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From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 7:13-20. For the parallel passages see Luke 6:43-45; 13:24. To follow up the theme look at Matthew 12:33-35; Galatians 5:22-23; James 2:14-26.

One of the greatest of virtues, as our society sees it, is to be broad-minded. We encourage a general goodwill, on the assumption that most people, whatever their mistakes, are headed in the right direction. To doubt this is to be intolerant.

At this point Jesus meets us with a quite different teaching. "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matt. 7:13-14).

The Narrow Gate

Here we must be unusually careful to understand what Jesus means. If we remember his command against judging others, we will never boast that we are saved while many are heading for destruction. If we remember the place of love in his gospel, we will never scorn those who are not going our way. Too many Christians across the ages have read these verses with a satisfied feeling and a happy prayer, "God, I thank thee that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11).

With these warnings burning in our minds we must still ask what Jesus means by the narrow gate and the difficult way. We may find that the answer has painful force for our time.

The twentieth century has been an age of the testing of faith. Great forces have risen to shake men's loyalties. We see this clearly in the case of the new faiths that have stirred revolutions, sent armies trampling across nations, and changed the maps of the world. Make no mistake: the modern movements of Nazism and Soviet Communism are, in their way, religions. They have their creeds, their heresies, their acts of worship, their reliance upon powers beyond anything human, their prophets and messiahs, their demands for faithfulness unto death, and their promises of salvation. Our major wars have not been over such issues as the fixing of national boundaries or the inheritance of the right to a throne. They have been ideological wars. They have marked classes between "ways of life," outlooks upon mankind and the universe, basic faiths. Political leaders have called nations to show loyalty to their convictions, to put into action their creeds. The point comes when one must say in dead earnest: If Jesus Christ is right, contradictory faiths are wrong.

All this we can see fairly clearly. We can sympathize with people living under the sway of destructive ideologies. We can understand how, for them, the way to destruction is broad and easy. We honor the heroes and martyrs who refuse to go with the throngs.

But the problem goes far deeper and comes closer to home. It is not just a question of the place one lives and the government that asks loyalty. It is a question of the warring faiths and impulses within every personality. People who proclaim their loyalty to the church and utterly despise "materialistic communism" may be quite materialistic in their competition for wealth. Every honest Christian must admit that a thousand temptations draw him away from the kingdom of God. Jesus speaks directly to his own church when he says: "The gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life."

Of course, we prefer a more comfortable religion. A popular book published in the rosier days of 1925 said that the God of Jesus was "not a stern Judge . . . but a kindly indulgent, joy-loving Father." Jesus, it said, "was notably tolerant of almost all kinds of sinners."

That reduces the message of divine mercy to a cheap piece of wishful thinking. Yes, God's love is infinite, and in his compassion he never ceases to seek the lost sheep. But some sheep, including some who love to proclaim that they are saved, keep running away. They reject that free grace which would transform their lives. They want no part of that "blessedness" described in the Beatitudes.

Why shouldn't the way be hard? Men will discipline themselves, adjusting their living habits and directing their ambitions for years, to make a football team or play the violin. Can the deepest concerns of life require less?

Even when we understand Jesus' words, we may distort his message. These last few paragraphs have come perilously close. Our tendency is to look around us and say: How few of us have found the narrow gate to life; how many of them have found the wide gate to destruction! No. Jesus is not inviting us to survey the world and contemplate how many skeptics or Communists are doomed. It's a neat, easily learned psychological trick to shift the question from ourselves to others. He tells us the way is hard, and we think he means it is hard for somebody else. He says, "I am the way" (John 14:6); and we avoid the challenge by saying, "What about all those other people?" He sees our dodge, and tells us (as he told Peter when Peter started worrying about John): What is that to you? You follow me. (See John 21:15-23.)

"By Their Fruits"

Jesus predicted accurately that there would be false prophets. His phrase, "a wolf in sheep's clothing," has become proverbial. Anyone can learn a pretty speech and promise us entrance to heaven, or a miracle in government, or a transformed personality.

The early church faced the problem. In its days of great missionary expansion there were many traveling prophets and evangelists. Some mixed their own vanity with their mission, and lured men into various heresies. Some others, with no allegiance to Jesus, found such a career an easy way to a meal ticket and a home wherever they went. The church had to learn to sift out the impostors. It went back to the words, "You will know them by their fruits."

This was a practical test. Do they come with acts of helpfulness, or with grasping hands? Do they encourage deeper fellowship, or do they stir up dissension?

That kind of test appeals to us practical Americans. No elaborate theories. Just a look at the fruit. A popular American philosophy is called pragmatism. The word looks, and means, something like practicalism. Pragmatists hold that the practical course of action is best; they choose the plan that works. There's just one gap in their theory as it is often expounded. Yes, we want the plan that works. But for what goal does it work? Often that question is left unanswered. Jesus offers a pragmatic test, but the testing takes place within the Christian faith. He tells us to look for the fruits -- fruits that resemble the ways of the kingdom of God.

All through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been pushing our thought back behind actions to motivations. Now he tells us that motivations bear fruit in actions.

Earlier he said that there was no virtue in an outward act that did not grow out of an inner sincerity. Now he fills out the picture by saying that inner sincerity will produce visible acts. The fundamental thing is the faith, hope, and love that set the character and direction of life. But these express themselves in all that we do.

The church has often argued about the relative importance of faith and works. Some of the arguments could easily have been solved by looking at Jesus' message. The arguments become unrealistic when they separate faith from works. Jesus is saying that the two go together. The inward is primary; the outward follows.

When we understand that, we see easily that works without faith are empty and that faith without works is dead. Each of these ideas is worth attention.

Works Without Faith Are Empty

A practical age like our own is likely to say that only actions count. We've often heard it said, "I'm not interested in your beliefs; I only want to know whether you can deliver the goods."

Of course no one really believes that. Suppose a Communist, who is actually loyal to Russia rather than the United States, is discovered in a key governmental position. No one says, "It doesn't matter, so long as he has committed no crimes." We recognize immediately that loyalty (which is akin to faith) is more basic than any isolated act.

Likewise, in the international negotiations of recent times, we have heard repeatedly the phrase, "good faith." If we could count on good faith, many other worries would settle themselves. But neither promises nor acts make us feel secure if we doubt that there is good faith.

Clearly, then, works cannot take the place of faith. Jesus' most scathing denunciations went to men who did numerous good things, but whose deeds were expressions of their own pride or efforts to win the approval of God. Jesus probed beneath the acts to the faith that prompted them.

There is a second reason why acts alone are empty. Recall some of the qualities of the blessed man, according to Jesus' definition. He is poor in spirit, merciful, sympathetic, thirsty for righteousness, pure in heart, loving, forgiving, sincere, trusting. These are not qualities that we can drum up inside ourselves. As we have seen before, no one can claim such spiritual accomplishment as to earn a place in God's kingdom. Rather, a loving and forgiving God offers us a place in his kingdom. Our response to God's mercy is faith. In that faith we enter into the spirit of his kingdom. Not by earnest effort, but by trusting him do we approach him. Once the trust (another word which is close to faith) is there, we can do some striving.

Faith Without Works Is Dead

If good works truly are the expression of faith, then true faith expresses itself in helpfulness. It has its fruits. The New Testament letter of James resoundingly asserts: "Faith without works is dead." We could just as well say that faith without works is not really faith. The phrase faith without works, as Augustine suggests, is like the phrase, "warm snow." There is no such thing. When snow becomes warm, it ceases to be snow. When faith bears no fruits, it is not really faith.

During a dramatic evangelistic campaign some time ago, someone noticed a passenger on a bus, talking to the driver in obviously intense enthusiasm. As the driver slowed the bus for the next stop, the passenger's voice was heard: "Oh, don't stop for them niggers. I just got saved, and I've got to get home as soon as I can to tell my wife about it!"

We have a right to wonder about that kind of salvation. With Jesus' warning in our ears, we know that we cannot comprehend the degree of sincerity in the convert's heart, nor assert that he is inferior to ourselves. But we can say that his "salvation" does not comprehend the "blessedness" of the Sermon on the Mount.

The Protestant Christian tradition has emphasized the theme of "justification by faith" rather than by works. (Justification means entering into a right relationship with God.) The apostle Paul gave us the phrase, and Martin Luther rediscovered it. But both insisted that faith finds expression in works.

In the letter where, above all others, Paul emphasized faith rather than works and the Spirit rather than the Law, he wrote that the "fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (See Galatians 5:22-23.) And in his argument for faith as against the Roman Catholic law, Luther used Jesus' figure of the tree and its fruit. Faith, he said, forms the roots; they nourish the fruits (the good works). And this is the way Jesus puts it. (See Matthew 12:33-35 and Luke 6:43-45.)

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 7:12. For the parallel passage see Luke 6:31. To follow up the theme look at Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:34-40; John 13:34-35.

Life is difficult enough that people often wish they could find some slogan that would always guide them. The modem yen for getting everything in a cellophane-wrapped package is not entirely new. Long before there was any cellophane, the human race learned to love neatly packaged goods. People have wanted even their religions to come in packages -- all in one container, no loose ends, no puzzling leftovers, nothing unsure. So they have longed for rules, proverbs, slogans -- to save thinking and praying.

But the idea won't work. No rule can do our thinking for us. In Christian faith no rule can take the place of the personal encounter with God. Nor can any rule take the place of the Christian gospel.

Two slogans we often hear, as though nothing else were needed: "Let your conscience be your guide," and "Follow the Golden Rule." Each of these, when used in the light of the whole Christian faith, can be helpful. Each by itself lacks something.

Look first at conscience. Huckleberry Finn once found himself quite without his intention, helping a runaway slave to escape. His conscience bothered him about disobeying the law, and his conscience bothered him when he thought about obeying the law and turning the slave in. So he complained: ""It don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow." (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 33.)

No doubt Huck should have been more grateful for conscience, but what he says has its truth. Conscience approved the crucifixion of Jesus. When Paul accepted Christ, he had to retrain his conscience which had been educated by the strict Jewish Law. When conscience urges us to do right, it reflects the God who created us. But when it tells us what is right, it reflects also our social conditioning. That is why conscience alone is not enough; it needs the whole Christian faith.

In the same way, the Golden Rule needs the guidance and direction of whole Christian faith.

The Golden Rule in Human History

One reason the Golden Rule is so popular is that it seems to require no specific faith and no specific religious beliefs. Men may argue over many questions, but often they can agree on the Golden Rule. Religious teachers all over the world, many of them long before Jesus, taught one form or another of the Golden Rule. Look at a few examples.

1. The Hindu Mahabharata teaches: "Men gifted with intelligence and purified souls should always treat others as they themselves wish to be treated."

2. A Jainist writing, also from India, says: "A man should wander about treating all creatures in the world as he himself would be treated."

3. When Confucius was asked for a single word to sum up the rules of life, he answered: "Is not reciprocity such a word ? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."

4. The Taoists taught: "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and regard your neighbor's loss as your own loss."

5. In the generation before Jesus a man asked the great Rabbi Hillel to teach him the Law while standing on one foot. Hillel answered: "What thou thyself hatest, do not to thy neighbor. This is the whole Law. The rest is commentary. Go and learn it."

Not only the great religions have framed this rule. Some philosophers, unwilling to accept the Christian belief in God's revelation in Christ, have worked out principles of conduct much like the Golden Rule. Thus Immanuel Kant tried to base his ethics simply on the principle of logical consistency. He decided that rationality demands that he act on principles that he could will all other men to act upon.

