Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  The routine or stationary fast of one or two days a week simply isn’t the way the Bible describes fasting, even if the church has thrown its weight in that direction. The stationary fast has a place in the church, as long as it learns to orient itself toward the grievous condition or sacred moments and avoids concentrating on what we can gain from it. And the routine calendrical fasting—such as during Lent or in preparation for Advent—have clear biblical precedent in the Day of Atonement fast, but that fast was not depicted as heroic. It was expected to be done by all Israelites as a way of facing sin and looking to God.

  Sixth, at work in the Bible’s teaching on fasting is an anthropology: that we are an organic unity and not dualisms. We are body, soul, and spirit and not bodies with a spirit or soul dwelling in us. The former sees us as an organic unity, while the latter sees us as having an inferior part (body) and a superior part (soul, spirit). Fasting in the Bible is the organic, unified response of a whole person to a sacred moment. We can provoke more biblical fasting simply by teaching a more organic sense of who we are.

  Finally, we can help the church become more biblical by responding to sacred, grievous moments—like 9/11, a hurricane’s devastation, or a fire tearing across a California hillside—by calling Christians to fast in response to the devastation and as a way of entering into the grief of God. Instead of promising blessings and benefits, we can call attention to the grievous moments of our lives, our church, and our communities and urging God’s people to fast. Time will tie our bodies to our mind, soul, spirit, and heart.

  Notes

  1. KNT: “play-actors.”

  2. KNT: “tidy your hair and beard the way you normally do.”

  3. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 155–66, esp. 157. After listing the various fasts, he concludes: “Now, if you put all this fasting together on one pile, it is not worth a heller.”

  4. A classic short treatment is Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 47–61.

  5. Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, 1:215.

  6. Thus, m. Taʿanit 1:2–7 then in the Talmud at b. Taʿanit 12b; also at b. Baba Meṣi ʿa 85a. See G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, The Age of the Tannaim (3 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 2.55–69, 257–66.

  7. Kinghorn, Wesley on the Sermon, 181. For his practical advice, see pp. 191–95.

  8. See S. McKnight, Fasting (The Ancient Practices Series; Nashville: Nelson, 2009).

  9. Suetonius, Augustus 76, tells us that Augustus compared his own sparing eating habits favorably over against the fasting practices of the Jews. See: www.gutenberg.org/files/6400/6400.txt.

  10. Instances include Acts 13:2–3; 14:23.

  11. From the OT Apocrypha, Jesus ben Sirach (Sir 34:31; in Greek, 34:26) writes: “So if one fasts for his sins, and goes again and does the same things, who will listen to his prayer? And what has he gained by humbling himself?” See T. Asher 2.5–10. For further information, Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries, 2:55–69 (public piety), 257–66 (private piety); R. Banks, “Fasting,” DJG, 233–34.

  12. Greek aphanizō means “to make unrecognizable through change in appearance” (BDAG, 154). There is a play on words here in what can be called a “delicious irony” (France, Matthew, 255): “disfigure” and “show” translate words that sound alike (aphanizō and phainō). For more discussion, see Betz, Sermon on the Mount, 420–21.

  13. See Dan 9:3; Jonah 3:5.

  14. Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, 1:214.

  15. The Greek term hypocritēs emerges from theater. See BDAG, 1038. A suggestive study here is Batey, Jesus and the Forgotten City, 83–103.

  16. Allison, Sermon on the Mount, 137.

  17. Keener, Matthew, 226–28.

  18. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 158.

  19. See John Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1997); Kent Berghuis, Christian Fasting: A Theological Approach (Richardson, TX: Biblical Studies Press, 2007).

  20. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 155.

  21. In ACCS: Matthew, 140–41.

  22. See Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls (rev. ed.; New York: Vintage, 2000).

  Chapter 15

  Matthew 6:19–24

  LISTEN to the Story

  19“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.1

  22“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,2 your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are unhealthy,3 your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!4

  24“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

  Listening to the text in the Story: Exodus 20:3; Leviticus 19:9; 23:22; 24:19; 25; Deuteronomy 24:19; 28; Amos; Haggai 1.

