Study
Book: The Sermon on the Mount: a 12-week Study, by Douglas Sean O’Donnell
Please note: There are many sources and a lot of books written on the Sermon on the Mount. Some sources cited in this Bible study are BibleProject, books like Hard Sayings from the Bible, Amy-Jill Levine’s book Sermon on the Mount, a beginner’s guide to the Kingdom of Heaven and a Logos book: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount.
This posting will not go in-depth here, but will include those … that have encourage us. So we invite you, reader, to do your own research and to start, if you would like to, with those resources mentioned above.
Week 1- An Overview
Scripture – Matthew 5-7
On reading The Sermon on the Mount, people have all kinds of questions or statements about how to interpret these sayings of Jesus.
- Someone said “Some read it and it drives them to despair. They see it as an unattainable ideal. How can they develop this heart-righteousness, turn the other cheek, love their enemies? It is impossible.”
- Another asked this question: “In relating to the triad of ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’, ‘those who mourn’, and ‘the meek’, I can't help but think there's something I should be doing to attain these states of being, like, I should be trying to be in a state of mourning to receive blessing. Is there supposed to be an action on our end when reading this, or is that not the point? Further, is this what led groups in the past to make vows of poverty in church history?”
- And another, “It's easy to interpret the Beatitudes as instructions for how to get the good life. Should we, therefore, pursue mourning, powerlessness, and poverty? If Jesus says the poor and powerless have the good life, why shouldn't we desire to be those people? How are people with health, wealth, and power called to practically respond to this teaching from Jesus?
- Or is Jesus making these statements directives like someone who says, “they are called the “be” attitudes, because we should go and “be.”
But Stanley Hauwerwas says
“Too often, these characteristics of the blessings have in Christian history been turned into ideals or virtues that we must strive to attain. When we do that, we turn them into formulas that help us gain status and favor with God, which is of course precisely the opposite of what Jesus is trying to say. Rather, they are descriptions of the kinds of people to whom Jesus, in fact, first brought the kingdom of God. Nowhere does Jesus tell us that we should try to be poor in spirit or mourn all the time or try to get yourself persecuted. He simply announces the great surprise – that these people who are not significant or honored in their society are precisely the ones who have received the honor to be first among those called into God’s Kingdom.”