Now we see why Martin Luther could say that the Golden Rule is part of the "natural law" -- the moral law which men can recognize without any Christian teaching. It is in the New Testament, he said, but even the Turk, who is warring against Christianity, understands it. Luther was right. Although the Golden Rule is not in the Koran, another Islamic writing says: "No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."

In chapter 7 we noted that the Emperor Severus included Jesus among the gods in his chapel. This same emperor inscribed the Golden Rule on his palace walls. Maybe it seemed to him a good illustration of his religious tolerance.

But the Golden Rule is not enough.

The Golden Rule Without the Gospel

Look carefully at the next sentence and see whether you agree. The Golden Rule without the gospel can be (1) a cheap standard of conduct and (2) a source of frustration. Let's examine both ideas.

(1) The Golden Rule can be a cheap standard of conduct. Let's be grateful that it also may be, whether inside or outside Christianity, a high standard; but it is not always.

For example, suppose you are a person with plenty of ability, well able to look out for yourself. You may say: "I am tough. I believe life is a dog-eat-dog struggle, with everyone out for himself. I ask no mercy and I give none." You can still live by the letter of the Golden Rule. You want no love or forgiveness; you do not extend it to others. The chances are that some day you will awaken to realize your dependence on others; but for years you can live by cheap standards, all the while quoting the Golden Rule.

Or take the case of Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century. He may have been a better man than his theory; but if we take him at his word, we find a crude theory of morality. He believed that all men are moved by the restless desire for power. This makes us bitter competitors, each endangering the other. Without some political power controlling us, life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Every man naturally has the right to anything he can grab, including the lives of others. But to save our own skins we decide to limit our grasping. We make agreements with our fellowmen. We'll not kill them if they'll not kill us. So Hobbes comes around to quoting the Golden Rule from Jesus. And all for frankly selfish reasons.

Or say that you find in business that the Golden Rule "pays off." So, again selfishly, you may live up to it as strictly as the businessman next door who honestly loves his fellowman.

Or, to take a last example, a moral pervert might use the letter of the Golden Rule to justify involving others in his evil ways. He would gladly have men encourage him in vice, and he will so encourage them.

All this is simply saying what the Sermon on the Mount has been saying to us week after week: No external form of action, no rule is enough.

The Golden Rule cannot be applied legalistically anyway. The child cannot do for the parent what he wants the parent to do for him. The patient doesn't do for the doctor what the doctor does for the patient. The Golden Rule requires the imagination to put oneself in the place of another and see his needs. It requires love.

(2) The Golden Rule can be a source of frustration. Even though, as we have seen, it is not always a very high ethic, it often rises above our normal conduct. Frequently we praise the Golden Rule, then live by some lower code. Someone says, "I'll treat him the way he treated me -- tit for tat." (It reminds us of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.") Or someone tries the popular slogan, "Do unto others what they would like to do to you, but do it first."

Someone has said, "The Golden Rule works like gravitation." But it doesn't. Gravitation is natural, independent of us. We can't argue with it or disobey it. We do disobey the Golden Rule. History records countless acts of disobedience to it. Our inclinations are to make exceptions of ourselves, to claim privileges -- maybe "just this once" -- which we do not give. The person of insight knows that often he does not live up to the Golden Rule. Any rule hanging over us, especially a rule that we disobey, is frustrating. To try to obey it and not succeed is even more frustrating.

The Christian gospel is not a set of rules. It is God's gift to us, a gift that awakens a new spirit in us. The spirit takes the frustration away. With the spirit we want to guide our conduct by the Golden Rule. "The written code kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor. 3:6).

The Golden Rule Within the Gospel

Within the gospel the Golden Rule can become a pathway of life. When the words convey the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, they become a helpful guide in many a situation. In Luke's Gospel the Golden Rule concludes the paragraph which starts, "Love your enemies." Love, mercy, forgiveness, the spirit of the Beatitudes -- here we find the spirit in which Jesus meant the Golden Rule.

Compare the Golden Rule with the other summaries of Jesus' teaching in the Bible readings at the beginning of this chapter. With them it carries light. If we try to put it in place of them, it becomes less than Christian.

The New Testament tells us that what we most truly need is to love and be loved. If we do not love, life can become as agonizing as for the woman who committed suicide and left the note, "I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being in all my life." If we are not loved, no other gifts can replace the one thing missing. Clinical histories are full of case studies of crushed personalities of children in privileged homes, given every advantage of life except genuine parental love. Giving or receiving, "the gift without the giver is bare."

In earth's highways and byways the Golden Rule means many things. In the gospel it means, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 7:16. For the parallel passages see Luke 6:37-38, 41-42. To follow up the theme look at John 8:1-11; Romans 2:1-4.

The most famous louse in all history is the one Robert Burns saw on the hat of the proud woman sitting in front of him in church. In amusement he watched its crawlings, which the "fine" lady knew nothing about. And he put his thoughts in the lines,

Oh wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

But actually we normally prefer not to see ourselves as others see us. We prefer to keep our own picture of the self. So someone has revised Burns' lines to read:

Oh wad some power to ithers gie,

To see myself as I see me.

In either case the problem is evident. We share the common human failing of passing judgments on other people -- judgments in which our own pride and defensiveness take the place of understanding. At the same time they, we know, are passing judgments on us. We worry about their judgments. More often than we admit or even realize, as we go through the day's paces, the subconscious levels of personality are saying tormentingly to us, "What will they think of me?"

We can build a cruel and miserable world in this process. Even when we are eager for friendship, we find ourselves sizing each other up. Often one of the great embarrassments of courtship is having to meet his (or her) family. Justifiably or not, there is the feeling that we meet them, not to make friends, but to pass in review and be judged. And those parents are equally uneasy as they face the scrutiny of this young person who has won the interest of their son (or daughter). In a moment walls may arise that will take months or years to melt away.

Going through life, we have to "make a good impression." It's such a job that sometimes we must even try -- this is really curious -- try to be natural. The one thing that logically should take no special effort seems more than we can accomplish. But we are making warped judgments of others. . - . they are making warped judgments of us. - . - we are making warped judgments of ourselves. . . - and no one can break the cycle of vicious judgments. . . - and no one quite realizes how vicious they are.

"Judge Not. . ."

In this situation Jesus says, "Judge not, that you be not judged." The whole network of misery is broken apart with one clear sentence. But is this possible? Every decision of life requires judgments. To take the time to read this chapter involves a judgment as to the use of your time -- and of the relative values of the institutions and persons who make demands on your time. We must continually judge, evaluate, criticize, and choose.

Yet we see what Jesus means, as he goes on: "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Among Jesus' listeners the exaggerated language -- like that of a tall story -- probably provoked a laugh. The speaker in one of his typical ways was using absurd language. But the laugh perhaps gave way to the profound smile of self-recognition. Yes, we do just that. Is something wrong with us? Then let's discover and gloat over a fault, however small, in someone else.

The centuries since Jesus have invented new names for this old experience. Psychologists talk of "projection" and "transfer." People project their inner troubles on society or the universe; they transfer their own guilt feelings into accusations of other people. How often we laugh bitterly at the person who so obviously criticizes in others the very qualities which we resent in him. He sees the speck and misses the log. But, then, we do too.

The apostle Paul says that, whoever you are, you have no excuse for judging another. "For in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things" (Rom. 2:1). Kierkegaard tells of the thief who stole a hundred dollar note, then saw a second thief swindle it from him. The first thief hauled the second into court and demanded justice. The judge asked the embarrassing question of where the money had come from and found both accuser and accused guilty.

Maybe we resist that way of putting it, saying: "Of course, I'm not perfect. I make my mistakes. But there are some things I don't do and I have a right to complain when someone else does them." But are you sure? You have not murdered. Have you never hated? (Matthew 5:21-22)? You have not committed adultery. Have you remembered Christ's definition of adultery (Matthew 5:27-28)? You have never sworn falsely under oath. Have you been utterly sincere (Matthew 5:33-37)? Every accusation that we make is transferred by Jesus to the deeper level, where no one can proudly claim virtue. "In the moment that you are truly aware of God's presence you certainly would not think of looking at a mote in your brother's eye, nor would you think of applying this terribly strict standard -- you who are yourself guilty." (Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard, translated by D. F. and L. M. Swenson, p. 308. Princeton University Press, 1946. Used by permission.)

That realization dawned upon a startled group one day. They had caught a woman in the crime of adultery. There was no doubt about it, she was guilty. The law said she should be stoned to death. They brought her to Jesus, told him their story, and put him on the spot. What now would he do with his fine words about forgiveness? Would he ignore a crime clearly defined in the Law of Moses? His answer was as clear as the crime and the Law, and far more profound. "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). Read the rest of the story. See how the shamed crowd drifted away. See how Jesus neither condemned the guilty woman nor made light of the wrong she had done.

Luke puts the words, "Judge not" immediately after the words, "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful." That helps us to see the point. We cannot stop evaluating, but we can be merciful. We remember that it is the merciful who shall obtain mercy. We who crave mercy can show mercy.

God's Kingdom and Human Government

Again the question of practicability arises. Does not Jesus undermine the possibility of sound civil law and judicial procedure? Forgiveness is beautiful, mercy is lovely. But we cannot let murderers run at large, our mercy thus permitting more murders. What if God does find us all guilty of inner sins? Society must be concerned with overt acts that disrupt peace and justice. In this area some are guilty and some are not.

True. But Jesus too is true. As we have seen before, Jesus gives us the truth of the kingdom of God. He shows us our human life as God sees it. He exposes the hypocrises and deceptions of life. He does not, in all this, take the place of civil government.

At this crucial point, however, we are not entitled to say: "Oh, that means we can ignore Jesus in politics." A judge, passing sentence on a criminal, might think (as, we know, some judges do think): "This man before me may be no more guilty before God than I. If I had been in his shoes, I might have done what he did. Only God, not I, can judge his life. I do know that he has violated the laws of society and harmed other people. To prevent his continuing to harm them, society denies him freedom. As the agent of society, I must pronounce the sentence. As I do so, I pray that God may have mercy on his soul and on the souls of all of us."

The governor of an important penal institution has hanging over his mantelpiece a wood carving which says: "Every man is fighting a hard battle; therefore, be merciful." Mercy cannot entirely replace judicial procedures and forceful restraint of lawbreakers. But it can transform justice so that it does not resemble vengeance. It can eliminate the kind of vision that sees specks and ignores beams. It can work to help rather than to humiliate the criminal.

The Need to Discriminate

In Matthew's report the warning against judging is immediately followed by a jolting contrast: "Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine." That puzzling sentence does not seem to fit the development of thought. Matthew is the only New Testament writer to report it. In the early church, we know, it was used to exclude curious spectators from the Lord's Supper, a celebration reserved for those who came in reverent faith.

If the statement belongs here -- some scholars doubt it, or consider it part of a lost parable -- it is a reminder that all the dangers of judging cannot relieve us of the need to discriminate. Jesus often made this point. He warned his followers against false prophets. He denounced evil. He makes us more intent to discern between good and bad, between seeming good and true good. He awakens a more sensitive conscience, a surer power of evaluation. What he rejects is the impulse to stand in judgment over others, as though we could take God's position and see truly into the lives of our fellowmen.

The warning against judgment has special force when we think of other peoples, especially those for whom we feel some hostility. The tendency of all "in-groups" is to judge "out-groups" harshly. Often such judgments actually endanger the world. Consider a few examples.

