Vaught's study is a theological attempt to explore some of the ways in which perfection can be achieved. The text moves from Matthew's Beatitudes, through simple illustrations of salt and light, to indications about the way in which Jesus fulfills and transcends the religious tradition from which he comes. In The Sermon on the Mount, we also find suggestions about how to deal with the practical problems of murder and anger, adultery and divorce, the problem of retaliation, and the problem of responding to our enemies.
Vaught's study is a theological attempt to explore some of the ways in which perfection can be achieved. The text moves from Matthew's Beatitudes, through simple illustrations of salt and light, to indications about the way in which Jesus fulfills and transcends the religious tradition from which he comes. In The Sermon on the Mount, we also find suggestions about how to deal with the practical problems of murder and anger, adultery and divorce, the problem of retaliation, and the problem of responding to our enemies.
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Overview
Vaught's study is a theological attempt to explore some of the ways in which perfection can be achieved. The text moves from Matthew's Beatitudes, through simple illustrations of salt and light, to indications about the way in which Jesus fulfills and transcends the religious tradition from which he comes. In The Sermon on the Mount, we also find suggestions about how to deal with the practical problems of murder and anger, adultery and divorce, the problem of retaliation, and the problem of responding to our enemies.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780918954763 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Baylor University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2001 |
| Edition description: | REVISED |
| Pages: | 214 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d) |
| Lexile: | 1310L (what's this?) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Sermon on the Mount
A Theological Investigation
By Carl G. Vaught
Baylor University Press
Copyright © 2001 Baylor University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-918954-76-3
Chapter One
The Context of the Message
In the fifth chapter of his gospel Matthew begins his account of the teaching of Jesus by calling our attention to the context in which the Sermon on the Mount was delivered. Most scholars have suggested that the Sermon was not formulated as a unified discourse and that the three chapters in which Matthew presents it are a collection of sayings uttered on different occasions. If this is the case, the first two verses of Chapter Five can be regarded as editorial comments intended to serve as an introduction to a series of utterances brought together from a variety of contexts: "And when He saw the multitudes, he went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And opening His mouth, he began to teach them, saying ..." (Mt 5.1, 2). Whether the Sermon is a continuous discourse or a collection of more episodic utterances, these introductory comments ought not to be ignored; for in making them, Matthew generates the framework in which his presentation of the message of Jesus is to be understood. In doing so, he calls our attention to the kind of audience to which the message of Jesus was directed and points to Jesus as the source of his inspiration.
The first verse of Matthew's brief introduction divides into four clauses; and in order to establish a clear conception of the audience to which the Sermon was addressed, it is important to comment on each of them in turn. First, consider "the multitudes." At the beginning of Jesus' Galilean ministry, the multitudes thronged him; and he was confronted by a great variety of individuals who were drawn to the initial power of his message. To be sure, the crowds would soon begin to trickle away, and toward the end of his life when he would cry out from the cross, "It is finished" (Jn 19.30), not even all the disciples would be present to hear what he said. At the outset, however, Jesus spoke to multitudes of people; and Matthew calls attention to this fact by referring to them in the first verse of Chapter Five.
But notice what Jesus does in the second clause of Matthew's brief introduction: He goes up onto a mountain, or more accurately, up the hillside. At this point most commentators suggest that Matthew intends to remind us of the earlier Old Testament tradition, and more specifically, of the first covenant that was ratified in the formulation of the Ten Commandments. Moses went up onto a mountain where the first covenant came to focus in the first Law. Matthew, writing with Hebrew apologetic purposes in view, wishes to remind us of this fact, and thus he sketches a picture of Jesus going up onto a hillside to begin his teaching. However, this time what is at stake is a new covenant; on this occasion, what is involved is a new Law; in this context, what Jesus formulates is the Law that the prophet Jeremiah mentions when he says: "One day I will write a new law on your hearts" (Jer 31.33).
