They Have Their Reward
The Teaching
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. …
Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
— Matthew 6:1–2, 16
Commentary
Three times in one passage of the Sermon on the Mount, the same sentence: they have their reward. The giving done to be seen, the praying done on street corners, the fasting worn on the face. Each one is paid in full, on the spot, in the only currency it was after: being seen.
The fast is the sharpest of the three, because it is a performance of suffering. The hypocrites disfigure their faces so that their hunger shows. The real fast, the passage goes on, is hidden: wash your face and let no one know. The suffering that wants an audience has already been rewarded, and the reward is the audience.
On a modern feed the trumpet sounds by itself. The passage doesn’t say that everyone who suffers in public is pretending. It says something about the suffering that needs to be seen, and it asks the reader to put the question to themselves first.
Themes
Connections 8
Travelled
The song borrows the Christian image of the cross.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Christianity and Taoism while these teachings took shape. The Church of the East reached Chang’an in 635 and described itself in Taoist and Buddhist terms (Xi’an Stele, 781), long after both took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. No known exchange while either’s teachings took shape. The Buddha’s life later reached Christian Europe as the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat (10th–11th c.), and a Christian church in Tang China used Buddhist terms (Xi’an Stele, 781).
Travelled
Greek thought reached Christianity by 50 CE. The New Testament is written in Greek. John’s Logos is a Greek idea, and the Church Fathers read Plato.