Just the title…Sermon on the Mount…skews reality. Take just a moment to bring out the context of this body of teaching.
First, it’s not a sermon in the sense that we think of sermons. I prepared sermons for over 30 years, always in a quiet place, surrounded by books and articles and yellow pads, over a span of several days. At the appointed time I would stand behind a pulpit or stand of some kind and deliver the sermon to a group that had come together expecting such a thing. I usually preached for 24 ¾ minutes, and until my later years when I invited such things, there was no interruption, nor was there an expected discussion time.
That’s not what happened with Jesus and his disciples.
After describing the healing ministry of Jesus, the gathering crowds, and the places people came from, Matthew sets up the Sermon on the Mount in this way: “Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:…” Luke describes the setting with more detail. After Jesus had gone to a mountainside to pray all night, he called his disciples up to him and chose the 12 apostles. Still on the mountainside,“He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all. Looking at his disciples, he said…”
So he went up on the mountain a little way so that his immediate followers would be nearer than the rest and then came down with them to a level place. Presently he sat down (in that culture a Rabbi would not teach standing up. When the Rabbi sat down that was a signal that he was ready to teach.) and began to teach, with special attention given to the disciples. As Matthew records the words of Jesus he does so as a student’s report of a class lecture and discussion. The crowd there could ‘eavesdrop,’ but the disciples were the focus of his attention.
Modern culture has looked at the story of Jesus through minimalist eyes. We see the events of his ministry as small and localized. But if we actually read the gospels the opposite is so. The crowds were large or vast, the number of sick was so great that Jesus was in danger of being crushed by the number of them trying to touch him, people were coming to see/hear/touch him from all over the Fertile Crescent, and even the disciples are described as a ‘large crowd.’ He was the still center of it all, swirled about with dust, noise, the crush of people, and tremendous need.
Did they ‘like’ what he had to say? Who can like being knocked flat on his face by a sledge hammer? I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition that that of a person who can read the Sermon on the Mount with tranquil pleasure. It is an uncompromising statement of our sinfulness and God’s righteousness. When I finish reading the Sermon I am crushed by my complete inability to measure up to its simple statements. Some have suggested that the Sermon on the Mount was delivered so that all people would realize that they were completely lost without God’s grace. My imagination watches the disciples as they listen to Jesus. I see the growing concern on their faces, the realization that they have failed to measure up, the feeling of complete and utter “I’ve blown it!” And I see the growing shift in the crowd at large; focused on healing, then beginning to listen, then captured by his teaching and his authority. From his still center, and traveling out, a ring of quiet grows as concern for their illnesses is replaced by a concern for their souls.
We will spend the next several days in the Sermon on the Mount. I hope that you too will be driven to the grace and forgiveness of God.
Prayer: “Gracious Father, I am grateful today simply for another day of Life. Whether I have a ‘good’ day or not, I know that I am always surrounded by your care and provision. Help me to live well today, and to accomplish the things you may set before me in a way that causes you pleasure. I thank you for my breath, my body, my mind, and my life. Use me as you wish. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”