Having considered the multitudes, and having noticed that Jesus goes up the hillside, what are we to say about the third phrase, "and He sat down"? Rabbis always taught sitting down, and that is how Jesus taught on this occasion. However, the fact that he sat down reflects the more fundamental fact that the attitude of Jesus stands in radical contrast with the attitude of the multitudes with whom he is surrounded. The hysteria of the crowds that were following Jesus was mounting; he would have to face that hysteria on subsequent occasions; and at the end of his ministry, it would come to a climax when he would ride into Jerusalem and the people who had been expecting the long-awaited Messiah would shout, "Save us now! Bring salvation now!" (Mt 21.9). However, at this point, Jesus begins to address his audience simply by sitting down and teaching.
Finally, consider the fact that "His disciples came to Him," noticing first that when they approach him, a space opens up between Jesus and the disciples on the one hand, and the crowd on the other. Matthew begins Chapter Five with the multitudes, and he begins in this way because Jesus was confronted by countless individuals who were drawn to the power of his preaching and to the mighty acts that he performed. However, the striking fact about the Sermon on the Mount is that it begins only when he leaves the multitudes behind, goes up a hillside, and generates a space between himself and the multitudes who were crowding around him. In addition, the Sermon does not commence until his disciples cross the space that Jesus opens up to listen to his teaching. When the disciples first encounter Jesus, they are no doubt dimly aware of the difference between his absolute perfection and their own degenerate condition. Nevertheless, they find that he is willing to teach them only if they make an initial commitment.
At the most fundamental level, we have a clear indication in this verse of the kind of response that Jesus demands from his followers. We come in multitudes-for whatever reason-attracted by the words and by the witness of Jesus. For that particular crowd, there might have been something attractive in Jesus' appearance, or about what he said, or about the tremendous power that was to be found in him. Hope for a new world was no doubt generated simply by being in his presence. Yet it is crucial to see that Jesus, knowing what he could have done with the multitudes in the light of the power at his disposal, turns away from them, lets a space open up between himself and them, permits a few disciples to come across that space, and having had a positive response from a small group of individuals, begins to teach them, calmly and deliberately.
As we will discover when we reach the end of Chapter Seven, the crowd begins to move forward as the Sermon progresses so that the seventh chapter ends with the phrase, "and the crowds were amazed at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes" (Mt 7.28, 29). At the beginning of Chapter Five, there is a space; at the end of Chapter Seven, the multitudes reappear; and in between, we find the Sermon that was addressed initially to Jesus' closest followers. However, what is most important to notice is that an initial moment of separation must occur if we are to hear the message of Jesus, and that only if we choose to cross the chasm that separates us from him will the words that he speaks be able to address our fragmented condition.
Yet what shall we say about verse two, where Matthew concludes his brief introduction by claiming, "And opening His mouth He began to teach them, saying ..." (Mt 5.2)? This phrase is redundant, and there can be little doubt that the other gospel writers would have been much more economical. For example, Mark's gospel depicts Jesus in action and is a breathlessly written document, one event tumbling after the other with scarcely a pause in between. By contrast, Matthew is more expansive, interlacing sayings of Jesus with the activities in which he was engaged by using phrases of the kind before us. Yet whatever Matthew's intentions, we can perhaps find a deeper significance in the expansive form that he adopts. There are other ways to teach besides opening one's mouth. One teaches by who one is; one teaches by what one does; and one teaches by what one says. In fact, Jesus teaches in all three ways at once; and he is able to do this because as the writer of the Gospel of John expresses the point, he is the Living Word (Jn 1.14). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is able to teach his disciples because he is the Logos; and this fact expresses itself not only in what he says, but also in who he is and in what he does.
