Live generously! The sermon on the Mount (4) Matthew 5:38-48

Matthew 5:38-48 The Gospel reading for Sunday February 20th 2011

This week's reading opens with reference to an age-old adage "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth". That saying by the way, comes directly from God's earlier instructions to His people ... in triplicate in fact! (Refer to these three O.T verses:)

Exodus 21:24  Lev. 24:20 Deut. 19:21

(Hence my insistence on making sure that we take into account the context of what Jesus was saying to the people. The Jewish people would have known sayings like this off by heart, passed down in oral tradition from one generation to the next. That harsh understanding of the law was embedded in their culture. Jesus faces a tough job of trying to get the people to set aside that thinking. But I've already pushed the view strongly enough in the last few weeks that Jesus is in the process of de-commissioning the law and introducing to the people a radical, upside down, new way of thinking and acting, so we will leave that there.)

So in the end what DOES the Sermon on the Mount have to say to us in Lutheran Schools in the 21st Century?

Something struck me when I had a look at the Eugene Peterson (Message version) of our reading, which concludes (v48) with these words:

"Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."

We've all heard the saying GIVE generously ... but what does it mean to LIVE generously?

... just maybe, that's what the Sermon on the Mount is saying to us today. We are challenged in our service to others to make more than a superficial commitment by a one-off donation (something we often do at more than arm's length), but rather to live out our generosity to others daily. As we work with young people in our schools, may we be led to live generously as we strive to produce graduates who will also live generously. May the Spirit move us to instinctively look beyond ourselves, so that the primary goal of helping to make the world a better place becomes permanently embedded in our way of thinking.

Nev

Footnote:

I have read that Martin Luther King used these words of Jesus from this week's reading to underpin his non-violent strategy of changing his part of the world, through the commitment to respond to evil with love. Having just also recently watched the film INVICTUS (and previously read Nelson Mandella's story "Long walk to freedom", I see "Sermon on the Mount" written all over that too.)