Parable of the Talents: Why Talents Aren’t Talents

You may find this a refreshing departure from the usual "talents" sermon.

(Read Matt. 25:14-30)

It will help you to understand the parable better if, for a moment, we put the modern meaning of 'talent' out of our minds. The word 'talent' in this story means money. A talent was a particular quantity of money in Roman and Greek societies. But where did the other meaning of 'talent' come from? Actually, it came from this parable! Because, through thousands of years of church history, preachers have applied this parable to the lives of their hearers, asking, 'How are you using your "talents" for God?' Of course, they first said 'talents', in quotation marks, as a metaphor for abilities and skills. But this went on for so long that, finally, the word 'talent' completely took on the meaning it has today. In other words, no more quotation marks. Because everybody had forgotten the real meaning of the word, anyway. But that created problems.

The main problem is, we tend to read the parable and take the word 'talent' in the usual modern sense, as an ability, and that creates two more problems: 1) we oversimplify the parable and miss its deeper meaning; 2) we misuse the parable, especially when we apply it to each other. Maybe somebody already wants to object, 'Wait a minute! Are you saying that God doesn't want our abilities, He just wants our money?' No, of course not. The word 'talent' in the parable does mean money, simply because that’s what the word means, and that’s what the people in the story are talking about. But it would be totally wrong to interpret the parable as saying, “God is only interested in your money.” But it is equally wrong to interpret the parable to say, “God is only interested in how talented you are.” Both interpretations are wrong. The money in the parable is talking about something bigger than both money and talents, the way we think of talents.

It will help us to understand this parable and all parables better if we keep in mind this concept: two worlds. There is the world inside the parable, where people interact with each other and relate to each other and do things for their own reasons, and then there is our world, where we read the parable and draw from it metaphors, and parallels, and applications. Let me give you a very simple example, very easy to understand: you all know how Jesus said he was the good shepherd, and how the good shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to go looking for the one lost sheep. Now, Jesus didn't say that the good shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to go looking for the one lost drug addict! That would make no sense. Shepherds look for sheep, not drug addicts! Inside the world of that simple picture Jesus gave us, the shepherd is a shepherd and the sheep are sheep. But, when we relate that picture, as a metaphor, to our world, then we know that Jesus is speaking of God's great love toward sinners, and how He will do everything possible to find lost souls, including the drug addict, the thief, the murderer and, by the way, the person who seems to perfectly fine.

And so we come back to this parable. Inside the world of this parable, the master is a real master, the slaves are real slaves, the money is real money, the hole in the ground is a real hole! And the master's words in verse 27 mean literally what they say: the slave should have put the money in the bank and earned some interest on it! He wouldn't even have needed to roll up his sleeves and work, he could have simply put the money in the bank, and at least he'd have earned something! Something is better than nothing! But nothing is worth precisely nothing, which is why the master calls the servant 'worthless'. The master gave the servant something and the servant made nothing out of it. That's what happened in the story, in that world.

And now, how do we interpret it, apply it to our world? What lesson do we take from this story? In the parable, the master gave the servants money and expected a profit from it. In our life, what does God give us and what does He expect us to do with it? As a hint, I want to suggest that it’s no accident Jesus immediately followed this parable with a prophecy of his second coming, when he will separate the sheep from the goats. And what is the criterion in making the separation? (Read Matt. 25:35-36)

It is interesting that Jesus says nothing here about preaching a sermon, or singing a solo, or playing the piano or washing the church windows. All those things are good and necessary, but sometimes we interpret this parable as if it were only talking about that: about artistic abilities or housekeeping chores or what we do in the service on Sunday morning. It's not. It's a parable about life. A parable about what we do with life, who we become inside, and how we show God to others. Ultimately, your talent – that is, the spiritual currency God has entrusted you with – is your life; it's the gift of life itself. The master in the parable gave his servants money and they were judged by how they used it. God has given us life. That is the precious 'talent' the Master has entrusted us with.

We can look at this priceless talent in different ways: it is the time given to each of us on this earth, to find God and His love. It is our capacity to respond to him. It is the possibility of loving people. This ‘talent’ is God's summons to climb the stairs of holiness through a transformation of heart that bears fruit in works of love. I want to say that again: this ‘talent’ is God's summons to climb the stairs of holiness through a transformation of heart that bears fruit in works of love.

The scriptures portray such a life in many different ways. For example, we all know the passage in Galatians where Paul mentions the “fruit of the Spirit”. There you have a picture of God’s investment bearing fruit. Likewise, Ephesians 4:22-5:1 (read). The apostle is talking here about a wholly new way of life, a new mind, new eyes for seeing the way God sees, and feeling with God’s heart. Because of God’s precious gift, we can throw off and leave behind the old man and become actual imitators of our heavenly Father. Romans 12:1-2 talks about the same thing in fewer, but very powerful, words (read). “Be transformed”, “imitate God”, “be living sacrifices” – this is what the parable of the talents is all about. And the money called “talents” in the story stands for the open door God gives each one of us to enter in to the richness of the Spirit and life in Christ. Yes, yes, of course, this will be demonstrated in certain practical ways in our daily lives, and I don’t ever want to suggest that singing in the church choir or cleaning the sanctuary are not part of that. But what a terrible mistake we will make if we think that that’s all the parable was meant to teach.

