William Loader
Pentecost 3: 1 June Matthew 7:21-29
These verses form the conclusion of the so-called Sermon on the Mount and give Matthew’s comment on the crowd’s response. It can be useful to take these last words first. 7:28-29 speaks of the crowd’s astonishment at Jesus’ teaching, ‘for he taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.’ This is Matthew’s adaptation for a different purpose of words which Mark had used to describe Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue in Mark 1:22: ‘They were astonished at his teaching; for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as the scribes.’ Mark goes on to tell about a madman in the synagogue (1:23-26) and concludes by again highlighting the wonderment of the crowd about Jesus’ new teaching with authority (1:27-28). Matthew uses almost every part of Mark, but he leaves out 1:23-28. He retained 1:22, however, but chose to use it after the Sermon on the Mount and altered it slightly. He changes ‘the scribes’ to ‘their scribes’.
The Sermon on the Mount is a collection of Jesus’ teaching, which runs through three chapters, Matthew 5-7. We find the same basic outline of teaching in the same order (with minimal exceptions) in Luke 6:20-49. Both Matthew and Luke have used the same collection. It begins with beatitudes and ends with the saying about good building. Matthew’s version, however, is much longer and has been expanded by him and probably others before him. There are, for instance, more beatitudes and there are entirely new sections about prayer, fasting and giving alms. There are also new warnings. Clearly Matthew and his church have worked on this material very carefully because they see it as having a vital message for the churches of their day.
One of Matthew’s many innovations in the process has been to combine it with material from Mark which spoke of Jesus going up a mountain before choosing twelve disciples (Mark 3:13-19). Once again Matthew has reworked Mark. He combined the story of the choosing with the story of the sending. So we now find the names in 10:2-4. He then takes Mark 3:13, the leftover piece, which speaks of Jesus going up a mountain, and uses it to introduce his expanded collection of Jesus’ sayings (5:1). The result is the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke it is down on the plain (6:17). I am sure Matthew would have just loved using a computer - it would have made his cutting and pasting so much easier!
What is the significance of all of this? For Matthew’s hearers bells would start ringing when they heard that Jesus went up a mountain to teach. Anyone who was still wondering would certainly see the point once Jesus began to speak about the Law in 5:17-20. For Jesus is acting like Moses on Mt Sinai. More importantly, he is taking God’s Law and expounding it. His expositions were not like those of the scribes, the interpreters of scripture. The crowds were used to listening to their scribes. Jesus was different, a different kind of scribe. That is why Matthew changes ‘the scribes’ of Mark 1:22 to ‘their scribes’ in 7:29. Jesus was also performing the role of a scribe, expounding scripture, but with much greater authority. Matthew speaks of Christian scribes also in 13:52 and 23:34.
Jesus’ interpretation was authoritative because of who he was, but also because it made sense. It rang true. Why should this be of importance to Matthew’s church? Because it appears there were other people claiming a different kind of authority. At one level there were scribes who knew only one way to interpret scripture: in a very demanding and legalistic way, a kind of fundamentalism. At another level there people claiming special status and authority because of their spiritual achievements. Our passage is part of the final section of the ‘sermon’ in which the best things (or at least some of the most urgent things) are kept for last and these address the dangers of these other claims to spiritual authority. Already from 7:15-20 on the message has been that people should beware of false prophets. Matthew even lifts one of John the Baptist’s saying from 3:10 to reinforce the point: trees which do not bear fruit will be destroyed (7:19)! Words are not enough. There must be performance!
7:21-23 are even more pointed. They imagine a scene where self-confessed Christians call to Jesus as their Lord, and point to their prophesying (preaching?), miracle-working and exorcisms in his name, only to be told that they have disqualified themselves from the kingdom. This is quite shocking. It is directed towards challenging certain kinds of Christians who have missed the point of what Jesus is about.
What are they missing? The earlier parts of the ‘sermon’ show that keeping God’s law matters most and God’s law must be interpreted in line with love and compassion. 5:17-20 demand that none of the Law is watered down. 5:21-48 then illustrates how the Law is to be heard and applied (very differently from the way people often interpreted it or heard it to be saying). Matthew is depicting Jesus as the scribe, the true interpreter of scripture. Without that kind of love-informed application of scripture, all the rest is froth and bubble.
Paul had a similar problem at Corinth and in response penned one of the most beautiful statements about the superiority of love ever to be written (1 Corinthians 13). Christians are capable of getting it wrong. They can even build churches on such wrong foundations. 7:24-27 make that clear. It is courting disaster to build on inadequate foundations. Matthew wants us to understand that the kind of Christianity which counts is the kind characterised by the values set out in the beatitudes of 5:3-12 and in Jesus’ sample exposition of the Law in 5:21-48. The ‘sermon’ needs to be read as a whole; its closing statements have to be read in the light of the way it began and then continued.
This first ‘sermon’ will also a find an echo in the last ‘sermon’ (ch. 24-25) and the way it ends. It imagines a judgement between sheep and goats. What counts ultimately is the life of compassion for others, not the one that is solely devoted to Jesus as Lord, nor even the one which does compassionate acts out of obedience to Jesus, but the one which simply lives compassion for the sake of the people who need it.
Epistle: Pentecost 3: 1 June Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)