Father Richard Rohr writes about the radical message of the Sermon on the Mount.
In his teachings, and in the Sermon on the Mount in particular, Jesus critiques and reorders the values of his culture from the bottom up. He “betrays” the prevailing institutions of family, religion, power, and resource control by his loyalty to another world vision, which he calls the reign of God. Such loyalty costs him general popularity, the support of the authorities, immense inner agony, and finally his own life. By putting the picture in the largest possible frame, he calls into question all smaller frames and invites his hearers into a radical transformation of consciousness. Many were not ready for it—nor are many of us today.
To understand the Sermon on the Mount, we need to clarify where Jesus is leading us.
It’s not to the old self on the old path, which would be non-conversion and non-enlightenment.
It’s not to the old self on a new path, which is where most religion begins and ends. It involves new behavior, new language, and practices that are sincere, but the underlying myth/worldview/motivation and goals are never really changed. My anger, fear, and ego are merely transferred to now defend my idea of God or religion.
Jesus is leading us to the new self on a new path, which is the total transformation of consciousness, worldview, motivation, goals, and rewards that characterize one who loves and is loved by God.
Matthew sets the stage for the Sermon with three simple sentences: “Seeing the crowds, he went onto the mountain. And when he was seated his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak” (Matthew 5:1–2). Remember, Moses came down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments. For Matthew’s Jewish audience, the message is clear: This is the new Moses going back to the mountaintop, reproclaiming the truth, bringing down the new law. That is a very important context: In a certain sense, the Sermon is Jesus’ revisioning of the Ten Commandments.
The Beatitudes (sometimes translated as “happy attitudes,” or even congratulations in a secular sense) are addressed not to the crowds but to Jesus’ disciples. Later in the Gospel, the most demanding teaching— “take up your cross”—is reserved for an even smaller group, the twelve apostles. The Sermon is addressed to the larger second circle of disciples, those who are still being initiated. That’s us!
It seems there is a very real plan in Jesus’ initiation. He is aware of timing, readiness, and maturation. At the early stages, we are not ready for the hard words of the gospel; we are unable to hear the message of the cross. It is only in the second half of life that we come to understand that dying is not opposed to life. Dying is a part of a greater mystery—and we are a part of that mystery. In my experience, it is usually the older psyche that is ready to hear such sober truth.
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A Teaching to Be Lived Out
Father Richard considers how challenging it is to live out Jesus’ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount:
I am told that the Sermon on the Mount—the essence of Jesus’ teaching—is the least quoted Scripture in official Catholic Church documents. We must be honest and admit that most of Christianity has focused very little on what Jesus himself taught and spent most of his time doing: healing people, doing acts of justice and inclusion, embodying compassionate and nonviolent ways of living.
I’m grateful that my spiritual father, St. Francis of Assisi, took the Sermon on the Mount seriously and spent his life trying to imitate Jesus. Likewise, Francis’ followers, especially in the beginning, tried to imitate Francis. At its best, Franciscanism offers a simple return to the gospel as an alternative lifestyle more than an orthodox belief system. That example continues to be lived out by the Quakers, Amish, Mennonites, the Catholic Worker Movement, and others. For these groups, the Sermon on the Mount is not just words! At their best, they include the outsider, prefer the margins to the center, are committed to nonviolence, and choose social poverty and divine union over any private perfection or sense of moral superiority.
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us this short but effective image so we will know that we are to act on his words and live the teachings, instead of only believing things about God:
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built a house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built a house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined (Matthew 7:24–27; Richard’s emphasis).
Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, understood the Sermon on the Mount as the foundational plan for following Jesus: “Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers.” [1] She observed that “we are trying to lead a good life. We are trying to talk about and write about the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the social principles of the church, and it is most astounding, the things that happen when you start trying to live this way. To perform the works of mercy becomes a dangerous practice.” [2]
Jesus taught an alternative wisdom that shakes the social order instead of upholding the conventional wisdom that maintains it. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not about preserving the status quo! It’s about living here on earth as if the reign of God has already begun (see Luke 17:21). In this reign, the Sermon tells us, the poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, the grieving are filled with joy, and enemies are loved.