1. Some investigators in 1952 set out to discover, through the pollster's techniques, some of the bases of international hostilities. Their findings help us to "see ourselves as others see us." Americans described themselves with such adjectives as peace-loving, generous, intelligent. Foreigners described us as progressive, practical, conceited, domineering. In selecting adjectives to describe themselves, Americans picked thirteen complimentary ones for every uncomplimentary one.

2. Shortly after the war with Japan, the Reverend Mrs. Tamaki Uemura, a distinguished churchwoman and president of the Japanese YWCA, visited the United States. When a New York taxi driver learned she was from Japan, he said: "You folks had better all repent over there. America is always right."

3. An American political scientist studied closely the official propaganda from Russia for several years. He found plenty of criticisms of the policies of other nations, but never a single hint that Russia might ever be wrong. On the other hand, an American news reporter, traveling in a Russian ship, overheard through his porthole a sarcastic conversation between two Russian sailors. One said that in America everything was wonderful and nothing wrong or bad. "Would you like to be there?" he asked the second. "Oh, no," came the answer, "I am sometimes both wrong and bad."

4. Several psychologists and social scientists in 1961 released results of their studies Soviet-American relations. They reported that each society consistently interprets the actions of the other in the worst possible way. The result is a pathological inability to communicate.

5. In situations of racial tension, prejudiced people cannot see other people accurately because of stereotypes. The white Gentile, for example, fits the Negro and Jew into his preconceived picture. The facts about persons make very little difference, because those facts are apprehended through the stereotype.

In all these cases, the "beam" in an observer's eye leads him to condemn others without asking about himself.

A Religion of Grace

We have seen before that the Sermon on the Mount leads us to the point where we put our confidence not in our goodness but in God's grace. We dare not judge because we are not fit to judge. In every judgment we condemn ourselves. Even after we have been told this, we continue to judge. Try it for a week and see! You may find Jesus' warning restraining you, and you may find the power of Christian love tempering your judgments. But still, buried deeply in the subconscious foundations of personality where we cannot root it out, is the tendency to go on measuring others, judging them, taking satisfaction in our petty triumphs over others.

Thus our hope lies in God's grace -- his forgiving, healing, empowering love. As Augustine put it, "he who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon." None of us is fit to throw that first stone. But pardon is real. God promises mercy for the merciful.

'Twas a thief that said the last kind word to Christ:

Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

Robert Browning

So the Sermon on the Mount leads us to the message of the cross.

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 6:25-34; For the parallel passages see Luke 12:22-31; 11:9-13. To follow up the theme look at 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Philippians 4:6-7.

Here is the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus confronts life's deepest personal problem.

We start with a scripture passage that seems unbelievable. The language is familiar and beautiful. It was originally poetry, and something of the poetic quality lingers in our tran~ations. The words are often set to music and sung. People love to hear them. All this helps to make the language so ethereal that most people never bother to ask what it means. If they do investigate the meaning, they may take one startled look, then run away. It's beautiful, they think, but oh, how impractical!

Yet if we can get beneath the surface and penetrate the real depths of the message, we will not dismiss it so lightly. We will find it catching us at a sensitively sore spot. The chances are that we have found all kinds of fluff and padding to protect the soreness. This message will rip off these futile coverings. But then, if by the grace of God we do respond, it will heal the wound so that the old protections are unnecessary.

 This Age of Anxiety

This is the age when fantastic science fiction turns into fact overnight. Astronauts, satellites, and space exploration are part of the daily news. To have some fun and to educate the public at the same time, the Hayden Planetarium in New York once offered to take reservations for space trips. Forms were prepared and prospective travelers checked the tour they wished.

The applications rolled in by the thousands. Some, of course, were just keeping up the joke. But someone started asking why so many people replied. The most realistic answer seemed to be that worried and weary people wanted a chance, though it was only an imaginary one, to escape from the troubles and worries of life. One applicant wrote: "It would be heaven to get away from this busy earth, I honestly wish God would let me go somewhere where it's nice and peaceful, good, safe and secure."

That's one of the signs of the times. There are many more. A book by one of our most famous poets is called Age of Anxiety. That title reflects the judgment of many. A book called Peace of Mind sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the 1940's. Then came a wave of other best sellers with titles like Peace of Soul, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, A Guide to Confident Living, Identity and Anxiety. The books in this field range from profound helpfulness to slick absurdities. But they are evidence of the pathetic eagerness of the mid-twentieth century to get away from its fears and anxieties.

Even young people -- supposedly the eager, venturesome group in society -- show the same signs. Many a survey claims to show that, whether in business or politics or a choice of a career, youth is more eager for security than for adventure. The "hot rodders" are a minority. The beatniks, despite some notorious antics, are a far more troubled group than the "flaming youth" of the "flapper age." In one eastern college the students, far above average in wealth and brains, spent a year deciding the subject for a week's religious program and came up with the title, "Anxiety, Despair and Faith: the Search for Meaning in Life."

This is no occasion for the old pastime of bemoaning "the younger generation." Its lack of confidence is part of its realism and may be the gateway to wisdom.

Of course, there are plenty of noisy, cocksure people to tell us that these "signs of the times" are exaggerated. But the blustering is pretty clearly a cover-up for the emptiness underneath. A European artist, visiting America, said that he liked this country, but found some difficulty getting adjusted. "Naturally one needs constant practice," he reported. "It is not a simple matter to keep repeating daily: 'Yes, everything is fine.'"

The artist is not the only one who has seen through some of our typical false bravado. Wise news analysts have referred to the "emotional binges" that America has gone through in connection with certain military and political crises. Level-headed people have shown how our reactions to national and international dangers have often been hysterically unintelligent. Al Capp, the famous cartoonist, has observed that we are so insecure that we dare not laugh at ourselves. Yes, America knows anxiety.

Can Christ Help Us?

No doubt Jesus is talking about our problems when he tells not to be anxious. But is his advice good? Take a long look that passage in Matthew. Try to see exactly what it means. Can anybody really believe this? Is there anything harder to believe?

There the words used are mostly words of only one or two syllables -- such words as life, food, body, clothing, birds, lilies, grass. And that word anxious, five times in one paragraph. And promises, beautiful but incredible: God will look after you; your prayers will he answered.

Some of the sentences are so easy to refute that we wonder how anyone could make them. "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." Who cannot demolish that promise from his own experience? Who has not had prayers unanswered and yearnings frustrated? Or look at the words, "Consider the lilies of the field.. . ." Their idyllic beauty charms people. But then reality takes hold. Marx and Engels, the fathers of modern communism, write with bitter sarcasm: "Yes, consider the lilies of the field, how they are eaten by goats, transplanted by man into his button-hole" Against our will, we grant that they have made a point.

So we become realistic. We count on our own achievements. Maybe God can feed and clothe us, but look how much better modern agriculture and industry do the job. This is a modern world and a hard world, and if you don't take care of yourself, no one will do it for you.

But the haunting words of Jesus will not quite leave us. As we think further, we realize that he knew something about life. He met disappointments. He told parables of injustices. He yearned to escape a cruel death, and did not have his way. And his words were preserved for us by disciples who knew the hard side of life. They must have seen something in his promises that we don't see.

And our proud modern answers have not always been so good. Anxiety does shake us to the depths. We haven't solved all our problems. The last president of the League of Nations Assembly, Norwegian Carl Hambro, said in 1935: "Here in Geneva we have every fear but the fear of God." He had a point. In declaring our independence of God we ran into some real troubles. With all that modern nutrition and medicine can do there comes the time when no one can add an inch to his stature or a day to his span of life.

The Basis of It All

Several things Jesus clearly does not mean. He is not patting us on the hack and saying, "Don't worry. Everything will come out all right." He knew things do not always turn out "all right." He is not saying that God will step in to correct all our follies and omissions. Sometimes he assumes a place for prudent foresight (Luke 14:28-30). He is not saying that those who trust God will never be injured or persecuted. He has already told men to expect, and rejoice in, persecution. He is not saying we should ignore food. He has bidden us pray for daily bread and he has never criticized honest work. He is not saying that the lilies and the grass will live happily ever after. As he spoke those words, he probably thought of one of his favorite Old Testament hooks, which said: "The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever" (Isa. 40:8).

Now we can see what Jesus does say. He tells us that our destinies are controlled by the God who stands forever. That we, who determine neither our births nor our deaths, are helpless; but that if we trust God, we tie our feebleness to an eternal power and purpose. That if the goal of life is to keep the heart beating and the stomach expanding, we all fail before long. But if we seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, will be given all else that we need -- not immunity to hunger and pain and death, but confidence in spite of them.

Put this in terms of our modern psychology. Dr. Rollo May, in his widely-read book, Man's Search for Himself, that the clinical practice of psychologists today shows that the chief problem people is emptiness. By emptiness he means lack of purpose, lack of power, lack of direction. And he finds more anxiety than in any period of history since the breakdown of the Middle Ages.

Now see how the Christian gospel fits this problem. When we are detached from God, trying to be self-sufficient, everything threatens our existence. We are finite, mortal. War or an invisible virus can wipe us out. In our nakedness and peril there is nothing to hold on to. But, says Jesus, trust your Father. Your life gets its power, its vitality, its meaning from him. Neither war nor virus nor any other thing threatens God. You are secure because your security is in him.

This is not the Stoic fatalism which many people adopt these days. It does not say, "Since you cannot do anything about it, you may as well face it with a minimum of emotion." No, Jesus' word is positive. Trust overcomes anxiety.

Are you approaching pain or death? Countless men have met both. Empty men have been overwhelmed with anxiety, trusting men have been confident.

Some Examples

This Christian faith is not just something "up in the air." It makes a difference in life.

H. G. Wells rejected the Christian faith. For years he was an optimist, confident that the human race could lick its problems and move on to ever greater triumphs without any help from an obsolete God. But events chipped away at his confidence. The emptiness of his faithlessness left him helpless before the anxiety of the twentieth century. So at the end of the trail he was helpless. Man, he wrote, is played out. He goes to his doom. Perhaps some other animal will come along "better adapted to face the fate that closes in more and more swiftly upon mankind."

Martin Luther heard and believed Christ's answer to anxiety. Though he had his days of terrible doubts, faith rose up in him to conquer despair. He was challenged once by a Cardinal

who threatened him with all the power of the pope, whose little finger was stronger than all of Germany. "Where then," thundered the Cardinal, "will a wretched worm like you be?" "Then as now," said Luther, "in the hands of Almighty God."

It happens today too. Out of Soviet-occupied Germany once came a letter worth quoting, from a Christian student. "The greatness of the power of God had never been more clearly revealed to us, and could hardly be better expressed, than in the following somewhat desperate statement made in a meeting of the Communist youth: 'We cannot get a hold on them; they always hide behind their God,' or in a remark made in a discussion as to whether convinced materialists should be sent into the Studentengemeinde in order to try to win over its members and thus create division among them: 'It is dangerous; they come back as Christians.'"

Answers to Prayer

Now we can see clearly why Jesus is so confident that prayers will be answered. "Ask, and it will be given you." If we evil folk give good gifts to our children, the heavenly Father will do far more for us. But what will God give us? Not any old thing we happen to want. The answer is the theme of the whole Sermon on the Mount. God grants us his kingdom. So when Jesus prayed at Gethsemane, he was granted, not release from the pain ahead, but the power of God "strengthening him" (Luke) 22:43). So when Paul prayed for release from his "thorn in the flesh," he got the divine answer, "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Cor. 12:7-10). No wonder Paul could write his friends that the answer to their "anxiety" was "the peace of God, which all understanding" (Phil. 4:6-7). It was no easy peace of mind, free of trouble; it was God's peace, known best in struggle. And that is the only peace that satisfies the soul.

