Part 2 (2/2)
The Psalm explains in many different ways the content of this condition for admission to G.o.d's dwelling place. One fundamental condition is that those who would enter into G.o.d's presence must inquire after him, must seek his face (Ps 24:6). The fundamental condition thus proves to be the same att.i.tude that we saw earlier, described by the phrase ”hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Inquiring after G.o.d, seeking his face-that is the first and fundamental condition for the ascent that leads to the encounter with G.o.d. Even before that, however, the Psalm specifies that clean hands and a pure heart entail man's refusal to deceive or commit perjury; this requires honesty, truthfulness, and justice toward one's fellow men and toward the community-what we might call social ethics, although it actually reaches right down into the depths of the heart.
Psalm 15 elaborates further on this, and hence we can say that the condition for admission to G.o.d's presence is simply the content of the Decalogue-with an emphasis on the inward search for G.o.d, on journeying toward him (first tablet) and on love of neighbor, on justice toward the individual and the community (second tablet). No conditions specifically involving knowledge of Revelation are enumerated, only ”inquiring after G.o.d” and the basic tenets of justice that a vigilant conscience-stirred into activity by the search for G.o.d-conveys to everyone. Our earlier reflection on the question of salvation finds further confirmation here.
On Jesus' lips, though, these words acquire new depth. For it belongs to his nature that he sees G.o.d, that he stands face-to-face with him, in permanent interior discourse-in a relation of Sons.h.i.+p. In other words, this Beat.i.tude is profoundly Christological. We will see G.o.d when we enter into the ”mind of Christ” (Phil 2:5). Purification of heart occurs as a consequence of following Christ, of becoming one with him. ”It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). And at this point something new comes to light: The ascent to G.o.d occurs precisely in the descent of humble service, in the descent of love, for love is G.o.d's essence, and is thus the power that truly purifies man and enables him to perceive G.o.d and to see him. In Jesus Christ, G.o.d has revealed himself in his descending: ”Though he was in the form of G.o.d,” he ”did not count equality with G.o.d a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.... He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore G.o.d has highly exalted him” (Phil 2:69).
These words mark a decisive turning point in the history of mysticism. They indicate what is new in Christian mysticism, which comes from what is new in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. G.o.d descends, to the point of death on the Cross. And precisely by doing so, he reveals himself in his true divinity. We ascend to G.o.d by accompanying him on this descending path. In this context, the ”gate liturgy” in Psalm 24 receives a new significance: The pure heart is the loving heart that enters into communion of service and obedience with Jesus Christ. Love is the fire that purifies and unifies intellect, will, and emotion, thereby making man one with himself, inasmuch as it makes him one in G.o.d's eyes. Thus, man is able to serve the uniting of those who are divided. This is how man enters G.o.d's dwelling place and becomes able to see him. And that is just what it means for him to be ”blessed.”
After this attempt to penetrate somewhat more deeply into the interior vision of the Beat.i.tudes (the theme of the ”merciful” is addressed not in this chapter, but in connection with the parable of the Good Samaritan), we must still briefly ask ourselves two questions that pertain to the understanding of the whole. In Luke's Gospel, the four Beat.i.tudes that he presents are followed by four proclamations of woe: ”Woe to you who are rich.... Woe to you who are full now.... Woe to you who laugh now.... Woe to you when all men praise you” (Lk 6:2426). These words terrify us. What are we to think of them?
Now, the first thing to say is that Jesus is here following the pattern that is also found in Jeremiah 17 and Psalm 1: After an account of the right path that leads man to salvation, there follows a warning sign to caution against the opposite path. This warning sign unmasks false promises and false offers; it is meant to save man from following a path that can only lead him fatally over the precipice. We will find the same thing again in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
If we have correctly understood the signposts of hope that we found in the Beat.i.tudes, we recognize that here we are dealing simply with the opposite att.i.tudes, which lock man into mere outward appearance, into provisionality, into the loss of his highest and deepest qualities and hence into the loss of G.o.d and neighbor-the path to ruin. Now we come to understand the real intention of this warning sign: The proclamations of woe are not condemnations; they are not an expression of hatred, or of envy, or of hostility. The point is not condemnation, but a warning that is intended to save.
