The Sermon on the Mount: Rules of Life in the Kingdom | Frank Sheed | From "To Know Christ Jesus" | Ignatius Insight
The Sermon on the Mount: Rules of Life in the Kingdom | Frank Sheed | From To Know Christ
Jesus | Ignatius Insight
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2011/fsheed_sermononthemt_jan2011.asp
Our Lord's baptism by John had taken place in January, a cold month, even in
the Jordan valley, for total immersion. The definite call of the Twelve was
perhaps in June. We shall now be looking at the nine or ten months which still
remained of his ministry in Galilee, ending with the vast double
explosion—the feeding of the five thousand, and the sermon on the Bread
of Life which cost him most of his followers.
So far his teaching seems to have followed the line of the Baptist's—that
the Kingdom was at hand, and that the preparation for entry into it must be a
change of soul. These last weeks had brought something new—his claim to
forgive sins, to be greater than the Temple, to be Lord of the Sabbath. The
Baptist had never talked like that. Nor did his hearers grasp what such talk
actually meant, for he had still not said who and what he himself was. About
that, they might argue and grow confused. The one thing quite clear was that he
worked miracles, and that was enough to bring crowds thronging.
We learn that they had come from Judea and Galilee, Jerusalem and Herod's
ancestral home Idumea, from countries away on the other side of the Jordan,
from Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean coast. They were all trying to touch
him, thrusting in on him, so much so that he told the disciples to have a small
boat standing by. But this time he did not use the boat. Instead he went up
onto the hillside. And there he preached.
Saint Luke gives a short account of the sermon in his chapter 6, Saint Matthew
a longer account in his chapters 5, 6, and 7. It would be good to read them
both before proceeding further with this chapter. Most people, I fancy, think
of the Sermon on the Mount as nine verses, each beginning with the word blessed: if only all sermons were as short as that! In fact
it takes three chapters of Saint Matthew. Even so it could be delivered at my
own speaking pace in under twenty minutes, and the most sermon-resistant
Catholic would hardly begin to complain so soon.
This very brevity helps us to answer one problem. There are things in one
account not in the other, things in Matthew which Mark and Luke show as being
said on quite other occasions. We may be quite certain that our Lord did not
dismiss people who had come so far with a twenty-minute sermon. Even Matthew's
account is only a tiny proportion of what he must have said; and it may have
included relevant things Jesus said at other times. Of course, as we have
already noted, he would have uttered the same great truths again and again,
every teacher does—and very often in the same words, because when one has
found the best form of words, it would be eccentric to change it.
How perfect were the words he found. Think of some of the things that everybody
knows, even if he doesn't know that they are in the Sermon on the
Mount—"Consider the lilies of the field", "You cannot
serve God and Mammon", "By their fruits you shall know them",
"Turn the other cheek", "Love your enemies, do good to them that
hate you", the Our Father, the Golden Rule. Golden Rule? It was a golden
sermon.
It is not quite clear whether the crowds were there for all of it. Certainly
some of it could hardly have been meant for them but only for the Twelve:
"You are the salt of the earth", "You are the light of the
world." Much of it was of application to everyone, to everyone there, to
everyone everywhere. But the whole of it is the equivalent of a special
training course for the men upon whom he was going to build his Kingdom. They
were not simply to be rulers wielding authority. They were to be
"light", both to the darkness of the pagan world and to the dimness
of the chosen people. They were to be "salt", bringing a new tang and
savor to a world insipid, to a life grown dreary. The whole sermon was a
commentary on the "repentance", metanoia, change of soul, that was at the heart of the
forerunner's message. And of Christ's.
The Sermon begins with the rules of life in the Kingdom. It is blessed to be
poor, provided one does not resent one's state but offers it to God; to be
patient; to be hungry for justice and sorrowful; to be merciful and clean of
heart; to be lovers of peace and makers of peace; to be persecuted for
justice's sake, still more to be persecuted and reviled and slandered for our
Lord's. It is a remarkable way of life, or program of life, here sketched. Most
of these things had been spoken of, and right endurance of them praised, in the
Old Testament. But they had hardly been described as adding up to blessedness,
a kind of fundamental bliss, so that one would be diminished by not having
them. Mercy and cleanness of heart, yes. But sorrow, persecution, reviling, and
slander? Jesus is wholly uncompromising about these.
