Matthew 5 - Part 2

Onwards and upwards!

I was travelling a lot yesterday and rushed to close off chapter 5.  I felt quite bad about this and then realised that the likes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a whole book on the sermon on the mount and that made me feel much better!

What I have found most difficult in reading through chapter 5 is my realisation that I don't practice most of it. In yesterdays post I contrasted our society's values with the values of the Kingdom of Heaven as shown by Jesus in the Beatitudes. The problem for me is that as I examine my own conscience I realise that my own personal values are much more that of "modern western civilisation" than those of Jesus.

I get angry and that's as good as murder. I lust and that's as good as adultery.  I hate my enemies and therefore show that I am just as bad as everyone else.  Does this then lead us to deep, dark introspection and gloom at the fact that we cannot keep the heart of God's law even if we outwardly keep the letter of it?  I don't think that's what Jesus is about here.

Life with Jesus is a journey.  We are called to follow him, to be continually on the move with him.  The enemy of this movement is a settled contentment in who we are, a sense that somehow, religiously or morally, we have arrived.  Later in Matthew's Gospel Jesus revisits this list of commandments in his encounter with a rich man who asks him what he must do to have eternal life.

In that encounter he tells the rich man to do two things, give the wealth that weighs him down and has become an idol to the poor and then follow Jesus.  The rich man thought that he had done enough by outwardly keeping the commands, "What then do I lack?" he asks Jesus as though somehow eternal life could be added to a household inventory alongside his nice car and new iPad (or nice horse and household musicians).  Jesus replies by telling him that the Kingdom is a journey not a destination.  Give up your stuff and start moving again with God.

If righteousness was about being able to tick off a list then maybe, just maybe, some really strong and dedicated people could make themselves right according to God's law but what Jesus is saying here is not a finger wagging rant of "You'll never be good enough for me!" but rather a call to keep moving rather than sitting still.

Managed not to murder anyone today? (despite it being a Monday!) Good!  Then let's go past that milestone and head on past anger next.  Kept yourself out of bed with your neighbour's wife or husband despite your stunning good looks?  Great!  Now let's keep going and move past seeing other people as objects!  Managed to love those close to you or people that you get things from?  Excellent!  Now let's go for those further hills of living our enemies.

As he says in verse 17 the fulfilment of the law is in Jesus.  The closer we get to him and the nearer we follow him the less satisfied we will be with our own goodness and the more we will crave his perfection.  To slightly change verse 6, the more we hunger for him and his righteousness the more we will be filled.  CS Lewis sums it up well at the end of his final book in the Narnia series, "The Last Battle" when Aslan encourages the children and their entourage to go further up and further in.  The Christian life is not static, this is why the Kingdom of Heaven is not a place but a people.  The joy is in the journey, not the arriving.