So What?
It is essential as we preach Matthew
to be aware of the truly unique spirituality that is being born and being
borne witness to, that of Jesus. Spiritual awareness is everything, it guides
life, it brings hope, it energizes. If we approach the Beatitudes, the SM
or Matthew’s gospel apart from connections between Christology (Jesus
the human and his thinking) and anthropology (us and our thinking), we will
limit their power as Word. Word creates. Word empowers. Word incarnates. The
SM functions in Matthew’s Gospel the same way the ‘imitatio Pater’
functions in the Fourth Gospel. They both speak of Jesus’ life as an
imitation of God and they both draw a line to our horizon of an ‘imitatio
Jesu.’ This is the positive side of mimesis, the redemption of mimesis
(Walter Wink). This is the ‘how to’ of discipleship. It is the
empowerment of mimesis by the Spirit, both for Jesus and for us.
“May be the devil or it may be
the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody”
-Bob Dylan
Anthropological Reading
Have you ever met someone who said something
like, “Yeah, I used to go to church but I don’t believe in God
anymore.”
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Have you ever met someone who felt as
though all was lost? A crisis, or a series of crises has slammed their world,
altered their reality, and decimated their perception of things. Someone who
had lost all hope?
Blessed are those who mourn.
Have you ever met someone who was genuinely
poor but lived happily and content? Someone for whom it wasn’t what
one had, but who one had become?
Blessed are the meek.
Have you ever met someone who you knew
in your heart of hearts always sought to live justly, who treated everyone
else as they would treat themselves, with fairness, kindness, integrity and
love?
Blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness.
Have you ever met someone who always
seemed to be going out of their way to help others? Someone who met the needs
of others indiscriminately?
Blessed are the merciful.
Have you ever met someone who had a singularity
of focus? Whose focus was to be, by choice, purely authentic, completely transparent
before the world? One whose focus was a genuine spiritual odyssey?
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Have you ever met someone whose entire
existence was devoted to the healing and wholeness of the other? Who did not
simply get involved in stopping conflicts but who actively got to the root
of conflict and disease and brought goodness, wholeness, shalom?
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Have you ever met someone who you knew,
or perhaps even saw, was completely without fault when they were attacked
by another person right out of the blue? (What, you don’t go to those
kinds of parties? Well, how about [dysfunctional] family reunions?) Ever met
a scapegoat?
Blessed are those who for persecuted
because of righteousness.
In the Beatitudes of Jesus, as composed by Matthew, we are given an extraordinary
window into how life is to be, and can be, lived. While scholars may debate
whether or not the Beatitudes are ‘eschatological blessings or entrance
requirements,’ we can be sure that the beatitudes are Matthew’s
way of telling us about the character of the spirituality of Jesus. We must
remember that Matthew is writing about a person, Jesus, and we can easily
see that much of the language of the Beatitudes is predicated of Jesus elsewhere
in this gospel.
While we see the Sermon on the Mount
(SM) as a text explicitly about discipleship, the ‘how to..’ of
the Christian life, the SM is not just about how we are called to live, but
how Jesus lived. Scholars often miss this because they fail to connect the
dots between Matthew’s Christology and his anthropology. This feels
to them a bit of an over-reading, but it is Matthew who explicitly explores
the implications of the spirituality of Jesus, how he lived.
This is a wonderful thing, this is what
‘Emmanuel’ means (1.23). Gunther Bornkamm laid the framework for
this reading of Matthew in his approach to the miracle stories. Matthew’s
use of ‘akoluthein’ as a technical term for discipleship,
alerted Bornkamm that for Matthew, Jesus was just as alive in the community
as he had been during his time on earth. The community not only shaped the
tradition but they shaped it as their own, the gospel records the spiritual
journey of Matthew’s community. The gospels therefore are about this
dual journey, that of Jesus and his followers. There is no separation. It
is all about one and the same Jesus.
We must begin by asking ‘where
are the corresponding woes’ like those that Luke has in his sermon on
the plain (Luke 6)? They have been completely separated. Matthew’s woes
are found in chapter 23. Why separate the woes from the blessings?
When Jesus used ‘woe’, it
was virtually always in the context of a ‘city.’ Jesus pronounces
woe on the city. Jesus’ woes are not directed at specific individuals
but to the institution of the city itself. Jesus knows what makes the city
tick, the same thing that made the founding father’s cities tick. Murder
and lies. It makes any city, any gathering of humans, tick. From the start.