In conclusion, let me repeat that we should be careful how we interpret the parable of the talents. When we oversimplify it, we use it incorrectly. Let's be honest, sometimes we exploit this parable to force people to do what we want them to do. We want a brother or sister to sing a song and maybe they don't want to. And what do we say? 'Remember the parable of the talents, brother! God says to use your talents, so you’d better sing this morning!' So we quote the scripture to convince the brother it's God's will for him to sing – work a little “holy guilt” on him - when in reality it’s our will for him to sing! The parable doesn’t actually say anything about doing a solo in church. In fact, to hear how some people throw this parable around, you’d think the whole parable was about singing!

We shouldn't use scripture that way. Instead of applying the parable to others in a shallow way, it would be better to apply it first to ourselves in a deeper way: to examine first how we are using the real ‘talent’ - the precious truth and life – which God has invested in us. We’ve all received this talent. Even the “untalented” brother or sister, in today's sense of the word – the one who can't sing, can't play an instrument, can't preach, can't build anything, it seems they can't do anything... and maybe they can't! – that person, that child of God, still possesses the great, real, indescribable Talent, with a capital T, of God. And we don’t help him or her by forcing them to come up with something we consider a ‘talent’, with a small “t” - as if the parable doesn’t apply to them until we can define how well they do needlepoint or fix a car. No, no matter what they can or can’t do – and praise God for all the abilities He gives us – but, no matter what they can or can’t do, every child of God possesses the true Talent, the secret treasure, the hidden spiritual glory, the eternal newness that is life in Christ. And every child of God can make so much out of it, and we have to help each other do so, as we grow into the glory of the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Light on the Road to Bethany (John 11:1-10)

(Read John 11: 1-2)

With these simple words, the Gospel writer John lets us know that something special is going on here. Jesus had already been healing many whose names we don’t know. But here it says a “certain Lazarus” was ill. We read his name, Lazarus, and that he lived in Bethany, and who he lived with, that is, his sisters Mary and Martha. And if that is not enough, John specifies that this is the family from which one of the sisters... (read verse 2). Have you noticed that John reminds the readers about that event as if all we need to do is turn back a few pages and find it in the gospel? The funny thing, though, is that that event is located later in the gospel, after this chapter, not before it! What it means is, when John says to his readers, ‘This is that Mary who anointed Jesus once and wiped his feet with her hair”, John doesn’t mean, “like you already read in this book”. No, what he means is, “like you already heard about, dear readers.” John is writing first of all to believers in the first century who first heard these stories in spoken form, and he assumes that when he mentions the story of Mary anointing Jesus, the early church knows perfectly well what he’s talking about, even though he hasn’t gotten to that yet in the written version. And, of course, in the same way, as they read this Gospel from the very first words, “In the beginning was the Word”, they already knew that it would tell about the crucifixion and the resurrection and Jesus’ many, many glorious words and deeds. And as soon as they read here that Jesus got word about Lazarus’ illness, they already know, “Ah, this is the story about how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead!”

All the same, none of them probably ever heard the story with all the detail that John includes here. That’s part of the reason for the written Gospel, to fill out the story and go deeper into the spiritual impact of it. I don’t doubt that John chose precisely the most important details that would teach us more about the very meaning and glory of Jesus Christ.

Now, we’re not going to talk today about the whole story of the raising of Lazarus. We’ll just focus a bit more deeply on the first part of the chapter, about what happened right up to heading out to Bethany. But just like the church of the first century, we also know the rest of the story, and let’s keep it in our minds as we meditate over the “preface”. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. We know it. And reading the run-up to it, we know that Jesus knows he will do it, and he knows why, and everything he’s doing and saying before the event is in the light of the awesome glory and power he is about to reveal.

(Read verse 3) Word came to Jesus: “the one you love is ill”. But Jesus already knows that the one he loves is not merely ill; he’s going to die. And precisely in this fact Jesus recognizes the promise of glory. That brings a question to my mind: if the Son of God sees in the death of his beloved friend the promise of glory, then what do we see only gloom and despair in?

In verse four, Jesus says, “This illness will not end in death”. But... Lazarus died! As a rule, if a doctor says some illness won’t be fatal and then the patient dies from it, we say the doctor was wrong! But when Jesus says that this illness –the illness of this dying, perhaps already dead man – is not going to end in death but in God’s glory, knowing that he will glorify his Father precisely by raising this man, Jesus Christ happens to be talking about the realest thing of all, the most fixed and certain and true and concrete and genuine. Because thinking that this death represents defeat for all possibilities of God’s activity in Lazarus’s life, that’s actually what is unreal and an illusion. Lazarus’s death is no defeat but an occasion for glory.

