Practices of Personal Piety

Carrying on through the Sermon on the Mount

The thing that is startling about Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6.1-20 in his day, is a different thing that that which startles us about it today. If in the last section Jesus provided six representative exegeses of Torah commandments, and showed a deeper, whole-hearted way of fulfilling their true purpose and scope, in the next section Jesus continues on to do the same with personal practices of piety.

Jesus assumes that every decent, minimally alright member of society is doing these things. That is: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Even, we should imagine, many of society's least reputable nonetheless practiced these three things. So what is initially striking to a modern reader is the expectation that one would participate in almsgiving and fasting (less so prayer, though I have something to say about that). That is not what's striking about Jesus' teaching though - Jesus offers a pattern of personal piety practices that is whole-hearted and exemplifies the kind of flourishing life that his way offers.

The opening verse sets us up with what to expect, a warning that performing righteousness for the approval of others is its own reward, but practicing righteousness out of a right heart is seen by God.

Pennington has a particular good insight (which he cites from Andrej Kodjak) on how religious practices function to connect people both with God, and establish social norms. And precisely because of the latter, they are prone to become vehicles of social status and approval. Whatever religious practices we come up with (and we should have them), just the nature of human society means that they will always serve that second function, and we are liable to misuse them for that purpose at the neglect, cost, and betrayal of true devotion unto God.

I think what's confronting for a modern reader about the Almsgiving passage (6.2-4) is that it lives in a fairly different social world (even more so for an Australian than an American!). In its ancient context, without aid networks, welfare, government agencies, but with daily subsistence living and poverty, direct aid of people in need was commonplace, and expected of upright people. Today, we regard direct giving to the needy to be foolish at best. We are far more concerned with (i) "effective" charity, (ii) programs and policies and institutions, (iii) giving to charities as organisations, (iv) not being scammed.

And so one question that I need to ask myself is, am I willing to be foolish enough for Christ to simply give away money directly to the poor without any strings whatsoever.

Secondly, and more apt to what Jesus is actually teaching us, is do I give out of a right heart motive and oriented towards God who sees, or because of other people's opinions of what is good and right and praiseworthy?

The second example is prayer, and while I think most Christians accept that prayer is part and parcel of their expected religious life and devotion, there are some surprises in here for us too. Firstly, I love the quote that Pennington offers from Theophylactus on place: "“It is not the place [topos] that harms, but the nature [tropos] and the purpose [skopos].”^[1] Mostly because it captures with some nice wordplay that the dislocation and relocation of prayer isn't really about always and ever praying in secret, alone, but once more about heart-motives and whole-heartedness.

Right here, smack dab in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, is the Lord's Prayer. Pennington is right when he says that books have been, and should be, written on this text. There's no way he can do it justice in the work he's doing, and there's even less that I could hope to cover here. I will content myself with two comments - firstly that Pennington suggests "on earth as in heaven" refers not just to "thy will be done", but also "hallowed by thy name" and "thy kingdom come", treating those three as a triplex petition; secondly, that the 'forgiveness rider' in 14-15 connects the teaching on forgiveness directly to Matthew 18:15-35 (esp. v35), which expands the teaching here in a way that several other Matthean passages expand elements found in the SotM. So, if we want to understand how the forgiveness of God relates to our forgiveness of others, we simply have to connect v14-15 to Matthew 18.

If almsgiving is out of fashion, fasting is considered a fringe activity among most modern Christians in the West (Catholics perhaps not; certainly not considered unusual among non-Western groupings). Our problem with fasting is that (a) we're not sure why it's a practice at all, (b) we are far too comfortable to do it, (c) we suspect it might just be an externalised practice all the way down. Jesus' problem with fasting is different - he has no problem with practices of piety, including fasting - he seems to assume that his followers will fast. The problem, as everywhere here, is that it is easily and often perverted to become a mark of status and honour among people.

It's worth pausing for a moment to say that Jesus highlights three practices, but these aren't limitive, they are exemplary. Whatever practices of piety we have, and we ought to have some, are liable to the same temptation - to conform to social norms in order to please others and gain their respect. Jesus' teaching brings us back to the same point again and again - wholehearted devotion to God expressed in actions that are single-, not double-, minded.

To return to Pennington's commentary, he notes how 6.19-21 functions both as conclusion to 6.1-21 as well as start of 6.19-34.

For where your treasure is there also will be your heart

Photo by Ashin K Suresh on Unsplash

In other language, we are what we desire. We are loving, desiring, 'oriented' creatures. The call of the Mountaintop Homily is to orient ourselves profoundly towards God, and let our heart's love for God bear fruit in wholehearted actions that express the same.