We call this myth. Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel and the fruit of that death
is civilization as we know it (see Jacques Ellul’s The Meaning of the
City). Woe to the institutional structures, woe to the principalities and
powers. Sin is structural, as we have learned from the liberation theologians.
Jesus pronounced woes on the mimetic structures of human culture.
Matthew has adapted Jesus woes on structures and institutions and applied
them to a perceived threat in his own community, the post 70 C.E. Jewish rabbis
who were putting together the pieces of their shattered community and it’s
faith. It is a sad chapter to read. But it is Matthew’s way of saying
something profound about missing the point of Torah, as he perceived was occurring
in the synagogue(s) of his city.
Luke, we know from David Moessner and
others, is modeling his narrative from the book of Deuteronomy. Luke brings
together the blessings and the woes as the Deuteronomist did. We think that
Luke used Matthew and obviously Luke’s community does not have, or may
not even know, scribes and Pharisees. For Luke, more so than Matthew, the
Jewish ‘two-path’ genre of blessing and curse (echoing a dual
yetzer anthropology) is clear. Yet we would note that Luke’s
Jesus addresses his woes to the ‘leaders’ of the cities, the places
of the mighty, the rich, the powerful, the elite. These are all ‘A’
list people. Mimetic structures embody themselves in certain people. These
kinds of folks have no needs. They get whatever the want. They are insatiable.
So, like Matthew, Luke has directed his woes in a ‘contemporary’
fashion. But neither Matthew nor Luke name names, they address the authorities
who govern the institutions, the earthly counterparts of the spiritual principalities
and powers.
For Matthew, there is no discipleship
without blessing. What is ‘blessed’ is not we ourselves but the
condition we are in. The blessing comes before discipleship, it is not earned;
it is simply recognized. And if we skip over this lightly, we may find that
we experience the post-Beatitude portion of the SM in a rather legalistic
fashion or that we treat what is given regarding life instruction as an impossible
ethic. These two fatal hermeneutic errors arise from not perceiving the crucial
relation of the Beatitudes to the rest of the sermon. The SM will only make
sense to the poor in spirit, the mourning, the hungry, etc. These are types
of folks who have been brought to liminal situations, they are ready to hear
God give his blessing to them.
The SM is not for those who are satisfied,
sated, comfortable. Everything that is said following the Beatitudes will
only bring discomfort to those who seek to ‘practice the SM’ without
recognizing that certain ‘conditions’ are essential, these conditions
being poverty of spirit, grief, humility, etc. The blessing given to these
is hope, a way out, and this way out is the SM. These ‘conditions’
come in many shapes and forms through many different circumstances. They are
‘marginal’ conditions. Jesus ministry is to people in these conditions.
Those who have nothing or have lost everything or have given up everything
and have nothing left to lose. These bring nothing in their open hands. These
are blessed by his presence, by his touch.
There is a gladness inherent in ‘blessing’
(makarios). A blessing is a healing. Try to live up to the SM without
being healed (blessed) and you will rarely laugh as you live life as depicted
in the SM. It will be dreary, difficult, you have to stop and catch your breath
all the time. But examine your ‘condition’ and recognize that
‘condition’ as blessed, and everything makes sense and you will
find yourself laughing and enjoying whatever life brings your way. The joy
of the Lord is strength, our strength.
We might say that if the Beatitudes are
about intent and direction, the SM is about choice. The redirecting of our
intent to recognize conditions as blessed that don’t feel blessed is
the liberation that brings the freedom and power of choice. These instructions
are livable, concretely and fully and the entire Sermon is a description of
spirituality, not ethics. Jesus didn’t have ethics. Jesus knew the will
of God. Jesus lived the will of God. And he did this by God’s Spirit.
What was Jesus’ condition, how would you describe it? Poor? Humbled?
Hungry? Poor in Heart? Persecuted for Righteousness sake? Sound familiar?
So too we, who follow him, have this opportunity to share in his blessing
if we will ask ourselves about our own personal condition, our intention and
our choice.
Historical/Cultural
There is great exegesis to be found in
the commentaries, particularly those of Davies & Allison and Luz. Gundry
has important research demonstrating the explicit takeover of phrases from
2nd Isaiah and the Psalter. I decided against getting involved in a lot of
the debates, rather wanting to focus on the hermeneutic implications of some
of these discussions. Why rehash something that others have done better? Karl
Barth was once asked about important theological tasks to do. Barth replied,
“exegesis, exegesis, exegesis” in that order. Well, we have exegesis
up the wazoo. Today we must say the most important theological tasks to do
are “hermeneutics, hermeneutics, hermeneutics”, in that order.