Back in chapter nine, verses one to three, Christ expresses the very same truth just a little bit differently. (Read vv. 1-3) For Christ, God’s action is uninterrupted and continually present. Ultimately, God’s intention plays the central role in everything that happens. And in Jesus’ life on earth the entire sense and objective of his being was to continually perceive and carry out that intention. The Lord also knew that, as long as he walked in this world, he was the world’s light, and while there is light you can work – in other words, there was nothing that was going to stop him from doing what his Father was determined to do through him. It was that simple. Jesus would never stop, because it was time to work, right up to the moment when it was time to embrace death itself in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice to the Father’s will.

In this light it’s easier to follow what Jesus says further (read vv. 4-5). “People don’t work at night, they work in the day. And it’s day now, so let’s work. I’ve brought the light, I am the light. Why wouldn't I do my Father’s work now?” And for us these words (v.5), “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” are as relevant now as they were when Jesus walked the earth. This is a promise not only to the disciples who listened to Jesus speak it, but a promise and encouragement to us, because Jesus is in the world even today, not in the flesh but spiritually indwelling his body, the Church – the Church he purifies and prepares for glory.
This same Christ, who now abides in his Church with the Father and the Spirit, and sanctifies her, this is the very same Jesus who on one sunny day in Palestine long ago heard the words, “Your friend is sick”, and answered, “This is to God’s glory”, and when he said that he wasn’t just wishing, he was defining reality. And he knew that not just sickness but an actual death would turn into God’s glorification. What are the circumstances, the situations, the problems in your life today that Jesus knows all about, just as much as he knew all about what God would do through Lazarus’ death? You know, just as with Lazarus, it’s truly the case that, sometimes, the circumstances have to get, not better, but worse before God’s glory unfolds through them.

But let’s not make the mistake of thinking that, until we see that glory, God’s doing nothing, taking the day off. The essence of faith is that even when it seems that things are only getting worse, without a glimmer of hope, the heart stays fixed on the truth of God’s continual presence and intention. True faith doesn’t sleep until God does something. Genuine faith always perceives the advance of God’s will and gets stronger for it. Faith is a way of seeing. In order to see physically, two things are needed: eyes – at least one! – and a source of light, like the sun. Well, the spiritual realm is no different. To see spiritually we need both eyes and sun. But the spiritual eye is faith, and the sunlight of our faith is the very Person of the risen Son of God and his glory. (Read 2 Cor. 3:17-18)

And so we return to the “preface” of the raising of Lazarus, to listen to the words of the Light of the World. (Read John 11:4-8) Of course, Jesus could well have responded, “No, you needn’t fear that. They’re not going to stone me, in fact. Something else is waiting for me there....” But Jesus took the moment to repeat the lesson he gave them earlier, one they seem not to have understood: (read vv. 9-10). What does that mean?

Jesus would have “stumbled” in the darkness if, hypothetically, he had promised his disciples that no one would stone him and then they had actually stoned him in Jerusalem. He would have stumbled in the darkness if, with the horror of the cross looming before him, he had run away, and if they had caught him anyway and led him to the cross as he struggled and screamed. But Jesus didn’t stumble, the Light of the World didn’t get lost in the darkness. In fact, he had this to say about his soon suffering; (read John 10:17-18).

The light of the world never stumbled, and he will help us not to stumble. It doesn’t mean we won’t go through hardship or grief. But not stumbling means not losing faith, not giving up your assurance in God’s presence and intentions, not losing hold of the absolutely certain hope in the ultimate outcome of God’s glory, which overflows with goodwill towards us.

Unexpected Words (Luke 9:37-46)

This sermon takes a section which is, probably, rarely preached on as a single unit. For me, though, the uniting concept was the string of “contrary” responses Jesus gave and what those responses said about the deepest spiritual reality, or realities, underlying these incidents. As I pictured the boy’s father receiving his restored son back with exultation and, most likely, tears, and with Jesus watching, it suddenly hit me with a jolt that Jesus may have been thinking at that moment of his own heavenly Father and the reunion towards which he was pressing on with everything that was in him. And just as the boy had to go through terrible suffering before being restored, it is altogether reasonable to suppose that, at that moment, Jesus connected the suffering awaiting him with the image of restoration, reunion.

While it is typical for us to read Jesus’ stark, seeming non sequitur about the Son of Man’s suffering as a “lesson” to his disciples, perhaps our reading is too... dry. It doesn’t do any violence to the sense of the text or, more importantly, to the meaning of the Person, to imagine Jesus telling these things to his friends, “out of the blue”, with a choking voice and agony of both pain and love, in view of the moment. They could hardly be expected to grasp, just then, “where that came from” or why. Later, they may well have understood not only what Jesus was talking about, in terms of concrete facts, but why he talked about it precisely then.

In the five very brief “vignettes” included in this section, the running theme seems to be that Jesus is now, more than ever, entirely consumed with one thing: the ultimate consummation of his complete, selfless surrender out of love. The egotistic, petty and vindictive preoccupations of those around him at this time stand, therefore, in even more appalling contrast. They also illustrate just how terribly alone Jesus was in a world of men – alone, but for the Father.


