Sermon on the Mount

And now the time is finally here to talk about the word perfect. Like when Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” It is one of those phrases that Evangelicals love to point to when talking about the necessity of moral perfection. I am pretty sure the text on that million dollar bill with the million dollar question I talked about back in episode six, included a bit about perfection. It is all part of an evangelism spiel that says if you are not perfect than you deserve hell unless Jesus saves you. There are just two small problems … Greek and context. I will unpack each.

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If you live in the United States of America, odds are, you don’t know your enemies. This is true of the people you perceive to be your enemies and your actual enemies. So how can we take Jesus’ words about loving our enemies seriously? Let me expand a bit.

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What do we do when God isn’t like God? When I say that I am pointing to those parts of the Bible that portray God as doing something other than, for example, causing the sun to rise on the evil and the good.

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What is God like? Or maybe, since this is an exploration of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, a better question would be, “What is the God Jesus calls Father, like?”

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What do children do?

While there is so much to cover in the next segment of the Sermon on the Mount, I think that is the first essential question we need to reflect on. Jesus continues saying:

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This week explored what can only be described as Jesus’ resistance revolution. After all, embracing the resistance wisdom of Jesus invites dramatic social change. That is the ultimate point of being the light of the world. By shining in the darkness you expose injustice and invite cultural transformation.

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