Beware

Matthew 6: 1-18

1‘Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

The danger of all this instruction in ethical living is that we turn it into a legalistic practice of rules which everybody sees or its gets elevated to an impossible idealistic standard that can never be achieved and so is abandoned from the everyday concern of disciples. This results in us living like everybody else in our culture and reducing the teachings of Jesus to simply internal and non-transformational ‘believing’.  The followers of Jesus are very visible; they live counter cultural lives if they live out the Sermon on the Mount. This presents a danger to us if we want or have a deep rooted desire to be seen; the needs we are seeking to meet is the recognition of others and through that meet other physical, social and psychological needs. Our ‘good works’ become the vehicle for meeting our needs our own way. Jesus was aware of the danger of this perversion of the practice of the Justice of God and so in chapter 6 Jesus introduces us to the three broad elements of discipleship practice given the name ‘piety’ or the practice of the Justice of God. Jesus is teaching us again about the transformational power of His gracious invitation to participate in the Kingdom He is inaugurating. Piety (dikaiosuné) that is to say, the practice of the Justice of God taught by Jesus has three parts: alms giving (the practice of compassion and mercy in its physical, social, psychological and environmental forms), prayer and fasting and forgiveness. The practice of following Jesus and living out Kingdom values, attitudes and beliefs is therefore composed of these three elements of discipleship. There can be no discipleship without giving and serving, prayer and fasting and practicing forgiveness. Discipleship living is empowered through the practice of private prayer and fasting not public recognition; where there is no forgiveness there is no discipleship. ‘Beware’ is the instruction from Jesus because if we want to be transformed through discipleship practice and not just recognised we need to practice piety as defined by Jesus. We are expected to live lives of justice and these lives are lives of compassion, prayer and fasting and forgiveness. Our practice must be so personally and culturally immersed in the transforming power of Jesus teaching on behalf of others that we lose ourselves; ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me’ was Paul’s expression of this in his letter to the Galatians 2: 19-21. Piety reveals Jesus not me! Over the next few days we will explore these life transforming practices.