Now perhaps we are ready to understand a great liturgical prayer of the church, which we may have heard and wondered about often:

"O Lord our God, who art always more ready to bestow thy good gifts upon us than we are to seek them, and art willing to give more than we desire or deserve: help us so to seek that we may truly find, so to ask that we may joyfully receive, so to knock that the door of thy mercy may be opened unto through Jesus Christ Our Lord."

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 6:19-24.

For the parallel passages see Luke 12:33-34; 11:34-36; 16:13.

To follow up the theme look at Matthew 16:24-26; 1 Timothy 6:17-19; James 5:1-3.

Decision is a common word. We speak of decisive and indecisive personalities. We say, "I dread to make this decision," or "I made the wrong decision," or "I can't stand indecision."

Some decisions can be postponed or avoided forever. If you are asked to choose between strawberry or chocolate sodas, you may say that you don't want a soda-or you may choose pine. apple. If someone asks whether you agree with Einstein's last set of equations, you may dodge a decision; probably neither the world nor you will be worse off.

But some decisions cannot be avoided. William James called them "forced options," because the nature of the situation forces us to a choice. In such a case, even to delay is to make a decision. The automobile driver, confronted with a sudden hazard must decide whether to use his brakes or not. To wait another hour before deciding is, in effect, to decide against using the brakes. The young man, considering whether to propose marriage, must choose. To put off the choice for a few years usually means negative decision.

The Bible confronts us with a forced option. Jesus says, "Follow me." He attracts us. But so do some other forces. We maneuver pathetically to delay or to find a "both-and" answer. Jesus comes back insisting that it's "either-or." If throughout the years we keep saying, "Let's think this over a little longer before doing something rash," some day we will waken to realize that the Master has kept moving, while the unconscious decisions of everyday life were moving us in the opposite direction.

The Uncompromising God

When Christianity came to northern Europe, rulers sometimes led whole armies through rivers for mass baptisms. As the story goes, some warriors walked into the water with the right hand held high and dry. The soul could belong to God; but the unbaptized right hand could wield a sword as freely as before.

Our own story may be like that. We pledge loyalty to God, but withhold something dear. Some bad habit, pet vanity, ambition, or bank account remains unbaptized, uncommitted. So we try to serve God with half the heart, soul, mind, and strength.

This is an old story in human history. It is a recurring theme the life of Israel. Moses, leading his people out of bondage, found them, on the one hand, longing for God and freedom, on the other hand, yearning for a golden calf or the fleshpots of Egypt. In the promised land Joshua confronted them with the words, "Choose this day whom you will serve," and heard them answer that they would choose the Lord (Joshua 24:14-28).

But the people found new gods in the new land. So the time came when Elijah demanded of them, "How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him" (1 Kings 18:21). Then the great prophets, one after another, called the people from their indecision to loyalty. Often they likened Israel to an unfaithful wife, pledged to one husband but ready to yield to the temptations of other lovers.

Now Jesus appears and calls for a clear decision. You cannot keep wavering, he tells men. Time is running out. You must take a stand.

Not many heed him. First, people try to ignore him and go on as before. But he can't he ignored. So they try to accept him, and give him a hit of their loyalty. One Roman emperor, Alexander Severus, includes him among the several gods of his private chapel.

And there he remains, for thousands of people, to this day. They count him as one of the leaders they can use. They want his blessing along with all the other blessings of life. They call religion one interest in a well-rounded life.

But he will not allow it so. For he comes to us from that God, who almost alone among ancient gods, would tolerate no rivals -- the God who said from Sinai: "You shall have no other gods before me. . . . for I the LORD your God am a jealous God. . ." (Exod. 20:3, 5). This God reigns while the compromising gods are forgotten. And when men today seek to give him part of their allegiance, they do it at the risk of tearing their inmost selves apart.

The Specific Issue: God or Mammon

When it comes to stating the issue specifically, Jesus could not have put it more directly for us. "You cannot serve God and mammon." Mammon -- let's face it -- means wealth of every kind. Translators have used various phrases: profit, money, gain, the almighty dollar.

Was Jesus specifically foreseeing American civilization? Why, we may wonder, couldn't he have used a different contrast? It would he so much nicer if he had said, "You cannot serve God and Caesar." Or God and the Sanhedrin. Or God and Baal. Then we could happily nod agreement, forgetting that we too have our Caesars and Sanhedrins and Baals. But he puts it so we cannot dodge it. He hits us at our sorest spot.

Has ever a nation been more entranced by mammon than Ours? Walter Marshall Horton once brought back from Europe a photograph of the "American suite" in a hotel of Prague, Czechoslovakia. On the wall was a large tapestry of the American dollar. Dr. Horton suggests that its purpose was to assist the nightly devotions of pious dollar-worshiping tourists. We sometimes openly boast that the mainspring of our society is the profit motive. If so, says Jesus, we are headed for damnation. The apostle echoes Jesus when he writes: "For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs" (1 Tim. 6:10).

The Value of Material Things

It is possible -- though not likely for us -- to misunderstand here. He is not one of the many religious teachers who believe that matter is inherently evil, that the spiritual life should avoid material things so far as possible. He believes, with the Testament, that God created the universe and called it good, that God gave man dominion over the things of nature and expected man to enjoy them, Christianity has fought off these religions and heresies which called creation evil. William Temple, a great Archbishop of Canterbury, surprised many people when he wrote that Christianity is "the most avowedly materialistic of all the great religions," because it neither ignores nor denies the material, but asserts its reality and its subordination to God's purpose.

So we should enjoy and use the material goods God has created. There is nothing unhealthy about honest labor -- like that in the carpenter shop at Nazareth -- to provide for human needs. Martin Luther said that the cobbler who soles the pope's shoes can serve God as truly as the pope who prays for the soul of the cobbler.

All this is true, we have every right to believe. But if these last two paragraphs take the sting out of Jesus' words, they become false and blasphemous. Jesus was intending to make us uncomfortable, not to ease our consciences. Yes, the Christian can use things (or wealth) without serving them. But that is not easy. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

A key to understanding Jesus lies in a favorite modern word, security. In our vocabulary securities are a type of investment. Jesus is telling us that there is no true security in securities. Our gilt-edged investments, our government bonds cannot give what only God can give.

An insurance company advertises with the motto, "Unforeseen events need not change and shape the course of man's affairs." The slogan is absurd. Of course, insurance is a wonderful invention. It relieves financial distress and enables us to share our insecurities. It may be an expression of love for our dependents. But it can never meet the challenge of unforeseen events. Life insurance does not conquer the challenge of death. "You can't take it with you." Nor will it replace you in a family that loves you. Would a policy on the life of Jesus have softened the cruelty of his crucifixion or enhanced the glory of his resurrection? Does insurance give us peace of mind about H-bombs? Can any wealth assure us that our children will find blessedness in lives of integrity, unharmed by the world's temptations?

There comes a point where we must decide the direction and the basic confidence that will control our lives. We have a saying about trying to carry water on both shoulders. Jesus puts it more bluntly: if we serve mammon, we despise God. A strong word! But day in and day out people, including churchmen, do despise God. When a physician turns his back on human need

to enjoy a more profitable practice, he despises God. When a youth chooses his lifework, thinking only of what he can get rather than what he can give, he despises God. When a clergyman moves up the social scale by pleasing congregations and dulling the sharp Word of God, he despises God.

An Example

Perhaps we most despise God when, instead of defying him, we "use" him to support our love of mammon. In the great international conflicts of the twentieth century, one American group has proposed a business campaign to save the world. The technique? To "put the money on the line to resell Christian philosophy to America, and thus smother out communism and other false ideologies." For "any idea, even Christian philosophy, can be sold if backed by a proper sales campaign."

So this group proposed an Ideological War Council to "coordinate and thus make effective all of the movements that are now selling partial or watered-down portions of the Sermon on the Mount." It recommended that Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders combine to prepare a credo. Then five of the top advertising men of the land should prepare these truths "for sale." Such an effort, blessed by God, would spread throughout the world. So said the proposal.

America's most famous theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, commented scathingly on this notion of having the Sermon on the Mount "neatly packaged and 'sold' by salesmen and advertisers. What kind of blindness or perversity prompts this vapid idealism to choose, of all symbols, the Sermon on the Mount, with its exacting moral demands, all of them straining at the limits of human possibilities? What will the 'Ideological War Council' do with the words, 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt'?" (Christianity and Crisis, March 19, 1951.)

But don't we all commit this Sin? Don't we want to use the Christian faith to win our ideological wars, instead of letting it humble and transform us?

The Wider Issue

Throughout much of life we try to serve two masters. Mental hospitals harbor the worst schizophrenics, victims of personality disintegration. But the rest of us, too, need healing.

Perhaps we are like Augustine, enjoying his youthful lusts and praying, "God, make me a Christian -- but not yet."

The famous novelist Lillian Smith has described with rare memory and insight an aspect of her own childhood. (Christianity and Crisis, July 10, 1950.) Like all children she asked questions that adults could not answer. She remembers also questions that she felt she did not dare ask. Some, she says, "I could not whisper even to myself." They were rooted in a deep uneasiness.

"I can still feel our anxiety as we were taught conflicting beliefs which we could not live and yet which we dared not admit, even to ourselves, that we did not live. I cannot forget the feeling of that never-ending struggle in our minds between democracy and white supremacy that wore down our energy and strength and compelled us to put up signs in our own souls, segregating beliefs so that one could live in peace with one's self."

"It was a false peace, yes; for splitting a child or a nation or a world into fragments and trying to wall up the fragments is hardly the way to avoid conflict."

Miss Smith is describing a problem that concerns all of us. Recent psychology has shown us that, often without our knowledge, we are torn in our subconscious levels by the opposition between contrary commitments. Deeply imbedded in our emotional lives are symbols like democracy, equality, Christianity, love, service. Conflicting with them are counter-drives: ambition, prestige, comfort, financial security. So personalities are torn apart in this uneasy age.

It is dangerous to follow Christ. But once we have met him, it is also dangerous to resist him.

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 6:5-15.

For the parallel passage see Luke 11:1-4.

To follow up the theme look at Matthew 18:21-35; 26:36-46.

Jesus, immediately after warning his hearers not to "heap up empty phrases," goes on to give them a prayer that has been muttered as empty phrases more times than anyone can count. Evidently men still need to learn about prayer.

We have already looked at Jesus' caution against ostentatious prayers. We took up this passage ahead of its proper order because it said so much about the topic of chapter 5, "Light and Secrecy." Now as we come to the same sentences in their regular sequence, we can concentrate on the Lord's Prayer.

 The Motives of Prayer

In approaching the Lord's Prayer notice again what Jesus says about the reasons for praying, especially the wrong reasons. In addition to the one wrong motive that we have already noticed

-- to "be seen by men" -- Jesus describes a second. The motive for prayer is not to provide God with information that he lacks. Critics of prayer often remark that they see no value in prayer, because if there is a powerful, personal God, he knows already what we tell him in prayer. Those who say that do not usually realize that Jesus said most of it first. But Jesus drew a different conclusion.

After rejecting these false motives for prayer, Jesus does not go on to say why men should pray. Perhaps he felt that if people do not know the reasons for prayer, there is no use telling them. Perhaps he saw that good reasons cannot be stated so neatly and glibly as bad reasons. His hearers are left to decide for themselves why anyone should pray. They are not left without any clues. They have all of Jesus' life and teaching as a help. They have especially the accounts about his own praying -- most notably that night of prayer reported in Matthew 26:36-46.

