NOTES for Mat 5:13-26

Jesus calls His disciples salt and light. These apparently incompatible things are the main thing by which they must differ from all other people. Salt by itself has no nutritional value, but it is precisely salt that gives flavor to a dish and makes it special. Living in the world, Christians fill it with a divine savor, which, however, does not belong to them, since the Lord has endowed them with it. But it is important not to lose the special gift received in baptism while living by the laws of this world, not to be absorbed into it, because to lose one's "saltiness" means to stop being a follower of Christ. Jesus also says of Himself that He is the "Light of the world." In this lies the amazing privilege of Christians: to be like their Teacher.

Like much of what the Gospel calls us to, this comparison of the disciples with light and salt is paradoxical. On the one hand, one must be insignificant salt, which does not exist for itself, and on the other hand, one must be like God.

The path of blessedness and the path of emptiness lie before a person. There are many uncertainties in our life, but in our relationship with God our choice becomes sharply divided, like "yes" and "no." The Son of God, having become the Son of Man, did not waver between these two paths, but was always "yes" and "amen." He calls us to the same thing: having chosen His path, we become light to the world, channels of the love and truth of the heavenly Father. And we must justify His trust, because if a lamp is covered with a vessel, the house becomes completely dark.

Have you ever tasted distilled water? A few days on such water can be fatal for a person: life is impossible without salts. Salt not only enhances the flavor of food but also protects it from decay. Without God the world would be insipid and empty. Today the Savior tells us that we are the salt of the earth, which means that He is present in the world through us. But what if we do not allow Him to be? What can be used to salt salt? Without Him, not only our lives but the whole world loses its meaning.

In Church Slavonic, in the Synodal translation, in Bishop Cassian's translation, and in other Russian translations, there are two different expressions: light of the world and light to the world. This difference is absent from the Greek, from the Vulgate, and from translations into modern European languages. Yet this point is very important for you and me if we are to understand today's Gospel reading correctly. We see here two entirely different spiritual traditions. Everyone is free to choose either of them, as long as that choice is conscious.

Still, this does not prevent us from turning to the general meaning of what was said. The main word that comes to mind when trying to understand it is probably: witness. "We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20). We can only bear witness; nothing else is given to us. Bear witness by word and deed. This is exactly why Seraphim of Sarov said: save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved. And how often we want someone to lead us by the hand to salvation. How we want our spiritual father to take responsibility for our actions. But no. We can only be witnesses to one another.

And one more thing comes to mind when reflecting on today's text. Remember where else this expression "light of the world" occurs. "The disciples said to Him, Rabbi, lately the Jews sought to stone You, and are You going there again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world" (John 11:8,9). A strange answer. As if to a different question, yet it seems to us that it gives a great deal for understanding what this is: the light of the world.

Truly nothing is hidden from the Lord, and He knows everything. The psalmist writes: "Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thoughts from far away. Whether I go or rest, You surround me, and all my ways are known to You. There is not yet a word on my tongue, but You, Lord, already know it completely" (Ps. 138:1-4). And, naturally, He sees both the good and all the evil in our hearts.

But despite this, He continues to love us. And He does not deny us His Kingdom, even knowing that at every moment we are capable of breaking His commandments. In the New Testament, the main thing becomes the striving, the direction of the vector of our life. And it is precisely this striving that is rewarded in the end with the "Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 5:19).

And if, in our search for God, we understand that "there is no limit to perfection," that is, we do not stop at what has already been achieved, and at the same time we realize that we make mistakes but keep going, then the goal becomes the Kingdom itself, not the place we will occupy in it.

Jesus says that although the Law has been surpassed by the New Covenant, keeping the commandments has not been abolished. The apostle Paul explains that the ministry of the New Covenant cannot be reduced to keeping commandments ("a ministry of death-dealing letters"), because we have no such ability in ourselves. Rather, it consists in confidence before God through Christ ("the ministry of the Spirit"), because God gives us this ability.

