Matthew 6:1-24

Integrity above Honour

Matthew continued to elaborate Jesus’ earlier comment: For I assure you, that unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the heavenly kingdom. [5:20].

The previous section had illustrated Jesus’ approach to interpreting the law, an interpretation that Matthew had regarded as fulfilling the law. Matthew offered a series of examples. In doing so, he had shown how Jesus differed from other scribal interpreters, including many Pharisees.

Matthew’s next concern was to show Jesus in conflict with attitudes, which Matthew attributed to those in the synagogues, and that he claimed were emphasised by many Pharisees. He proceeded to compare Jesus’ “piety” with that of those he called hypocrites in the synagogues, focussing particularly on three practices revered by Jewish piety:

  • almsgiving,
  • praying,
  • and fasting.

It is important to remember that Matthew frequently was reading back into the mind and teaching of Jesus attitudes that had developed within the Christian community. The Christian community and local synagogues had a history of bitter argumentation and confrontation. Both groups battled for the hearts and minds of Diaspora Jews, as well as of those Gentiles who had aligned with and were impressed by the Jewish attitudes to God and to morality.

Christians and Pharisees shared many attitudes in common. To differentiate themselves, Christians tended to exaggerate the faults of Pharisees they knew, irrespective of whether they were typical or not. Unfortunately, the tendency to stereotype opponents seems to be widespread. Religion, universally, is open to misuse and corruption. The issues that Jesus would address are problems faced by all religious people of all nationalities and times. They were no more distinctive of Pharisees than of conscientious disciples. Disciples need to be warned. The human tendencies to pride and blindness never die.

As he had done earlier in his approach to the law, Jesus looked behind external pious behaviours to the heart from which they proceeded, to their inner inspiration. To Jesus’ mind, what primarily determined morality was not external action but inner motivation. Many Jewish teachers of his time shared the same concern.

Matthew 6:1-4     Almsgiving

1Be careful that you do not act justly
in public in order to be noticed by people.  
Otherwise, you will miss out on the reward your heavenly Father gives.
2So, when you give a charitable gift,
do not play a trumpet when you do it;
as hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets
so that people will give them honour.  
I tell you clearly that they have received their reward in full.
3 Rather, when you give charitably,
do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 
4 In such a way that your mercy remains secret,
and your heavenly Father who sees what is secret
will be merciful to you.

Judaism in general had a long and balanced tradition of almsgiving, of reaching out especially to the widow and the orphan. It was customary, however, in the “honour” based culture of the whole Mediterranean area, for the wealthy to give generously to community projects as well as to their dependants. In so doing they put the recipients into the position where they owed them a debt of praise. Even among peers, generosity was seen as a means of achieving honour.

Pharisees made a particular commitment to almsgiving. Without doubt, they were no more prone than anyone else to seek honour through their generosity, though, like everyone else, they liked to receive praise when it was given, some more so than others.

Jesus was consistently critical of the various expressions of the honour system of his day. Earlier in the discourse, indeed, he had urged his disciples: Let your light shine out for people to see, so that, when they see your good works, they might give glory to your heavenly Father [5:16] – to God, not to the disciples. Jesus’ primary concern was the motivation and purpose. He wanted generosity to be an occasion always of self-giving, rather than of self-interest – a recognition of the basic human dignity of those in need, and an expression of solidarity and mercy. Purification of the heart resulted in inner peace, flowing from inner harmony. Given his simple view of life, Matthew was responsive to the issue of reward. Even then, he was more focussed on reward in God’s Kingdom, than on the grosser search for honours.

Matthew 6:5-15     Prayer  

(Lk 11:2-4)
 
5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites;
for they love to stand up and pray
in the synagogues and at street corners,
in such a way that people see them.  
I tell you clearly, they have their reward in full.

With Jesus, Matthew’s concern was to teach his own community a better approach to prayer than that of hypocrites, wherever they might be found. Pharisaic attitudes were not the exclusive preserve of Pharisees, but could surface in anyone, particularly in those who took their religion seriously. Jewish teachers of his day condemned ostentatious prayer, as Jesus did.

