The Heart of Jesus Listening Again to the Sermon on the Mount Week One – True Happiness and Deep Obedience Did you know… o that Jesus has an action figure? o that one fervent believer claimed that Jesus had appeared miraculously in the form of shower mold? (Huffington Post 12/12/12) o that in a famous episode of the TV show “Glee”, a character recognized the face of Jesus on a sandwich and called it Grilled Cheesus? ©2000-2112 Radio Free Babylon. All Rights Reserved. People go to great lengths to know who Jesus is and what he’s like, and we should. Looking for him is a holy thing to do. But the places people look are not so solid. One Christian New Testament scholar had finally seen enough and wrote a book called What Have They Done with Jesus? Part of whose subtitle is “Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History.” As you and I listen to Jesus speak the Sermon on the Mount, we don’t begin from scratch. We have been offered pictures of Jesus by the Christian voices in American culture. It is important to know what these are as we begin, so we don’t unconsciously read the Sermon in order to fit The Heart of Jesus Project Bible at Pinnacle 24-25 JAN 2018 Hilton and Avram Jesus into our view. In fact, though they believed they were applying the scientific method of investigation to identify the real “historical Jesus,” 19th-century German researchers discovered a ruddy-faced Lutheran and late-20th-century American researchers found a Jesus who sipped latte and could have written for the NY Times Op Ed page. People tend to find what they want to find in Jesus – a glorified version of ourselves. Jesus is the psychologist’s ink blot. Christians in our time offer Jesus in at least five packages: o Self-Help Guru. The quest for a happier, more successful life drives us to read books, attend seminars, drink herbal teas... Jesus came to be our personal life coach and walk us toward a state of pleasantness. o Drill Sergeant. Moses gave God’s Law to Israel at Mount Sinai. Jesus came to enforce it and hold humanity accountable to it. Whether by example or by command, Jesus’ primary mission is to whip us into shape. o Christian Lobbyist. Americans are currently enthralled in a debate over the place of Christianity in our politics and culture. One side wants to protect a Christian identity in the US. Another side wants to tailor our laws to fit the prophets. For both sides, Jesus came to take charge politically. o Prince of Prosperity. Do good things, pray, go to church, read your Bible, and God will reward you with material success. Jesus came to make sure his faithful got rich and lived healthy, unhindered lives. o Righteous Judge. The world is full of ambiguity. Jesus came to righteously divide humanity into the in group and the out group, the heaven and the hell, the eternal bliss and eternal punishment crowds. These five portraits of Jesus are a part of the murky water we swim in, the lenses Christian culture has ground for us. So let’s empty the pool. Let’s clean our spectacles. Let’s take an attentive walk through the Sermon on the Mount with fresh eyes and seeking souls, asking, “What is the Heart of Jesus?” The sermon spans three chapters at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Matthew. It begins with Beatitudes (from the Latin translation, which uses “Beata” to render the Greek “Makarios”) that reveal what and whom God blesses (Matthew 5.1-16); then Jesus turns to his “Antitheses,” a series of commentaries on Moses’ Law and other Jewish commands (Matthew 5.17-48); next he takes on hypocrisy (Matthew 6.1-18), then values and worry (Matthew 6.19- 34); finally, Jesus brings the sermon home with a grab bag of teachings that condemns judging, promotes seeking God, presents the Golden Rule, tells how narrow Christ’s way is in a world bent on the broad way to destruction, and advises people to build their lives solidly on his teaching. (Matthew 7.1-29) May the Sermon land among us as powerfully as it must have among those village peasants who made their way up a hill by the sea 2,000 years ago. The Heart of Jesus Project Bible at Pinnacle 24-25 JAN 2018 Hilton and Avram Blessed! – Hearing the Beatitudes again for the First Time Matthew 5.1-16 hold one of the most beloved passages in all of scripture. “Blessed are the poor in spirit…the meek…those who mourn...” etc. The Beatitude have captured the hearts of faithful people for two millennia: Beautiful words that Jesus speaks to his Galilean audience and that God continues to speak to us. But how should we read them? When Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” is that our cue to: o Try to become poorer in spirit? (Ethical Reading) o Learn that God surprisingly blesses people who are already the poor in spirit and give thanks for that? (Prophetic Reading) o Learn that we can’t live up to the high demands, so thank God or grace and forgiveness? (Martin Luther’s Reading) o Honor the saints of the church who have been poor in spirit? (Ecclesiastical Reading) o Learn that at the end of time God will change the order of the world and bring a Beatitudes world into play? (Apocalyptic Reading) o All of the above? And how should we imagine these blessings? The Greek word MAKARIOS is the one we translate “blessed” in the Beatitudes. MAkARIOS means blessed, or happy. The evolution of the way ancient Greek-speakers used this word helps us understand what Jesus means with the Beatitudes. The word MAKARIOS described… Stage One – The state of the gods, who need not work and are beyond the ravages of time. The Heart of Jesus Project Bible at Pinnacle 24-25 JAN 2018 Hilton and Avram Stage Two – The condition of the dead, who have ceased suffering those same ravages, experiencing nothing. Stage Three – The experience of the elite, who have the power or money to buffer themselves against the difficulties of life. “If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail Do you see a trend? MAkARIOS mostly the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a described people who had it easy, for sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence whom life was good. The sign of cosmic and there are often sudden storms that sweep blessing was ease. Those who weren’t the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude doing well, the cosmos had forgotten. that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.” (Seneca, Jesus disagreed. Essays and Letters) In the Beatitudes, Jesus told ancient peasants and all of us that God is with us in the struggle -- while we mourn and are poor in spirit and are being persecuted, and not just when waters are smooth. That is a word worth hearing. The great American preacher and writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, has written, “I guess you can do anything you want with the Beatitudes. Some have ignored them, some have admired them and walked away, some have used them as a yardstick to measure their own blessedness, and some have used them to declare revolution. The simplest thing to do with them, perhaps, is to let them stand you on your head so that you cannot see the world again in the same way but rather the way God sees it – turned upside down by the only one who really knows which way is up.” Questions 1. What does God reveal to us through these words about the character of God? 2. What would a person/church formed by these words look like? How would we become those people/that church? 3. Picture two people the Beatitudes make you re-evaluate. The Heart of Jesus Project Bible at Pinnacle 24-25 JAN 2018 Hilton and Avram Righteous – Jesus and the Intention of the Law What makes a person righteous? While you may not have used that word to describe what you’re looking for – we mostly use it as a pejorative these days – we want to know what God counts as right living…right? Jesus takes this up in the second movement of the Sermon on the Mount. Before we read, let’s answer a couple questions: 1. What are your usual sources of guidance for how to live? Have they served you well? 2. On a scale of 1-10, how much does what Jesus says about how to live matter to you, 1 being “Not at all!”, 10 being “Whatever he says, I’ll do!” Jews of Jesus’ time agreed about where to look for the answer: the Law of Moses (Torah). But the question was how that Law ought to be read. Like the rabbis around him, Jesus starts with the Law of Moses, but he’s not going to end there. He’s not going to stop until he gets to the very heart of God. He’s going to answer the question, “If I hand more of my life over to Jesus, what kind of person will he make out of me? Be careful what you ask for! The great English churchman, G.k. Chesterton, may have been reading the Sermon on the Mount when he says, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting.