When I left College in 1976 and settled in pastoral ministry, I had to decide what I would do for my probationary studies. Quite rightly, the denominational policy was to encourage lifelong learning, and for the first three years there were set assignments ranging from book reviews to a couple of essays. I've never needed much encouragement to read, study and write. It is one of the perils of being a minister that there are so many words to read, write and speak. I guess the skill is in learning to read in the right places, to write well, and to speak only what's worth other people's trouble to hear.
Early on in my probationary studies, I decided I was going to make my major project a study of the Sermon on the Mount. I still have the typewritten manuscript; a long study of the background and structure, and a verse by verse exegesis using several standard commentaries and monographs. That study, over those years, shaped my approach to the Bible for the rest of my life. I have retained an interest in the Sermon on the Mount, exploring the history of its interpretation, being both inspired and perplexed about how it applies to personal, social and community life. I've tried too, to participate in the ongoing exegetical mining operation that is essential when excavating truth that is so deep, radical and transformative.
Study of the text and its background is one thing; living it as the blueprint of the Kingdom of God is something else again. Knowing the text thoroughly can only ever be the first stage in a transformational encounter with a text that today, as much as ever, cuts across some of the most unquestioned and life-shaping values of our culture. So I was keen to get my hands on the most recent exposition: The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, by Jonathan Pennington.
That a text so old and counter cultural, should have contemporary purchase on how we live; that a vision of life so inimical of late globalised capitalism and consumer driven materialism, might be the salvation of all of us in a world exploited to exhaustion; that words that sound like a manifesto for the Naive and Otherworldly Party, might instead be the words of hard wisdom, and tough talking, and direction-changing discipline we all need to hear, and heed. That this might be so.
That these might each be a possibility; lives of counter cultural persuasiveness lived as intentional critique and compassionate gift; lifestyles that nurture and nourish our world rather than rip up and tear apart the very fabric of our planetary home; that words, ideas and actions might spring from life giving principles and visions of humane community, and begin to heal divisions, cure our propensity to conflict, teach us again the ways of trust, compassion and hope; that all this is possible is part of the burden and the blessing, the risk and the promise, of the Sermon on the Mount.
Make no mistake. These are words of life, and their negation is perilous.
When Jesus says "Blessed" he speaks a word redolent of risk and new possibility.
When Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said…but I say unto you" he is challenging every status quo we've ever stood on.
When Jesus says, "Consider the birds…look at the flowers…do not be anxious" he contradicts the most powerful drives of our money obsessed, image addicted, and deliberately discontented culture.
And when Jesus warns about the intentional foolishness of building our lives on sand, we go ahead anyway, because the waves will crash on someone else's shore.
So I'm back into the Sermon on the Mount. Over the next while I'll post on Pennington's book, and his take on one of the most destabilising texts our complacent culture can encounter. But that encounter will only happen when there are communities for whom those words of Jesus are embraced as the risky possibility and the counter-cultural critique that is the Kingdom of God.
Leave a Reply