Deadly Piety (by John Frye)

Deadly Piety: Be Careful!

In the review of Scot McKnight’s SGBC: Sermon on the Mount, we now move into Matthew 6 with its opening “thematic (warning) statement” (6:1) and three examples of practices of deadly piety (by the Pharisees)—almsgiving (6:2-4), prayer (6:5-6), and fasting (6:16-18). Jesus offers an aside that breaks the neat symmetry of the sermon when he warns his followers not to pray like the pagans and actually gives them a recitative prayer (6:7-15). In this post, I will comment on Scot’s teaching in verses 1-18 (chapters 11, 12, and 14 in SGBC: SoM) except for the section on the recitative prayer (chapter 13). We’ll consider “the Lord’s Prayer” in the next post.

Scot offers a chart on page 152 that neatly summarizes verses 2-18 and shows the uncanny symmetry of Jesus’ teaching. As I scanned the chart and read the commentary, I thought, Either Jesus was a rhetorical genius (and no doubt he was) or some mighty fine editing was done by the author(s) of Matthew’s Gospel. The opening warning “Be careful” carries a lot of pedagogical weight (see 16:6, 11, 12; 7:15; 10:17) and directs Jesus’ followers away from the pretentious, hypocritical practices of piety current in his culture.

Scot stresses two things: 1) practices of piety were not considered “works righteousness” by Jews (based on the monumental work of E. P. Sanders) and 2) public practices of piety are not in themselves banned; it is the motive behind the public practices that Jesus excoriates (“to be honored by others,” “to be seen by others,” “to show others”). Jesus himself practiced public piety. Jesus teaches direct engagement with God in practices of piety, not a horizontal concern about the judgment and affirmation of people. Jesus stresses a deep, inner, “secret” motivation that seeks to love God and love others. Just as Jesus aimed to please his Father, so Jesus’ followers do the same. Jesus-followers seek the Father’s reward, that is, deeply value what the Father values. Reward has, again, nothing to do with works righteousness or a mercenary spirit. For Jesus, hypocrisy is a dangerous habit in that it not only deceives others about the real nature of our “righteousness/piety,” but signals a severe self-deception. We may be in a very corrupt spiritual state and not even know it. Yikes. Be careful!

Intriguing to most readers will be Scot’s take on fasting. Scot questions what he calls instrumental fasting (i.e., fasting in order to gain something) even though that form of fasting has continuing traction in the church. Scot probes into the biblical accounts of fasting and states, “To say this once again, the focus of the Bible on fasting is not on what we get from fasting or motivating people to fast in order to acquire something, but instead lands squarely on responding to sacred moments in life” … “The emphasis of the Bible is that fasting is a response to sacred moments, like death, or the realization of sinfulness, or the fear of death, danger, or disaster, or the new medical report of potentially fatal disease” (194, 201). Scot closes out chapter 14 with six lessons we can learn from Jesus about fasting. Does Scot think abstinence from the Internet or from movies or from chocolate is a form of fasting?  Take up and read.