Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount was, according to the Gospel of Matthew, a particular sermon given by Jesus of Nazareth around 30 CE on a mountainside to his disciples and a large crowd (Matt. 5:1; 7:28). It is thought by some contemporary Christians to have taken place on a mountain on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, near Capernaum. The recounting of the Sermon on the Mount comes from the Gospel of Matthew 5-7. Today, many scholars think that the sermon was not actually delivered all at once, but was composed by Matthew from various sayings of Jesus which he had found in his sources.

The Sermon on the Mount may be compared to the similar but more succinct Sermon on the Plain as recounted by the Gospel of Luke (Luke 6:17–49). Some commentators believe they may be the same sermon, others that Jesus frequently preached similar themes in different places, still others that neither sermons really took place but were conflations of Jesus's primary teachings as put together by Matthew and Luke.

Probably the best-known portion is the Beatitudes, found at the beginning of the section. It also contains the Lord's Prayer and the injunctions to "resist not evil" and "turn the other cheek", as well as Jesus's version of the Golden Rule. Other lines often quoted are the references to "salt of the Earth" "light of the world," and "judge not, lest ye be judged." Many Christians believe that the Sermon on the Mount is a form of commentary (midrash) on the Ten Commandments. To many the Sermon on the Mount contains the central tenets of Christian discipleship, and is considered as such by many religious and moral thinkers, such as Tolstoy and Gandhi.

The Sermon on the Mount by Carl Heinrich Bloch.

Structure of the sermon

The sermon comprises the following components:

Chapter 5

• Introduction (Matt. 5:1-2)
• The Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-12)
• Be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matt. 5:13-16)
• Jesus is fulfilling "the Law and the Prophets" doctrine, not destroying it (Matt. 5:17-18)
• Establishing new commandments (Matt. 5:19-20)
• Anger and hatred prohibited, not just killing (Matt. 5:21-22)
• Contentiousness prohibited (Matt. 5:23-26)
• Lust prohibited, not just adultery (Matt. 5:27-28)
• Cut away what threatens your spiritual future (Matt. 5:29-30)
• Divorce as adultery (Matt. 5:31-32)
• Prohibition against oaths (Matt. 5:33-37)
• Loving your enemies and turning the other cheek replaces "an eye for an eye" (Matt. 5:38-48)

Chapter 6

• Do good deeds and pray in secret, not for public reward (Matt. 6:1-6)
• Pray not with repetitions, but with the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6:7-13)
• Forgive in order to be forgiven (Matt. 6:14-15)
• Fast in secret, not for public reward (Matt. 6:16-18)
• Build your treasures in heaven, not on earth (Matt. 6:19-21)
• The light of the body follows the eye (Matt. 6:22-23)
• No man can serve two masters, so choose between God and materialism (Matt. 6:24)
• Seek first the kingdom of God, and have no worries for anything else (Matt. 6:25-34)

Chapter 7

• Judge not, so that you will not be judged (Matt. 7:1)
• Remove the log from your own eye before attending to the speck in another's (Matt. 7:2-5)
• Do not cast pearls before swine (Matt. 7:6)
• Seek it and you will find it (Matt. 7:7-11)
• Doing toward others as you would want from them is "the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12)
• The narrow, difficult way leads to life; the broad, easy way leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13-14)
• Beware of false prophets; by their fruits will you know them (Matt. 7:15-20)
• Doing the will of God rather than invoking Jesus is what matters (Matt. 7:21-23)
• Who follows this instruction builds a solid foundation and will survive; who does not builds on sand and will be destroyed (Matt. 7:24-27)
• Epilog (Matt. 7:28-29)

Interpretation

One of the most important debates over the sermon is how directly it should be applied to every day life. The advocacy of complete non-resistance is incompatible with survival in human society, thus almost all Christian groups have developed arguments to compromise the teachings. McArthur lists twelve basic schools of thought on this issues.

