A PRAYER TO START
This prayer is adapted from Nan Doerr and Virginia Owens who offer this supplication to help us stay in the gracious presence of the Lord even when doing so exposes those ways in us that none of us desire to be true. Pray today…
Our Father, full of compassion and mercy. Come let us adore you. O Father, be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast your unchanging truth. For you, Father, did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him (Jn. 3:17). Therefore our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield (Ps. 33:20). May your grant us today Father, forgiveness of sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Amen.
TAKING A LOOK AHEAD
On any journey, whether a hike in the mountains or a trek to the grocery store, it is important to be aware of your surroundings, to be present. It’s also important to know where you are going! To look up, and take a peek at what is ahead.
This week our expedition’s path takes us into the depths of most desperate need: righteousness. Righteousness is word that has to do with meeting expectations, especially in a relationship. When the expectations of a relationship are not met, the relationship breaks down. That breakdown can be in a marriage, a friendship, a job, or in a society or group, or even with God. Fundamentally this is our most basic human need: to be in a “right” relationship with God. To be related to God—and thus all he creates—in a way that brings flourishing, wholeness, and goodness.
Read Matthew 5:20-26. As you are reading take notice and note of the following:
Who are the characters in the story? Explicitly named and those assumed.
Where does the story take place? Physically, & how is it connected to what proceeds it?
What repeats? Words, characters, actions/events, sayings, descriptions, etc.
What surprised you?
What might have surprised the people Matthew was writing to?
What questions does the story raise so far?
CONNECTING THE DOTS
Many of our translations phrase verse 20 in a way that to our ears sounds like we need to be “more” righteous, better people, than the best people of Jesus day,
“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God.”
Certainly there is an intensity to the beatitudes (5:3-12) that evaporates any notion that a life of faith is something of a hobby or simply a verbal acknowledgement. Kingdom living is real living—with all the beauty and difficulty that real life entails. So, it is not strange to consider those who live most intensely this life of faith (i.e. the scribes and Pharisees) as the ones whose relationship with God is be desired and their lives’ imitated.
Do you ever find yourself comparing your “faith” to those whose lives seem more “intensely” devoted than yours? Do you think your friends do?
What impression of “righteousness” does comparing ours with others give us?
If Jesus is saying we need to be better than the best, what picture of kingdom life does that create for us to strive after? Does that sound like “good news”?
Yet, what if the way we have been hearing verse 20 has given us the wrong impression of what it takes to enter the kingdom life? The commentator John Nolland (223-224) argues that we could / should read verse 20 in another way,
“For I tell you, there needs to be something more than the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees or you will never enter the kingdom of God.”
“…something more than”. If we follow Nolland’s translation, it sounds like Jesus is not saying we need to be better than the best, but rather we need something totally other to restore our relationship with the Father, and one another. In other words, Jesus is saying that the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is inadequate, that they are not meeting the expectations of the relationship with God even by following the letter of the Law and the Prophets.
How might you expect the people listing to Jesus’ comment that they need different expectations for a restored relationship with God to react? Think about the different types of people listening. Would they all react the same? Why or why not?
In what ways does Jesus’ comment in verse 17 that he has not come to “abolish” the sacred expectations of relationship, but rather “fulfill” them relate to verse 20? How will Jesus be different?
Read again verses 21-27. If Jesus is proclaiming the need for a different, greater righteousness for kingdom life, how does that understanding impact the way you read and interpret these verses? What different expectation or relationship is Jesus proclaiming here?
A THOUGHT TO PONDER
“There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the ways of death.”
(Proverbs 16:25)