Whenever . . .

Most followers of Jesus keep coming back to the Sermon on the Mount. There is something about those words from Jesus that attract us to its message and ideals, and something about them that is convicting. The Season of Lent is a great time to spend some quality time with the sermon of all sermons. 

My guess is that when I read comments in the gospels about Jesus out “teaching and preaching” or “heralding the gospel of the kingdom” I should think “He’s preaching that sermon again.” In our cultural context, perhaps it was the sermon He kept in the back of His Bible, always read to preach it when asked or given the opportunity.

Among the issues that Jesus addresses in the sermon are giving, prayer, fasting.  In each of those three situations, He introduces the topic with a little Greek word that is often translated “whenever.” This particular word means something like an act this is possible, and perhaps regularly repeated. So it could be possible that Jesus is saying something like “since you regularly give, pray, and fast.” 

What seems to be obvious in all three examples (Matthew 6:2 for giving, 6:5 for praying, and 6:16 for fasting) is that the question of why we do such things is an important one. The one who gives should do so without trumpets announcing the gifts. The one who prays shouldn’t seek an audience. The one who fasts should not look like fasting is going on.  Rather, Jesus tells us, give, pray, and fast in ways that honor God, not self.

While Jesus has more to say about prayer than He does giving and fasting in the sermon, He apparently thinks all three activities are the kinds of things those who follow Him “regularly do.” These actions get to be very complex issues in our culture. Most capital campaigns to raise money in church and para-church ministries are centered in “a lead donor” whose gift is used to encourage others to be generous givers. Prayer as a “public issue” in church can easily become more for the audience than the intended audience. Fasting – what church youth group hasn’t done a 40 hour fast to raise money for some mission that intrigues them?

Can we become so private about these matters that we still miss the intended audience? Should I not expect an end-of-the-year statement from the church and missions my family supports t use for tax purposes because “the left hand shouldn’t know what the right hand is doing?” Should I never pray in public because of the temptation to forget to whom I’m actually talking.   Since early January, I have been attempting to fast one meal a day, spending that time praying for specific things on my heart. Should I have not told you that?

Some people are critical of the Season of Lent for this very reason. It is making “fasting” too public an issue and Jesus said we should fast only for God. But those are the same people who pray long and lofty prayers in church and sometimes use the benediction to make announcements. There’s something incongruent about a prayer to God that says “Lord, help us to remember the study we are starting in Wednesday night prayer meeting this week at 7 p.m.” Did God not know that or need to be reminded?

My senior year in college, the last semester, required that I take what I now describe and the absolute worst class I’ve ever taken. As we, the all-male group of students, were sitting around before class started talking about what an awful class it was, the professor came in. Thankfully he didn’t hear what we were saying (and I’ve repented of it since). As was his normal practice, he called on one of us – thankfully not me! – to have a prayer. The student who prayed thanked God for what a wonderful class we were in and for the opportunity to learn something important about being a minister! I promised myself that day that if I ever became a professor in a Christian college, I wouldn’t put students on the spot like that! And I haven’t.

In my own study of the Sermon on the Mount, I think that is the kind of thing Jesus is concerned about – whether it be giving, praying, or fasting. It isn’t so much “be so secretive that no one ever knows you give, pray, or fast.” Rather, it is simply a matter of “remember the real audience.”

I’m personally grateful for the Season of Lent – it reminds me of my fragile nature and my desperate need for God. It serves as a great reminder for the “whenevers” of the Sermon on the Mount.  That’s why its words are both attracting and convicting.