{"id":7164,"date":"2022-03-01T13:17:49","date_gmt":"2022-03-01T12:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theologie.whp.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/?p=7164"},"modified":"2022-03-02T23:54:57","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T22:54:57","slug":"sermon-on-matthew-6-1-6-16-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/sermon-on-matthew-6-1-6-16-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ash Wednesday 2022 | <\/strong>Mt 6.1-6, 16-21 | by Richard O. Johnson |\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

J<\/em>esus said, „Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.“ (Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21 NRSV)<\/em><\/p>\n

This evening we begin our Lenten journey once again\u2014later that usual this year, to be sure, but it is never the wrong time for this journey intended to bring us closer to Jesus by leading us to his cross. Tonight\u2019s passage is the traditional gospel text for Ash Wednesday. Each year it strikes me as ironic. Here we listen to this text that urges us, among other things, to wash our face so that our piety may not be seen by others, and then we receive the imposition of ashes, the visible mark of repentance and mortality. Is this God\u2019s idea of a joke?<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t just Ash Wednesday. Much of our focus during Lent has traditionally been on external disciplines, things we do to demonstrate our faithfulness. So how do we square that practice with what Jesus says in this passage?<\/p>\n

Beware!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ll say more about that momentarily. First, I\u2019d like to call attention to the beginning of this gospel lesson: \u201cBeware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them,\u201d Jesus says. Let\u2019s think about that word \u201cbeware.\u201d The word as we use it normally is a warning\u2014and a warning against some danger that might not be immediately evident. \u201cBeware of dog!\u201d the sign says, and then we know that we must take special care if we are walking into that yard or near that house. You may like doggies, but this one may be dangerous. \u201cBeware of thin ice!\u201d\u2014and we think twice about skating on that pond\u2014even if it looks perfectly safe at first glance. It is a word that really ought to be painted in big red letters, because it is a warning of danger and it\u2019s important to heed it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way we must hear Jesus\u2019 words here, too. Some of the older translations rendered this, \u201cTake heed . . .\u201d but our translation very rightly has it \u201cBEWARE.\u201d It is a warning. There\u2019s danger here. We must be careful.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s remember the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is talking to disciples. He\u2019s talking about the Christian life, and what it entails. He\u2019s giving insider instruction, taking us deeper into our discipleship. So when he says \u201cBeware,\u201d he\u2019s not warning against some grievous, open sin like murder or adultery or theft. He\u2019s talking to people who know the commandments, who know right from wrong. But as in the signs about dogs and thin ice, the purpose of this warning is to point out a danger that may not be immediately evident. And it is, Jesus says, a danger precisely for those who seek with their whole heart to obey God. When we are striving most to be faithful, that\u2019s when this warning sign pops up.<\/p>\n

You start showing off<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why the warning? Well, because in chapter 5 of Matthew Jesus has told us that we are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. \u201cLet your light so shine before others,\u201d he said, \u201cso that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.\u201d Part of being a Christian disciple is letting our light shine. Jesus does not want us to be shy about our faith, our ethical standards, the way we live. And that\u2019s why we need this warning! It is too easy, he says, to slip over the line and start doing the right thing for the wrong reason.<\/p>\n

In The Catcher in the Rye,<\/em> J. D. Salinger\u2019s classic novel of adolescent angst<\/em>, Holden Caulfield makes a very perceptive comment: \u201cIf you start doing something good,\u201d he says, \u201cthen, after a while, if you don\u2019t watch it, you start showing off. And then you\u2019re not as good anymore.\u201d What Jesus is telling us in this text is that it is important to do the right things, but it is equally important to do them for the right reasons. The specific things he mentions are almsgiving, prayer and fasting. Those were the three standard elements of the pious life in first century Judaism. Jesus just assumes his followers, being pious people, will do them. But when you do them, he says, when you give, when you pray, when you fast, here\u2019s how to do it and how not<\/em> to do it. And \u201chow not to do it\u201d is the same in each case: Don\u2019t do it in order to be seen by others.<\/p>\n

So how do we let our light shine, and yet not do these things before others? I think the key lies in the wording of that introductory verse: \u201cBeware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them<\/em>. What is at heart here is motivation. Jesus is not condemning alms, or prayer, or fasting or any other religious practice that is seen by others. He is condemning those practices when they are done in order to be seen<\/em> by others. It\u2019s interesting that the phrase, \u201cin order to be seen,\u201d in the Greek text uses the word from which we get our word \u201ctheater.\u201d He\u2019s really saying, \u201cDon\u2019t make a show.\u201d And those who do such things he calls \u201chypocrites,\u201d which, in Greek, literally means \u201cactors.\u201d They are acting pious, putting on a show, but their real motivation is to impress other people with their piety. And that is what we are warned against. \u201cBEWARE,\u201d Jesus says, \u201cThe best actions can come from the wrong motivations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hide your good works from yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has a wonderful spin on this paradox between being told to \u201clet our light shine before others\u201d and yet being told to do our good works in secret. The real point here, he says, is not so much that we are to hide our good works from others, but that we are to hide them from ourselves. \u201cOur task,\u201d he says, \u201cis simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing. We must be unaware of our own righteousness.\u201d In commenting on prayer, for instance, and on Jesus\u2019 commandment that we should not pray on the street corners but go into the privacy of our room, Bonhoeffer says that the real danger is that we may, in our praying, put on a show not for others, but for ourselves. \u201cI can put on a very nice show for myself even in the privacy of my own room,\u201d he says! Nobody prays more ardently than I do in the privacy of my room! The point of secrecy, you see, is not just to avoid other people seeing what we do; it is also to avoid impressing ourselves with what we do.<\/p>\n

If we hear Jesus aright, we will understand that our piety, our righteousness, our devotion to him is rightly done out of love for him\u2014not out of obligation, not out of self-importance, not even out of self-need, but out of love. It is a love that is secret\u2014not that it is hidden from others, for indeed it shines through us\u2014but it is a love that is genuine and deep between us and God, so much so that our expressions of it come so naturally and easily that we<\/em> don\u2019t even notice them. But God, who shares that secret love with us, rewards us by drawing us ever deeper into his love.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Rev. Richard O. Johnson<\/p>\n

Webster, NY<\/p>\n

roj@nccn.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ash Wednesday 2022 | Mt 6.1-6, 16-21 | by Richard O. Johnson |\u00a0 Jesus said, „Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,157,108,110,362,3,285],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-beitragende","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-06-chapter-06-matthaeus","category-nt","category-richard-o-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7278,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions\/7278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=7164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}