• The absolutist view rejects all compromise and believes that if obeying the scripture costs the welfare of the believer then that is a reasonable sacrifice for salvation. All the precepts in the Sermon must be taken literally and applied universally. Proponents of this view include St. Francis of Assisi and in later life Leo Tolstoy. No Christian denomination fully adopts this position, but the early Anabaptists came close and modern Anabaptist groups such as the Mennonites and Hutterites come closest.
• One method that is common, but not endorsed by any denomination, is to simply modify the text of the sermon. In ancient times this took the form of actually altering the text of the Sermon to make it more palatable. Thus some early copyists changed Matthew 5:22 from "whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment" to the watered down "whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment." More common in recent centuries is to paraphrase the Sermon and in so doing make it far less radical. A search through the writings of almost every major Christian writer finds them at some point to have been guilty of this modification.
• One of the most common views is the hyperbole view, that argues that portions of what Jesus states in the Sermon are hyperbole and that if one is to apply the teaching to the real world the need to be "toned down." Most interpreters agree that there is some hyperbole in the sermon, with Matthew 5:29 being the most prominent example, but there is disagreement over exactly which sections should not be taken literally.
• Closely related is the general principles view that argues that Jesus was not giving specific instructions, but general principles of how one should behave. The specific instances cited in the Sermon are simply examples of these general principles.
• The double standard view is the official position of the Roman Catholic Church. It divides the teachings of the Sermon into general precepts and specific counsels. Obedience to the general precepts is essential for salvation, but obedience to the counsels is only necessary for perfection. The great mass of the population need only concern themselves with the precepts, the councels only most be followed by a pious elite such as the clergy and monks. This theory was initiated by St. Augustine and later fully developed by St. Thomas Aquinas.
• Martin Luther rejected the Catholic approach and developed a different two level system McArthur refers to as the two realms view. Luther divided the world into the religious and secular realms and argued that the Sermon only applied to the spiritual. In the temporal world obligations to family, employers, and country force believers to compromise. Thus a judge should follow his secular obligations to sentence a criminal, but inwardly he should mourn for the fate of the criminal.
• At the same time as the Protestant Reformation was underway a new era of Biblical criticism began leading to the analogy of scripture view. Close reading of the Bible found that several of the most rigid precepts in the sermon were moderated by other parts of the New Testament. For instance while Jesus seems to forbid all oaths, Paul is shown using them at least twice, thus the prohibition in the Sermon does have some exceptions.
• In the nineteenth century several more interpretations developed. Wilhelm Hermann embraced the notion of attitudes not acts that can be traced back to St. Augustine. This view states that Jesus in the Sermon is not saying how a good Christian should behave, only what there attitude is. The spirit lying behind the act is more important than the act itself.
• Albert Schweitzer popularized the interim ethic view. This view sees Jesus as being convinced that the world was going to end in the very near future, as such survival in the world did not matter as in the end times material well being would be irrelevant.
• In the twentieth century another major German thinker, Martin Dibelius, presented another view also based eschatology. His unconditional divine will view is that the ethics behind to Sermon are absolute and unbending, but the current fallen state of the world makes it impossible to live up to them. Humans are bound to attempt to live up to them, but failure is inevitable. This will change when the Kingdom of Heaven is proclaimed and all will be able to live in a Godly manner.
• Closely linked to this is the repentance view which is that Jesus intended for the precepts in his Sermon to be unattainable and through our certain failure to live up to them will learn to repent.
• Another eschatological view is that of modern dispensationalism. Dispensationalism first developed by the Plymouth Brethren divides human history into a series of ages or dispensations. Today we live in the period of grace where living up to the teachings of the sermon is impossible, but in the future the Millennium will see a period where it is possible to live up to the teachings of the Sermon, and where following them will be a prerequisite to salvation.

See also

• Sermon on the Plain found in the Gospel of Luke

External links

• Text of the sermon (KJV)
• Text of the sermon (NIV)

References

• Betz, Hans Dieter. Essays on the Sermon on the Mount. translations by Laurence Welborn. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.
• Fox, Emmet. The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life and the Lord's Prayer : An Interpretation 1989 ISBN 0060628626
• Kissinger, Warren S. The Sermon on the Mount: A History of Interpretation and Bibliography. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1975.
• Kodjak, Andrej. A Structural Analysis of the Sermon on the Mount. New York: M. de Gruyter, 1986.
• Lapide, Pinchas. The Sermon on the Mount, Utopia or Program for Action? translated from the German by Arlene Swidler. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986.
• McArthur, Harvey King. Understanding the Sermon on the Mount. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978.
• Prabhavananda, Swami Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta 1991 ISBN 0874810507