Jesus' prayer was often solitary prayer, and he recommends praying "in secret." In this "other-directed" culture of ours, solitude is often frightening. People like to do everything in groups. Jesus points to the value -- yes, the necessity -- of the solitary approach to God. But he sees the need of both solitude and community. The pronouns of the Lord's Prayer are our, us, we -- not my, me, I. This prayer is for the community of disciples, united by the same Spirit.

 Simple Profundity

Compare the differing contexts of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew and Luke. In both cases Jesus is giving a prayer to the community of disciples. They memorized it and passed it on to the church.

The differing translations of Jesus' Aramaic into Greek and the liturgical uses of the prayer in the church led to the two Greek versions. The variations sometimes help clarify the meaning. The likenesses show the essential fidelity of both versions to Jesus' original teaching, the exact Aramaic words of which we cannot know.

Few prayers are shorter or use simpler language than the Lord's Prayer. The whole prayer can be read aloud in seconds. In Matthew's record (as translated in the Revised Standard Version) about three out of four words are monosyllables -- an achievement few modern stylists can rival.

Yet the simplicity may be deceptive. The understanding of the prayer involves all of Jesus' message and the depths of our own spirits. The words carry a weight of meaning from the whole gospel. We see this when we examine the petitions.

Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Augustine says that the opening words are already the answer to the prayer, for we can ask nothing greater than to approach the Lord of the universe as Father. There is still something breathtaking in the idea. Think of the universe of modern physics and astronomy, a universe of uncounted galaxies and mysterious cosmic rays, a universe of distances measured in light years. Then address the creator, "Our Father."

Many a modern man looks at this universe in bewilderment, convinced that it has nothing to do with human hopes and that he means nothing to it. That word, nothing, has become one of the basic words of contemporary philosophy and literature. In his famous short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," Ernest Hemingway made a parody of the Lord's Prayer, built on the Spanish word nada, meaning nothingness: "Our nada who are in nada, nada be thy name..."

Against that experience of nothingness, known in ancient times as in modern, Christ bids us come to God the Father. The word father occurs seventeen times in the Sermon on the Mount. Further, it has the intimate meaning given it by Jesus' whole ministry. Hence Paul, though in Judaism he had learned to call God Father, felt that because of Christ he could approach the Father in the spirit of an adopted son, not of a slave (Romans 8:15-17).

Nevertheless it is a God of majesty with whom we have this intimate relation. His name is to be hallowed. That is, he is to be approached in his holiness. The tremendous reverence of the Old Testament here enters into the heritage of the Christian.

For thus says the high and lofty One

who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

"I dwell in the high and holy place,

and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit,

to revive the spirit of the humble,

and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Isaiah 57:15

This is the God whom we approach as Father, whose name we hallow. To "repeat the Lord's Prayer" irreverently is to contradict its very words.

God's Kingdom -- and Daily Bread

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." The phrases are both petitions and expressions of trust. They call on God, who alone can establish his kingdom. And they call on the praying person to conform to the will of God.

The heart of the prayer, "Thy kingdom come," is the heart (as we have seen) of Jesus' whole message. He bids his disciples pray for that work of God, already beginning but not yet complete. (Recall chapter 2 above.)

Although the kingdom is a gift of God, its practical significance for us is clear in the petition, "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The citizens of God's heavenly kingdom are called to live by God's will on earth. That, we may say, should be the normal expectation of any religious commitment. But here, set in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, it is a call to daring life. We have already read of purity of heart and mercy, of persecution for righteousness' sake, of men lighting the world for God's glory, of love for enemies. All this is the will of God. For this we pray whenever we join Christ in his prayer.

"Give us this day our daily bread." Immediately the prayer turns from the exalted and the strenuous to the commonplace. What is so common as daily bread? Here in the midst of language about the holiness of God and the wonder of his kingdom is the prayer for bread -- one of man's ordinary needs. Believers in some highly "spiritual" religions are ashamed to pray for material things. But the Bible does not despise the material. It assumes that personality is psychosomatic, that God provides for all of life. To pray for bread -- for oneself and the world -- is as basic to the Christian as to pray, "Hallowed be thy name."

When the disciples first learned this prayer, they did not know that the day was coming when their Lord would offer them bread, saying, "This is my body." In Christian faith it is as natural to pray for bread as to use this same commonplace bread in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

Forgive Us Our Debts

Luke says sins (trespasses in the older translations) where Matthew says debts. The difference is unfortunate for the common worship of Christians, since denominations vary in their usage. But the meaning is not difficult. Both words probably come from the same original Aramaic word. The exact meaning is determined less by the specific word than by the entire message of Jesus.

For what do Christians seek forgiveness? For the wrongs they have done and for the anger, lust, and pride that prompted the wrongs. They ask forgiveness for every failure of love, for their own unreadiness to forgive.

Anyone who has read the Sermon on the Mount up to this point will not he surprised by the prayer for forgiveness. Once again we see that the New Covenant is a covenant of grace (chapter 6). We meet its terms not by perfect compliance with God's will, but by accepting in faith his forgiveness.

This faith will prompt us to forgive. In Matthew's account, the prayer is followed by the foreboding words of verses 14-15. (See also Matthew 18:21-35.) The idea is not that God is only as generous as we are. The gospel often refutes that idea. But if we refuse to forgive, we lack the faith that can accept forgiveness.

Deliver Us from Evil

"Lead us not into temptation." This is the one petition of the Lord's Prayer that causes confusion because of its wording. The New English Bible translates, "Do not bring us to the test." Either translation is justifiable, and both raise frequent questions. Does a good God deliberately tempt us? If he wants to test us, should we pray that he not do so?

Here, as in some other sayings of Jesus, we can get help from the scholars who translate the Greek back into the probable Aramaic words of Jesus. Then the sentence means this: "Do not allow us to be led into temptation." Or it may mean: "Do not let us be tested beyond our capacity to endure." That is, God is not the tempter; but he has put us into a world of temptations.

In this world we may prayerfully seek to avoid temptations. But what is more important, we pray that we shall not yield to them, that God will deliver us from the evils into which we might be tempted.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:13 helps us to understand the issue: "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

Life is full of temptations. Many men, meeting temptations in faith and prayer, have found God delivering them.

Thine Is the Glory

Christians often conclude the Lord's Prayer with the words: "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen."

This final doxology or paean of praise does not appear in the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament. By the second century, we know, Christians were using it widely. It echoes earlier themes in the prayer: it hallows God's name and it ascribes to him lordship in his kingdom. Probably Jesus did not include these words; the early church added them, in accord with the general liturgical practice of ending public prayers with an expression of praise.

Amen simply means truly, verily, or may it certainly be so.

When Christians pray this prayer with a genuine Amen, they glorify God. Dr. E. F. Scott in his book, The Lord's Prayer, says that, while the church has often drawn up creeds to define loyalty, Christ gave his followers a prayer rather than a creed. Often Christians, separated by doctrines and ecclesiastical authorities, have been able to unite in this prayer.

That is appropriate, since the prayer comes from Christ himself.

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 5:38-48.

For the parallel passage see Luke 6:27-36.

To follow up the theme look at Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18; Romans 12:14-21; 1 Peter 2:18-25; 3:8-9.

The most controversial character in all history is Jesus of Nazareth. Now we come to some of his most controversial teachings -- love for enemies, forgiveness for any wrong, returning good for evil. Many of the world's leaders have wiped their feet in disdain on these sayings. Others have been transformed by them.

Let us start by looking at these sayings in their original setting. We can get some help from Sholem Asch, a reverent Jew who takes Jesus more seriously than many Christians do. In his novel, The Nazarene, he shows us how Jesus might have seemed to those who saw him in the flesh. As he reconstructs the scene of the Sermon on the Mount, we watch the attitudes of the people around Jesus. The common people are listening in eager approval. The scribes and scholars stand apart, in intent concentration. As Jesus echoes their orthodox teachings, they nod in vigorous agreement. When he uses the daring words, "But I say unto you," their frowns and gestures show their outrage.

Then comes the point at which Jesus asks them to love their enemies and pray for their persecutors. As Sholem Asch describes it, ". . . when he said this, they stretched out their hands to each other in bewilderment and despair, as if they had to go forth the very next day and fulfill the commandment. They exchanged frightened glances, and said in utter confusion: 'Surely it were well if it could be so! But who can carry this out? An angel, not a man of flesh and blood!'" (The Nazarene by Sholem Asch, p. 168. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1939. Used by permission.)

Standing at the edge of the crowd are two officers of the Roman army, their armor covered by civilian togas. They too are curious and amazed. Days afterwards one of them, worrying about what Jesus teaches, thinks this: "He seeks to undo and wipe out everything that man has accumulated by experience, whatever has been won in the struggle for mastery and supremacy, everything that tradition has ratified, whatever custom and law have validated, everything that has been cultivated and is controlled by institutions, rulers and spiritual leaders -- and to create in their

place a new world and a new order founded on diametrically opposed principles. The things that we regard as virtues, as the highest achievements of man's peculiar and separate greatness, he would condemn as vices and defects; and contrariwise, vices and defects are exalted by him into high moral commandments. . . . To avoid anger and hatred, which are the parents of battle and victory, to renounce, to love your foe, to fly from the battlefield before you have set foot on it, to forgive your enemies their sins in order that your father in heaven may forgive you yours.. ."

"I saw in this man the epitome of all dangers. . . . He was a more desperate enemy than Carthage had been of old, or any other hostile state since then." (Ibid., pp. 180, 182.)

We have to ask ourselves, could it be that this Roman officer understood Jesus better than our churches do today? Quite possibly he did.

More of the New Covenant

The command to return good for evil and to love enemies is set to the now-familiar refrain: "You have heard . . . but I say to you." The verses need careful study. The following notes may clarify some details.

Verse 38. The principle of "an eye for an eye" came from the Babylonian law-code of Hammurabi in the twentieth century B. C. Its purpose was to restrain vengeance. The Jews adopted this principle for their own Law (see Exodus 21 :24; Leviticus 24:19-20; Deuteronomy 19:21). It was also a principle of Roman law in Jesus' time. Jewish courts often permitted a payment of money instead of physical violence, hut the basis was still retribution.

Verse 40. The "coat" was a Jewish undergarment with sleeves. The "cloak" was an outer garment, also used as a cover for sleeping. For a poor man to give up both would leave him naked. No wonder we must ask whether Jesus' teaching is practical.

Verse 41. The word "forces" referred to military demands upon civilians. A soldier might require a Jew to transport his baggage.

Verse 43. The Jewish Law said: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19:18). It did not say: "Hate your enemy." But the word neighbor generally referred to a fellow Israelite. So Jesus demands love beyond the Law.

Verse 46. Tax collectors (publicans) were the despised Jews who worked for Roman overlords in gouging their people. The word became a symbol for the greedy and disloyal. Jesus sometimes offended highly moral people by befriending tax collectors.

Now we are ready to see the impact of the passage as it mounts up to the crashing climax: "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." What are we to do with that?

Surely no New Year's resolution, however determined, will make us perfect. Not even the most sincere prayer will succeed here. There are some arguments about the translation of the word perfect. Some translate it (with Luke) as merciful, mature, or all-inclusive (in goodwill). But none of these words softens the impact: you are to be like the holy God.