But now the fundamental question arises: Is the direction the Lord shows us in the Beat.i.tudes and in the corresponding warnings actually the right one? Is it really such a bad thing to be rich, to eat one's fill, to laugh, to be praised? Friedrich Nietzsche trained his angry critique precisely on this aspect of Christianity. It is not Christian doctrine that needs to be critiqued, he says, it is Christian morality that needs to be exposed as a ”capital crime against life.” And by ”Christian morality,” Nietzsche means precisely the direction indicated by the Sermon on the Mount.
”What has been the greatest sin on earth so far? Surely the words of the man who said 'Woe to those who laugh now'?” And, against Christ's promises, he says that we don't want the Kingdom of heaven. ”We've become grown men, and so we want the kingdom of earth.”
Nietzsche sees the vision of the Sermon on the Mount as a religion of resentment, as the envy of the cowardly and incompetent, who are unequal to life's demands and try to avenge themselves by blessing their failure and cursing the strong, the successful, and the happy. Jesus' wide perspective is countered with a narrow this-worldliness-with the will to get the most out of the world and what life has to offer now, to seek heaven here, and to be uninhibited by any scruples while doing so.
Much of this has found its way into the modern mind-set and to a large extent shapes how our contemporaries feel about life. Thus, the Sermon on the Mount poses the question of the fundamental Christian option, and, as children of our time, we feel an inner resistance to it-even though we are still touched by Jesus' praise of the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure. Knowing now from experience how brutally totalitarian regimes have trampled upon human beings and despised, enslaved, and struck down the weak, we have also gained a new appreciation of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; we have rediscovered the soul of those who mourn and their right to be comforted. As we witness the abuse of economic power, as we witness the cruelties of a capitalism that degrades man to the level of merchandise, we have also realized the perils of wealth, and we have gained a new appreciation of what Jesus meant when he warned of riches, of the man-destroying divinity Mammon, which grips large parts of the world in a cruel stranglehold. Yes indeed, the Beat.i.tudes stand opposed to our spontaneous sense of existence, our hunger and thirst for life. They demand ”conversion”-that we inwardly turn around to go in the opposite direction from the one we would spontaneously like to go in. But this U-turn brings what is pure and n.o.ble to the fore and gives a proper ordering to our lives.
The Greek world, whose zest for life is wonderfully portrayed in the Homeric epics, was nonetheless deeply aware that man's real sin, his deepest temptation, is hubris-the arrogant presumption of autonomy that leads man to put on the airs of divinity, to claim to be his own G.o.d, in order to possess life totally and to draw from it every last drop of what it has to offer. This awareness that man's true peril consists in the temptation to ostentatious self-sufficiency, which at first seems so plausible, is brought to its full depth in the Sermon on the Mount in light of the figure of Christ.
We have seen that the Sermon on the Mount is a hidden Christology. Behind the Sermon on the Mount stands the figure of Christ, the man who is G.o.d, but who, precisely because he is G.o.d, descends, empties himself, all the way to death on the Cross. The saints, from Paul through Francis of a.s.sisi down to Mother Teresa, have lived out this option and have thereby shown us the correct image of man and his happiness. In a word, the true morality of Christianity is love. And love does admittedly run counter to self-seeking-it is an exodus out of oneself, and yet this is precisely the way in which man comes to himself. Compared with the tempting l.u.s.ter of Nietzsche's image of man, this way seems at first wretched, and thoroughly unreasonable. But it is the real high road of life; it is only on the way of love, whose paths are described in the Sermon on the Mount, that the richness of life and the greatness of man's calling are opened up.
THE T TORAH OF THE M MESSIAH”You Have Heard That It Was Said...
But I Say to You...”