  More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar per day; about three billion live on less than two dollars per day. Between 12 and 20 percent of Americans live below what we call our poverty line. With those simple facts on your mind, I’d like you to get up from reading this book and observe what you have, what is accessible to you, and what you and I take for granted. I’m sitting in my personal library: a heater next to me, a workable computer I own, thousands of books within twenty or thirty feet. If I want water, I can get it; if I prefer coffee, I can get that—espresso machine, bean grinder, milk frother. If I want a snack, I have a pantry full of food. If I need lunch, I see what’s available in the refrigerator. The house is warm or, in the summer, cooled by air conditioning. I do not worry what to wear, for I have a dresser and a closet full of clothing. I do not worry about safety as my house is sturdy, and we have had funds available for repairs and reconstruction. Our community is policed and safe.

  The Jesus we follow seems to have had nothing. He lived in a dry, hot, and dusty world. What food he ate he received by fishing, by farming, or by donations. The summers were long and filled with famine-causing heat; the houses in places like Capernaum were made of black basalt and were sturdy but hardly cool enough to make life comfortable. To cool off people waded into the Sea of Galilee. He lived on little; he lived from the generosity of others; he undoubtedly knew some hunger and thirst.

  Jesus saw homes every day, from Sepphoris (just north of Nazareth) to Tiberias all the way around to the cities of the Decapolis, where wealthier Jews or Romans had villas and plenty of food and entertainment. He undoubtedly knew of the heated Roman baths Herod had built at Masada and other locations. He knew what it was to have little and to dwell with those who had even less while others around him basked in luxury and filled their mouths with delicacies. In Jesus’ Bible were passages about the Jubilee, and he evoked that very theme in his opening sermon in Luke 4:16–30. His vision tapped into the Jubilee, the gleanings, and the prophetic words—and he embodied a carefree, trust-in-God kind of economic vision. He demanded simplicity because he lived it; he expected care for the poor because he had experienced it.

  The irony of wealthy followers of Jesus cannot be ignored.

  In the history of the church a number of Christians have stood up and said, “Enough is enough!” and called the church to its knees about its participation in wealth and opulence while those around them were suffering in poverty and hunger. Some of them were extremists, like Saint Anthony of the Desert, Saint Francis of Assisi, and in our own day Shane Claiborne of Philadelphia. Their extremism reminds us of the call to simplicity by Jesus. Others write themselves into a pitch about our extravagances and comforts, and I think here of both the ancient church’s Clement of Alexandria’s famous Who Is the Rich Man? and Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluenc
e to Generosity.5

  Back to Jesus again, who knew the obedience-leads-to-material-blessings tradition of Deuteronomy 28 and who had contemporaries who no doubt embraced that very tradition, especially if they were wealthy. When Jesus stood up to warn his followers about attachment to or accumulation of possessions, he stood in a long line of biblical laws and prophetic announcements about idolatry, the danger of accumulation, justice, and the need to distribute one’s excess in order to care for those who had little.6 Like the ancient prophets, Jesus’ teaching in our passages isn’t simply about the ideal society, and neither is it an economic theory; this is about worship and idolatry. What Jesus had to say to his followers who were seeking to embody the kingdom vision of Jesus has even more to say to the affluence of Christians in the West. Jesus’ message can be reduced to these ideas: Live simply. Possessions are mysteriously idolatrous. Trust God.

  EXPLAIN the Story

  In 6:19 Jesus begins a new set of instructions; the connection to what precedes is far from clear as he moves from three spiritual disciplines (6:1–18) to the idea of lordship and possessions (6:19–34). Dale Allison explains this as a shift to “social obligations.”7 Luther calls it “Sir Greed,”8 but Calvin, correctly I think, reminds us “that we have here a series of short utterances, not a continuing address.”9 As any synopsis of the Gospels shows, Matthew’s three sayings in 6:19–24 are found in three different locations in Luke (see Luke 12:33–34; 11:34–35; 16:13).

