The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most beautiful works of literature ever written. At least that’s the way I looked at it for most of my life. Now don’t get me wrong, I still believe it’s beautiful. Some of the concepts put forth, however, seemed like something that could only be attained by Christ himself, or at the very least, we believers after we had passed from this life into heaven.
In the past few years, I have felt the Holy Spirit draw me into these three chapters of Matthew’s gospel as if he were dragging me in and saying, “I’m going to hold you here until this becomes you!”
Some of us refer to the Sermon on the Mount as the constitution of the kingdom and I believe that is an appropriate term, but we cannot allow ourselves to merely give mental assent to it, stand back and look at with admiration as we would a masterpiece painting in an art museum. We must let the Artist Himself draw us in and allow this work of art to capture us.
The kingdom life described here once seemed so foreign to me because it’s just not accepted behavior in our culture, especially here in the west. It’s not like Jesus didn’t prepare us for this sermon when he said in chapter 4, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Repent – change the way you think, which results in a life change.
My view of the Sermon on the Mount changed when I began to understand that the kingdom of heaven is not some far-away place, but a present reality. Does the Lord’s Prayer ring a bell? New Testament theologian and scholar N.T. Wright so eloquently puts it this way:
“So when do these promises come true? There is a great temptation to answer: in heaven, after death. At first sight, verses 3, 10 and 11 seem to say this: ‘the kingdom of heaven’ belongs to the poor in spirit and the persecuted, and there’s a great reward ‘heaven’ for those who suffer persecution for Jesus’ sake. This, though, is a misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘heaven’. Heaven is God’s space, where full reality exists, close by our ordinary (‘earthly’) reality and interlocking with it. One day heaven and earth will be joined together forever, and the true state of affairs, at present out of sight, will be unveiled. After all, verse 5 says that the meek will inherit the earth, and that can hardly happen in a disembodied heaven after death.
No: the clue comes in the next chapter, in the prayer Jesus taught his followers. We are to pray that God’s kingdom will come, and God’s will be done, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. The life of heaven – the life of the realm where God is already king – is to become the life of the world, transforming the present ‘earth into the place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That’s the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and these ‘beatitudes’ in particular. They are a summons to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God’s promised future; because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great daring, that it is in fact the right way up. Try it and see.”
If the Sermon on the Mount seems too far out of reach to you as it once did me, then maybe you’ve chosen to live outside of the realm where God is king. When Jesus announced that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, it was more than just an announcement, it was an invitation to join him now.
I will be exploring the Sermon on the Mount in more detail in my next several blogs. I hope you’ll join me!
In him whose kingdom is everlasting,
Kevin