(Read Luke 9:37-40)

We can’t call this a commonplace situation; we don’t run into something like this every day! But you can say that during Jesus’ earthly mission such situations were fairly usual. In the presence of God’s Son on the earth, evil forces for some reason manifested themselves more starkly, more blatantly, as if they couldn’t help showing themselves before the authority and holiness of Jesus. I would expect them to hide! But God’s presence somehow draws even hostile spirits. They rush out to try and oppose him. During his labors on earth Jesus cast out many such spirits, and here we find yet another instance.

But suddenly Jesus makes a pronouncement that is not typical; we never heard him talk like this before: (read verse 41, excluding last sentence). Amazing! None of our teaching about God’s love prepared us to hear, from the lips of the loving Redeemer, such utter exasperation. But that’s exactly what Jesus expresses. He’s “had it” with the total absence of faith, the spiritual obtuseness of humanity. And, quite naturally, he groans, “How long do I have to put up with you?”

Maybe you think that that doesn’t sound like love! But I want to say that this is supreme love: love with both eyes open, love that doesn’t fool itself about the nature of those who are loved, love that keeps going to the last drop of strength. This is love speaking, even as is aches and yearns for home, pines to see the Beloved One, but love that is ready to endure to the last drop of blood, ready to wait, ready to serve, ready to die for the beloved ones, even if they don’t understand, even when their stubborn spiritual shortsightedness tortures him. With these words Christ shows again that he truly is man – not a sinner, but man – and he grieves for the fallen-ness and appalling ignorance of those who, from the very beginning, were supposed to reflect divine love and glory. This Jesus is surely the “man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief”. But he is also the man and God of love who says, even in the most crying frustration, “Bring your son to me.” And what happens then? (Read vv. 42-43a)

Everyone is marveling. There’s incredible excitement and joy. But it’s exactly at that moment that Christ pronounces these completely unexpected words to his disciples: (read 43b-45).

Someone might say, “Look, this is a happy moment. The boy is completely delivered from all the tortures of the evil spirits, this father has gotten his precious son back, everybody’s jumping with joy. Why does Jesus have to suddenly throw a damper on the party with words like these?” But again we have to say that the voice of love is speaking here. Perhaps, as Jesus saw how ecstatic that father was to get his dearest and only son back, thoughts came rushing to Jesus’ mind – images and expectations – of his own reunion with his true Father, and how that reunion could only come through tortures and grief and death. Perhaps, too, looking at his closest friends, his followers, as they celebrated together with the crowd, Jesus needed to remind them of the actual, ultimate meaning of his being here in the world. Maybe Jesus needed understanding. He was, after all, a man – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – and for some reason, at that moment, his own approaching agony and his longing for home were very real to him.

Imagine Jesus' disappointment, then, when the disciples couldn’t understand. And not only that, but started bickering with each other about something totally different and useless. (Read vv. 46-47)

It’s no accident that, as a response, Christ turns their attention to a child. You see how a certain theme subtly continues? God’s Child, whose hearts longs to see the Father, who is getting ready to give up his very last breath in a sacrifice of love to Him for the sake of lost humanity – in fact, precisely that lost humanity standing around him at the moment arguing over which one of them is number one, king of the castle – God’s Child, in response, takes a child by the hand. Perhaps he stands with that child silently for a few minutes until the disciples who are busy arguing finally stop long enough to notice (God is patient), and finally the last disciple shuts his mouth and looks at Jesus and the child, and instantly feels humiliated, because he knows that he, all of them, have been making fools of themselves. An embarrassed, mortified silence. And Jesus speaks, (read verse 48).

In other words: genuine greatness, genuine excellence, doesn’t come from how you look at yourself but from how you look at the most insignificant, the most helpless, the most needy in this world. And if you become like them, you become like Christ, who made himself nothing, right up to dying on a wooden cross – and precisely by doing that, rose above all things in heaven and earth.

After a shattering lesson like that, you might expect complete silence and serious self-examination. But people always manage to come with some kind of “But-!”. I think parents especially know what that’s about: “But...! But...!” And here dear John comes up with an objection: (read verse 49).

In other words, “Yes, but, Lord, we still have to sort out who’s who... right? It’s up to us to say who’s close to you, who’s way out there. We have to discern, to judge, set the boundaries.”

Jesus’ answer is very simple: (read v. 50). That is, “Your assignment, John... Johnny... is to look at me, follow me, be for me, not against this one or that one, let alone standing in judgment on those who aren’t against you. Judgment is in God’s hands, but God’s love is reaching out to the whole world through your hands, your life. Get with the program, Johnny.”

Obviously, it was still a little early for John and company to get it, because look what happened next: (read vv. 51-55).

The Zebedee brothers had a pretty clear idea what condemnation looked like, and they were rarin’ and ready to see a real show of messianic power. They’d have loved to say, “Ha! You didn’t want to accept us, and now you’ve gotten what was coming to you. Next time you’ll know better.”

But Jesus rebuked them. He didn’t argue with them, didn’t debate the issue with them, didn’t even stand another child in front of them as an example; he just rebuked them: “You don’t even know what kind of spirit you’re operating on.” And then, Jesus turned his face and headed to Jerusalem. Because, until it’s all done there, these disciples will never get it, will never know what condition their spirits are in or what it means to love with God’s love even to death, and beyond, to all eternity.