Why, if I do not live at peace with my neighbors, am I unworthy to stand before the Lord? Is peace of soul attainable in this vain and passionate world? Are there not prayers for enemies - and therefore enemies themselves? Is not the entire Psalter full of curses against the wicked ('let death come upon them,' 'But You, O God, will bring them down into the pit of destruction,' 'blessed is he who takes and dashes your little ones' and others)? And the Savior Himself says: 'Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword' (Matt 10:34). How are all these to be held together - peace and sword?

In our modern Orthodox usage, which in many ways did not escape and could not have escaped the influence of the Soviet worldview, which urgently needed the image of an enemy and simply collapsed without it, very many people seize on this dualism from the end convenient to them. But every true dualism is unconfused and undivided. And what does the Soviet period have to do with it? This is as old as the world. It is enough to remember witch hunts and the Inquisition as a whole, or persecutions of Jews in every age. Sergei Averintsev wrote about this as follows:

With all my mortal heart
consenting to decay I forgive those who offended me
Only who offended me
This woman who imagined that it seemed to her
That she trembled at the sound of my voice
…………
This man who imagined that it seemed to him
that he was trampling my face
…………
God, console with tenderness those who offended me
I do not know You know who they are
('Spiritual Verses / Bewilderment')

Only in this way is it possible to understand, only in this way is it possible to avoid the most terrible thing that opposes God - hatred, even when it hides behind righteous anger. 'You know,' and 'I do not know.'

The Torah, the commandments given by God, were always understood as a guide along the path of righteousness. It is no surprise that Jesus turns to the Torah, or more precisely to the Decalogue, interpreting its commandments from the point of view of the Kingdom that He brought into the world. And from the point of view of the Kingdom, what comes to the foreground is not the action as such, but the intention standing behind it, the intention a person puts into the action he performs. If the intention is present, the mere fact that the action is performed or not performed changes nothing in principle. If, for example, a person hates his neighbor so much that he is ready to kill him, Jesus, as we can see, equates such hatred with murder.

At first glance, such an approach may seem too strict. But one must keep in mind that the inner Torah, about which many learned rabbis and teachers of the Torah spoke in those days, placed precisely intention first. Deliverance from evil intentions was considered the most important step on the path toward receiving the inner Torah.

But the issue is not only the inner Torah as such. The issue is also that intentions have special importance for the Kingdom. The substance of the Kingdom is the breath of God, and its fabric is formed by the relationships that bind a person both with God and Christ and with his neighbors. Not only the quality of a person's life in the Kingdom, but the very possibility of remaining in it, depends on the quality of relationships. That is why Jesus gives so much attention to intention: every one of our intentions, if we are inhabitants of the Kingdom, concerns not only us and the people toward whom it is directed, but also the whole Kingdom in all its fullness.

Jesus calls the disciples to the highest measure of righteousness, which must surpass the virtue even of the scribes and Pharisees, who were marked by great piety. And He says directly that without this it is impossible to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Reading the explanations that follow, one cannot help being struck by how difficult and uncompromising the path is that the Lord offers us. Anger is equated with murder, abusive speech is equal to a mortal sin; finally, losing peace with one's neighbor means losing connection with God. Accepting this system of coordinates, you immediately understand how great God's mercy is, covering our daily "murders," "betrayals," and "rejection of the Lord." You understand that not our merits, but He alone, can bring us into His Kingdom.

Sin lies not in actions but in thoughts—Jesus shows us in the Sermon on the Mount. Slavery to sin is not enslavement imposed from outside, but an inner spiritual condition of ours. Our good deeds (reconciliation with a brother) do not free us from it, but they testify to our desire to accept liberation; and the Spirit of the Lord brings freedom and purification from sin, “enlightening our hearts.” What takes place then is beautifully described in Psalm 84 (85):11-14.