  However one explains the shift, or however far one extends the next section (I connect 6:19 through 6:34), 6:19–24 contains three separable but similar units that use concrete images/metaphors to teach one simple message on the necessity of disciples disentangling themselves from possessions: treasures (6:19–21), the single eye (6:22–23), and serving two masters (6:24). And then in 6:25–34 Jesus uses images of God’s care for creation to instill trust in him for provisions. Instead of seeing a logical progression in 6:19–24, which would assume these were given in rapid succession by Jesus, it might be wiser for us to see these as three images communicating a similar idea. Each unit contains a thesis statement (6:19a, 22a, 24a, 25) followed by two observations (6:19b–20, 22b–23b, 24b-c, and 26, 28–30) and a concluding summary (6:21, 23c-d, 24d, 31–34).

  Treasures (6:19–21)

  The treasure image unit has three elements: a prohibition (6:19), a positive command (6:20), and the reason (6:21). The follower of Jesus—that is, the one who is committed both to Jesus and to his kingdom vision and who lets that vision frame all of life, is prohibited from storing up treasures. The word “treasures” here surely involves possessions, but it is not the same as possessions. Instead, it refers to the accumulation of things as a focus of joy. It refers to the spirit of acquisitiveness or the desire to acquire.

  Jesus’ point is that these things are temporary,10 a point trenchantly painted by James (James 5:1–6), and no one reading this book hasn’t had something that has worn out (jeans, shoes, a car, a lawnmower, a computer). Joe Kapolyo, a Zambian, tells of taking out an endowment policy that would have matured at 45,000 kwacha, enough to buy a retirement home, but five years later a schoolteacher was making 110,000 kwacha.11 The brevity of the life of things can become a sacrament of the eternal if we but look into the depth of how transitory our things are. In fact, Luther says the “great idol Mammon” has anointed “three trustees—rust, moths, and thieves”—that ought to remind us of the temporality of possessions.12

  In contrast, the disciple is commanded to store up treasures that last, and here “treasures” moves from things we value that are temporal to things we value that are moral and eternal. Jesus uses typical merit language when he uses “treasures.”

  For behold, the days are coming, and the books will be opened in which are written the sins of all those who have sinned, and moreover, also the treasuries in which are brought together the righteousness of all those who have proved themselves to be righteous. (2 Bar. 24:1)

  Our rabbis taught: It is related of King Monobaz [first-century king of Adiabene, who was accused by his brothers of squandering possessions, said to them:] … “My fathers stored up below and I am storing above…. My fathers stored in a place which can be tampered with, but I have stored in a place which cannot be tampered with…. My fathers gathered treasures of money, but I have gathered treasures of souls…. My fathers gathered for this world, but I have gathered for the future world.” (b. Baba Batra 11a)

  This means we are led to ask what lasts, and what lasts is love (see 1 Cor 13). We can begin to focus on the eternal if we live to love God and others (the Jesus Creed), if we pursue justice as the way we are called to love others as God’s creations, if we live out a life that drives for peace as how loving people treat one another, and if we strive for wisdom instead of just knowledge or bounty. Jesus commonly urges his followers to live in the light of life after death, or the age to come (his Ethic from Beyond): Matt 5:3–12, 19–20, 22, 29–30; 6:10; 7:13–14, 21–27. A concrete expression of treasures that last is how Martin Luther King Jr., after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, donated his considerable financial award to the cause of human freedom.13

  Jesus’ grounding argument is that what we value—our treasures, which are measured by where and on what we spend our energies—indicates where our heart, or the center of our passion, is. I think of Joseph of Arimathea, who, though rich and a disciple (27:57), had a treasure centered on Jesus. The rich young ruler had treasures centered on possessions and not on caring for the poor (19:16–30), and the disciples who left family and economic/social security to follow Jesus (4:18–22; 8:18–22; 9:9–13) illustrate Jesus’ point about treasures. The story about Zacchaeus illustrates our passage (Luke 19:1–10).