But I think that now, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, after his ascension to the Father, after the coming of the Spirit and the revelation of salvation and grace, I think we better understand. And I think Jesus’ unexpected words about suffering and humility and spirit aren’t as unexpected or quite as mysterious to us as they were to the disciples then. Rather, I trust you and I are pressing on to materialize and live out, here and now, the meaning of Jesus’ words: in patience, humility, love and a heart that yearns for the Father in Heaven. That’s Jesus’ gift: to understand what he meant, even what he felt, and to know his heart. And when we know his heart, we are never alone.

Matthew 7 (Sermon on the Mount)

This will be my longest of introductions, but I think it is important and hope it will prove interesting.

While my sermon is mostly on Matthew 7, it is really intended to give a rather sweeping overview of the entire Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), in as few words as possible. The operative interpretation behind my message is that, by paying strict attention to the historical, cultural and theological context, the Sermon on the Mount must be taken not as some loose “bouquet” of proverbs, aphorisms, inspiring ideals and “practical applications” but, rather, as a single, coherent, logically developed summons to the nation, to the real people listening to Jesus that day – a radical summons to abandon a worldview grounded in relative (comparative) righteousness, social approbation and cultural identity.

The summons is even more radical and audacious in that, in place of that familiar, more-or-less comfortable worldview, Jesus presents – starkly, without apology – himself as the center, the touchstone, the authority, the very meaning of the new worldview – a worldview to be accepted for no lesser reason than that, very simply, it is reality, the way things actually are.

In short, the “narrow gate” is Jesus and the straight path is the new life of the kingdom upon which one sets out after entering through Him. (Notice, please, how this interpretation diverges from the customary one as depicted on Sunday School room posters, where the straight path leads up to a narrow gate/pearly gates, i.e., into Heaven at the end of life. To me, that interpretation totally misses the stark option Jesus was laying out to his immediate hearers. The gate isn’t at the end of the road but the beginning.)

Before the Jewish nation in about the year 30 AD there are two paths available: 1) the “wide gate” which will (whether they know it or not, but Jesus knows it) lead only to the end of the world, i.e., their world as they perceive and construct it (70 AD), and 2) the “narrow gate”, which is Jesus himself, the living portal of God’s kingdom, where true righteousness both commences and is consummated in knowing him. Having entered the kingdom through him, their true identity before God can never again be threatened, no matter what happens to the temple, to Jerusalem, etc. They will become the genuine kingdom of the Spirit, in Christ.

Understood in this way, the Sermon becomes less the “beautiful”, “inspirational” piece of “literature” some would make it out to be (though ultimately it is far more “beautiful” than that) and more of a scandal and outrage to the socio-religious norms of the time. Jesus’ sermon epitomizes C.S. Lewis’s famous observation about Jesus leaving his contemporaries (and us) very few intellectually honest options, i.e., to take him as “liar, lunatic or Lord”. If, as Jesus says in the conclusion and summation of the sermon, he is actually going to be the One to whom all souls answer on the last day, then the whole sermon is true and the only reasonable thing for his hearers to do that day was to throw in their lot 100% with him, no matter what. If he is wrong, however, then any talk of the “moral beauty” of the sermon is simply nonsense.

Someone might object that I am being naïve taking the Sermon as a conceptual whole – that, for one thing, it is unlikely Jesus actually “recited” these three “chapters,” word-for-word, all in one go just like we have it recorded. And, for another thing, what we have in writing is in any case the composition – no matter how accurately recalled – of Matthew. We can’t interpret the Sermon solely on the basis of what we think Jesus was saying to those people that day or how they took his meaning; rather, we have to take into account what Matthew wanted to say to his audience, too.

My responses to those objections:
1) there is no reason to assume that Jesus did not or could not have pronounced this entire message, virtually as we have it recorded, all in one go. It’s not really that long a sermon, particularly for the pre-television world (when people still had attention spans) and particularly when there is a vital conceptual center driving the development of the thought with passion. We all know quite well that when there is one thing we desperately wish to get across as vividly as possible, it is quite normal to explain the idea at length, with multiple illustrations, applications and extrapolations. The Sermon is a perfect example; in fact, in terms of length or complexity, it is hardly an extreme case. I would even call it a rather compact nugget! Moreover, even if Matthew 5-7 encapsulates teaching pronounced by Jesus over a period of days, that fact doesn't argue in the least against the tight conceptual flow of the Sermon either in Jesus' telling or Matthew's recording. You could make the argument, after all, that Jesus was preaching only one thing for three years.
2) Yes, we are “getting” the Sermon through a) the “filter” of Matthew, b) the passage of time between event and composition, and c) the materialization of new contexts, i.e., the early Church to which Matthew is writing, a (somewhat) different audience than Jesus’ there on the mountainside (though Israel was, after all, God’s “church” [qahal] and the raw material, the initial stock, of Jesus’ new ‘qahal’). This is hardly an objection. Matthew’s world, and the early Church’s, is still the world, and audience, Jesus addressed on the mountainside. The challenge of Jesus was no less audacious or outrageous expressed through the Church and its writings in the middle first century than when Jesus himself pronounced the words on earth only a few years or decades earlier. The challenge, the import and virtually the entire socio-cultural context was the same. Therefore, Matthew’s “message” is faithful to Jesus’ “message”. It is the same message: the early Church is the “poor in spirit” whom Jesus challenged to enter the “narrow gate” and entrust their eternal lot to Him, seeking first the kingdom and God’s righteousness. They have cut their line to the dock and set sail with the Captain of their salvation, Jesus. (For some, however, the ride eventually proved rather too adventurous and they started looking longingly back to the dock... which is what the whole Epistle to the Hebrews is about. But that’s another story. Sort of.)