The verse begins with the word “for”, i.e. it is a continuation of previous verses. Jesus says that he came to execute law and not to transgress it. But it turns out further (V 19) that the executor of commandments and the transgressor will both find themselves in the Kingdom of Heaven, however in different status. The 20 verse looks rather strange in this context. It appears that the righteousness of strict zealous of law is entirely not enough to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Oh, come now! If from the verse 19 we found that the transgressor – even the slightest will enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Jesus never blamed the Pharisees and scribes for their strict observance of the law when rebuking them. He pointed out that law was executed on letter and not by the spirit of law. Formality superseded love to people, so and to God, since one without other is impossible.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the Kingdom of the loving God, the Kingdom of love. We know it is impossible to please God without faith (Heb 11:6), but if love is greater than faith (1 Cor 13:13), then can we please God without love?

Jesus teaches, "as one having authority," clearly moving sin from the realm of actions into the realm of thoughts. For us this is a hard saying: we can still somehow control our actions, but thoughts... It is like "not thinking about the white monkey" (remember the old fairy tale about how, in a certain situation, you could receive the fulfillment of all your wishes if only, at the most important moment, you did not think about the white monkey?)

But we can avoid thinking about the white monkey, if only we think about Someone else! We can avoid sinning in our thoughts if we think about Someone Sinless, Who is righteous and true.

And when do we think about someone constantly? When we love him. That is the whole secret.

In conversations with the disciples and in sermons, Jesus often speaks about the Torah and its proper understanding. In the Synodal text the Torah is usually called the "Law," but, though such a translation is formally correct, it still does not fully convey the meaning of the corresponding Hebrew word. Torah is more than simply law in the sense in which we usually use that word, more than only legislation or the legal order defined by it. Torah also implies a way of life corresponding to the law, including the inner, spiritual state of a person that corresponds to such a way of life. In Gospel times, in the rabbinic environment and in the Synagogue in general, the concept of the "living Torah" had spread rather widely, and ideally every believing Jew was to become such a Torah. What was meant was a person's spiritual state in which the Torah becomes something inwardly inherent to him, defining the whole of his life in all its manifestations. This understanding was very close to Jesus; it is no accident that He Himself says that He came not at all to destroy or change the Torah, but to bring it to fullness (v. 17; in the Synodal translation this thought is conveyed by the word "fulfill").

And the first thing to which He draws His listeners' attention is their intentions, or, as psychologists say today, their intentionalities. If you hate, consider yourself a murderer (vv. 21-22); if you lust, consider yourself an adulterer (vv. 27-28). Otherwise, according to Jesus' word, our righteousness does not go beyond ordinary religiosity, it "does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees" (v. 20), who, being deeply religious people, outwardly, on the behavioral level, of course kept all the commandments of the Decalogue.

But it turns out that for the Kingdom this is not enough. And this is not about requirements raised especially high in order to be "holier than everyone else." It is simply that in this world our spiritual quality and state determine our actions, while in the Kingdom our intentions do. One might say that in our fallen world we are what we do, while in the Kingdom we will become what we desire. And if, while hating someone, we refrain from murder for God's sake, this is a serious spiritual achievement for our fallen world. But for the Kingdom it is a failure. And the spiritual bar raised so high by Jesus is needed in order to protect us from such a failure.

“Your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees”—these words were probably received like a proposal to drink the sea or leap higher than one’s own head. The scribes and Pharisees were precisely the people who paid special attention to righteousness: they tried to fulfill every religious prescription so as to please, by their life and conduct, the God who had given people the Law. Yet these words were addressed to Jesus’ disciples, among whom were people of limited understanding, weak people, people of doubtful reputation—in a word, sinners. And they were supposed to live more righteously than the “specialists” in right living! Perhaps this obvious moral dead end was meant to transform fundamentally His listeners’ whole understanding of the world. God cannot be pleased by our wretched righteousness; in His eyes, irritation or a lustful look at another man’s wife is as much a crime as murder or adultery. He does not count our sins and good deeds—it is useless, because a relationship with Him is not a trade. Clearly, Christ’s disciples must live differently, in a new way, as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. They must become a place of God’s presence on earth.

