The Kingdom Heart

No good tree produces bad fruit, nor any bad tree good fruit... The good person, from the good treasured up in his heart, produces what is good. 
         ~(Luke 6:43)

Welcome to chapter 5, both of the book we are reading and of the Gospel of Matthew. These next few weeks will look at both. As per the title of this posting, this chapter is about the heart. More specifically, it concerns the heart as it relates to good and evil.

We must understand that when Jesus tackles human existence, he does not do so in platitudes and proverbs. Wise sayings are great for general ideas of where to go with life. For instance, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is vague enough to allow me, if I understand its meaning, to apply it to situations when I feel it applies and ignore it at all other times. 

Jesus does not give us that luxury.
When Jesus deals with moral evil and goodness, he plunges right into the guts of human existence: 

raging anger

contempt

hatred

obsessive lust

divorce

verbal manipulation

revenge

slapping

suing

cursing

coercing

begging

It is the stuff of soap operas and the daily news - and real life. He knows that people deeply hunger to be good but cannot find their way. His aim is to enable people to be good, not just talk about it.

We, the people, have talked about. We have discussed it and dissected it and condoned it and condemned it. We've put it on posters and stickers and buildings and bombshelters. Indeed, in nearly ever location in modern world Jesus' teachings have found their way to the core of the culture.

What Jesus had to say about human good and evil was of sufficient depth, power, and justification to dominate European culture and its offshoots for two millennia.

But how many of us have actually lived his teaching? His famous Sermon on the Mount leaves most readers confused and cringing at the thought of doing some of the activities he suggests. Sell all our clothes? Cut of our hands? Gouge out our eyes? Become salt? Never insult anyone? Tie a large rock around our necks and hurtle ourselves into the sea? Certainly not, you say. Certainly not, I say. 

Jesus' words in Matthew 5-7 are perhaps the most misquoted and misunderstood sentences of the entire Bible. Everyone knows them, and yet no one seems to agree on what they mean. To this point, Willard offers hope.

First, what is now called his Sermon on the Mount should indeed be read as a sermon, as one unified discourse. It is organized around one purpose and develops along a single line of thought in masterful unity. When taken as independent sayings, the various statements the "sermon" contains will certainly be regarded as "laws" dictating what we are and are not to do. If that is all he is doing, they will certainly be laws that are impossible to keep. 

I can vouch for that. In growing up as a legalist and perfectionist, I sought to figure out how to be good and great, beyond everyone else around me. I was much like the rich, young noble who came to Jesus and said, "All the laws I have kept since my childhood, so what must I still do to inherit eternal life?" 

Then I opened to the dreaded Sermon, and my eyes were opened to the impossibility of my task. I was not going to dismember my body. I was not going to sell even what little I had and just blindly give it away. I was going to continue to structure my life around blindly following what I thought were the rules of the good life and hope that that that produced my sought after reward. In the end, I, like everyone else who travels down this path, ran into the obvious conclusion.

The keeping of the law turns out to be an inherently self-refuting aim; rather, the inner self must be changed. Trying merely to keep the law is not wholly unlike trying to make an apple tree bear peaches by tying peaches to its branches.

My outer appearance may have put on the guise of righteousness, obedience, and piety, but my heart never changed. As we shall see in this chapter, the heart is heart of the matter. It is the crux, the building blocks, the capstone, the keystone, the foundation, and the page one on the book of life. 

In the words of Paul, "If I have faith that can move mountains and I give all I have to the poor, it still amounts to nothing if my heart does not love." (1 Corinthians 13)

He goes on to describe such a person as a clanging gong and banging cymbal. Such a person is a loud noise-maker, sure to draw attention to himself, bu unable to ever produce anything of substance or value. He is an apple tree, showing off his wonderful peaches, while everyone around wonders what he'll do when those have all dropped away.

This chapter is about the heart. For me, it's about my heart. For you, it's about yours. Jesus' words were meant for the individual, the seeker of life's secrets. His words will give you the secrets you seek, but you will have to look inside yourself to find the answers. And if you want to produce real fruit.