Book 1: An Illumination of Matthew
Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus
Chapter 6: Trouble for Today (Righteousness II: the Present)
This episode continues Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus. Jake and I continue to discuss the 1st discourse of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, looking at chapter 6 of Matthew’s Gospel.
This chapter contains the heart of Jesus’ Thesis on Righteousness, or Ethics. It is devoted to the question of the Present, and the power of the Present - which is the Eternal. We discuss the difference between performative ethics and the ethical mysticism advocated by Jesus.
In this episode:
0:00 - Outlining the territory to be covered today
2:30 - The Lord’s Prayer as Jesus’ poetry
4:30 - Paul Tillich’s religious analysis of the present
6:20 - On Martin Buber’s dialogical conception of the eternal
10:10 - Dimensions of psychic experience and existential modes
14:40 - True Relation vs. Fusion to nondifference
17:30 - The 4th Beattitude: hunger and thirst for righteousness
18:05 - Reading of Matthew 6:1-18
21:25 - The principle: Being Seen vs. Being in Secret
25:45 - Mysticism and the closed realm of the secret place
28:50 - Illustration of the principle in alms, prayer, & fasting
31:20 - The Poor Face of Christ and the Christic Descent
37:05 - The central deception of performative ethics
39:25 - Analysis of the structure of The Lord’s Prayer
43:15 - The distinctive of Christian mysticism: “On earth as it is in heaven”
55:35 - The elements of the earthly: Bread, Debts, Temptations
1:00:35 - Reading of Matthew 6:19-34
1:03:45 - Why you can’t serve both God and money
1:06:15 - The link between value and perception
1:11:35 - Anxiety vs. Presence
1:15:25 - Existential anxiety vs. pathological anxiety