Commentary on Matthew 5:13-20

The lectionary offers preachers an awkward selection this Sunday. It combines two units from the Sermon on the Mount that, at first (and probably second) glance, don’t seem to belong together (5:13–16, 17–20). One option is to focus on one of the units. Another option is to find a way to link the two sections. I suggest that a focus on the interpretation of scriptures links the scenes.

Using parallel images, verses 13–16 provide further vignettes or examples of the identity and practices of Jesus-followers shaped by the empire of God. Both images are expressed in the second-person plural (“you”) to construct communities that exist for the benefit of the “land/earth” and “world.” Both images form missional communities.

Communities of Jesus-followers do not exist for themselves. No matter how powerless, they are not to live in retreat from or avoidance of the imperial world. Rather, their mission is to manifest God’s empire that contests the status quo and envisions an alternative societal experience.

Why the image of salt? Salt performs multiple functions: transforming, flavoring, preserving, and purifying substances. Salt does not exist for itself but affects other elements. Likewise, the community of disciples is commissioned to impact “the land” or the earth or the world where Israel and the entire population live under Roman rule (5:16; 6:1).

The beatitudes have described this inhabited world. According to 5:3–12, this world is marked by wealth and poverty (5:3), loss and grief (5:4), oppressors and oppressed, those with resources—land—and the dispossessed (5:5), injustice and acts of justice (5:6), mercy and cruelty (5:7), purity and impurity (5:8), war and peace (5:9), opposition and reward (5:10–12). Jesus-followers are missional participants in this society with the huge task of “salting” and transforming it.

The rest of verse 13 recognizes that this mission identity and task are challenging. It acknowledges that ineffectiveness or failure is a possibility by imagining that salt becomes “saltless” (whatever the chemical impossibilities). And in such circumstances of the failure of identity and practice, judgment follows with the salt being thrown out and trampled underfoot. The Gospel threatens judgment to motivate faithful behaviors.

Another image of transforming mission follows: “You are the light for the world” (5:14). This image is drawn both from everyday life and from Israel’s traditions. As “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6), Israel is constructed as an agent of God’s will tasked with resisting imperial injustice and awaiting God’s eventual imperialist triumph over all opposing forces and nations (Isaiah 2:2–5; Micah 4:1–3). Likewise, Jesus-followers are to continue Jesus’ identity and mission of shining light into the darkness and death of the Rome-occupied world (so 4:15–16).

In contrast to the warning and threat about the salt in verse 13, verse 16 seems optimistic about the transformative impact of the “good works” that comprise this light-shining mission. Yet the confidence seems misplaced. The mission task is monumental, the world (past and present) is significantly out of shape, and it comprises competing claimants, powers, and interest groups. Cicero, for example, describes Rome’s identity and mission as “light to the whole world.”¹ None of this, though, deters the Gospel’s constant urging to mission (10:7–8; 24:14; 25:31–46; 28:19–20), nor its confidence about the final, life-giving, imperially imitative victory of God’s empire over all opposition (24:27–31; 25:31–46; 28:18).

Verses 21–48 will supply six more examples or vignettes of the identity and practices of Jesus-followers created by God’s empire. These examples are created by constructing Jesus as the interpreter of scriptural traditions. This is not a new development. Scriptural traditions and images have informed the beatitudes and images of 5:3–16, just as they will be central in the following six scenarios in 5:21–48.

Verses 17–20, therefore, pause the sermon’s examples or visions of life in God’s empire to highlight two claims. One is that Jesus’ manifestation of God’s saving presence (1:21–23) and of the reign or empire of God (4:17) enacts God’s will known in the scriptures. And second, Jesus is the God-anointed interpreter and teacher of the divine purposes.

The Matthean Jesus makes four declarations.

First, he claims continuity between his teaching and the scriptures (5:17). He emphatically rejects the notion that he destroys or abolishes the scriptures. Rather, he rightly interprets them.

The second claim states the basis for the first claim (5:18). The written scriptures have abiding authority for the duration of the present world. Not one letter, not an iota and stroke (“jot and tittle”), will pass away before heaven and earth pass away. If the smallest letters are so valuable and permanent, so are all the letters that comprise the scriptures.

The third claim moves beyond written texts to their accurate teaching, interpretation, and observance (5:19). He identifies a teacher who sets aside a commandment and teaches others to do so. This teacher is not excluded from God’s empire but is demoted to a place of little honor.

By contrast, Jesus ascribes great honor in God’s empire to the one who teaches and obeys the commandments interpreted by Jesus. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus’ interpretation emphasizes justice (5:20), mercy (9:13; 12:1–4), love (22:34–40), and faithfulness (23:23) as central tenets. The sermon closes by advocating hearing and doing Jesus’ teaching (7:24–27; see also 12:46–50).

The fourth claim identifies the ethical demand to live according to Jesus’ right interpretation of scripture that ensures entry to God’s empire (5:20). The ethical demand consists of a life marked by justice as set out in the scriptures and rightly interpreted by Jesus. It is to be greater than the justice of the scribes and Pharisees. Doing justice matters more than confessions.

The verse does not identify the inadequate practices of justice. However, we must remember that scribes and Pharisees were part of the Judean leadership and allies of Rome (2:4; 15:1; 16:21; 27:41, 62). As societal leaders, they sustained and benefited from Rome’s powerful, male-dominated, hierarchical, oppressive world. They will secure Jesus’ death. Jesus attacks them for ignoring justice, mercy, and faithfulness (23:23).

The communities of Jesus-followers are not to replicate self-interested “(in)justice,” but are to embody justice that brings life to all.

Notes

1. Catalinarian Orations 4.11.