Such a statement, reinforced with the detailed instructions that Jesus gives, is hard to take. There are two common ways to dodge its difficulties: (1) Water it down. Say: "Jesus was a good fellow. He didn't quite mean that. He was exaggerating for effect. If we're moderately generous, we're O.K." (2) Do the Opposite. Interpret it so literally that it doesn't apply to you After all, nobody ever demanded your cloak or forced you to go a mile.

Both dodges are familiar-and hypocritical. These "hard sayings" of Jesus were meant to be hard. So let's face them.

First, then, we see that their significance is not the bar literal meaning for a few specific cases. Jesus was not providing a new law book. He was using specific examples to convey total way of life.

But, second, the examples were deliberately chosen to present a strenuous demand. Maybe Jesus did not expect men, in actual fact, to give away their clothes until they were naked; he did mean that we should love and forgive completely. His beliefs led him to a crucifixion, in which he forgave completely.

Hence Dr. Fosdick says: "He was deliberately presenting a way of life so demanding that no legalism could define it, no unredeemed heart practice it, no saint perfectly fulfill it." (The Man from Nazareth by Harry Emerson Fosdick, p. 106 Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1949. Used by permission.)

What then? Recognition of that truth is the entry point into the Christian gospel. The report is that Socrates once said: "I have never done anything that was wrong in my private life or in my public life." And Socrates had lived honestly and bravely enough to shame most of us. But Socrates had never confronted the standard of purity that Jesus presents. And we who have, dare not echo Socrates' words. We approach God with the prayer of forgiveness, taught us by our Lord. Every time we celebrate the Holy Communion we mark the fact that the blood of the New Covenant was shed for the forgiveness of sin.

Hence one of America's best known philosophers has written:

"The Christian gospel produced a spiritual reorientation of ancient ways and ideals. For the rigidity of the law it substituted the life of the spirit; it scorned the cautious wisdom of the sage to bless the trusting faith of a child; from the beauty of the flesh it turned to the beauty of holiness; it regarded man as a prodigal son and a lost sheep, lost but for the grace of the Divine Shepherd."

(The Moral Ideals of Our Civilization by Radoslav A. Tsanoff, p.35, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1942. Used by permission.)

But the faith in forgiveness does not relieve us of our mission. It confronts us with the love of God and impels us to make that love real. Notice the reason for loving enemies: "that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." (See Matthew 5:45 and John 1:12.) No other reward. Often even good Christians have thought this inadequate. In the early church it was sometimes said, "Love your enemies, and you will have no enemies." But the Jesus whose enemies crucified him and bade us welcome persecution did not say that. Even Paul missed the point when, quoting the book of Proverbs instead of Jesus, he saw a chance to score a point by helping enemies (Romans 12:20). Jesus asks the purest of motives. In one sense, God is already our father. Yet by loving we become sons of God. So we sometimes say to a young man, "Be a real son of your father!"

An old story in the Jewish Talmud tells how, when the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea, the angels joined the children of Israel in their rejoicing. Then God stopped the angels, saying: "What? My children are drowning and ye would rejoice?"

Jesus would have us be like God.

Being Honest with Ourselves

Confucius was once asked whether one should respond to injury with kindness. His answer was: "With what then will you recompense kindness? Recompense injury with justice and recompense kindness with kindness."

Before we feel superior to Confucius, we had better pause to be honest. He has not reached Christ, but he has gone farther than we often go. We are likely to respond to injury with vengeance. The ancient Jewish Law, which Jesus transformed, aimed to limit vengeance. Instead of unrestricted feuding and revenge, the Law set up a standard of just retribution -- inflicting a punishment equal to the crime, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." If we live up to that, or even to the precept of Confucius, we must often curb our desires.

Indeed, in our hardened world where slaughter has become common, we scarcely have enough sympathy to love our allies. During the Korean war, it is reported, inexperienced American troops confronted war's horror in the form of a mound of bloody corpses by the roadside. "Don't get shook up," their sergeant said. "They're just Koreans." Allies, but not our own folks. Not important. Don't blame the sergeant. He had more reason to be hardened than we at home. Didn't we do the same? Didn't we react differently to Korean casualties and American casualties? As for loving enemies -- say the Communists of China and Russia -- who thinks much or prays much about that?

Bertrand Russell, no Christian, expressed admiration for those who really love their enemies and their persecutors. He wrote: "There is nothing to be said against (the Christian principle) except that it is too difficult for most of us to practice sincerely." (A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, p. 579. Copyright 1945 by Bertrand Russell. Used by permission of Simon and Schuster Inc), Such honesty is certainly better than a false pretense about following Jesus, while we go our vindictive ways.

What We Can Do

With all our failings, we are not helpless. The spirit of Christ can make a difference in us. Let's be honest in acknowledging our wrongs, but let's be sincere about our discipleship.

Men can forgive. They can love their enemies. Granted the resentments that we all feel from time to time, the question is: What will we do about them? Will we let them erupt in violent antagonisms, or seethe inside us until they produce ulcers or nervous breakdowns or plain misery? Or will we find that Christ's spirit can move us to turn hatred to love? We can nurse our anger, cherish our vindictiveness. Or we can come clean and find peace with God and ourselves, and even with our enemies. When we are most disappointed in others we can say, with the old African pastor in Alan Paton's novel, "God forgives us. Who am I, not to forgive?"

Even warfare need not destroy love. True, it often does. In Second World War an American general said: ". . . we must hate. . . . We must lust for battle; our object in life must be to kill." And a newspaper columnist, admitting it would be "a messy task," demanded "total obliteration of Germany as a nation." But a rabbi in the first winter after the war, grieved by the Nazi destruction of his people, nevertheless gave his money to German relief, saying: "I believe with all my heart that we should rise above hatreds and prejudices and succor all people who are afflicted and heavy-laden."

On the one hand we have seen Mussolini call for "that cold, conscious, implacable hate, hate in every home, which is indispensable for victory." On the other hand we have seen a great (and more successful) national leader say, while war still raged: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." ( From Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.)

A Controversial Area

So far we have avoided one fair question. How sincere is forgiveness of enemies if we go on fighting them? Does not Jesus demand repudiation of punishment, coercion, and warfare?

Here we enter into an area of honest Christian controversy. It is not so important to argue one side of the question as to see both sides fairly, so that the Christian conscience can decide.

To begin, it is generally agreed that Jesus was not giving advice on how run a government. He was proclaiming the perfect ethic of God’s-kingdom, for which he taught men to pray. He said nothing of police, public laws, enforced justice. He gave ( us, instead of advice on the changing problems of government, ) the eternal will of God in its utter purity. He does not answer all our questions; he gives us light in which we can look for answers.

He addressed men living under a foreign conqueror. Don't think that makes his message easier. It is hard to forgive an enemy who oppresses you daily. But years later, when Christians had responsibility for government, they had to ask: Now what shall we do?

One voice in the church said: To follow Christ means to reject the ways of the state. Its laws are not entirely just; it jails criminals; it fights national enemies. Another voice said: Even so, it is worse to abandon responsibility for government than to take part in it. Rather use political power -- though it be far from Christ's perfection -- than abandon it to men of no Christian faith.

The second has clearly been the majority voice since the fourth century. But the minority has continued, sometimes in monasteries, sometimes in the world, to turn aside from the contests of power politics in order to remind men of the purity of God's kingdom.

Sometimes the two groups, in arguing with each other, forget how much they have in common. For both put love above hate; both would rather redeem than destroy their enemies; both see the difference between God's kingdom and the kingdoms of this world.

Now history under God's providence has reached the era of perpetual emergency, when man's age~old sin combined with his new technology threatens the survival of the human race. Even the most violent of men must recognize that there can be no satisfaction in destroying an enemy by thermonuclear weapons while he is destroying us. But the world is caught in the mood of bitter, tragic necessity. The Sermon on the Mount offers no program to present to Congress or the United Nations. But something of its vision and daring, combined with wise statecraft, offer the only hope for mankind.

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 5:17-37.

For the parallel passage see Luke 16:16-18.

To follow up the theme look at Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:22-36.





Nothing seems much older than the pancakes that were fresh yesterday. The new dress or hat, the new car, the new toy for the children -- all turn old in a few weeks or, at least, a few years. Collectors often specialize in old things, for they will keep getting older; nothing new will get any newer.

Yet human life craves the new. The old gets tiresome; we need renewal, freshening, invigorating. Fortunately, some things are perpetually new. The mysteries of love and hope, of sympathy and joy, are inexhaustible. However long we live with them, they are able to open up new worlds for us, to lead us into undiscovered riches of living.

The Christian faith has its source in the conviction of a new covenant -- the phrase is often translated New Testament -- which God offers mankind. It is the Christian faith that this covenant never grows old or dim or tarnished, because it is a living covenant. It is our belief that when we get bored with all of civilization's hectic attempts to find "something new and different," this age-old covenant remains fresh. Let us see why.

The Story of the Covenants

Jesus was talking to a group of people who were confident that they lived in a covenant-relationship with God. In the ancient days at Mount Sinai, God said Moses: "I have made a covenant with you and with Israel" (Exod. 34:27). The words of the covenant were preserved in the Ten Commandments. Through the centuries, when the Israelites sinned, the prophets called on the people to be faithful to their covenant. Everyone who heard Jesus knew of that covenant.

Many who heard him remembered also that the great prophet Jeremiah had foretold the days of a new covenant — written, this time, not on tablets of stone but upon the hearts of the people. This was to be a covenant of divine forgiveness. (See Jeremiah 31:31-34.)

Now, in a land already stirred by the fiery John the Baptist, Jesus appeared. Boldly he confronted the sacred tradition and said repeatedly: "You have heard that it was said . . . but I say. . . ." This rash effrontery was more than some conscientiously could stand; their whole sense of what was sacred made them enemies of this bold impostor -- as he seemed to them. But others recognized in him God's ambassador, bringing the promised new covenant.

Thus the Christian church has seen it through the ages. At the service of Holy Communion we read again the words of institution, "This is my blood of the covenant" (Matt. 26:28). The Christian faith is that in Christ the hope of the centuries was realized: the new covenant was established.

But the Lord of the new covenant did not deride the old covenant. Some Christians in the early centuries of the church did. They wanted to do away with the Old Testament, and reject the God of the Jews. The church, however, declared their views heretical -- for Jesus had said that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. Notice the strong wording of Matthew 5:17-20, especially verse 18. Iota refers to the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The dot is an ornamental mark that the scribes used in writing. Although we know that Jesus was less concerned with minute details of the Law than with man's basic relation to God, he is here saying: If you truly understand what God asks in the Law, you will see that none of it (not an iota or dot) is lost in my teaching.

Yet Jesus' method was not to elaborate, develop, and bring up to date the Law by applying it to the many details of first-century Palestinian life. That was the method of the conscientious Pharisees. Jesus rather went to the heart of the Law, extracted its divinely-given meaning from the surrounding web of words and customs, and proclaimed the will of God in its purity. But to those who concentrated on the externals, Jesus appeared to be wrecking the most sacred of religious institutions.

What Is New in Jesus' Teaching?

Sometimes Jesus startled his listeners with a statement so new that they were shocked by it. More

often his ideas were not new, at least not in the sense that no one had ever thought of them before. Most of the sentences in the Sermon on the Mount have their parallels in the Old Testament or in the rabbinic writings of Jesus' time.

Sometimes we say that the newness of Jesus lies in his personality -- in his powerful character which inspired men to faithful loyalty, in the vigor that shook them out of their ruts, in the holiness before which they felt ashamed, in the mercy that brought love into the lives of sinners. Sometimes we find his newness in the penetrating discrimination by which he evaluates old teachings, knows which to accept and which to reject, puts first things first, and subordinates what is secondary.

