Sermon on the Mount
#1: The Good News of the Upside-Down Kingdom
October 1st, 2006
Gary Harder
Texts:
Matthew 4:23-5:3
Matthew 7:28-8:3
Introduction
I am excited about this series of sermons on The Sermon On The Mount. It felt very good to meet with our preaching team a few weeks ago to study this section of Matthew and to plan this series of sermons. The last time we preached through the entire sermon on the mount here at TUMC was in 1988 – eighteen years ago. At that time Bill Klassen, Betty Puricelli, & Ron Sawatzky were on the preaching team with me. Over the years since then I have at various times preached a sermon from one piece or another of these chapter, but have not systematically preached through the entire text. So it is high time.
But I am also afraid of the sermon on the mount. It is the central core of Jesus teaching. How can we do it justice? For Mennonites it has been at the heart of Biblical teaching, a kind of canon within a canon. How can we honour that heritage as we struggle to apply its radical teachings here in Toronto in 2006?
These two months around Matthew chapters 5-7 hold so much promise and also so much discomfort. The teachings of Jesus will challenge us to the core. They are certainly a challenge to preach about. They are a far greater challenge to live out.
But here, in front of us, is the Sermon on the mount. And let the chips fall where they may. Today is meant to be an overview, a setting the stage for more detailed study to follow.
Observations on a re-reading
As I read through these 3 chapters of Matthew several times, there were a series of things that struck me. I make 6 observations.
1) It is so very familiar to me. Much of it I know almost by memory. It is as if it is kind of internalized in my bones. There are the beatitudes “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. There is the Lord’s prayer. We want to recite both the beatitudes and the Lord’s prayer each Sunday over the next two months. There is the invitation for us to be salt and light to the world. The heart of our pacifism is rooted here – “Love your enemies”. It tells us not to worry, for God’s eye is even on the birds of the air. There are the stories of building a house on the sand and on the rock. All so very, very familiar. And so inviting and so rich in profound spirituality that touches us to the core.
But then these are the teachings from the sermon that we have embraced. These are the texts we gladly go to. They are familiar and welcome and comforting to us. The challenge will be to say anything new or fresh about texts I know almost for memory.
My first observation is that the Sermon on the Mount feels so very, very familiar.
2) There are some very hard sayings in the sermon
A second observation is that there are some very hard sayings in these 3 chapters. Jarring sayings. Harsh sayings. One’s that I would rather not preach about.
• “But I say to you, if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement….” (5:22).
• “You have heard it said, ‘you shall not commit adultery’. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (5:28).
• “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (5:39).
• “ You cannot serve God and wealth” (6:24).
• “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (5:48).
Mennonites have said that we need to take the entire Sermon on the Mount seriously, not only those chunks we find comforting. That does indicate how important these chapters have been in our Mennonite tradition, and how deeply we have drunk from this core of Jesus’ teaching. Mennonites have tended to make the sermon on the mount the centre of the Bible, the most important part of the entire canon. At its best this has meant making the teachings of Jesus central to how we understand the Christian faith. It meant trying to follow Jesus and follow the teachings of Jesus. Sometimes the phrase “ethical discipleship” has been applied to our fixation on this set of teachings of Jesus. We have been challenged by others for concentrating so much on ethics and not enough on grace. We have been chided for reading Jesus too literally. And that may be.
But many Christians, through the centuries, have resisted this sermon, the hard parts especially, or at least resisted saying that it applies to how we should live our lives. We Christians have been almost ingenious in giving reasons not to embrace these words of Jesus as applicable to us.
• It is intended only for the really exceptional Christians, like priests and nuns and pastors. Ordinary Christians can’t be expected to live out these demands.
• It is intended only for special times. Jesus expected the world to end imminently. So for a very short “interim ethic” time maybe Christians could live that way, but not for a life time.
• You might be able to live out some of these demands in your personal life. There you can try to follow these teachings. But in public life you can’t be expected to. As a civic leader, for example, you have to do what civic leaders need to do, not what Jesus asks us as individual Christians to do.
• These teachings are way beyond our reach, so how can Jesus expect us mere mortals to follow them? And on and on.
Mennonites have tried to say that these teachings of Jesus are at the core of how we understand the Christian life – difficult teachings, surely, but none-the-less a real call to discipleship.
How do we read and interpret these hard sayings, let alone live them out. As I read through these chapters these texts jarred me, and I moaned a bit to myself. “How in the world can I preach about them? I can’t live them out myself, so how can I preach them to others. There are many other things in this larger text that will be easy and fun to preach about, but some parts of it will be really difficult.
3) There is another version of Jesus’ Sermon in Luke. In some ways Luke’s version is very similar, in other ways radically different.
Luke’s version is much much shorter, about one quarter as long. One of the other very striking differences to me is how Matthew and Luke treat the Beatitudes. For example, Matthew states, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Luke’s version states, “Blessed are you who are poor…” (Luke 6:20). His version is much more political, addressed to people who are poor, who are literally hungry, while Matthew’s version talks about the poor in spirit and those who hunger after righteousness.