The Messiah was expected to bring a renewed Torah-his Torah. Paul may be alluding to this in the Letter to the Galatians when he speaks of the ”law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). His great, pa.s.sionate defense of freedom from the Law culminates in the following statement in chapter 5: ”For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). But when he goes on to repeat at 5:13 the claim that ”you were called to freedom,” he adds, ”Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Gal 5:13). And now he explains what freedom is-namely, freedom in the service of good, freedom that allows itself to be led by the Spirit of G.o.d. It is precisely by letting oneself be led by G.o.d's Spirit, moreover, that one becomes free from the Law. Immediately after this Paul details what the freedom of the Spirit actually consists in and what is incompatible with it. Torah. Paul may be alluding to this in the Letter to the Galatians when he speaks of the ”law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). His great, pa.s.sionate defense of freedom from the Law culminates in the following statement in chapter 5: ”For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). But when he goes on to repeat at 5:13 the claim that ”you were called to freedom,” he adds, ”Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Gal 5:13). And now he explains what freedom is-namely, freedom in the service of good, freedom that allows itself to be led by the Spirit of G.o.d. It is precisely by letting oneself be led by G.o.d's Spirit, moreover, that one becomes free from the Law. Immediately after this Paul details what the freedom of the Spirit actually consists in and what is incompatible with it.
The ”law of Christ” is freedom-that is the paradox of Paul's message in the Letter to the Galatians. This freedom has content, then, it has direction, and it therefore contradicts what only apparently liberates man, but in truth makes him a slave. The ”Torah of the Messiah” is totally new and different-but it is precisely by being such that it fulfills the Torah of Moses.
The greater part of the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5:177:27) is devoted to the same topic: After a programmatic introduction in the form of the Beat.i.tudes, it goes on to present, so to speak, the Torah of the Messiah. Even in terms of the addressees and the actual intentions of the text, there is an a.n.a.logy with the Letter to the Galatians: Paul writes there to Jewish Christians who have begun to wonder whether continued observance of the whole Torah as. .h.i.therto understood may in fact be necessary after all.
This uncertainty affected above all circ.u.mcision, the commandments concerning food, the whole area of prescriptions relating to purity, and how to keep the Sabbath. Paul sees these ideas as a return to the status quo before the messianic revolution, a relapse in which the essential content of this revolution is lost-namely, the universalization of the People of G.o.d, as a result of which Israel can now embrace all the peoples of the world; the G.o.d of Israel has truly been brought to the nations, in accordance with the promises, and has now shown that he is the G.o.d of them all, the one G.o.d.
The flesh-physical descent from Abraham-is no longer what matters; rather, it is the spirit: belonging to the heritage of Israel's faith and life through communion with Jesus Christ, who ”spiritualizes” the Law and in so doing makes it the path to life for all. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks to his people, to Israel, as to the first bearer of the promise. But in giving them the new Torah, he opens them up, in order to bring to birth a great new family of G.o.d drawn from Israel and the Gentiles.
Matthew wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians and, more widely, for the Jewish world, in order to renew this great impulse that Jesus had initiated. Through his Gospel, Jesus speaks to Israel in a new and ongoing manner. In the historical setting in which Matthew writes, he speaks in a very particular way to Jewish Christians, who thereby recognize both the novelty and the continuity of the history of G.o.d's dealings with mankind, beginning with Abraham and undergoing a revolution with Jesus. In this way they are to find the path of life.
But what does this Torah of the Messiah actually look like? At the very beginning there stands, as a sort of epigraph and interpretive key, a statement that never ceases to surprise us. It makes G.o.d's fidelity to himself and Jesus' fidelity to the faith of Israel unmistakably clear: ”Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pa.s.s away, not an iota, not a dot, will pa.s.s from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:1719).
The intention is not to abolish, but to fulfill, and this fulfillment demands a surplus, not a deficit, of righteousness, as Jesus immediately goes on to say: ”Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:20). Is the point, then, merely increased rigor in obeying the Law? What else is this greater righteousness if not that?