These ideas are true enough, but they do not quite get to the core of the matter. For Jesus' emphasis was not on his own personality or on a new and better law. His central message -- is we have seen -- was the gospel of the kingdom of God. It is this kingdom, which fulfills the best in the Law, which takes men's deepest yearnings and makes them deeper yet before it satisfies them. So the newness of Jesus is the power of the king dom of God to make us new. We understand his sayings when we grasp them as expressions of that power.

So one of our foremost New Testament scholars writes:

"God demands more than that man should perform some particular commandments; he demands that man become a new being, living under the eyes of God and in the consciousness of his will. . . For Christ has brought with him not the revelation of a new law but the message of the kingdom. Its purpose is to transform men, and a transformed humanity will be able to do more than men did under the government of the old Law. Man will recognize the will of God in every situation, even if the commandments of the Bible do not cover this situation." (The Sermon on the Mount by Martin Dibelius, pp. 77-78. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940. Used by permission.)

When we understand this we can see why the message of Christ is as new in the twentieth century as it was in the first, and why it fulfills the highest ethics of our world as truly and as radically as it fulfills the ancient Jewish Law.

The Inwardness of Jesus' Ethic

Today we, like some of the Pharisees, are likely to find the causes of our troubles in the externals of life. Propagandists tell us that we can solve our problems by buying a new product, by getting (or getting rid of) a "new deal" in government, by new techniques of industry or of psychology. As T. S. Eliot says:

They constantly try to escape

From the darkness outside and within

By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

(From "The Rock," reprinted from Collected Poems 1909-1935 by T. S. Eliot. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1936. Used by permission)

Of course, the Christian faith does not discourage our attempts to deal with the externals of life. But it tells us that no externals will take the place of Christ's message to the inmost self. His message, in one example after another, moves from the law governing actions to the inner motive.

1. From murder to hatred (see Matthew 5:21-26). Laws can prescribe punishment for murder. But no government can outlaw anger and animosity. Only the kingdom of God can do that. For Jesus the seething resentment is as bad as the act that grows out of it. Jesus does not, of course, condemn honest and deeply felt opposition to wrong. He is talking of the kind of anger that is an expression of envy or jealously and that takes satisfaction in the bad fortunes of another. Modern psychological discoveries throw an interesting light on the Christian teaching here, as they show how repressed hostilities can create in us a hell on earth. The answer obviously is not in allowing all hostilities to erupt -- not in letting anger become murder. What we need is inner healing. So Jesus "fulfills" one of the Ten Commandments -- one article of the Old Covenant.

Verses 25-26 here present some problems of detail. Luke puts these verses in a different context (12:57-59). In Matthew they might be merely prudential advice. Actually they are a parable about man's relation to God. Every man is approaching God's judgment seat. We had better approach in humility and repentance, seeking God's mercy.

(2) From adultery to lust (see Matthew 5:27-32). Again Jesus moves from the overt act which a court of law might pass judgment on, to the inner disposition. If a man covets his neighbor's wife (in the words of the Ten Commandments), he "has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Once more recent psychology, showing the disastrous effects of repression, bears out what Jesus is saying; and once more the answer is not the discarding of all restraints upon conduct, but an inner transformation -- a "fulfillment" of the Law.

Verses 29-30 show the seriousness of sin. Some religions actually endorse self-mutilation, and in rare cases Christians have taken these verses literally. However there is no evidence that those who knew Jesus ever understood him in this way. The complete paragraph makes the point clear. If inward lust is the problem, literal loss of a hand or eye will do no good. Jesus means, seriously, that an unhealthy personality is worse than loss of limbs.

NOTE: We cannot here make a study of Jesus' whole teaching on the family, though that would be richly rewarding. We should notice two things in passing. First, Jesus is not condemning sexual desire or sexual union as such. Jesus' teaching on marriage (see Mark 10:6-9) places the highest value On marital union. Second, his teaching on divorce allows no room for self-righteous criticism of divorced persons. Jesus teaches the sanctity and permanence of marriage so as to bring under judgment all the frivolity of our culture. But those who use his words (verse 32) to condemn others find his words (verse 28) convicting themselves of the same guilt.

(3) From perjury to dishonesty (see Matthew 5:33-37). American law does not convict a man of simple dishonesty -- or who would be out of prison? It defines the crime of perjury, in which one tells a falsehood under the technical conditions of a prescribed oath. So it was with Jewish law. Detailed prescriptions marked the difference between oaths that were binding and those that were not (Matthew 23:1622). Jesus swept aside all this. For a man of integrity a simple "yes" is adequate -- better than the most complicated oath of a hypocrite. Some Christian groups to this day take Jesus literally and refuse to take oaths, but most Christians think he was emphasizing the need for a genuine trustworthiness that will make unnecessary all the intricate legal guarantees.

A Covenant of Grace

In all this we see Jesus' insistence, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and

Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:20). The Pharisees were the models of conscientiousness. Aiming to be faithful to God and his covenant, they guarded themselves against many temptation by carefully seeking to live up to the Law. Jesus demands so much less -- and yet so much more. The meticulous attention detail can go by the way, if only the essential thing is present the fulfillment of the Law in the spirit of the kingdom of God

Augustine understood this when in the fifth century a convert asked him for a listing of his ethical obligations as a Christian. Augustine's answer cut to the heart of the problem in a short sentence: "Love -- and do as you please." The one word includes everything. For if we truly love, what we please will please God.

The answer is simple, but not easy. For, as we study the Sermon on the Mount, we realize that there is no human love of such purity as to meet God's demand. We try all sorts ways to soften these words of Jesus.

For example, when Jesus says, "every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment," we say that is asking too much. How can we make it easier? In ancient times someone slipped into the sentence an extra two words, without cause. Some of our manuscripts of the New Testament include that insertion. Whoever got that idea reasoned thus: to be angry without cause is the sin; anger with just cause is all right. But that is a dodge. We are never angry without what we can pretend is a cause. But Jesus asks for complete love. He makes no concessions to our weakness.

We are driven to ask, as the disciples did on a different occasion, "Then who can be saved?" The answer to us, as to them, is: "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God" (Mark 10:2627). We are saved by God's mercy, not by our goodness. Christianity is a gospel, not a law. The new covenant is a covenant of grace.

From the Sermon on the Mount read Matthew 5:13-16; 6:1-18.

For the parallel passages see Luke 14:34-35; 11:33-36; 11:1-4.

To follow up the theme look at Matthew 23:1-12; Luke 18:9-14.

Heads and tails on a dime look different, but both are part of the same coin. Sometimes the truth, like the coin, shows two different faces. Frequently that is true of Jesus' sayings. His thoughts move with a vigor and penetration that strain the limits of language. His vocabulary is vigorous and exuberant, full of imaginative appeals. Often he meets a situation with a story instead of an explanation. Often instead of a simple statement he gives us a paradox.

Thus it is when Jesus tells his followers how they are related to the social world around them. To understand him we must pull together parts of two chapters in the Sermon on the Mount, because each side of the paradox helps explain the other. Christians are to let their light shine before men. Yet they are to do their good works in secret. If we take to heart either of these directions without the other, we can destroy the message of Jesus. How do the two faces of the coin go together?

We will not understand Jesus if we approach him as a law-maker, prescribing rules for every situation in life. Rather, he uses specific situations to convey to us the spirit of the kingdom of God -- a spirit that enters into everything we do. So let us look at each side of this paradox of Jesus in order to discover what it has to say about our inner attitudes and motives.

Salt and Light

"You are the salt of the earth." Here is a curious figure of speech. Human beings are not much like salt. But the striking metaphor has its purpose. A pinch of salt can flavor a whole meal. Salt is a preservative, often used in past times to save food from decay. So a few faithful disciples can affect society-giving zest to and saving from corruption a much larger group. But what about salt that is not salty? (Of course, there is no such thing; Jesus is simply continuing his figure of speech, which is meant to be bizarre enough to shake us out of our ruts.) It is useless. So is a disciple who has lost his enthusiasm and loyalty.

"You are the light of the world." Here is a more familiar of speech, common in the Jewish tradition. God has called servant to be "a light to the nations" (Isa. 42:6). The rabbis sometimes thought of Israel as the light of the world. To this day candles are lighted on the altars of many a church during worship hours. A later New Testament book describes Christ as the light from God which shines into the darkness of world (John 1:4-5).

Yet it must have sounded fantastic to suggest that this tiny band of weak disciples in an obscure land could he the light of the world. They were not even known in Rome, the headquarters of the world. Nevertheless, Jesus said that his followers, not the Caesars, were the light of the world.

Now, centuries hence, we know well the feebleness of the Caesars and the light-giving power of that little group that followed Jesus. But to them these words of his must have seemed impossible -- as impossible as much of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus bade these men-as he bids us-to let this light shine. It is senseless, yes criminal, to conceal a light that can bless the world. Let the beams stream afar!

Then the world will see us, recognize us, appreciate us -- we think. But that is not what Jesus says. He tells us to fear men's glory, not to seek it. (Remember chapter 4.) But we may hope that our light will lead men to glorify, not us, but God.

So it is said that in the heart of Africa a man relieved of pain by the surgical skill of a foreigner looked up to ask, "But why have you come here to help us?" And he got the simple answer from Albert Schweitzer, "The Lord Jesus sent me."

Thus Jesus' words come true. But too seldom. Why is there so little sacred light in this shadowed world? When a few disciples have spread such magnificent illumination, why do millions give so little light?

Between 1940 and 1950 for the first time in history church members came to be a majority of the population. In the century 1850-1950, membership moved from a rather small minority to a substantial majority. But what difference has it made? We can hardly claim any startling change in our society. Has the salt lost its Savor? Is it fit only to be "thrown out"?

When the French Communists once wanted to strengthen the party, instead of campaigning for more members they pared the rolls. They knew that a few zealously loyal people, :working out from their little cells, could shake a nation. Maybe they had learned that from Christians, who once understood well but now usually forget it.

Serving in Secrecy

Now we turn the coin over and find Jesus telling us, not to let our good works be seen, but to do good in secret. The contradiction seems great; but it is resolved when we get at the basic concern of Jesus -- our motives.

For, says Jesus, the purpose of our good works is to glorify God, to serve him, to express our love for God and our fellow-men. If this is honestly our purpose, we are not worried about getting credit for what we do. But too often our purpose is not genuine. Then we demand recognition. So our willingness to do our good works in secret becomes a real test of our sincerity.

Look at an example from a growing congregation which needed a new building. (The same thing may have happened often, but the recorded facts come from a single specific case.) The pastor and officers of the church, in planning the financial campaign, decided that contributions would be kept secret. The purpose was to make giving a genuine act of Christian devotion. As the campaign got under way, returns were disappointing. Some families were clearly doing their share; others, sometimes the wealthiest, were dragging their feet. So the officers reconsidered and decided to publicize contributions. Many contributors revised their pledges and the campaign succeeded. Some of the church members, who understood the Sermon on the Mount, were grateful for the new building, but disturbed by what they had learned about the motives for giving.

The same psychology works in still subtler ways. Charles Lamb wrote: "The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident."

That statement shows up some of the devious traits of personality. We enjoy getting credit for doing good. But then, knowing Jesus' teaching, we obey him and do good secretly. Since we still like praise for our good deeds, we praise ourselves -- both for doing good and for doing it secretly.

