Epiphany 5 – 2020
Matthew 5:13-20
Marian Free
In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen.
When we think about The Sermon on the Mount most of us think of Matthew 5:1-12 – the Beatitudes. In fact, the sermon as a whole extends all the way to the end of chapter 7. It consists of a selection of Jesus’ sayings that Matthew has gathered into one place and arranged somewhat thematically. Matthew structures his gospel around five (some say six) such blocks of teaching of which this is the first. The teaching material is separated by narrative material which is linked to what has come before. In this instance Matthew introduces the ‘Sermon’ with an announcement that Jesus teaches and heals. The sermon (teaching) is followed by accounts of Jesus’ healing before Matthew moves to the next collection of teaching material. It is most unlikely that Jesus’ teaching consisted of long lists of unrelated material. A more believable scenario is that during the course of his ministry Jesus taught the disciples and the crowds a variety of things and, after his death, Jesus’ followers collected his sayings (and parables) together and repeated them to each other. In time the material was gathered into collections of sayings which the gospel writers used in their own particular way. The sayings included in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew) and in the Sermon on the Plain and Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem (Luke) are believed to have come from a common source (technically Quelle or Q) that was known to Matthew and Luke but not to Mark.
Though the sayings seem unrelated (today’s being salt, light and law), Matthew appears to have tried to structure them and to gather them into themes. Perhaps the best example of this is chapter 18 that contains sayings that are specifically directed to the community of faith – being careful not to harm another’s faith, how to resolve differences within the community and forgiveness (of other members of the community).
It is generally believed that the community for whom Matthew’s gospel was written was a community of Jews who had come to believe in Jesus and who believed that they were the logical outcome of God’s promises to Israel. That the community still thought of themselves as Jews is implied by the references to “their synagogues” (4:23, 9:35, 10:17, 12:9, 13:54) which suggests “our synagogues”. Only a Jewish Christian would engage so heatedly with the synagogue and would judge Israel so harshly. A Gentile community probably would not feel that there was any need to compete. Further, a primarily Gentile community might have placed more emphasis on the relaxation of the law instead of insisting that, “until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
That Matthew’s community were convinced that they were the true Israel is also hinted at by the gospel writer’s use of the Old Testament and of Rabbinic forms of argument. Most importantly, the belief that the community felt that they were the logical and obvious continuation of Israel is demonstrated by the ‘competition’ with those Jewish communities that did not believe in Jesus and the attitude of one-upmanship concerning the law that we see in today’s gospel: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
This make-up of the community also explains Matthew’s harsh, legalistic and exclusive stance . Whereas the other gospels and the letters of Paul express some ambivalence or even negativity towards the law, Matthew not only affirms it, but insists that members of his community should both keep the law and keep it even more rigorously than members of the Pharisaic sect with whom they seem to be in competition and whom Matthew accuses of hypocrisy. Matthew’s attacks on the scribes and Pharisees are much stronger than in Mark and Luke (see for example the invective in Chapter 23: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees! Hypocrites!”). Such sayings suggest a defensiveness on the part of Matthew’s community and a need to protect their legitimacy.
Following on from the Beatitudes, the sayings in today’s gospel appear to be instructions to the community. Those who are blessed are expected to be salt and light; seasoning and illumination for the wider community. They are to live in such a way as to make Jesus present in the world. In other words, Jesus both comforts and reassures, commissions and challenges the disciples. He assures them that they are blessed, but insists that with the blessings comes responsibility. The mission does not end with him but must continue in and through the lives of his disciples – in this case the members of Matthew’s community.
It is possible to soften Matthew’s rigid stance with regard to the law, to argue that Jesus here is referring to fulfilling the law in the sense of bringing to completeness, bringing wholeness to the law. We can argue that in some way the law has come to fullness in the person of Jesus that it is fulfilled, not abolished. It is not done away with, but is transformed. I want to suggest that we should let the saying stand if for no other reason than that this saying challenges us never to slip into the sort of complacency and hypocrisy that Matthew’s Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of, but that we are always striving to build lives that fully represent the desires of God for us as revealed by Jesus.
The blessedness of which Jesus speaks is not an excuse for laziness, but a reason to excel, to strive to be worthy of such blessings and in turn to really be the presence of Christ in the world.
Swallowsrest 