Either
this page has not yet been completed, or we have not found any significant textual
issues in the lectionary texts for this Sunday.
What's New: (Hover your mouse over to pause cycling)
Isaiah 9:1-4
There will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he
brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in
the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond
the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been
reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers
and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul,"
or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or
"I belong to Christ." Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified
for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized
none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were
baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond
that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send
me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so
that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message
about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are
being saved it is the power of God.
Matthew 4:12-23
When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left
Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun
and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might
be fulfilled:
"Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles--
the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned."
From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
has come near."
As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called
Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea-- for they were
fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish
for people." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he
went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother
John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called
them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming
the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among
the people.
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright
1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
Occasional Articles
As with the Introductory Articles, we
will add other articles as time permits or as our readers request. If you
have a suggestion for anything, please let us know.
Michael Hardin
Is the Apocalypse Inevitable?: Native American Prophecy and the Mimetic Theory presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
Michael's Essay for a Celebration Volume honoring Rene Girard
Michael's Response to Willard Swartley's Covenent of Peace at the November Colloquium and Violence Meeting
Does
Peace Make A Difference? - Michael's essay in response to Rick
Warren's P.E.A.C.E. plan (which somehow never mentions peace).
An Analysis of Rick Warren - Michael's response to "The Purpose Driven Life."
"The
God of Pat Robertson" - a response to Pat Robertson's words
to the people of Dover, PA.
"A
response to Charles Stanley's "A Nation at War"
"Must
God be violent? A Diagnosis and Prescription for Modern Christianity"
The
Scapegoat: Christologies in Conflict - A Study in Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Biblical
Testaments as a Marriage of Convenience: Rene Girard and Biblical Interpretation
Finding
Our Way Home: A Brief Note On The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture
"Does
The Passion of the Christ Preach the Gospel?"
A
sermon for the holiday devoted to Dr. Martin Luther King. (requires
Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
GRASPING
GOD: Philippians 2: 1-11 in the Light of Mimetic Theory
Rene Girard and the Recovery of Early Christian Perspectives (Brethren Life and Thought)
The Dynamics of Violence and the Imitation of Christ in Maximus Confessor (St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly)
"EcoSpirituality"
Or What Happens When You Sit Down With A French Literary Critic
Jeff Krantz
Mighty
One or Crucified Messiah? Competing Christologies and the Chiastic
Structure of Mark's Gospel
There's
No Such Thing as the Rapture - A sermon preached at the Church
of the Advent, Westbury (requires Acrobat Reader)
Holy
Scripture and the Consecration of Gene Robinson - a response
to the request of the Windsor Report for a Scriptural rationale. (requires
Adobe's Acrobat Reader)
Worship - The Redemption of Desire by Jeff Krantz
Myth
and Film - a piece written for the City of Angels Film Festival
The Stations of the Cross - Rewritten by Jeff Krantz
A Dramatic Presentation of the Stations of the Cross for Youth by Barb Fabijan-Waddell
Escaping
the Power of "My" - A NonViolent Approach to Stewardship
Preaching
Peace in Hollywood: The Theologies of Terminator, Lord of the Rings, and the
Matrix
V
for Vendetta - The Name Says It All A review of the movie.
Essays, Sermons and Liturgical Pieces by Friends of Preaching Peace
"Jesus and the Gibeonites: Reading the Bible from the Perspective of the Hidden Victim" by James Warren.
Mark Heim's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement
Kate Layzer's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement (and inspiration for Mark Heim's hymn!)
Alan Cork, "Transformation" in L'Arche: A Mimetic Account presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
"The Wisdom of God's Peace" a sermon by Jim Amstutz, co-pastor of Michael's church.
Girard's Christology - Per Bjornar Grande
Violence, Anarchy and Scripture: Jacques Ellul and Rene Girard - Matthew Patillo
Comparing
Plato's Understanding of Mimesis to Girard's - Per Bjorner Grande
C. Frank Terhune, an Easter Sermon: "God's Big But" (no kidding!)
Gerald Biesecker-Mast's paper from Theologia Pacis on Pacifist Gospel Epstimology.
An essay by the Rev. John Hill on Mimetic Theory and Catechesis
