In this week’s gospel reading, Jesus lays out in the Sermon on the Mount a new discipline for mankind. Given his primarily Jewish audience, Matthew records that Jesus makes clear that His teachings on the mountain do not replace the existing commandments and Torah (Law of Moses), but rather, His teachings aim for a more profound and meaningful interpretation – a new dimension. These are not mere generic boxes to be checked; Jesus asks us to concentrate on substance and dig deeper to examine our attitudes and behavior.
Teaching and Preaching
As the backdrop to this week’s gospel reading, Jesus has been travelling all around Galilee teaching and preaching, and great crowds have begun to follow him. He begins the Sermon on the Mount by giving the disciples and assembled people the Beatitudes, His guideposts to happiness in the next life and in this one. He then lays out several examples of how a surface reading of the Law of Moses is not enough, for example concerning anger, adultery, divorce, retaliation, etc. His teaching calls for us to go beyond the old teachings (“You have heard that it was said . . . but I say . . .”)
Lest the religious authorities assume that he is attempting to overturn the status quo and replace the Law with something entirely new, he says to the crowd and his disciples,
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
The Law
In one sense, Jesus fulfills the law of Moses by his very existence and life, confirming the many predictions made in the Old Testament. In fact, he is the Law! He also fulfills by building on the Law of Moses to call us to a higher standard which, while difficult, is achievable with his grace.
Early Christian writers like St. Augustine confirm this view: “for he who adds what is wanting does not surely destroy what he finds but rather confirms it by perfecting it. Lo, we are willing both to bear all things for Your name, and not to hide Your doctrine . . . Are You about to mention other things contrary to those which are written in the law? No, says He; for think not that I have come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am have not come to destroy, but to fulfil[l].”
Put another way, “So too the painter does not destroy the sketch, but rather completes it.” (Theophylact of Ochrid)
A Higher Way
St. John Chrysostom, writing in the early fifth century, explains, “And here He signifies to us obscurely that the fashion of the whole world is also being changed. Nor did He set it down without purpose, but in order to arouse the hearer, and indicate, that He was with just cause introducing another discipline; if at least the very works of the creation are all to be transformed, and mankind is to be called to another country, and to a higher way of practicing how to live.”
While Jesus assures the crowds and the religious authorities that he is not doing away with the Law of Moses, he does not hesitate to call out those who “check the boxes” and adhere to the Torah only on the surface without changing their inner dispositions,
“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
A stinging rebuke, to be sure, to scribes and Pharisees of the day and throughout history since. And most importantly to ourselves, when we “check the boxes” instead of doing the harder work Jesus asks of us.