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most important Gospel texts, laying the foundations of Christian morality. Yet the beginning of this sermon, though traditionally called the "Beatitudes," speaks not about rules but about happiness: the happiness of a righteous life, the life Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven. In such a life, consolation, mercy, and joy overcome tears and pain, and grace and peace reign.

The blessings pronounced by Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount are commonly called the Beatitudes in Christian tradition, and are compared with the commandments of the Decalogue. Yet Jesus Himself did not treat them as new commandments replacing the old ones. In fact, in form they do not resemble commandments at all, but rather the series of blessings and curses with which Deuteronomy ends, or the blessings by which the Torah instructs priests to bless the people. But these blessings, of course, acquire a special meaning: they make sense only if the Messiah has already come and the messianic Kingdom is near and about to arrive.

The mention of the poor and the humble in such a context is especially significant. Historically, this refers to members of a movement that had formed even before the exile around Isaiah of Jerusalem. They came to be called 'the poor,' although in the literal sense they usually were not beggars. Sometimes they were also called 'meek' or 'humble,' with the same meaning: these are people who completely refuse to rely in life on anyone or anything except God, and who await the coming of the messianic Kingdom, where they will receive reward and consolation for the difficult path of righteousness they tried to follow. Speaking of the blessedness of the poor and the meek, Jesus thereby makes it clear that the messianic Kingdom has already come or is about to come.

Just as natural is the mention of those who thirst for righteousness: for the image of 'the poor one' was inseparable from the image of the righteous person, and already in pre-exilic hymnography these words had become virtual synonyms. At the same time, before the exile, purity of heart and mercy began to be perceived as integral traits of the righteous person. In addition, already in the pre-exilic period the image of the righteous person becomes the image of one persecuted by the authorities or the powerful of this world. Jesus proclaims the blessedness of those persecuted for righteousness, that is, following the tradition already existing at that time, for faithfulness to the Torah. And He adds: blessed are those persecuted for My sake, thereby in fact pointing to Himself as the Messiah; for the image of the suffering Messiah was known to tradition after all, although in those days it had somewhat receded into the background, and those persecuted for the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom were, of course, also understood as persecuted for righteousness.

Thus Jesus, proclaiming the nearness of the coming Kingdom, at the same time answers the hopes of those who were awaiting the Messiah and His Kingdom. He lets them understand that the long-awaited day has come - although not in the way they had imagined.

The Sermon on the Mount is truly the preaching of the Kingdom. The "beatitudes" themselves, as the blessings pronounced by Jesus at the very beginning of the sermon are usually called (vv. 3-11), testify that Jesus connects His coming with the manifestation in the world of the fullness of the Kingdom. It is not by chance that He speaks of the blessedness of the "poor in spirit" (v. 3). Here the reference is plainly to those whom the prophetic books of the Old Testament and the Psalter simply call "the poor," although even there the issue is clearly not material poverty.

Poverty in the Gospel sense was first spoken of in the history of God's people by the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem, who connected the triumph of the poor with the coming of the messianic age (Isa. 29:19). Later, "the poor" came to designate the members of the community of Isaiah's disciples, which then gave rise to a whole movement that remained connected with the prophetic milieu even later. Isaiah considered himself "poor" as well, although he belonged to one of the finest aristocratic families of Jerusalem.

By "poverty" he and his followers understood a spiritual state in which a person relies on no one and nothing in the world except God. With such complete surrender of oneself to the will of God, a person, even if rich and influential, still remained before God a poor person possessing nothing. And in a world that, in the Gospel's words, "lies in evil," such a person most often could not count not only on a kingdom, but even on a quiet life.

