Brian and Kathy Emmet

The Sermon on the Mount

I don’t mean to be lazy by not diving into a particular segment of this week’s longer passage (Matthew 6:19—7:14), I think I’m just overwhelmed!  Please indulge me as I hop back into my helicopter (to get a “helicopter view”).

As I wrote in an earlier devotional, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is after some things.  He is after our imaginations, the ways we picture and make sense of the world.  He’s after our loves, what we love, and why, and how.  He’s after us, you, me, each of us, calling us into a life of discipleship, a life of following Jesus.

And Jesus is after a community.  It is not only overwhelming to try to live the Sermon on the Mount all by yourself; it is downright impossible.  Jesus is not addressing me as an individual “I” but as a member of a community.  A community that is characterized by continually listening together to Jesus and continually putting into practice what he says.

Have you noticed how the Sermon on the Mount is fleshing out what Jesus will later identify as the greatest command?  The greatest command is to love God, with all that we are and have, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  The Sermon is an unpacking of this great command, because this great command is the heart and soul of the kingdom of God.  The great command is the “operating system” of the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ words call into being a community, a community that gathers around Jesus as its center, source and goal.  Jesus creates this community, sustains it in love and truth, and nourishes it through Scripture, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the gifts and contributions of each and every member, both the living and the dead (who are present through history, tradition, and received wisdom).

So any hope for we who are overwhelmed will come through Jesus.  Directing our attention today to community is not to suggest that we let someone else do “the spiritual stuff” while we go our merry way.  Instead, we see that we are all in this together.  We are all called, not only to attend to our own individual lives but also to the lives of the other members of our community, and to the overall life of the community as a whole.

The hope for the overwhelmed comes through the encouragement that can come to us by knowing and seeing how “we’re all in this together.”  Through the support of those who are listening to Jesus alongside us, with us.  Through the honesty of those who are struggling as we do, and through the examples of those who in some way model lives of faith, hope and love.

Who has recently encouraged you in a life of following Jesus –modeled something of the kingdom, set a kingdom-example?  Maybe they would be encouraged by your saying thank you?