True, at the beginning of this ”relecture”-this new reading of essential portions of the Torah-there is an emphasis on extreme fidelity and unbroken continuity. Yet as we listen further, we are struck by Jesus' presentation of the relations.h.i.+p of Moses' Torah to the Torah of the Messiah in a series of ant.i.theses: ”It was said to them of old...but I say to you...” Jesus' ”I” is accorded a status that no teacher of the Law can legitimately allow himself. The crowd feels this-Matthew tells us explicitly that the people ”were alarmed” at his way of teaching. He teaches not as the rabbis do, but as one who has ”authority” (Mt 7:28; cf. Mk 1:22; Lk 4:32). Obviously this does not refer to the rhetorical quality of Jesus' discourses, but rather to the open claim that he himself is on the same exalted level as the Lawgiver-as G.o.d. The people's ”alarm” (the RSV translation unfortunately tones this down to ”astonishment”) is precisely over the fact that a human being dares to speak with the authority of G.o.d. Either he is misappropriating G.o.d's majesty-which would be terrible-or else, and this seems almost inconceivable, he really does stand on the same exalted level as G.o.d.
How, then, are we to understand this Torah of the Messiah? Which path does it point toward? What does it tell us about Jesus, about Israel, about the Church? What does it say about us, and to us? In my search for answers, I have been greatly helped by the book I mentioned earlier by the Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner: A Rabbi Talks with Jesus A Rabbi Talks with Jesus.
Neusner, a believing Jew and rabbi, grew up with Catholic and Protestant friends, teaches with Christian theologians at the university, and is deeply respectful of the faith of his Christian colleagues. He remains, however, profoundly convinced of the validity of the Jewish interpretation of Holy Scripture. His reverence for the Christian faith and his fidelity to Judaism prompted him to seek a dialogue with Jesus.
In this book, he takes his place among the crowds of Jesus' disciples on the ”mount” in Galilee. He listens to Jesus and compares his words with those of the Old Testament and with the rabbinic traditions as set down in the Mishnah and Talmud. He sees in these works an oral tradition going back to the beginnings, which gives him the key to interpreting the Torah. He listens, he compares, and he speaks with Jesus himself. He is touched by the greatness and the purity of what is said, and yet at the same time he is troubled by the ultimate incompatibility that he finds at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. He then accompanies Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem and listens as Jesus' words return to the same ideas and develop them further. He constantly tries to understand; he is constantly moved by the greatness of Jesus; again and again he talks with him. But in the end he decides not to follow Jesus. He remains-as he himself puts it-with the ”eternal Israel.”
The rabbi's dialogue with Jesus shows that faith in the word of G.o.d in the Holy Scriptures creates a contemporaneous bond across the ages: Setting out from Scripture, the rabbi can enter into the ”today” of Jesus, just as Jesus, setting out from Scripture, can enter into our ”today.” This dialogue is conducted with great honesty. It highlights the differences in all their sharpness, but it also takes place in great love. The rabbi accepts the otherness of Jesus' message, and takes his leave free of any rancor; this parting, accomplished in the rigor of truth, is ever mindful of the reconciling power of love.
Let us try to draw out the essential points of this conversation in order to know Jesus and to understand our Jewish brothers better. The central point, it seems to me, is wonderfully revealed in one of the most moving scenes that Neusner presents in his book. In his interior dialogue Neusner has just spent the whole day following Jesus, and now he retires for prayer and Torah study with the Jews of a certain town, in order to discuss with the rabbi of that place-once again he is thinking in terms of contemporaneity across the millennia-all that he has heard. The rabbi cites from the Babylonian Talmud: ”Rabbi Simelai expounded: 'Six hundred and thirteen commandments were given to Moses, three hundred and sixty-five negative ones, corresponding to the number of the days of the solar year, and two hundred forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to the parts of man's body.
”'David came and reduced them to eleven....
”'Isaiah came and reduced them to six....
”'Isaiah again came and reduced them to two....
”'Habakkuk further came and based them on one, as it is said: ”But the righteous shall live by his faith”' (Hab 2:4).”
Neusner then continues his book with the following dialogue: ”'So,' the master says, 'is this what the sage, Jesus, had to say?'
”I: 'Not exactly, but close.'
”He: 'What did he leave out?'
”I: 'Nothing.'
”He: 'Then what did he add?'
”I: 'Himself'” (pp. 1078). This is the central point where the believing Jew Neusner experiences alarm at Jesus' message, and this is the central reason why he does n
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