To appreciate the meaning and importance of chapter seven, which is the climax of the Sermon on the Mount, we really have no choice but to quickly sum up chapters five and six! Believe me, this will be quick.

The essence of what Jesus is saying to the people around him, starting from the Beatitudes, is this: “People, everything is about to change; it’s already changing. The kingdom is coming, and its laws and principles aren’t what you think. You’ve got to be ready to think in a new way, to see in a new way. For example, blessed are this world's 'losers', the ones whose hearts are broken over the evils around them, and in them. They’re the ones who are ready to receive what's coming: the kingdom. You can’t enter the kingdom unless you’re willing to live for it and be the salt of the earth. How do you do that, you ask? Simple: your righteousness must be greater than even the Pharisees’ righteousness! What? Not so simple? The Pharisees are experts in righteousness? They know every trick in the book when it comes to keeping God’s law? Not so fast. Let’s talk about righteousness. You’ve heard them teaching you about everything it says in the Book: Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t break your oaths. But I’m telling you today that God’s standard is unbelievably higher. God looks at the heart. God doesn’t look at what you’re not doing; He looks at what you want to do. You’ve all been very well trained to be religious: you know when to fast, when to say your prayers, when to give money to the poor. And you get a nice pat on the back from the world when you do. But I’m telling you today that God’s standard is unbelievably higher. He looks at the heart. It’s time for you to decide what you want more: a nice pat on the back for being religious, or maybe rejection, suffering, even death for wanting what God wants and doing what God does. So decide. Do you want the kingdom? If you’re ready to surrender yourselves totally to God, I promise you, your Father in heaven will take care of you better than anyone could. But you’ve got to put Him... and Me... first.”

And that is my condensed version of the first two-thirds of the Sermon on the Mount. And now we come to the dramatic, even shocking climax. And if you were a Jewish man or woman listening to what Jesus was saying that day, I guarantee you, you would have been shocked.

So we come to chapter seven. Chapters five and six were like a picture which Jesus drew, a picture of a beautiful country, and he is inviting everyone to follow him there. But to go there, you have to get into Jesus’ ship, the ship of salvation. And Jesus is the captain of that ship. It means you have to leave your old country with all its traditions and laws, and you have to obey the rules of the ship. I think this is what Jesus is telling us in chapter seven. I think he’s saying, “Now you know where I want to bring you. Are you ready to go? If so, get in the boat and don’t look back. You can’t live the old way anymore. You can’t think the old way anymore. This is a new life with a new foundation, new responsibilities, new promises and, yes, new dangers.”

Now please remember: these events we read about in scripture aren’t just words on paper; these aren’t people in a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci or statues who never change, never feel anything. These are real people, who cough and sneeze, who scratch where it itches, who get sunburned – for instance, when they’re standing outside listening to a carpenter from Nazareth preaching. These are specific people who love other specific people, probably hate a few specific people, too, and don’t spend much time at all thinking about the rest. And now picture Jesus there on the mountain surrounded by his disciples and this crowd – there are no halos in the picture, by the way – and he is announcing that a kingdom has come, though nothing seems to have changed very much if you look around. But Jesus sits there and teaches the nation from the mountaintop, almost like, well, like God giving Moses the law on Mount Sinai. And in that crowd there are most likely some Pharisees and other bigwigs, and they’re not dumb. They get it. And they’re probably thinking, “Who does he think he is?” And Jesus’ subtle hints – and not-so-subtle hints – about the Pharisees’ so-called righteousness don’t fly over their heads, either. There are extremely uncomfortable moments during this Sermon, especially for any bigwigs who happen to be in the audience.

I think chapter seven begins with exactly such an uncomfortable moment, when Jesus talks about judging. Now, we usually understand this section to mean that we shouldn’t criticize each other. Some people even think this part of the Sermon says that we should never say that anything is a sin. The words, “Judge not, lest you be judged” are the favorite slogan of different groups who organize big demonstrations in support of sinful lifestyles. You’ll see Jesus’ words “Judge not!” painted in big letters on the signs they carry in their parades: “Since Jesus said, ‘Do not judge’, you have no right to say that anything is a sin!”

