Jesus' Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount

by Richard Rohr

Every indication is that the growing phenomenon in our society will be fundamentalism. Fundamentalism refuses to listen to what the Gospel authors are really saying to their communities. It enters into a nonhistorical love affair with words—I don’t know how else to describe it. The human need for clarity and certitude leads fundamentalists to use sacred writings in a mechanical, closed-ended and authoritarian manner. This invariably leaves them trapped in their own cultural moment in history, and they often totally miss the real message along with the deepest challenges and consolations of Scripture. In the name of taking the word literally, the fundamentalist is in fact missing the literal word. Isn’t that ironic? The real meaning of the text is largely missed by people who say they take it all literally. In other words, the metaphorical sense, the mythological sense, the sense of religious psychology and sacred story is in fact the literal, real sense—just as it is when you and I talk, write and communicate with one another. There is an especially telling passage in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus becomes angry even with his disciples, who are unable to understand his clearly metaphorical language. He tells them to watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. Taking him literally, they began looking quizzically at one another because they did not have any bread (see Mark 8:14-16). Is “Herod Bread” a new brand that they had not heard about? Aware of their ...