And now, according to Jesus' testimony, the day of which Isaiah spoke has finally come: the day of the triumph of the "poor," to whom the Kingdom is given. The reference, of course, is not to an earthly kingdom, but to that messianic Kingdom whose coming Isaiah foresaw and Jesus testified to. Sometimes in the Psalter such people were called "meek" or "humble," and if before they could not even think of inheriting the earth, now, in the world being transformed, such a possibility appears for them (v. 5).

And yet the Kingdom has not yet triumphed to the end and in its fullness. It is not by chance that Jesus speaks of the blessedness of those "expelled for truth" (v. 10; it would be more exact to translate this phrase as "blessed are those persecuted for righteousness") and of the blessedness of those persecuted for His sake and for faithfulness to the Kingdom (v. 11). The Kingdom "has drawn near" (Matt. 4:17), it is already entering the world and transforming it, but it has not yet opened in all its fullness, and the forces of evil resist this opening, falling upon those who live by the Kingdom and bear witness to it. Such is our age, the age of the coming Kingdom.

We are beginning to read the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ. Christians have always considered this text one of the most important for a person's formation in faith; it is said that in the early Church it even served as a basis for catechesis, the preparation of a person for baptism. We will see further on that the moral demands of the Sermon on the Mount are so high that they expose every one of us. And it would be very easy to fall into despondency, but throughout all the following days let us remember what we read today. Christ begins with a promise and encouragement, promising blessedness on the path of following Him, that is, some highest degree of happiness. And all this is because this is the very path where He Himself goes before us and does not leave us.

The Beatitudes are a completely unique text, one of the most important in the whole New Testament. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke transmit these words of Christ differently, which allows us to conclude that the Lord spoke about this more than once and that the ancient Church preserved several accounts of these words that do not fully coincide. This means that we are dealing with something truly important. Interpreters of the Gospel usually say that the Beatitudes designate the path of spiritual growth given to every person, or outline the places where we find Christ. But before all this, it is important for us to hear what Christ is speaking about. What is blessedness? The word has the meanings of both happiness and abundance, fullness. That is, from the very beginning of His ministry Christ speaks to people about what happiness is: the highest, overflowing happiness, happiness given in a measure pressed down and running over.

Instinctively, by some inherited stereotype, we expect something else from God. Denunciations of sins and cleansing from them, deliverance from pain, sorrow, and death, moral guidance. But the Lord first of all speaks of overflowing happiness, and this even embarrasses us a little. We ourselves are ashamed to think that we need this, so as not to appear somehow too primitive. Therefore it is important for us to understand that Christ calls us to fullness of life, to fullness of happiness. The path He points out to us is the path of the Cross. In order to live a full life, Christ says, we must receive as a gift the suffering that is inevitable in a fallen, distorted world. The happiness He offers us is not a wonderful and frightening elixir of forgetfulness. On the contrary, it is the victory accomplished in His Crucifixion and Resurrection. And for that reason the fullness of life to which we are called is all the fuller and more real.

The Beatitudes are a hymn to happiness, to the paradoxical Christian happiness of those who mourn and are persecuted, the meek and the poor. For Christ does not say, "Blessed are the well-fed and honored," although even they, difficult as it is, can still enter the Kingdom of Heaven (see Matt 19:23). On the contrary, through all these commandments the Lord shows that true life is found in simplicity. And these are not merely wishes, but commandments that must be fulfilled.

A very logical question arises: how is this possible? About some commandments we can still say that at times we correspond to them, for example those about mourning, but with others we have serious trouble. Who can honestly say that he is meek, pure in heart, and poor in spirit? No one, in essence. It is simply beyond our strength: our faith does not reach the level set in these verses.

And yet the Lord knows what He is doing when He sets such a standard before us. The mechanism of our relationship with Him is also paradoxical: hardly any teacher would pass a student who tries a little, has learned a little, and has understood something, but cannot answer all the exam questions. But the Teacher Himself promises to deal with us in exactly this way: to lead us "from faith to faith" (Rom 1:17) - from the small grain we already have to the fullness that only He can give.