Matthew 6-10

This Sermon on the Mount is a real stemwinder, but I'm looking for a theme here. It starts off in Ch. 5 with The Beatitudes, upholding Jewish law, lust, swearing oaths, turning the other cheek, and loving your enemies. It's a bit strange when it comes to adultery and divorce, but so far so good. Ch. 6 starts off with a rant against hypocrisy, inserts the Lords Prayer (minus the 'forever and ever' ending I learned as a kid), and then returns to the anti-hypocrisy rant. An odd part is that whenever Jesus rips some form of hypocrisy, he says of the hypocrites, "Truly I tell you, they have received their reward." (vv. 2,5,16) Huh? What reward? After telling people they cannot serve God and wealth, he gets really cult-like, telling followers, "not to worry about your life....what you will eat or what you will drink.....what you will wear." (v.25) "do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own." (v.34) So what does Jesus envision as a godly way of life? A tribe of half-naked, feral, foraging people?

Chapter 7 goes back to the hypocrisy theme for a while saying, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged." (v.1), and then goes into an Oprah-like, power-of-positive-thinking belief that if you want something, ask for it, and you'll get it. "Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." (v.7) Then comes the Golden Rule in v.12. The Sermon ends with some comments about who (no hypocrites allowed) gets into heaven, building your house on a rock, not sand.

Chapter 8 gets a bit strange again. Jesus heals a leper when comes down off the mountain with the multitudes, and then tells the leper not to tell anyone. Didn't thousands just witness the miracle? Then he goes to Capernaum and performs a few more miracles to fulfill prophecy again (v.17) He recruits a few more disciples, but gets back into his cult-like mode by telling one who wanted to bury his father first saying, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." (v.21) He gets back in the miracle mode by calming the seas, and then casting the evil spirits from a couple of demoniacs into a herd of swine who promptly run off a cliff and perish. The townspeople who saw this got freaked out and asked Jesus to leave.

Chapter 9 starts off with a few more miracles, the recruiting of Matthew the tax collector as a disciple, and then a few more miracles. He does this all very publicly, but when he heals a couple of blind men tells them not to tell anyone. I don't get it. What is it about this public secrecy? Then he does a whole bunch of miracles, "...curing every disease and sickness." (v.35)

In Chapter 10, Jesus gives his disciples (and names the 12 for the first time) the power and authority to perform miracles themselves. But the miracles are only for Jews, no Gentiles or Samaritans allowed. He gives the disciples some detailed instructions about what to expect, but then gets back into his cult-like apocalyptic mode. Get this from v.34-36:

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come
to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his
father,
and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law;
and one's foes will be members of one's own
household."

Whatever happened to the Prince of Peace? Maybe all those right-wing-whacko, bloodthirsty, evangelical goons are right after all.