yet. This view is often called “inaugurated” eschatology. The most influential presentation of this view for the more evangelical audience was George Eldon Ladd.23

  Ladd defined the kingdom as dynamically active in Jesus (see Matt 4:17; 12:28). He was pressed hard in his day by dispensationalists, who more or less saw the kingdom as millennium/heaven; in response Ladd probably exaggerated both the abstract and “dynamic” nature of the kingdom. Consequently, for some of his followers “kingdom” gets close to personal salvation and the experience of surrendering one’s life to God as King.24 Now, surely submission is inherent to kingdom language, but when it is reduced to the personal experience of surrender, we are mistaking what “kingdom” meant in Jesus’ world. Ladd did not teach such simplicities.

  But I want to suggest a way of thinking about the kingdom that modifies inaugurated eschatology, though I cannot defend that view at length here. A first-century Jew would have at least had the following ideas in mind whenever the word “kingdom” was mentioned, and all of this rolls out of the Old Testament expectations for God’s future:25 God as King, and for Jesus this mutates into the Davidic hope with himself as the messianic King; an Israelite society governed by the Davidic Messiah; a society or a people marked by peace, holiness, love, and wisdom in the land of Israel; a people governed by the Torah of Moses, but now once again mutated by Jesus into his teachings; and finally, since the kingdom would be the final realization of prophetic hopes, the kingdom would also be marked by new creation, new power, new obedience, and the healing of all sicknesses and diseases. The essential society-shaped, or people-shaped, form of the kingdom must be recovered, and this means the kingdom cannot be divorced from the church. So for Jesus “kingdom” would have meant the society of God’s people flourishing in this world under Christ as the King.

  The second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, then, expresses, as found in the Qaddish and expressed by Simeon (Luke 2:25) and Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43), the Jewish ache for God’s society to be fully established on earth. The vision of Revelation 21 is what Jesus has in mind. The highest form of loving God is longing for what most glorifies God. The Story of God in the Bible is the Story that God is Creator, Lord, and Redeemer, and that God’s plan for history is for it all to be summed up with Christ as Lord and with God ruling over the entire world.

  The first and second petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are fundamentally gospel aches: they ache for the full Story to become complete where God is All in All. But this ache is not just for the global, cosmic, and universal reign of God. Since the kingdom is already making itself present, and since we are called to live now in light of that future consummation, each and every act of love, peace, justice, and wisdom that we do enters into that final kingdom reality. But again, this petition is about God’s acting and not about our moral behaviors. A beautiful, poetic and prophetic announcement of what Jesus is saying can be found in Isaiah 52:7–10:

  7How beautiful on the mountains

  are the feet of those who bring good news,

  who proclaim peace,

  who bring good tidings,

  who proclaim salvation,

  who say to Zion,

  “Your God reigns!”

  8Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;

  together they shout for joy.

  When the LORD returns to Zion,

  they will see it with their own eyes.

  9Burst into songs of joy together,

  you ruins of Jerusalem,

  for the LORD has comforted his people,

  he has redeemed Jerusalem.

  10The LORD will lay bare his holy arm

  in the sight of all the nations,

  and all the ends of the earth will see

  the salvation of our God.

  The second petition of the Lord’s Prayer unfolds into a third. Some have thought Matthew himself defined “your kingdom come” by adding the explanation: “your will be done.” Its absence in the Lukan version of the Lord’s Prayer adds support to such a view, but when one is pushed to demonstrate that Matthew added the line, the evidence gets flimsier. Whatever its pedigree, “your will be done” is both an eloquent explanation of “your kingdom come” as well as a slight variant. The kingdom emphasizes a social order and a cosmic redemption, while “will” emphasizes the redemptive and moral intent of God for this world and for God’s people (see 7:21; 12:50; 18:14; 21:31; 26:42). Again, this is a prayer for God to act.

  “On earth as it is in heaven” is fundamental to the entire Lord’s Prayer as well as all of early Christian eschatology.26 Jesus clearly has no desire, as was the case in Platonic and the wider reaches of much of Greek and Roman thought, to move through this life with as little hassle and suffering as possible. The release of souls from this embodied life into a celestial disembodied existence is not a biblical notion. The opposite is the case with Jesus and for the entire Bible.

  A simple tracing of the word “heaven” and “new heavens and a new earth” in the New Testament shows that the final ending is found in Revelation 20–22. There it is not about our going up into the sky or into a disembodied state in heaven but of heaven coming down to earth. The final state according to Revelation 20–22 is on earth. That is why the Lord’s prayer says, “on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s redemptive power aims at realizing the heavenly condition on earth. It follows, then, that “kingdom of heaven” entails the idea that the earthly kingdom will be like the heavenly kingdom; that is, it will be a perfect manifestation of God’s will.

  The Bread (6:11)

  The Lord’s Prayer now shifts into a second part: from the You petitions to the We petitions. This second half finds itself in asking God for bread, for forgiveness, and for a moral life that flows out of a God whose name is to be hallowed, a kingdom whose desire is uppermost and a divine will that shapes all we do.

  It can be put baldly: we do not know exactly what “daily bread” means.27 For some this wrecks what we have always known to be true, but “our daily bread” uses a Greek term that is used but one time in the ancient literature. Dale Allison, a master in the history of interpretation, says “daily” is “an unresolved puzzle.”28 After observing that the third-century scholar Origen said that perhaps the Evangelists invented the word themselves, Allison begins to list and sort out the options: it could mean “needful” or “needed,”29 or “for the current day” (which is what Luke seems to sugge
st when he adds “each day” in Luke 11:3), or the Eucharist (“supersubstantial”; a majority of the church fathers read it this way; Matt 26:26), or spiritual sustenance (John 6, which can be narrowed as Luther did to the Word of God),30 or Jesus himself (6:48); it could also mean the kind of bread served in the kingdom (Luke 14:15), or the bread of “the coming [final] day.”31

  Allison himself leads a number of interpreters when he opts for the “coming day” view, observing that it has ancient support in both patristic writings and early translations of the Bible. That interpretation is rooted in the hope of the eschatological manna (Exod 16; Num 21:5), and the eschatological themes of the first three petitions would then come in to support such a view: eschatological manna for the eschaton.

  Do we need to limit our views to one? Allison, for instance, sees it as a blur of daily provision, the eschatological banquet, and the Eucharist, which anticipates that banquet.32 It is wisest to ask what Jesus would have meant, what Matthew’s own horizon could have comprehended, and then to give some freedom to reading this text in light of the Story of God. What appears to be in view is prayer for daily provisions. In support of this view is that the second half of the Lord’s Prayer is concerned with the normal needs of humans. But because the first three petitions focus on the consummation of history, perhaps the bread petition is about the so-called eschatological or kingdom manna. But again, both in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the Gospels there are indications of routine needs being met (6:25–34), and this leads me to think Jesus was thinking of ordinary bread for ordinary days,33 even if his listeners thought the divine provision was partaking in the bounty of kingdom redemption.34 I doubt that that Eucharist is in view.