And the rewards? They practically all seem to be in a world to come. And if his
followers fail? If the salt lose its savor—surely it lost a lot of its
savor on the night of Gethsemane—it is fit only to be thrown out and
trodden under foot. Thank God, he also will forgive unto seventy times seven.
Yet for the hardened in failure, there is hell. Jesus says it again and again
in these chapters.
It is an exacting standard he is setting them, reaching its climax in a phrase
approached in Jewish teaching but not reached—"Be ye also perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect." Their rigor for themselves, however,
must be balanced by a total forbearance toward others. Indeed
"forbearance" is too pale a word for what is demanded of them. They
must not even judge others, for if they do, they will be calling upon God to
judge themselves: they must be charitable, that is, not only in external act,
but in judgment as well. They must treat others as they would want others to
treat them.
Here again we have a phrase his hearers had never heard before. The Old
Testament does teach negatively
(Tob 4:16) that we should not treat others as we should not want to be treated
by them. But phrased positively by Jesus, the Golden Rule is dazzling and
dazzlingly difficult to live up to. Which of us could keep it up for a week? To
make quite clear that he means the word "others" do unto others-in
its fullness, he applies it at the extremest point: we must love our enemies, we must do good to those that hate us.
As well as drawing up a rule of life for his followers, he states his position
with regard to the teaching already given to the Jews in the Old Testament.
"Do not think that I am come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets. I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfill." Upon murder, adultery, retaliation for
evil, he completes and perfects the Law given by God through Moses, always with
the formula: "It was said to them of old, but I say to you".
His respect for the Law—which, as second Person of the Trinity, he
himself had given through Moses and the prophets—is not extended to the
teaching of the scribes: "I tell you, that unless your justice abound more
than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of
heaven." He applies this particularly to the teaching he found in
possession upon the matter of oaths. False swearing, he says, is false
swearing, no matter what you swear by: you cannot evade the commandment by
using some other name than God's.
What did his hearers make of all this? Some things they would have understood,
and perhaps reacted against instantly—such, for example, as being told
not to resent having their face slapped, but to offer the other cheek for
slapping. Only slowly, perhaps, did they make their own the essence of what he
was saying—namely, that no external act, however splendid, can save us;
no external act, however appalling, can damn us, either. All is in the
state—knowledge, will, intention—of the soul. A man is saved or
damned by what he loves: God, or himself as against God. But, of course, what a
man loves will tend to show itself in what he does.
At the end of the sermon Jesus had still not described the Kingdom whose
founding he had already begun. Nor had he told them who he was himself. But
upon this second point he had added to the claims which had already been quite
sufficient to set so many of them thinking of blasphemy. Not only had he
completed the law of God with a casual, unexplained "but I say unto
you". Worse than that, he had referred (Mt 7:24) to the commands he had been
giving them simply as "mine".
Related Ignatius Insight Essays and Book Excerpts:
• The Blessings & Curses of the Beatitudes | Mark Brumley
• St. John the Baptist, Forerunner | Frank Sheed
• The Incarnation | Frank Sheed
• The Problem of Life's Purpose | Frank Sheed
Frank
Sheed (1897-1981) was an Australian of Irish descent. A law student,
he graduated from Sydney University in Arts and Law, then moved in 1926,
with his wife Maisie Ward, to London. There they founded the well-known
Catholic publishing house of Sheed & Ward in 1926, which published some
of the finest Catholic literature of the first half of the twentieth century.
Known for his sharp mind and clarity of expression, Sheed became one of
the most famous Catholic apologists of the century. He was an outstanding
street-corner speaker who popularized the Catholic Evidence Guild in both
England and America (where he later resided). In 1957 he received a doctorate
of Sacred Theology honoris causa authorized by the Sacred Congregation
of Seminaries and Universities in Rome.
Although he was a cradle Catholic, Sheed was a central figure in what he
called the "Catholic Intellectual Revival," an influential and
loosely knit group of converts to the Catholic Faith, including authors
such as G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn
Waugh, Arnold Lunn, and Ronald Knox.
Sheed wrote several books, the best known being Theology
and Sanity, A
Map of Life, Theology for Beginners and To
Know Christ Jesus. He and Maise also compiled the Catholic Evidence
Training Outlines, which included his notes for training outdoor speakers
and apologists and is still a valuable tool for Catholic apologists and
catechists (and is available through the Catholic Evidence Guild).
For more about Sheed, visit his IgnatiusInsight.com
Author Page.
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