In the second half of the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Plain. It is a shorter address than the Sermon on the Mount found in the fifth through seventh chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel although the subject matter is largely the same. It is not merely a matter of Jesus having on this occasion given a condensed version of His longer talk, there are a few things found in the Sermon on the Plain that did not make it into the Sermon on the Mount. There are also places where the same thing is treated in both sermons but in differing ways.
The
forty-sixth verse records Jesus asking His hearers “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things
which I say?” The double “Lord” calls to mind the twenty-first
to twenty-third verses of the seventh chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel and the illustration
likening those who hear Him and do what He says to those who build on solid
rock and those who hear but do not do to those who build on a less stable
foundation follows immediately after in both cases. In the Sermon on the Mount, however, Jesus
made a statement about what would happen at the Last Judgement. Here He expresses Himself in the form of
question.
The interrogative nature of the verse is often missed by
some contemporary commentators who interpret it as if it were a statement
declaring that Jesus is not the Lord of those who do not do what He says. Jesus does not say this, however, nor is it
the proper inference from the question.
Indeed, the idea that people “make” Jesus their Lord by obeying Him
looks suspiciously like the reading of Modern democratic concepts like
legitimate governance being derived from the consent of the governed into Jesus’s
Lordship where they do not belong.
Jesus is Lord of all. This is a matter
of fact. In the forty-third verse of the
first chapter of the same Gospel, St. Elizabeth, six months pregnant with John
the Baptist, asks the Blessed Virgin “And whence
is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Mary had only just conceived Jesus and
already He is Lord. This is because even
before His conception, from eternity He is Lord. His Lordship is inseparable from His
deity. Jesus is God, always was God, and
always will be God. (1)
The import of the question that
Jesus asked in the Sermon on the Plain, therefore, is not whether or not we
will make Jesus Lord but in what way will we acknowledge His Lordship. With our lips only or also with our lives? There is also the related question of when we will acknowledge His Lordship
which is not so much at issue in Lk. 6:46 but which arises out of what St. Paul tells us about how in the end
everyone will (Phil. 2:10-11, Rom. 14:11).
The two questions are closely connected because it is better for us that
we bend the knee to His Lordship in this life, just as it is better for us that
we do so in our hearts and not just on our lips.
Another improper inference from this verse, one often made in conjunction with
the one already discussed, is that it pertains to distinguishing true believers
from false professors. While those who
make this inference can support it by pointing to the parallel part of the
Sermon on the Mount, it is still a mistake.
Jesus didn’t put a question here where there is a prophecy in the other
sermon just for the sake of mixing things up.
The problem with reading the question this way, apart from the fact that
encourages self-appointed “fruit inspectors” to go around making precisely the
sort of judgements that Jesus said not to make, is that it becomes a way of
deflecting the question away from ourselves and onto other people.
“This is for those who say they
are believers but are not. I am a
believer therefore it does not apply to me.”
The New Testament, however,
is quite clear that even as believers we continue to sin. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 Jn. 1:8) What is sin but disobedience to God? To the extent that believers sin, and we all
do, we do not do what Jesus says. To the
extent that we sin, we all fall short of living up to our confession of Jesus
Christ as Lord. Jesus’ question in the
Sermon on the Plain, therefore, is as much for us as it is for those who
profess a faith in Christ which they do not possess.
Another passage about which a
similar point can be made is the Parable of the Sower. Some, perhaps most, commentators interpret the
four soils as representing believers (the good soil) and three types of unbelievers
(the other types of ground). Other
commentators have argued that only the rocky ground represents unbelievers and
the three other soils are different types of true believers. Naturally, the self-appointed fruit inspectors
favour the first interpretation since only the good soil brings forth fruit, to
varying degrees. Both interpretations, however,
miss that the parable is not about distinguishing between true and false
believers but about different ways in which the heart responds to the Word. The same person can at different times respond
in each of the four ways depicted. We
should be wary of deflecting the parable’s message away from ourselves by
saying “I’m a believer, therefore I’m the good soil” and thereby preventing the
parable from speaking to us in a way that might correct a problem with our own
response to the Word. Observe that when
we do so, the soil we most resemble is the rocky! That we should take care to avoid this – and a
shallow, enthusiastic reception of the Word and allowing the cares of the world
to choke out our reception of the Word – but aspire to be the good soil, and of
the good soil the kind that produces hundred-fold, is the parable’s message to
us and it does not cease to speak when we become believers. Rather, that is when we can really hear it
for the first time.
(1) When St. Elizabeth calls the Blessed Virgin “the mother of my Lord” no other meaning of “my Lord” other than “God” fits the context. Therefore, this is the Biblical equivalent of Theotokos or Mother of God. Those who find the rejection of this title by the heresy named after Nestorius of Constantinople (but which really began with Theodore of Mopsuestia) tempting because they associate it (the title not the heresy) with Roman Mariolatry, despite the fact that rejection of the title is irreconcilable with orthodox Christology would do well to consider this.
