Except your righteousness exceeds - Introduction

Except Your Righteousness Exceeds

Part One - Introduction

A meditation for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

By Dan McDonald

 

            I am a member of an Anglican church which uses the 1662/1928 version of the Book of Common Prayer. As it is the custom of the church in which I am a member this blog makes use of the older prayer book and it is hoped that what I say will be said not as an argument for one prayer book over another, or for that matter over none at all; but rather as an expression of Christian truth meant to appeal to all those who love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in sincerity.

            For those reading this blog who are neither Anglican nor Episcopalian it is the tradition of our churches to have assigned readings for any given Sunday in a church year and in most instances in at least one service per Sunday the minister will proclaim a message based on the assigned readings. The readings include a text from a New Testament Epistle and a Gospel reading from one of the four Gospels. Our assigned texts for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity include the Epistle reading from Romans 6:3-11 and the Gospel text from St. Matthew 5:20-26. I hope to present to the readers of my blog something of a daily meditation on these texts for the course of this week. I doubt this will be a regular feature of my blog, but simply something I am doing this one time as this week’s texts seemed especially to speak to my soul and seem to be full of a message that might be helpful and important for others to consider.

            We will begin with a consideration of the Gospel text in which we read that “Jesus said unto his disciples, “Except your righteousness shall exceed shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” These are weighty and important words and we should recognize that with the use of such words that St. Matthew would have us treat them respectfully. A cavalier reading of this text will not do. It is important that we see these words within their own original context and see that Jesus was speaking of an issue that he believed was most serious. Surely the hearers of these words in their original utterance recognized the seriousness of Jesus’ words concerning how one would in no case enter the kingdom of heaven unless they had a a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and the Pharisees.

            Matthew 5:20-26 is a subsection of the Sermon on the Mount which fills the fifth through the seventh chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel. It may be described as Jesus’ kingdom of heaven sermon. He begins the Sermon by articulating the Beatitudes in which he describes what sort of manner should characterize the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. They are to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to pursue righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to be peacemakers, and to be such people who will be naturally persecuted by a world that is committed to something other than life within the kingdom of heaven. Jesus then goes on to describe his relationship to the law and the prophets who had proclaimed the truths of the kingdom of heaven before him. He tells us not to be mistaken that he has not come to abrogate or set aside any of those laws and prophecies and declarations but to fulfill them. He warns those who would break the least of these commandments that whosoever teaches men to break the least of the commandments would be declared least in the kingdom of heaven. It is in this context that Jesus says that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees that one would by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

            It would seem in accordance with St. Matthew’s Gospel that this Sermon on the Mount was spoken early within Jesus’ ministry. It probably was first spoken before his message was met with the resistance of the scribes and Pharisees. I believe that what we are looking at in his teaching that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is his own estimation of his own ministry. He entered the ministry having been baptized by John in the Jordan River, having been declared the Son of God by voice and sign, having met the Tempter in the Wilderness, and only then did he begin his ministry declaring “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Jesus had a clear understanding of himself in his proclamation of the Sermon on the Mount that with his coming into the world the kingdom of heaven was being presented unto the sons and daughters of Israel.

His words describing how a greater righteousness was needed than that of the scribes and Pharisees were not so much spoken as a criticism of them as they were spoken of the great importance of the words and life presented to mankind in him. Every other ministry in all history would have received the same comparison. John the Baptist had understood this very truth for with the coming of Christ, John proclaimed “I must decrease but he must increase.”

The Sermon on the Mount which summarizes Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of heaven came early in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus understood the need of men. He would teach this message consistently and would faithfully proclaim and image this message with his own life and works so that in the course of the next three years those who followed him would gradually come to see the astonishing importance of his message. He proclaimed the summary of the kingdom of heaven early in his ministry because he knew that it would take everything he did and said to enable those who followed him to understand the greatness of his coming into the world with the kingdom of heaven. The world got its first glimpse of this with his preaching of the Sermon on the Mount. For we read that when he finished preaching the sermon “that the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” This was one who did not point men and women to the kingdom of heaven, but one who brought within himself the kingdom of heaven to men and women and children everywhere he went.

When we return, next time to our consideration of Matthew 5:20-26 let us realize the context of the message when he began to speak especially to his disciples, when he said to them “Thou shalt not kill”. We shall see that his meditation on the commandment not to murder led within his own understanding and teaching directly to his pointing out our need to be reconciled to others on account of the sin which remains in us. In his teaching thou shalt not murder was a commandment that in its fulfillment necessitated our seeking of reconciliation with others.