When Sigmund Freud read the Sermon on the Mount, reportedly he tossed it aside with the remark, “Impossible!” He’s not alone, of course. Many have come to regard Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount as impractical, heavenly ideals that aren’t much earthly good, since they will always exceed our grasp.
For example, if we call someone an “idiot,” are we really liable to the eternal fires of hell? Or, if we should ogle an attractive young woman (or an attractive young man), have we in fact committed adultery?
At first glance, the strictures of Jesus’ teachings do seem wildly unrealistic—not to mention unattainable. Notice, however, that part of the reason we think of them as unrealistic is because we are viewing them in terms of personal ethics. In other words, we cannot imagine how we, as individuals, could ever live up to these standards.
But, as scholars have pointed out, these instructions are not primarily addressed to individuals. The pronouns “you” and “your” throughout the Sermon on the Mount are deceptive; and because we live in a society that promotes individualism, we tend to read all the “yous” as singular. But in the Greek, they are actually in the plural, and so a better approach would be to borrow from our own Texas vernacular and think “you all.”
What Jesus is envisioning in the Sermon on the Mount is a new kind of community. For example, when he says, “Blessed are the hungry, for ‘you all’ will be filled,” he is picturing a new kind of society where there will no longer be hungry people because, moved by the Holy Spirit, we will start feeding and caring for one another. When he says, “Blessed are the powerless, for ‘you all’ will inherit the earth,” he is describing a new kind of world order, where we will begin to share power and authority, and stop trying to control one another.
I’m not sure if Sigmund Freud would still regard that as being “Impossible!” But I do hope that we, in the church, see it as a very real possibility, because we are the ones who have been called to model it for everyone else.
For example, if we call someone an “idiot,” are we really liable to the eternal fires of hell? Or, if we should ogle an attractive young woman (or an attractive young man), have we in fact committed adultery?
At first glance, the strictures of Jesus’ teachings do seem wildly unrealistic—not to mention unattainable. Notice, however, that part of the reason we think of them as unrealistic is because we are viewing them in terms of personal ethics. In other words, we cannot imagine how we, as individuals, could ever live up to these standards.
But, as scholars have pointed out, these instructions are not primarily addressed to individuals. The pronouns “you” and “your” throughout the Sermon on the Mount are deceptive; and because we live in a society that promotes individualism, we tend to read all the “yous” as singular. But in the Greek, they are actually in the plural, and so a better approach would be to borrow from our own Texas vernacular and think “you all.”
What Jesus is envisioning in the Sermon on the Mount is a new kind of community. For example, when he says, “Blessed are the hungry, for ‘you all’ will be filled,” he is picturing a new kind of society where there will no longer be hungry people because, moved by the Holy Spirit, we will start feeding and caring for one another. When he says, “Blessed are the powerless, for ‘you all’ will inherit the earth,” he is describing a new kind of world order, where we will begin to share power and authority, and stop trying to control one another.
I’m not sure if Sigmund Freud would still regard that as being “Impossible!” But I do hope that we, in the church, see it as a very real possibility, because we are the ones who have been called to model it for everyone else.
posted by Dr. Robert Crilley at
9:35 PM
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