Then, if someone accidentally discovers our good deed, we can be triply proud. We have done the good, we have done it secretly, and we received the public credit! Sometimes we even pretend to be disappointed that the discovery has been made, when inwardly we are greatly pleased that our good deeds are known. Or -- doesn't this really happen? -- even while we do the good deed secretly, we hope (without quite admitting it to ourselves) that someone will discover it. Maybe we even "accidentally" leave a clue.

Appropriately enough, the Scriptures use the ugly word hypocrite here. This Greek word originally meant, in a quite harmless sense, an actor on the stage. The New Testament adapted the word to refer to the kind of acting we do in daily life -- pretending to be generous when really we are merely looking for recognition, or pretending to be humble when really we are vain.

Jesus mentions three areas of action where we need to avoid this play-acting: good deeds, prayer, and fasting. In the case of good deeds, Jesus uses his typically vivid, exuberant language. The humorous words convey a serious meaning. Literally, we cannot prevent the left hand from knowing what the right hand does. Literally, the Palestinians did not blow trumpets to call attention to their almsgiving. But we easily get the meaning. (We still say, "If you don't blow your own trumpet, no one will blow it for you.")

Prayer is an especially significant problem. Here, of all places, sincerity should be complete. But many prayers are simply "empty phrases." (The Lord's Prayer, which Jesus gives at this point, will be the subject of chapter 8.)

Fasting represents the sacrifices we make because of our faith. We love to let others know that we are making a sacrifice -- that we are giving up something to do a job for the church. But Jesus says: "No. Make your sacrifice joyfully and unobtrusively. God will reward you."

Summing It Up

Our everyday language recognizes at least in part what Jesus is getting at. "Don't be afraid to take a stand." "Don't blow your own horn." Here are two sayings that point in different directions. One suggests bold, public activity; the other suggests quiet modesty.

Yet we see immediately that the two do not necessarily disagree. Each has its place. The same person might consistently use both sayings. For both are getting at the motives that prompt our acts. When fear of popular disapproval or lethargy leads us to drift with the crowd, we need to think of the first. When pride tempts us to make some display, we need the second.

In a more profound way Jesus is telling us to live our lives before God. Sometimes this will mean that we let our light shine before men -- doing good, confessing our faith -- even though men may seek to embarrass us with their sneers. Sometimes it will mean that we serve God in secret, even though publicity might please us. Always it will mean the kind of sincerity that removes self-consciousness from our religious acts.

Of course, this is the most difficult of all tests because it concerns inmost motivations. Effort and will power can accomplish a lot, but they cannot in themselves change our motives or bring us to be less concerned with ourselves. Self-consciousness is a mountain that no quantity of determination can move. But it is one of those mountains which faith, and faith alone, can cast into the sea.

From the Sermon on tile Mount read Matthew 5:10-12. For the parallel passages see Luke 6:22-23, 26. To follow up the theme look at I Peter 4:12-19; Romans 8:35-39; Revelation 3:14-22.

In a stroke of accurate wit Dean Inge of St. Paul's Cathedral in London once described the common longing for comfortable religion. Lie referred to a stanza of Reginald Heber's hymn, "The Son of God Goes Forth to War" -- a stanza inspired by past Christian heroes:

They climbed the steep ascent of heaven

Through peril, toil, and pain:

O God, to us may grace be given

To follow in their train.

Many, said Dean Inge, prefer an easier way to heaven and would like to revise the last line of the verse to sing:

To travel by the train.



Halford Luccock, in a comment on Dean Inge's verse, quotes the gushing woman who said: "We have the most up-to-date church in the country. We have inner springs in the pew cushions.

To all this a Christian might say: Welcome to comfortable Pullman cars and pew cushions if they remove some inconveniences and thus enable us to use our powers to conquer real difficulties. But God help us if we think that Christ offers us a path of comfort.

Suffering for Christ's Sake

Most of the Beatitudes are single, short sentences. They are cogently stated -- originally in poetry -- and could scarcely lose a word without losing the meaning. But when it comes to the blessing on the persecuted, Matthew records three sentences, each longer than any of the preceding Beatitudes. All this is no accident.

Recently biblical studies have shown us much about how our New Testament came to us. Obviously we do not have every. thing that Jesus ever said. If we take all the sayings of Jesus in the Bible (eliminating duplications in the different Gospels) we have a small quantity. A talkative person says more word in one single day.

What we have are those sayings which struck men so forcible that they could not be forgotten. They spoke to burning needs. So Christians memorized them and passed them on, used them in sermons and letters and conversations, preserved them through the transition from the Aramaic to the Greek language until the days when they collected them into our Gospels.

Christians, facing death for their faith, treasured the saying of their Lord about persecutions and sought to pass on promises without losing a word. Here was a source of strength. Christ, their risen Lord, had also known persecution. His words and spirit were a living power. With Paul these Christians gloried that -- whether in persecution, famine, or violent death -- they were "more than conquerors through him who loved" them (Romans 8:3-37).

We sometimes hear a parent say: "I want my child brought up in a Christian atmosphere, so that he will stay out of trouble." There is a grain of truth in that idea. Christian character does overcome or bypass some troubles in life.

But can you imagine a parent bringing a child to Jesus with the words: "I want my boy to go with you, because you will keep him out of trouble"? How might Jesus reply? Perhaps he would say: "What are you talking about? Foxes have their holes, but I have no place to lay my head. This is no way to avoid trouble." (See Luke 9:57-58.) Or he might say: "Trouble is one thing I can guarantee. If your boy comes with me, he'd better prepare for self-denial, persecution -- yes, cruel death." (See Matthew 16:24 and Mark 13:9-13.)

Once again Jesus upsets our ways of thought. Often in the Testament, and often today, people think of prosperity esteem as a reward for goodness. With deep irony Kierkegaard says of a bishop of Denmark: "Without doubt, he would not hesitate to die for Christ, in the case of necessity, but he takes care that the case of necessity does not occur." And don't we all.

But Jesus' advice is the opposite. Not only does he bid us at up under suffering. In bold and striking language he says: "Rejoice. . . and leap for joy!" (Luke 6:23) So, following Jesus,

Paul wrote: "We rejoice in our sufferings (Rom. 5:3). But why? One reason that Jesus gives is that men persecuted the prophets of old and spoke well of the false prophets. We might think a poor reason. Factually, of course, it is true. The stories of Amos and Jeremiah tell us how the prophet must often speak pleasant words, while the false prophet yields to social pressure, salves guilty consciences, and adjusts his message to make people feel good. Naturally, men speak well of him.

 What Jesus Promises

Hence we should rather -- so Jesus thinks -- accept persecution with the prophets than enjoy human approval with the false prophets. This logic may be unconvincing. But it may -- if we are touched by Christ's spirit -- command agreement. It promises us a place in what a great liturgical prayer calls "the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs." This, says Christian faith, is reason to rejoice. But there is more to the promise. Jesus offers "the kingdom of heaven" and a great "reward" in heaven. What does he mean?

We can easily misunderstand this promise of reward. We may take it as an offer of a bargain: Be good now and you'll get paid off later. Accept poverty and suffering here, and you will be given "a pie in the sky by-and-by." But Jesus often warns men that they cannot bargain with God. He tells us that the best of actions, when done with impure motives, are worthless. (We will see more of this in chapter 6.) There is no room here for selfishly playing the game for the highest stakes -- giving up a payoff now for a bigger one later. Jesus does not say: "Blessed are you who accept persecution for the sake of future reward." No, he talks of persecution for righteousness' sake or for his sake. Rudolf Bultmann, one of the foremost New Testament scholars, says:

"He promises reward precisely to those who obey not for the sake of reward."(Theology of the New testament by Rudolph Bultmann, vol, 1, p.14. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, Used by permission)

In Alan Paton's magnificent novel Cry, the Beloved Country, one of the natives of South Africa, a simple man with work calloused hands, a member of a persecuted people, says this: "I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering. . . . For our Lord suffered. And I came to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For be knew there is no life without suffering." (Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, p. 227, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948. Used by permission)

So the reward is the sharing in the life and love of Christ.

This reward is not something for the future alone. It comes in "the kingdom of heaven," which, we remember, has come among us in Christ, although we wait for God to complete it. For the apostle Paul, the love of God in Christ is already so tremendous an experience that he is sure "neither death, nor life" can separate him from it (Romans 8:38-39).

Our Situation Today

Of course, all this can be very remote -- something for ancient times only. We cannot go back to live in Palestine or the Roman Empire. Does Jesus really have anything to say to us today?

The answer is that the promise of Jesus has spoken as clearly to men in our time as it ever spoke in the past. The testimonies come from countless sources. From missionaries in foreign lands, from Christians scorned by their own kinsmen in non-Christian areas, from loyal churchmen persecuted by totalitarian governments come declarations of Christ's blessing and Christ's love.

Consider just one situation. We all know of the bitter persecution by Soviet rulers of the Fast German Church in 1952-53. Faithful pastors disappeared into the night. Young people met ridicule and exclusion in the schools because they acknowledged membership in the Junge Gemeinde (the youth fellowship) of the church. Laymen lost jobs and brought suffering upon their families because they confessed church membership. Yet out of that situation came testimonies of God's love that cannot be matched in America. Here are a few of the many responses:

1. A Christian, even while admitting his perplexities, said: "Perhaps God wants to bring suffering to hundreds and thousands of Christians, because he wants them." Another, feeling that in the suffering God had found persons, spoke of "God's beloved East Zone."

2. In the persecution a Christian wrote: "Hate and fear have been vanquished by him who loved us. He himself is the peace, who has given us true and lasting peace with God and with our enemies."

3. A woman whose husband had been arrested said this: "Yes, the great joy and happiness which come from the freedom of the heart, they were the chief characteristics of my dear husband. And this joy cannot and will not be destroyed by any external calamity. This is my confident hope. For it is striking that this joy comes out only the more brightly in misery and darkness.

Truly, God does not demand any sacrifice from us which he is not willing to bless a hundredfold in our hearts."

Coming Closer to Home

What does this all mean for us in our comfortable, casual American churches? Is there any blessing of Christ here?

One false answer we can quickly get out of the way: We are not serving Christ if we simply seek to generate hostilities against ourselves. Such is not persecution for Christ's sake. Perhaps this warning is not necessary. But we all know what I meant by a martyr-complex, and probably we all feel this temptation in minor ways. We can make ourselves miserable, simply out of egoism. Paul knew that one might even give his body to be burned -- without love (1 Corinthians 13:3).

But when all this is said, we must recognize that Christ expected his followers to be persecuted. Why are we not being persecuted? Is it because the world has chosen to follow Christ instead of persecuting him? Surely the spirit of Christ through the centuries has made some difference. But there is a m cogent, perhaps a more honest reason. Even in New Testament times, some churches avoided the troubles that others were meeting. Are we like the church of Laodicea (Revelation 3: 22) -- so lukewarm that we offend no one, except our Lord? Do men "speak well of" us because we are soft?

There is persecution in America. In the 1960's citizens and churchmen, believing that God's love includes persons of all races, have been battered and jailed. Men have endured bitter public ridicule because they believed in civil liberties for others.

There are other forms of persecution, too. A man loses a promotion because he refuses to play the game in cheap ways. A politician loses an election rather than lie to the voters. A pastor loses the call to a distinguished church instead of becoming a flatterer. In school, in business, in society at large someone earns corn because he refuses to take the easy way.

If these things happen to us, not because of stubborn egoism or a self-righteous complex, but because of our love of God, Jesus tells us to rejoice. For then we are blessed of God.