6 Rather, when you pray, go into your private room, close the door,
and pray to your Father privately,
and your heavenly Father who sees what is private, will respond to you.

This was the first time that Jesus used the term your Father in relation to the disciples. A childlike approach to God in prayer was common in Judaism, and the image of God as loving parent – father and mother – figured prominently in the scriptural tradition. Jesus had already been introduced as beloved son of that Father [3:17]. Though the translation does not make it apparent, frequently Jesus addressed his Father with the intimate title Abba – which was unique.

Jesus was speaking of private prayer, not prayer in common (The “you” had changed from plural to singular). He wished to focus uniquely on the intimate relationship possible between God and disciples – the profound mutual conversation of quiet intimacy. His stress was on the merciful, loving God within, rather than on the infinitely transcendent God beyond. Such intimacy would be betrayed by thought of extrinsic reward. The experience of intimate relationship with such a God would be itself the reward.

7 “When you pray, do not babble on like Gentiles.  
They think that by being wordy they will be heard.  
8  Do not be like them.  
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Matthew’s community was familiar with the approach to prayer of some of their Gentile contemporaries. He used their practice to emphasise another important approach to prayer. The prayer in the private room would be, as well, the prayer of a quiet heart. In such prayer, words were not important. What mattered was confident trust in God and the silent surrender of the need to feel in control. At most, words would serve, not to inform God, but to focus the heart-desires of the one at prayer.

9 “So you pray like this:

Jesus' language moved from singular to plural; he was addressing the disciples as community. In many ways the prayer summed up the basic attitude to daily living typical of disciples of Jesus. The context of the prayer was trust in a Father who knows what you need before you ask. The prayer would not seek to influence the mind of God but to orientate and to educate the praying community.

… Heavenly Father,

Those who prayed were to try to hold in tension both the immanence of God and God’s transcendence. God was the Father to whom those who prayed could relate in the secret intimacy of their own hearts. Yet this intimate God was, at the same time, the God in heaven, the transcendent one. Intimacy was to be balanced with a profound sense of awe and deep respect. Disciples were to avoid domesticating God, making God, as it were, in their own image. At the same time God was not to be kept at the distant edges of life, acknowledged and feared.


God as Father

God has no gender, and is neither masculine nor feminine. Yet human persons inevitably imagine a personal God in gender categories. The Scriptures abound in metaphorical descriptions of God, but human language lacks an intimate word that is inclusive of both the masculine and feminine.

It was easy for Jesus to refer to God as Father, because he lived in a highly patriarchal society, and was no doubt influenced by it himself.

In using the term, Father, Jesus captured the basic intimacy between God and himself. Together with that intimacy, he included the sense of his total dependence on God. The intimate God was the source of his being, of his life. In the culture of the time, people considered the male seed to be the sole source of new life, the woman’s womb providing only the seedbed. There was no knowledge of the equal importance of the woman’s egg in the process of procreation. God as life-giver was necessarily imaged as Father.

Some disciples find it very easy to relate to God as mother. In doing so, they stand firmly in the tradition adopted by Jesus, and, before him, by some of the prophets. Individual prayer with God in the “private room” of the heart gives those who pray the freedom to choose what characteristics of God they focus on at any particular time. Tender, gentle, intuitive, intimately sharing, trusting and unconditional love and mercy are eminently feminine energies. Jesus’ own sense of his God focussed as much on these aspects of God as on God’s life-giving, ordering and active care for the world.


… may your name be held holy;

Within the culture, the name of God referred to God as revealed to humanity and as understood by humanity. The name was distinguished from the unknowable essence of God. In the Hebrew tradition God’s name was Yahweh. The word itself was regarded as so sacred that Jews would never pronounce it. When they encountered the name in their Scriptures, they substituted the word "The Lord". 

God had revealed this name to Moses at the burning bush, as recounted in the Book of Exodus [3:7-14].  At the same time as revealing the name, God connected it with the imminent liberation of the Israelites from the oppression of the Egyptian Empire.

