The Way of Jesus

at the foot of the mountain

Eph 4:20 But that is not how you learnt Christ

Like most people there are parts of Scripture that are more my favourites than others; they resonate with me, I enjoy them more. If you know me, or have been reading here for a while, you can probably take a good guess at some of them. Psalms, John, 1 Peter. One of my favourite parts of Scripture has always been the Sermon on the Mount. I think it reflects something of who I was when, as a 17year old, I was figuring out life and faith and everything. I'm inclined, by temperament but also theological convictions, to a more anabaptist reading of the Sermon, mostly because I think we ought to take Jesus as his word, take his commands seriously, and at face value, and I've seen far too many ways to explain away the teachings of Scripture. However, at the same time I don't believe in naïve readings of Scripture, and it's not merely a case of "well, you read it here and that's that, you know what to do."

After reading Werntz's book and its vision of community, and while thinking about Martin Luther King's ideal of the "Beloved Community" (worth reading about and thinking on, in its own terms), I decided I wanted to spent some renewed time thinking and reflecting on the Sermon. My guide this time around is Jonathan Pennington's The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, a book that I'll interact with in this post and some subsequent ones.

Photo by Amit Lahav on Unsplash

Pennington's book is a real delight. It's not just a commentary on the SotM, in that Pennington spends a good deal of the book setting up and arguing for some important interpretative frameworks that shape how we read the SotM. In particular, he argues that (a) we need to understand the text in terms of two domains, and (b) two key terms are regularly misunderstood and mistranslated.

In terms of the former, he posits that the SotM stands at the intersection of (1) Jewish Wisdom traditions, and particularly 2nd Temple Judaism and the convergence of apocalyptic and wisdom discourse, and (2) Greek Virtue philosophy. In this light, Jesus' sermon is about how to live the life of virtue, in light of the eschaton.

In terms of the latter, Pennington makes a persuasive case. He spends a whole chapter looking at "blessed" (μακάριος); There are two sets of words, in Greek and Hebrew, that tend to get translated "blessed". The one is more active, referring to, e.g. God's bestowal of divine favour upon someone. The second is more a proverbial statement that asserts that "a person who does X, is living a life of human flourishing". That's the meaning of μακάριος, and that's what's lost in so much translation, and exposition, of the SotM. It is not a statement that God is bestowing particular favour on such people (except, perhaps, as a theological extension of the core concept), but rather a statement that the person who does/is X, is living the good life.

It is a difficult translation problem to solve. Here's an attempt by me leaning heavily on Australian English:

The poor in spirit - that's the good life! The Heavenly Reign is theirs.

Mourners - good on ya! They'll be comforted.

The meek are bonzer, they'll get the Land as an inheritance.

Hungry and thirsting for justice? Too beaut. They'll have all they can eat.

Showing mercy? - Sweet as. They'll be shown mercy in turn.

Those clean in their whole being have got it made, because they will see God.

People who’s way of conduct is peaceble with all, they’re on the right track! They'll get called God's kids.

Hounded for being upright - that's the good life! The Heavenly Reign is theirs.

The other term Pennington takes issue with is "perfect", as in Mt 5:48. Pennington argues persuasively from Hebrew/Greek translation practices, and broader Greek usage, that the sense of τέλειος is better understood as "wholeness", a unity and simplicity of heart and self that is totally devoted to God. And so Pennington's overall case is that the SotM is Jesus' picture of what it means to live a flourishing human life, a life pursuing and cultivating virtue to become the kind of person that we are meant to be, in light of God's coming eschatological reign. It's in that framework that we should go on to read the sermon as a whole, and it's in that framework that I'll go on to share some more reflections in another post.

The questions, then, that surround the Sermon on the Mount, and which I’m interested just in general are, what is the picture of human flourishing? What kinds of people ought we be, before we even get to consider how we act? And how do we get shaped into being those kinds of people in community with other people seeking after the same thing, the Heavenly Reign? In my next few posts I’ll reflect on the Sermon section by section, Pennington’s take, and these very questions : becoming the kind of person flourishing in this kind of way.