Living the Sermon on the Mount: Weekly Summary
Sunday
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.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
Jesus taught an alternative wisdom that shakes the social order instead of upholding the conventional wisdom that maintains it.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Most of us pedal pretty hard to avoid going in the direction of Jesus’ Beatitudes. We read books that promise to enrich our spirits. We find all kinds of ways to sedate our mournfulness.
—Barbara Brown Taylor
Wednesday
It is neither wealth nor poverty that keeps people out of the kingdom—it is pride.
—Clarence Jordan
Thursday
Perhaps all the world needs is enough of us to risk believing and putting the beatitudes into practice.
—Megan McKenna
Friday
I can hear Jesus saying, “Get your hands dirty to build a human society for human beings.” Christianity is not passive but active, energetic, alive, going beyond despair.
—Elias Chacour
Week Forty-Five Practice
Blessing Others
When we hear that we are blessed, we should hear as well a sense of responsibility. A blessing given, a talent bestowed, if unappreciated and unused, is wasted.
—Amy-Jill Levine, Sermon on the Mount
Blessed are you when people revile you, persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
—Matthew 5:11
New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine challenges any temptation we might have to make the Beatitudes only blessings for ourselves, instead of ways that we can become a blessing for others. Referencing Matthew 5:11, she writes:
On those who find themselves having others “utter all kinds of evil” against them on account of Jesus or who suffer for carrying the name “Christian,” Jesus is not talking about the so-called war on Christmas, what decorations appear on the winter-season coffee cup, or whether the mall rings with sounds of “Happy holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” This is not persecution. This is respect for those who do not identify as Christian. Jesus’s concern is that one welcome the strangers, not hit them over the head with candy canes and tinsel. He is [instead] aware of those who risk their lives to live the gospel. In parts of the world, the practice of Christianity is illegal, churches are bombed, and children are hounded. To be aware of this persecution should prompt his followers to risk their reputations to make peace when others in their neighborhoods—the people without the tree in the living room or the lights by the door—are persecuted for being different.
We can leave the Beatitudes with the phrase “blessed are” ringing in our ears. We could attempt to recite all nine (there should be a mnemonic, but I’ve yet to hear one I’ve remembered), but perhaps a better exercise is to continue the pattern and develop our own. Blessed are those who care for broken bodies or lonely children, blessed are those who sit by the dying at night, blessed are those who can sing of God asking “Whom shall I send?” and can respond “It is I Lord…. I have heard you calling in the night.” The path is narrow and the journey hard, but the blessings are found in every step forward.
Reference:
Amy-Jill Levine, Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven (Abingdon Press, 2020), 21–22.
Image credit and inspiration: Rachel Spina, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The woman watches the child marvel at the flowers—each of them practicing the Beatitudes by noticing and honoring what is small and vulnerable.