  The Eye of the Body (6:22–23)

  These two verses express something through an ancient image. Notice that it says the “eye is the lamp of the body.” Lamps give off light. In this image, Jesus says the eye is something through which light passes onto objects. Such a view of how humans could see was widespread in the ancient world, and there were two theories: the “intromission” and “extramission” theory of light.14 That is, did the eye permit light to enter the body (intromission), or did it send light out from inside the body (extramission)? In both views the eye is a window. Nearly four centuries later Augustine used the extramission theory of vision when he said that “rays shine through the eyes and touch whatever they see.”15 Jesus too assumes the extramission theory of light in this saying that the eye, like a lamp, permits light to exit the body. He uses that perception to probe into the condition of one’s heart, to probe whether it was light or darkness. Hence, “the eye is [a window for] the lamp of [inside] the body.”

  But what point is Jesus making? Allison thinks it’s about the inner light of God’s work of grace that flows into compassion and generosity,16 but Calvin saw in this image an appeal to the mind’s capacity to control the emotions.17 Guelich thinks pointing toward specific ethical concerns like generosity overcooks the image; it’s about being in the light or in the darkness (cf. 4:15–17, 23).18 But France and Hagner, closer to Allison, conclude we are to see in the “evil eye” (cf. m. ʾAbot 2:12, 15; 5:16, 22) a stinginess contrasted with generosity.19 Each of these illustrates the specifics; the evidence isn’t clear enough to know firmly.

  Next Jesus says: “If your eyes are healthy [perhaps ‘generous’], your whole body is full of light.” But this might suggest the eye is a window through which light passes into the body, morally purifying the inner person. Dale Allison, who is at least partly responsible for uncovering the ancient theory for how eyes did their seeing, contends that a sound or healthy eye indicates a light within, and he also distinguishes from the source (light) and the organ through which light passes (eye). Verse 23 confirms Allison’s point: “If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Jesus’ focus is on the inner person: Is it full of light or full of darkness? The use of light versus darkness is a rhetorical way for Jesus
to contrast two options in life: a good source (light) versus a bad source (darkness), and the good life of deeds (healthy eye) versus the immoral life of no deeds (unhealthy eye)—in other words, the way of God and the way of evil.20 This saying, then, is not unlike what Jesus says about good trees and good fruit in 7:15–20; 12:33–34; 15:18–20.

  But what perhaps surprises us here is that the words used for “healthy” (haplous) and “unhealthy” (ponēros) are words often used for “generous” and “stingy.”21 Words that appear to be rather innocent take on a more pointed economic flavor. The economic hints of these images make more clear why “healthy” and “unhealthy” are connected to the previous one (“treasure” in 6:21) and the following one (“God and money” in 6:24): the image about the lamp and the eye is a moral image for how one responds to the needy with compassion.

  Two Masters (6:24)

  Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters,” and his words apply the first commandment to the idol of possessions (Exod 20:3). That commandment was rooted in the distinct affirmation of ancient Israel’s faith: there is only one God, YHWH (Deut 6:4). One’s affections are for either one or the other. Jesus pushes the disciple to his major point: there are two masters; one master is God and the other master is “mammon” (NIV “money), or possessions.22 Luther has put it graphically: “as Mammon’s master, a man must make him [Mammon] lie at his feet; but he must be subject to no one and have no master except the Word of God.”23 Aaron M. Gale, in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, makes an important observation about the irony of this term: the term was “originally derived from ‘ ʾaman,’ ‘trust, reliance,’ meaning ‘that in which [other than God] one places one’s trust.”24