The Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount is like the "constitution" of the Church according to Emory professor Tom Long. It is the charter document for life in Jesus' Kingdom. Much like the U.S. Constitution sets forth, among other things, the sort of citizens the founders hoped would make up the United States, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus draws a picture of those who belong to His Kingdom. It is Jesus' own understanding of what his followers are, should be, and will be. In our denomination (Disciples of Christ) we often refer newcomers to the wonderful little book Handbook for Today's Disciples by Duane Cummins. If there is a definitive handbook for how to follow Jesus, it is his Sermon on the Mount.

There was a time when the Sermon played a huge role in the life of nearly every believer. For the first few hundred years of the church's existence it was the most often quoted part of the Bible. In preaching and teaching -- allusion to and quotation of the Sermon was central. Today it is mainly ignored and/or interpreted away except maybe in the Anabaptist traditions where they still think Jesus wasn't kidding. I leave it for others to tell us how and why the Sermon went from the center of the church's teaching to the periphery; rather, my concern is to place it once again in the center of my little corner of the church.

So today I'll begin blogging through the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. There are a couple of things that might be helpful to keep in mind, or maybe to use as guidelines in reading the Sermon.

1. The Sermon on the Mount “is not a list of requirements, but rather a description of the life of a people gathered by and around Jesus” (Hauerwas, 61). That is to say, you will not find in the Sermon rules that must be kept in order to be saved, but a picture of the way those who are saved live. This is what followers of Jesus look like.
2. The Sermon is not to be dismissed as an impossible ideal that is wonderful to strive for, but cannot ever be reached. Jesus, as we will learn, really expects us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile. One of my fundamental convictions about Matthew 5-7 is we make very poor disciples apart from the Sermon on the Mount. Converts, yes. Disciples, no. And it is disciples that Jesus commands us to make -- and become.

At the very end of Jesus' time on earth, in the days after his ministry had ended, in the time after Easter but just before he was to ascend back into heaven with His Father, Jesus gathered with his friends on a mountain top to deliver his final instructions (28:18ff): Make disciples, he says. Baptize them. And then Jesus instructs the group...

"Teach the new followers to obey all things I have commanded you."

In telling the story this way, Matthew wants us to hearken back to an earlier time, another mountain -- when Jesus delivered his most famous Sermon, in which Jesus lays out his program, his vision of life in God's Kingdom. It is the single most important passage in the Bible for those who want to know, "What does God want of those who are saved by His grace?"

At the close of the Sermon, Matthew notes that, "When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching." They are astonished at Jesus' preaching. I suppose we'll have to wait to see if their astonishment turned into something more substantial.

The Encounter

Dawn Husnick was a young nurse in a Chicago Emergency room when she had The Encounter . He was a “lock-down” patient -- violent, with psychotic episodes who had been brought in off the streets one evening. His feet were wrapped in plastic bags, barely disguising their mold-covered, puss-oozing state. Dawn was instructed to take him to the hazmat shower, and though the man desperately needed his feet treated and tended to with antiseptics and antibiotics, the charge nurse's instructions were simply to get him into the shower as a bare minimum.

She wasn't terribly anxious to treat the man, but reflecting later on the episode Dawn writes: “This poor shell of a man had no one to love him…No one in the ER that day really looked at him and no one wanted to touch him. They wanted to ignore him and his broken life. But as much as I tried…I could not.”

So she laid out all of the tools and supplies to treat his feet, prepared warm towels and a chair, and when he was finished with the shower, she led him to the chair and she knelt down to tend his broken feet: “The room was quiet as the once-mocking security guards started to help by handing me towels. As I patted the last foot dry, I looked up and for the first time [his] eyes looked into mine. For that moment he was alert, aware and weeping as he quietly said, ‘Thank you’. In that moment, I was the one seeing Jesus. He was there all along, right where he said he would be."

It was in a Chicago Emergency room that Dawn Husnick had her Encounter. Where will you have yours?

Jesus Doesn’t Do Hyperbole

It was a moment that could only occur in one of those Bible studies that can only take place among Christians who live privileged lives -- who have a lot invested in the here and now, who have a great deal to lose. We were studying the the Sermon on the Mount. As you know, that’s not the easiest piece of Scripture to swallow, so one has to read it with defenses at the ready. And we were ready. You simply have to be when you know how prone Jesus is to making unworkable, unreasonable demands.

And the timing of the moment was perfect. Someone read Matthew 5:38-48 with all its gristle (which is no problem because you can always spit it out), and before our teacher could even begin the lesson some obviously experienced Christian provided the moment: “Does Jesus really mean to say…?” And with that one move, we emasculated the Sermon and empowered ourselves. Listen. Can't you hear the honesty, the searching, and the humility in the question? “Does Jesus really mean…?” Trouble is, it's not really a question. It is a declaration, and the declaration is this: Long live me.

Of course, we never simply deny that Jesus is Lord, flatly rejecting all his impractical commands (we are Christians, after all). No, instead we simply ask the question that allows us to take Jesus’ Sermon “seriously” without going crazy and having it destroy our lives as we plan to live them.

I remember that someone in the class that day noted, "It’s really hard to tell when Jesus is using hyperbole and when he wants us to take him literally." Heads nodded.

Here's a hard truth to remember for your next Bible study: Jesus doesn’t much deal in hyperbole.

Do not resist an evil person
Turn the other cheek
Go the extra mile
Love your enemies
Pray for those who persecute you

Understatement maybe, but not hyperbole -- even though we’d rather they be. Because if Jesus is just the Great Exaggerator, then I can dismiss what he says and determine the level of "self-sacrifice" I'm comfortable with in my "discipleship." But if he’s speaking literally then, well, he wants my whole life. All of me.

"What do you want from us, Jesus?"
And Jesus sighing, answers, "Take up your cross and follow me."
"Wonder what he could mean by that?" we ask each other with a shrug.

It's a fairly typical day when Jesus comes walking into my home, your office, our church. Just as he had done with the fishermen by the sea of Galilee, Jesus looks us squarely in the eye and challenges, "Follow me."

Some will.
And some won’t.