The opening words of the Decalogue clearly connected the name of God with God’s liberating action:

I am the LORD (=Yahweh) your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery [Exodus 20:2].

The name of God (Yahweh), then, was inseparably linked to the sense of God as the liberating God. That sense of God’s name was clear to Jesus’ own contemporaries, as well as the members of Matthew’s community endeavouring to live the vision of Jesus in the cities of the Roman Empire.

Disciples were to pray: may your name be held holy.  To hold holy [usually translated as hallow] means to respect profoundly. Disciples were to take seriously this God, and the liberating energy expressive of the heart of God. The use of the verb in the passive voice was a customary Jewish way of referring to God’s active intervention. It requested God to make holy God’s name by bringing about their longed-for liberation. 

… and the nations shall know that I am the LORD (=YAHWEH),
says the Lord GOD, 
when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. 
I will take you from the nations,
and gather you from all the countries,
and bring you into your own land [Ezekiel 36:23-24].

Moses’ contemporaries experienced the oppression of the Egyptian Empire, Ezekiel’s of the Babylonian Empire. The disciples of Jesus and, later, Matthew’s community, knew the oppression of the Roman Empire. Like their predecessors, they longed for God to intervene to display his holiness once more.

10 … may your kingdom come.

This petition in some ways served to specify the previous one. In place of oppression by the rich and powerful, disciples were to long for the experience of God’s kingdom, the nature of which had been exemplified as Jesus worked his healings and exorcisms (and which had been cursorily described in the earlier part of the present discourse). Its coming would be God’s work.

… may your will come about on earth as it does in heaven.

Just as God’s name would be held holy through the advent of God’s kingdom, so, too, God’s kingdom would come as God’s saving will began to operate. All three would call for the close co-operation of disciples.

11 Give to us each day our bread for the day; 

Scholars debate the best translation for the word translated here as for the day. The word may recall the experience of the Israelites’ being fed with the “manna” in the Sinai desert; and, associated with the “manna”, it may have alluded to the concept of “need” and of “enough” (that which would meet everyone’s need, with nothing left over, as God had done in the desert for the first Israelites):

… When the layer of dew lifted, 
there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance,
as fine as frost on the ground. 
When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?”
For they did not know what it was. 
Moses said to them, “It is the bread
that the LORD has given you to eat. 
This is what the LORD has commanded: 
‘Gather as much of it as each of you needs, 
an omer to a person according to the number of persons,
all providing for those in their own tents.’ ” 
The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. 
But when they measured it with an omer, 
those who gathered much had nothing over,
and those who gathered little had no shortage; 
they gathered as much as each of them needed [Exodus 16:13-18]

In Jesus’ day, hunger was not uncommon. People lacked their daily necessities because others had accumulated too much. Rome loaded heavy taxes on the population. Many of the wealthy Jews took little notice of the oppression imposed on most of the population of Galilee.

The situation was little different for Matthew’s community out in the Diaspora. Poverty was rife in the cities of the Empire. God’s kingdom was yet to come. God’s will was yet to be realised.

12 release us from our debts,
as we have released those in debt to us; 

The language of the release (remission) of debts echoed that used in the description of the Sabbath Year, as recorded in Deuteronomy. The purpose, at that time, was that no one be in need among you:

And this is the manner of the remission: 
every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, 
not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, 
because the LORD’s remission has been proclaimed. 
Of a foreigner you may exact it, 
but you must remit your claim
on whatever any member of your community owes you. 
There will, however, be no one in need among you
[Deuteronomy 15:1-4]

The prayer simply assumed that everyone was in debt to God for offending God’s honour in some way. The image of debt was used to come to terms with the reality of sin. Most sin takes practical shape in actions that in one way or another do not respect the human dignity of another (or of the community), or of the persons themselves who are sinning. They are failures to love, to forgive, or to have mercy (as indicated earlier in the discourse).

