A long time ago, (1976-78) in a galaxy far away (Partick) I completed my probationary ministry studies by writing (actually typing!) an exegesis of Matthew's Greek text of the Sermon on the Mount. It was a mind and life changing immersion in the teaching of Jesus, and what is involved in faithfully following after the finest Teacher the world has ever known.
I've tried to stay current with both the scholarship and continuing interpretation of Jesus' Kingdom manifesto. But the more difficult call is to interpret the Sermon through the performance that is our own life trying to faithfully follow the script – and the script writer.
"Are the teachings of the SM for all Christians or only for the 'apostles'? Are they meant to be taken literally?… In one respect, the history of interpretation can be viewed as a succession of ingenious evasions and responses to these evasions." (Alan Culpepper, Commentary on Matthew, p. 81)
The early form-critic Hans Windisch mentioned Tolstoy and Baptists as "those who regard the Sermon on the Mount as presenting demands that are to be literally understood and literally fulfilled." He went on to say, "The unmistakable conclusion of our exegesis is that such people have correctly understood the Sermon on the Mount." p. 82 ( Windisch was referring to Anabaptists)
Over the next few months I'll be writing several posts here on the Sermon on the Mount as a text for our times. Actually it's a text for all times, but in our own time of political uncertainty, economic anxieties, fear of the other, moral confusion even about what it means to be human, this text comes to offer another way of life that begins with the word "Blessed.
"But that word doesn't encourage superficial, escapist, or self-generated positivity. It is a call to a life differently modelled, differently oriented, differently resourced, and differently motivated. "Seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else will fall into place."
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