Although Christians, especially, in my experience, non-church going ones, talk a lot about Christian morality and even use phrases such as “That’s not very Christian” meaning “I think that’s immoral”, the Gospels do not give any comprehensive statement of Christian Ethics. I suspect Jesus would have been surprised that such statement was needed. I do not mean to suggest He has nothing to say about how we should behave, but that the most important message derives from what he does.
Nevertheless, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel (part of which we heard this evening), does have quite a lot to say and comes as close to any such statement, or compendium of statements as there is. The strange thing is that it’s hardly distinctly Christian at all.
Perhaps we should not expect it to be. It’s clear that in some ways Matthew depicts Jesus as a new Moses and the Sermon on the Mount certainly has echoes of Moses setting out the Law which he received from God on Mount Sinai. Matthew’s version not, however, a mere repetition of that Law but an amplification even intensification of it. Jesus states that he has no intention of changing or abolishing the law; his intention is to fulfil it not to change any dot or iota of it.
Nevertheless, he takes a radical approach to it, literally turning it inside out and upside down.
Upside down, because the Beatitudes, with which he starts are a sort of restatement of the Ten Commandments but reversing the accepted social order. As in Mary’s manifesto, the Magnificat, it’s not the rich and powerful who are to be on top but the poor and the hungry, not the warmongers who will be rewarded but the persecuted. The bourgeois obsession with show, whether its clothes, or house or cars mean nothing; the wildflowers and birds look better without worrying about possessions. Conventional morality is upturned when he tells us that we should even love our enemies because, of course, although he does not spell this out, that is the only way they will stop being enemies.
Inside out, because Jesus tells us that it’s our inner selves that matter, not the outward show that we put on; it’s as bad, if not worse to be angry or lustful as it is to murder or commit adultery. Our appearance means nothing to God, who can see perfectly well what we really think, and what we really think is what matters.
This is all very troubling; much easier to accommodate oneself to the existing order and not rock the social boat, even if one is travelling through life deck class. Much easier to be sympathetic to the poor but do little about ending poverty. Very difficult not to feel jealous or angry or even lustful without any intention of taking those feelings anywhere. But troubling and challenging as they are, Sermon on the Mounts injunctions are right; this is how we should behave.
And yet there is something missing; it lacks spiritual imperative; its injunctions are radical but do not alter the fundamental basis of the old Law, and thus the Sermon does not seem to me to be quite Christian.
It’s a penetrating and challenging gloss on Mosaic law but equally a system to which most humanists would subscribe. It’s based on a transactional morality, an amplification of the Social Contract, expressed as a contract with God as summed up in Deuteronomy; If you will worship God alone and keep His law, he will give you a good life in the Promised Land. The Law is summed up as Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and your neighbour as yourself. It’s the last clause which is the essence of the Social Contract; loving one’s neighbour as oneself entails giving up one’s rights which might infringe one’s neighbour’s rights in return for the neighbour giving up his which might infringe yours. There is nothing unchristian in the Social Contract, but Christian morality is based on and demands something more.
That something is a gracious, unconditional love or perhaps better, kindness, because I suggest it is based in a sense of kinship, not merely with our fellow human beings, naturally, of all colours shapes and sizes, but every other creature and all creation.
The origin of this love is in God Himself. The creation of the world was, necessarily, a unilateral act and yet God’s relationship with His creatures, as portrayed in much Old Testament literature is highly contractual. It is a covenant- one half of a contract made between God and His people, sealed with a rainbow. Perhaps the evanescence of the rainbow is significant as in fact God forgives the Israelites more often than he destroys a wayward city.
This gracious love is more explicit in the Gospel, but more often expressed in actions that words; it is there in nearly all the miracles, which are conditional only on the disabled or sick person wishing to be healed and believing Jesus has the power to do so; it is there as the Prodigal’s father rushes out to forgive and welcome home his undeserving son; it is there when Jesus teaches us how to pray, enjoining us to be forgiven as we forgive those who sin against us. This last may seem transactional but I think it is rather that we can never be in a fit state to receive God’s forgiveness unless we can forgive others.
Gracious love is there too in John’s account of the Last Supper when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet upsetting social order in a way that might have been included in the Magnificat. And finally, and most significantly it is there at Golgotha. Admittedly, some do see the crucifixion a ghastly transaction whereby God accepts his Son’s death as the price for redeeming mankind. I cannot see it like that but rather as the ultimate expression of selfless, altruistic love of God himself for his creation.That is the love which ought to underpin our morality; the Sermon on the Mount has wise and penetrating words to say about how we behave but, the Lord’s Prayer apart, it omits the fundamental point. Nevermind, we have the rest of the Gospels to complete the picture. Amen.