Eucharistic exhortation

Matthew 5:20: I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

I've suggested in the sermon that Jesus is giving His disciples and the crowds instructions in redemptive righteousness. He is telling them and us how we are to behave in order to break through the cycles of evil that characterize fallen humanity. He is not simply telling us to avoid sin, whether in action or in our hearts. He is telling us how we can participate with Him in bringing the kingdom of heaven, in seeing God's will done on earth as it is in heaven.

In short, Jesus is simply telling His disciples to imitate His own righteousness, which exhibits the righteousness of His Father. Jesus didn't simply avoiding sinning. Jesus intervened in the world of sin in order to undo injustice, in order to cut evil at its root, in order to restore right order in God’s creation.

And He did that in surprising ways. His teaching seems paradoxical and upside down. He sets verbal traps for the Jews who try to trap Him, and He enacts a temple destruction in broad daylight. At the climax, Jesus undoes the injustice of the world, He does righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees, by giving His cheek to be slapped, by giving His back to be whipped, by going willingly to the cross.

That is the surprising righteousness of God, the righteousness that Jesus demands of us. This is one way to sum up the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus is giving detailed instructions for taking up the cross and following Him. He is telling us in specific how we can enact His redemptive righteousness every day.

This meal is a weekly pointer to that same redemptive righteousness. At this table, we memorialize Jesus' death. We ritually enact the memory of that redemptive righteous suffering. We remind the Father, and remind ourselves, of the righteousness that Jesus demands of us, the righteousness manifest at this table, the righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 08:54 AM

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