Another chapter of moralizing, and again I have mixed feelings. I like the message about not doing good deeds for the purpose of being seen: but, to me, the message of “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward” (Matthew 6:5) is weakened by the next verse, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6:6) Or, in other words, “you’re a hypocrite if you do good stuff to be seen by other people, unless the other people is the one person who can sentence you to eternal hellfire!”
I am probably sounding like a broken record on that regard, though; from now on, I should probably accept that yes, there are a lot of external motivators in here which range from nudges to naked threats. And I don’t have to like that, but it also won’t do me any good to spend time on that at the expense of seeing other bits that I could profit from more.
Like, for example, Matthew 6:24, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Though the following verses I’m not so sure about: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26.) That seems to me to be at tension with the “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” bit that we saw earlier in Matthew 4:7; and, if I’m remembering a Radiolab episode properly, I think that actually birds do gather seeds for winter storage, and some have such fast metabolisms that they wouldn’t be able to survive a single night if they couldn’t remember where they left them. Still, I’ll accept the basic point that you shouldn’t be paralyzed by fear of the future: as the chapter ends, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6:34)
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I’m wondering if you’re neglecting the community-building aspect of these sayings a little. The admonition about praying in secret doesn’t seem to me to be about individual prayer as much as it’s about the way you should integrate your prayer life into the life of the community. To put it another way “your Father who sees in secret” can’t be made commensurate with the people the Pharisees are trying to impress; praying in secret is an act of repentance, while praying on the street corner is an act of pride.
The same goes in another way for “Take no thought for your life”–Jesus seems to me to be saying that we need to have faith in our communities, in our neighbors, to take care of one another.
The real purpose of the Gospels seems to have been to create a canonical way for the early Christians to think about themselves as distinct communities–originally probably several separate ones. For me, that’s always a dominant theme.
12/22/2010 @ 9:11 am
I guess I’m not convinced about the community-building aspect of praying in secret: I have a hard time seeing “enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray” as building a community. Though, having written that, it’s perfectly reasonable to read that as praying silently but perhaps in a group, which works fine with communities.
You’re probably right about “Take no thought for your life”: in retrospect, I was reading that in a gratuitously narrow fashion. Your reading certainly works well with the “Take therefore no thought for the morrow” bit.
12/22/2010 @ 12:26 pm
Oh, but I read praying in secret as being much more about NOT praying in public than it is about actually praying in secret. Jesus’ sayings and ministry set themselves up as radically opposed to the authority of both Pharisees and Sadducees–the idea of a personal faith as the foundation for a spiritual community is what he seems to be proposing.
12/22/2010 @ 1:39 pm