Now we have to ask, is that, can that, really be what Jesus meant? That it is always wrong to identify an action of any kind as sinful, or even just plain wrong? I don’t think so. In fact, when we look at Jesus’ own life and how he condemned evil acts, we know that can’t be what he meant. Otherwise, he broke his own rule!

No, the whole logical flow of the Sermon on the Mount, and the situation in that society where Jesus was speaking, make it very clear that Jesus is simply continuing the central thought that started from chapter five, verse one: it's time for you to abandon your old life. And what was that old life? To a great extent, it was a religious system, very much run by the Pharisees, based on comparing: who’s the best keeper of the law, all 613 laws of it, not to mention thousands and thousands of interpretations. The Pharisees were the Taliban of Jesus’ time, the religious watchdogs: judging was their job. And if you wanted to be anybody in society, you’d better get yourself a degree in judging, too! For us, the word “judging” has a very negative connotation – in fact, precisely because of the Sermon on the Mount. But I think the Pharisees would have been delighted with that job description, just like the women in Iran who walk the streets with their sticks ready to give a good beating to any female who isn’t sufficiently cloaked. I think the Pharisees would have boasted, “Yes, we’re the ones who make everybody toe the line, who make sure nobody breaks God’s law... as we interpret it.” In that specific, suffocating environment, Jesus’ meaning is very clear, and it’s also radical, dangerous and threatening to the religious big shots of the time. He is saying, “No. No. God never made you His enforcers. In His kingdom, you’re out of a job, guys. And your whole system has completely the wrong focus.” As soon as Jesus brought up judging, the crowd had to know what the subtext was; they lived in it all the time. I bet there were a few carefully hidden smiles among the simple folk, and maybe some scowls and glares among the Pharisees in the crowd. “Instead of making judges out of yourselves,” Jesus tells them, “what you really have to do is become experts in personal holiness, and if you can’t see the difference, then you haven’t understood a word I’ve said so far.” Of course I’m paraphrasing, but I genuinely believe this meaning was obvious for those people there in that place at that moment. Let’s look closer at the allegory Jesus presents – a very famous allegory.

“How can you see the splinter in your brother’s eye and not see the plank in your own?” I think it’s fair enough to say most people interpret that to mean, “How can you see the eensy-weensy little fault in somebody else and totally miss the monstrous flaw in yourself?” I have to tell you, I don’t agree with that interpretation, popular though it is. If that’s what Jesus is saying, it completely contradicts his whole point. It doesn’t actually make sense. For a lot of reasons.

For example, there have got to be cases where the tables are turned (right?) and the fault in my life isn’t nearly as terrible as the next guy’s – like, maybe he’s a murderer or something. In that case, Jesus’ allegory doesn’t apply to me. I get an ‘out’, a free pass, I can judge my brother because, this time, he's got the plank and I've only got the splinter.... But we know that can’t be right. Jesus was laying down a principle that applies to everyone. So there’s got to something more in this besides simply comparing how big one sin is against another.

And that brings up another reason why I can’t accept the usual interpretation. The whole point here is that it’s time to leave that old religion of proving who’s better than whom. Now, how does it make sense if Jesus bases that whole point on an illustration that depends on comparing one person’s sin against another’s - that is, the plank vs. the splinter? If Jesus is saying “You can’t judge, because your sin is bigger”, that’s already a comparison! It doesn’t make sense.

Finally, it doesn’t make sense because Jesus says, nevertheless, that when you take care of the plank in your eye, you can help your brother get his splinter out. So, obviously, the point is not that you must never recognize where someone else needs correction.

For all those reasons, the usual interpretation just doesn’t work for me.

Here’s what I believe Jesus is actually saying to those people, in that time, in a way they would really get, and good. If I have a speck of wood in my eye and you have a speck of wood in yours, and they’re the same size (because nobody can really have a plank in their eye), which speck should be more obvious to me: the one in my eye or the one in yours? Of course, the one in mine. It’s in my eye, after all. I can feel it, it hurts, it should be my main issue of the moment: how do I get this thing out of my eye? Because it’s in my eye, it should be like a plank to me, the biggest thing in my field of vision. If it’s not, there’s something wrong with me. And the very idea that I wouldn’t even notice it and at the same time look at you and say, “Whoa, have you got a tree trunk in your eye” is crazy. And yet, Jesus is telling the people of his time that that’s precisely what they’re doing, and it is crazy. It’s not a matter of whose sin is bigger. Comparing isn’t the issue; in fact, that’s what they’re supposed to stop doing. It’s a question of whose sin you notice most of all- yours or other people’s. Jesus is saying that, in this kingdom of righteousness where he reigns, we must each become an expert in splinter removal, first from our own eyes. In other words, experts in personal holiness. Because we belong to Him. Because those splinters don’t go with love for Him. The subject is the hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is the love of God, and the priority on living the life that brings Him joy – and not only Him, but us, too. When we do that in our own lives, then, yes, we certainly will become examples and a help to others with their “splinters”. In fact, your example might be so powerful that you’ll help your brother or sister grow in spiritual purity and the knowledge of God with hardly a word.