One of the finest books about the Sermon on the Mount is entitled The Christ of the Mount, and it bears this title because the author realizes that the words spoken in the Sermon are rooted in the "being" of the one who speaks. In this book, E. Stanley Jones calls our attention to three aspects of Jesus' relationship with the Father that causes his Sermon to have the ring of authority and authenticity. First, he suggests that the Word of God is the specification of God in accessible form. Of course, Jesus claims to be one with the Father; and we begin our discussion with this presupposition. Yet one of the most important dimensions of the incarnation is that when Jesus reveals the Father, the Father receives specification in a finite form that he would not otherwise have. In John's gospel Jesus says that no one has seen the Father at any time and that he alone has manifested him to us (Jn 6.46, 10.30). Thus, the Living Word that appears on the mountain is the specification of God in accessible form.
Stanley Jones also suggests that the Word of God that Jesus expresses is the simplification of God. In the Republic, Socrates tells us that he wishes to sketch a picture of the human soul; and he also says that since the best way to do this is to draw a picture written large, he will turn away from speaking about the soul to speaking about the city. Thus Socrates says that if we can see the larger picture of the city, perhaps we can learn something about the structure of the soul by comparison. By analogy, when Jesus speaks to his followers, he both specifies God and simplifies him; and he simplifies him by making him accessible in human terms.
Finally, the author suggests that the one who sits on the mountain, and who intends to teach his disciples, is the pathway that leads to the Father. In John's gospel Jesus says, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (Jn 14.6). That is the dogmatic foundation upon which the Christian tradition rests. There are many dialogues that can and should occur between one religion and another; but the foundation of the Christian faith is expressed in the sentence uttered by Jesus himself that stands behind his teaching: "I am the pathway that will lead you to the Father; I am the truth that will reveal what is original and that will never degenerate into counterfeit coin; and I am the source of Life and am the Light in which the truth I have come to reveal will become visible."
Before we plunge into the Sermon in detail, let us finally ask the crucial question about the content of the message that Jesus intends to convey to his followers. What is the focus of the Sermon on the Mount? What is its center? What does the whole thing mean? In the book to which I have just referred, the author suggests that the focal point of the Sermon is to be found in the last verse of the fifth chapter of Matthew where Jesus says, "Therefore you are to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Mt 5.48). By contrast with this demand, the writer reminds us that other religions promise many things. Some promise justice; for as the Hebrew prophet Amos says, "Let justice roll down like the rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream" (Am 5.24). Others promise pleasure; for as popular accounts of Islam suggest, it finally comes to focus there. Some promise nothingness; others promise divinity; and still others promise progress. What, by contrast, does Jesus insist upon and not just promise, but demand? The crucial sentence is an imperative; it says: "Be perfect!"; and it concludes by suggesting that the perfection that Jesus has in mind is not simply human, but divine.
Yet at this point the question arises, "How can this be?!" Even the Scriptures themselves raise serious questions about how perfection can ever be achieved. For example, Isaiah says that our righteousness is like filthy rags when it is compared with the righteousness of God (Is 64.6); the Psalmist claims that there is none righteous, no not one (Ps 14.1); and in an even more familiar passage, the Apostle Paul tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of God's absolute perfection (Rom 3.23). How then can the focal point of the Sermon on the Mount be a sentence that says, "Be perfect!"? And be perfect "just as God is perfect"?
In responding to these questions, it is important to focus on the Greek word that is translated "perfection" in this passage. The word telios is the term from which we get the word telos, or "end." Thus, the word translated "perfection" means the end toward which a developing being is oriented so that when it reaches that end, it will be what it was meant to become. The universe about which Jesus spoke was not the mechanical universe of matter in motion and the clangor of machines, but was a world understood in terms of purposes, ends, and goals. As a result, the crucial question to be asked about a person or a thing was not a question about its internal constitution, but the more fundamental question about what that thing or person was meant to be.
