Pearls before Swine

So far, we’ve seen that the Sermon on the Mount contains a number of different genres within it: beatitude, legal discourse, prayer, and formal instruction. Now as the Sermon nears its end, Jesus switches to aphorisms, short, pithy sayings or proverbs. The one we’ll look quickly at today is simple, so simple that scholars have concocted all sorts of hypotheses about how to make it say something other than what it says.

It goes like this: “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you” (Matthew 7.6). The question for me isn’t what this means — I think it’s pretty straightforward — but why it’s included here in the Sermon on the Mount. It doesn’t quite seem to fit the beautiful and expansive ethic of the Sermon, especially situated here, right after Jesus’ teaching against judging others. Surely casting certain people aside as undeserving of what is holy or valuable must be inherently judgmental, right? What’s going on here?

The basic meaning of this saying is clear: Don’t waste what is valuable on those who won’t appreciate it. Taking Jesus’ analogy at face value, a pig is not going to appreciate a pearl, not because it’s not ‘worthy’ of a pearl, but because a pig is only going to appreciate what is valuable to it. A pig’s treasure, so to speak, is its food, not in fancy objects. To toss pearls into a pigpen would just be a waste of something that’s valuable to humans, but will in no way benefit the pig. The same is true with the best, most valuable parts of life — the things of God certainly, but also our time, energy, service, and resources. One of the criticisms of the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is that they can be — and have been — used to perpetuate unequal and harmful dynamics within relationships and society. I think this verse is the fail-safe. Yes, we are called to lives of humble service, even to the point of being taken advantage of. But that doesn’t mean that everyone is going to appreciate that service for the gift that it is.

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus puts a similar idea in the words to the effect of, “Let those who have ears to hear listen” (Mark 4.9, 4.23, 8.18; Luke 8.8, 14.35). Some people just don’t have ‘ears to hear’ or ‘eyes to see’. Their attachments to this world — its power, its pleasures, and so on — are such that their ears are stopped and eyes blinded to the realities before them. They are incapable of seeing the holy as holy, that wealth comes in the sharing rather than the hoarding, that God’s justice is mercy, compassion and grace, and so on. To people such as these, the Gospel will always be nonsense, impractical and ‘just not the way things work.’

And so, Jesus here reminds his followers not to tilt at windmills. Sometimes the conversation isn’t worth having. Sometimes people just aren’t worth the effort, not because they aren’t inherently worthy or are in any way lesser, but because of their hardness of heart the conversation just will not go anywhere. That doesn’t mean we treat them poorly — we are always called to compassion and grace — but that it isn’t ‘un-Christian’ to focus our efforts and attentions where they will be understood and appreciated. Sometimes Christian humility and service look like leaving people alone. Sometimes perseverance looks like finding more productive soil to farm. After all, nowhere does it say “Blessed are the stubborn!”

So, while we are always called to serve our neighbour, this verse provides a helpful nuance, allowing us to discern where our service might be most fruitful.