The prayer does not suppose that disciples’ readiness to forgive would measure the degree to which God would forgive. That would negate the unconditional nature of God’s love. God is always the first to move. It is God who energises the capacity of disciples to forgive others. Forgiveness is like a river, flowing from God to the sinner, and through the sinner to others. As sinners surrender to the Kingdom reality, enabling God’s forgiveness to flow into them, they are caught into the flow of that forgiveness, and allow it to flow outwards from them to others. Sinners truly accept God’s forgiveness only as they come to accept, at the same time, their own radical dignity in the eyes of God. That dignity is truly seen as it is recognised as shared equally by others. To seek God’s forgiveness, without offering forgiveness to others, is incomplete.

13 … and do not lead us into temptation,

The Hebrew Scriptures contained incidents where God was said to have brought individuals to a time of trial/temptation. The possibility of God’s acting in that way can suppose an inadequate sense of God – a capricious God for whom human lives, and the choices people make, are treated ultimately as a kind of play-acting, without substance. While God can allow others to be the direct causes of whatever trials people might meet, God would not be the source of the trial/temptation. God’s involvement would be to allow temptation, perhaps, for the purpose of some greater good, but, at the same time, to empower a life-giving response to it.

God does allow people to act in ways that God does not directly want, rather than prevent them, and, thereby, compromise some greater good – their freedom and personal responsibility, for example.

Early Scriptural writers had no clear sense of the distinction between what God directly wanted and what God merely allowed. Wishing to preserve the sovereign control of God, they assumed that even actions that God merely permitted others to do were directly willed by God.

What did Jesus concretely have in mind by temptation? For his own disciples, their temptation came when he was arrested in Gethsemane. He repeatedly warned them to pray – but they were unable to heed his insistence. For the early disciples, Matthew seemed to see the temptation coming from the persistent oppression of the Empire, coupled with the delay in the arrival of God’s kingdom [See especially 26:41]. He was concerned that they would be tempted to lose hope, and to revert to their former ways. He would severely warn against such possibility.

How might God avert the disciples’ experience of temptation? The petition that would follow might have contained the answer.

… but rescue us from the Evil One.

(The word translated as the evil one could, with equal accuracy, mean simply evil.) Matthew had shown Jesus being tempted by the evil one in the desert after his baptism. He would show him, again, being severely tested in Gethsemane before his eventual arrest and execution. In Gethsemane, the context of the trial was his experience of apparent failure: God’s kingdom had not eventuated. Jesus had overcome the temptations in the first instance by his fidelity to Scripture, and in the second by his persistent prayer. In both cases, God had empowered him to choose with integrity.

Jesus insisted that disciples pray that God might not bring them to trial/temptation, and might rescue them from evil(one), not because God needed reminding, but so they might clearly recognise their own vulnerability, indeed, their own powerlessness, and might insistently keep close to the God who knows what you need before you ask him.

The following lines seem to be Matthew’s own gloss on what preceded. They do not appear in the corresponding section of Luke’s Gospel. (And debts have become trespasses).

14 For if you forgive people their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will forgive you; 
15 but if you do not forgive people,
the Father will not forgive your trespasses.

Matthew’s statement was not a theological expression of causality. People cannot forgive unless they are already empowered by the love of God. Human forgiveness is an extension of divine forgiveness. Matthew was seeking rather to emphasise the imperative, but constantly difficult, need always to forgive. He would return to the theme again later in the narrative. Threats were a consistent element in Matthew’s armoury.


Praying the Lord’s Prayer in Today’s World

Obviously, the values of “God’s kingdom” do not consistently guide the internal and external affairs of nations. Since the time of Jesus, empires have succeeded empires and kingdoms have succeeded kingdoms. In most cases, hopes for instant improvement vanished quickly. Shaping regimes according to the values of Jesus is a constant work in progress,

Given that the vast majority of Christians today live in the world’s poorer countries, suffering in many cases because of the unjust policies adopted by the more wealthy and powerful nations of the West, their prayer that “God’s kingdom come” and that “God’s will be done” inevitably requires and seeks the reform of the Western powers. Many Christians of the Western democracies join them, and pray and strive for a more just restructuring of international relationships.