In the passage before us, Jesus formulates this fundamental question by using the term telios, which can be translated with the English word "perfection," but which can perhaps be rendered more adequately in terms of the concept of maturity. "Be engaged," Jesus says, "in the task of becoming what you were meant to be, reaching for the telos, the purpose, the goal, and the maturity for which you were intended." In these terms, the Sermon on the Mount intends to bring the followers of Jesus into a kingdom that has both come and is coming and into a way of life that makes it possible for us to live in terms of the end toward which we ought to be directed. As a result, what is about to unfold in this message is an account of what life in God's kingdom should be, directed as it is toward enabling the follower of Jesus to become what he or she was meant to be.
Perhaps Paul speaks most clearly for the kind of follower Jesus has in mind when he says in the third chapter of Philippians:
Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil 3.12-14).
In these sentences, the center of the Sermon on the Mount comes to focus; and we are confronted, not only with the goal of Christian maturity, but also with the kind of response that Jesus demands in our own case.
Chapter Two
Entrance into God's Kingdom
In establishing the context for the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew mentions the multitudes, refers to a mountain, and says that after Jesus sat down upon it, his disciples came to him (Mt 5.1). And when the space opens up between the surrounding crowds and the disciples close at hand, Matthew adds that "opening His mouth He began to teach them, saying ..." (Mt 5.2). Before we turn to the content of the Sermon, it is important to notice a striking fact about the tenses of the verbs in these first two verses. Every verb but the last is in the aorist tense, which means that the verbs in question point to specific moments in time. At a specific moment he saw the multitudes; at a subsequent moment, he went up onto a mountain; subsequently, he sat down; and at still another moment, his disciples came to him. Thus Matthew records four momentary occurrences, each in sequence. However, the last verb of Matthew's introductory comments is in the imperfect tense; it is translated in our English text "and He began to teach them"; but one of the possible implications of the Greek imperfect in this case is that he not only taught for a period of time, but also repeated himself often enough for his audience to understand his intentions. It is unlikely that the complex content of the Sermon on the Mount was formulated only once; and as a result, we should perhaps imagine four momentary events followed by a sequence of other events in which Jesus repeats the essential content of his teaching. It is this essential content upon which we shall focus our attention.
The first and most familiar section of the Sermon on the Mount is to be found in verses three through twelve of Chapter Five and is called "the Beatitudes" (Mt 5.3-12). The Beatitudes with which Jesus begins, are blessings, and the word "blessed" serves to bracket the entire initial segment of Jesus' teaching. As a result, our first question should focus on the meaning of this term and upon the significance of the brackets it places around the nine Beatitudes to be found at the beginning of the message.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sermon on the Mount by Carl G. Vaught Copyright © 2001 by Baylor University Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
PrefacePart I: Divine Perfection and Christian Maturity
1. The Context of the Message
2. Entrance into God's Kingdom
3. The Outward Journey
4. Persecution and the Real Order
5. Two Overarching Metaphors: The Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World
Part II: The Past and the Future: Five Practical Problems
6. Jesus as the Fulfillment of Tradition
7. Murder and Anger
8. Adultery and Divorce
9. The Problem of False Vows
10. The Problem of Retaliation
11. Love Your Enemies
Part III: Six Expressions of Perfection
12. Being Seen and Being Noticed: Secret Acts of Charity
13. The Inner Room and the Lord's Prayer
14. Fasting as a Centered Act
15. Two Treasures, Two Ways of Seeing, Two Masters
16. Beyond Anxiety
17. Judgment and Condemnation
Part IV: Final Considerations about God's Kingdom
18. Access to Transforming Power
19. The Golden Rule and the Narrow Gate
20. Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
21. Two Final Analogies: Houses, Rocks, and Sand
Notes
Index
What People are Saying About This
...a gracious invitation to rediscover the Sermon on the Mount... it reflects years of discipline in reading texts closely while also paying full attention to their contexts. The lucid, lively prose makes the solid, substantial content all the more attractive and accessible.
...a gracious invitation to rediscover the Sermon on the Mount... it reflects years of discipline in reading texts closely while also paying full attention to their contexts. The lucid, lively prose makes the solid, substantial content all the more attractive and accessible.