Matthew wrote as a Jewish Christian, careful about the background and nuances of Jewish thought. Luke wrote as a Gentile Christian, much more succinct and much more political.
Another contrast is striking. Matthew says Jesus went up the mountain to give these teachings, and thus the title, “Sermon on the Mount”. Luke says that Jesus came to a level place, a place on the plain, to give these teachings. Thus his version is called “The Sermon on the Plain”.
Most commentaries say that this sermon, whether delivered on a mountain or on a plain, is not really one sermon. It is not a transcript of a single presentation from Jesus. It is rather a compendium of words spoken on a number of different occasions (Believers Church Commentary), a collection of some of the most important teachings of Jesus put together into one larger “sermon” for easy access by believers. I still have this idyllic version in my mind, the picture of Jesus on a mountain delivering this great sermon, but that probably is not how it happened. Matthew and Luke would each have had a different purpose in mind and different audience in mind, and thus selected the teachings they would include accordingly.
During this series we will focus on Matthew’s version, and only briefly make reference to Luke’s version.
4) Jesus’ teachings have an Old Testament context
Jesus breathed the air of the Old Testament. And so did Matthew. And so it is no surprise that Jesus’ teachings make constant reference to the Old Testament.
Sometimes Jesus contrasts his message with that of the Old Testament. Two contrasts jump out at me. One is the frequent times Jesus says, “You have heard it said….but I say to you. For example, “You have heard it said, ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” There are six of these contrasts in Chapter five. In other words, Jesus is saying, “You have the Scriptures, but I have a new word from God. This is what God requires of you now.”
A second contrast, in my mind, is the way the basic “rules of the new Kingdom”, the beatitudes, are framed. This is over against the way the ten commandments are framed. The Ten commandments thunder “You shall not”. “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20).
The beatitudes are so much more invitational. They don’t thunder. They invite. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” They read like invitational good news.
Having named these very deliberate contrasts with the Old Testament, I also want to make clear that in other places there are very cle
ar similarities. It is certainly not a rejection of the Old Testament. In fact, so much of what Jesus teaches is rooted in those Scriptures.
Take especially the beatitudes. The theme of blessing is one of the predominant themes of the Old Testament. Over and over again we hear that God is intent on blessing all the people of the earth, and that one of the responsibilities of God’s people is to “Be a blessing to all the people of the earth”. We will hear much more about this next Sunday.
There is a strong Old Testament context to the teachings of Jesus, sometimes by way of contrast, sometimes by way of rooted-ness.
5) The immediate context of the Sermon on the Mount is a healing ministry
I very deliberately chose as Scripture texts today the stories leading up to Matthew 5, and the stories leading out of Matthew 7. In other words, I am trying to indicate what frames this collection of teachings.
What frames these teachings are stories of Jesus’ healing ministry. This sermon comes in the context of healing. I think Matthew placed it here very deliberately. Listen again to the end of Matthew 4.
“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and the cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying, ‘Blessed are’…
Crowds have come to Jesus because he has been healing people. And that becomes the occasion, in Matthew’s compilation, for the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
Immediately after these teachings are finished comes another series of healing stories.
“When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.’ He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed…”
The Sermon on the Mount is a part of an extension of a ministry of healing. It is not first of all about ethics. It is first of all about healing and wholeness and being embraced within God’s love and God’s care for us and our world. This is how we experience wholeness, health, spiritual vitality – by living the way Jesus teaches us to live. In that is healing and wholeness. These teachings then come as a continuation of the good news of healing and of God’s work in this world.
6) The Sermon on the Mount is pictured as good news – as good news of God’s Kingdom
Jesus talked often about “The Kingdom of God”, or “The Kingdom of Heaven”. He said that the reign of God was already here, visible now in a fresh way. His teachings collected in the Sermon on the Mount were teachings about how to live in and participate in God’s Kingdom.
But God’s reign is full of surprises. It is not a kingdom like any other. “It is an upside- down kingdom, wrote Donald Kraybill, an Anabaptist scholar in 1978 already, in a book which captured the Mennonite imagination. It turns the way we think up side down.
Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was:
• already here.
• that it is where God’s will is done, even in very small things,
• it is where compassionate love rules.
• that we can already participate in it
• It is where people try to follow God’s way and live in God’s love.
Jesus teaches us how we can take an active part in God’s Kingdom.
• by repenting, changing directions, following the new way of Jesus,
• by asking for forgiveness for sin,
• by having a personal relationship with God,
• by
following Jesus and being willing to live in his kind of way – the way he teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount,
• by letting God’s love flow into us and through us.
Jesus tells us who the deeply blessed and truly happy people are.
• Those who are willing to give their lives completely to God and for others,
• those who seek first the Kingdom of God,
• those who incorporates into their lives the love and the way of Jesus,
• Those who know grief and hunger for justice and are full of mercy and try to be peacemakers.
Extreme? Yes. Radical? Yes. Easy? No. But that is what is in the Sermon on the Mount. And it really is very Good News. In it is our healing and the world’s healing.