As the citizens of the developing nations pray for their share of “daily bread”, they realise that one of the reasons for their lacking enough is that people in the West have too much and selfishly keep it to themselves. They pray that God might intervene. Christians in the West need to be aware of the significance of their joining with Christians around the world as they pray as Jesus taught them. Yet God’s intervention seems not to bypass human cooperation.

A major, though certainly not the only, factor in the plight of the poorer nations is their hopeless indebtedness to the money-lenders of the West. Christians in the First World need to pray thoughtfully as they ask for God’s forgiveness – the slowness of their governments to renegotiate or to “cancel the debts” of the poor often exacerbates the spiral of indebtedness. 


Matthew 6:16-18     Fasting

16 “When you fast, do not go around sad-faced as the hypocrites do;
they disfigure their faces so that people can see they are fasting.  
I tell you clearly, they have the reward they wanted.
17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 
18 so that people do not notice you are fasting -
but your Father who sees what is secret notices,
and your Father who sees what is secret will reward you appropriately.

Jesus assumed that disciples would fast. The fasting that accompanies prayer certainly helps to assure the sincerity of the requests of those who pray. Yet, fasting could be done for other reasons. Jesus continued to warn against self-inflating motives. The God who is in secret knows the inner motivations of people’s hearts. Only genuine motivation would lead to true human growth and to greater intimacy with God.

Single-Mindedness

Matthew had considered the question of alms-giving within the context of the accepted pious practices of Judaism. His point was that disciples not be self-seeking in their supposed generosity.

The reality of life in a large city like Antioch regularly raised the issue of responding appropriately to the general poverty of so many of the population, and, presumably, included with them, some members of the Christian community. A generous response would presuppose a proper attitude to wealth.

Matthew 6:19-21     Treasures

(Lk 12:33-34)
 
19Do not store up earthly treasures
where moths and rot can disfigure them,
and where thieves can dig through and steal them.
20 Rather store up treasures in heaven
where neither moths nor rot disfigure them
and where thieves do not dig through and steal. 
21 Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

A certain amount of wealth is important – Jesus lamented the situation of the poor, and promised that they would see a reversal, when the values of God’s Kingdom guided human interactions. Here, Jesus’ concern was the instinctive tendency in most people to be absorbed by the material world around them: storing up earthly treasures for themselves. He challenged disciples to get things in perspective.

A careless reading of Jesus’ comments has led some disciples to see their task as accumulating for themselves some sort of “heavenly capital”, that they express in such terms as more graces, merits, indulgences – all of which they view as some kind of extra additive. Genuine treasures in heaven are people’s developing capacity for love and their on-going thirst for truth: those expressions of human life that are eternal. These are what the human heart was made for and with which it joyfully resonates. Disciples acquire them as they pursue the on-going path to conversion, specifically in this instance, through a use of their wealth within the context, not of personal gratification, but of true human dignity and of the common good of society.

Matthew 6:22-23     A Clear Eye 

(Lk 12:34-36)

22The eye is the body’s lamp.  
If the eye is clear, the whole body is lit up.
23 But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be in darkness.  
If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

The literal meaning needs to be understood so that Jesus’ deeper meaning can be heard. So much depends on how Jesus and his contemporaries understood the operation of the eye. It seems that they saw its function as something similar to the head-lights of a vehicle. When the head-lights function well, the driver can see, and the vehicle is not likely to collide with unseen objects. If they do not function well, the driver is “in the dark”, and the danger of accidents is very real: how great is that darkness!

Who, then, is like the driver who can see? The word translated as evil actually means “single” (or clearly focussed). Jesus had earlier said that the pure in heart (the undivided heart) would see God. Matthew had already referred to how the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light[4.16] – that light being the presence and the impact of Jesus.  The meaning would seem to be, then, that the eye would be clear and the body would be lit up to the extent that disciples were enlightened by the teachings of Jesus and ready to follow them with undivided hearts. 

This would equip them to fulfil Jesus' commission to be the light of the world [5.14].