And then we run smack into a very difficult statement to interpret (read v.6). But I have to say that if we stick to the whole flow of thought that started in chapter five and is now reaching its climax, this verse suddenly becomes much clearer. Usually we take it out of context and make it mean, “Don’t waste your time witnessing to people who are only going to make fun of the Gospel.” That’s what I’d call a “good try” interpretation, but it really has no connection at all to anything that Jesus is talking about here. So I think there must be a better one. If Jesus has been talking about saying goodbye to the old world and welcoming the kingdom in him, then this odd, mysterious allegory certainly continues that thought. And I do believe that the crowd standing there would have caught the gist right away. Jesus is saying, You can’t mix the new with the old. You can’t take what I’m giving you now and go back home and try to mix it in with the religion of the Pharisees and all that way of thinking. It won’t work. In fact, it will be a disaster. It will be like coming to a pigpen full of hungry pigs with a basket full of pearls. You throw the pearls to the pigs and they greedily go running for them... till they realize, “We can’t eat these”. Then you’ve got some really angry pigs on your hand, and they might start looking at you like dinner. That’s what will happen to you if you try to follow me and at the same time keep dancing to the Pharisees’ tune, trying to keep them happy, too. It won’t work either way. You won’t really be following me, and you won’t keep them happy, either! It’s a lose-lose proposition. Spiritual compromise is never “win-win”. Jesus’ message to the people on the mountainside that day, and to us today, is: if you’ve gotten into his ship, it means you’ve cut your ties, you’ve left the dock, and the new wine will never fit in the old wineskins. You can’t go to the world for your dose of “relevance”, of popularity, acceptance, significance, self-esteem, whatever. It’s not there anymore. Now, Jesus explains as he continues this message, you depend totally on God for all that, and the Father is ready to give you every truly good thing that you need: ask, and it shall be given to you. He loves to give, and your task is to be like Him – to love giving and doing to others as you would like them to do to you. That’s life in the kingdom.

It’s very hard, it’s not natural for us to live like this, but it’s the only way. Most people are going the easy way, the way of the flesh, but God calls us to go through the narrow gate and follow the straight way. Jesus is the gate and following him is the straight way. It’s not easy and it requires total devotion, but it’s do-able, because He walks the way with us. Yes, there will be fraudsters who try to lure you off the path, but you will know them for what they are, because they don’t line up with the truth. By their fruits you will know them!

And then Jesus says this amazing thing: On that day many will come to me and say, Lord, Lord.... We read these words and hardly even bat an eye. We think, “Well, yes, of course!” But imagine what this sounded like to the people standing there, listening to this young man, around thirty years old, from a poor village, without much education, no connections, no status, probably even talks with a lower-class accent – and here he is telling them, “On the last day humanity’s judge will be... me!” Some listeners may have thought it was a joke. Others may have thought it was craziness. And certain ones may have begun thinking that very day: “This Jesus is a person we must get rid of.” It is hard for us to really grasp how big a risk Jesus took, from a human point of view, by saying these words, because we only see the words on the page. And we believe that Jesus truly is Lord. But we don’t see the actual scene where Jesus pronounced these words, where people had no idea who he was, where they could have arrested him on the spot, or even stoned him. To really get in touch with that is to begin understanding what a powerful show of courage and faith this is; it’s the model of truth-telling, no matter the cost. You’ve got to have confidence to tell truth like that. Jesus has total confidence in the authority of His beloved Father in heaven and the concrete reality of what he was saying. With faith in Christ, we can have similar courage to speak truth, even when the world calls us crazy, or worse.

So you can see why the people were so amazed that Jesus spoke as one having authority. He even said he would judge the world! This is a huge declaration. Such a declaration certainly requires proof. In the following chapters of Matthew, we see this proof over and over again, where Jesus demonstrates his authority in many ways. Isn’t it interesting that the very first word someone says to Jesus after this great sermon is “Lord”? That was the leper whom Jesus healed. And after him the centurion also says, “Lord, I know that you have authority” and Jesus heals the centurion’s servant from far away, with just a word. And then Jesus prove to the Pharisees that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus sends his disciples out on a preaching mission and he gives them – what? – authority. You see, this idea of authority was very important for the people of Jesus’ time. I think it’s very important for us, too. Probably none of us wants to have total authority. None of us wants to be president, for example. Sometimes I worry that the only people who want to be president are crazy –and that would mean we elect crazy people to govern us! But all of us deeply desire the assurance and security of knowing that we have honest, strong and benevolent authority over us. When we hear about corruption in government, when we think our leaders have lied to us, we get very upset and angry. If we can’t trust the authorities, then everything in life seems shaky and uncertain.

But Jesus has proven his perfect and trustworthy authority and power. We will all answer to him some day. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promises that if we devote ourselves to his kingdom, if we make him captain of our ship and author of our salvation, then we’ll be like the house on the rock that stood firm even when the wind and waves beat against it. We won’t fall. How do we do that? Believe in Him, don’t look back, don’t mix the new with the old, grow into experts in personal holiness and devotion to God, trust your heavenly Father for all that you really need and, most of all, grow more like Him all the time, because He is perfect.