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

by Richard Rohr

Saint Paul and Luther likely had similar personalities. So Luther goes to Paul to find what he needs because both of them are struggling with the same issue: I want to be a good boy and I can’t. I want to be perfect and I can’t. Ah, God loves me unconditionally—hallelujah! Luther jumps up and Paul jumps up—“God loves me unconditionally!” But then they make that the whole gospel; every emphasis of one point is necessarily a deemphasis of another.

In these new sayings and stories the communities document their understanding of Jesus. And in some cases, we must admit, the new context changes the content of Jesus’ original message.

That Gospel could have been written as early as 60 but perhaps as late as 70. Imagine the difference between 1956 and 1996.

First we have stage one, the historical event itself, to which there are very few if any eyewitnesses (for example, Jesus and Satan in the desert). Yet the Gospels are not concerned with conveying an accurate biography of Jesus. That’s our hangup. The Gospels are about telling the meaning of Jesus, and his effect on their lives. This is personal testimony, “good news” more than empirical facts.

Yet the four Gospels can only be understood in relation to all three stages: the historical event, the way each of the early Christian communities interpreted it, how the final author wrote it down. Our act of faith—and it is an act of faith—is that all three stages are in fact divine revelation: God acting in history to reveal who God is and what happens when God encounters humanity.

The sermon that we’re going to spend most time on is the inaugural sermon, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5—7). Recent scholarship reaffirms that it is as close as we can get to Jesus’ original teaching; it seems to be the heart of the teaching of the historical Jesus.

We’ve tended to soften Jesus’ conflict with the system ever since we became a Church of the establishment. The year that we blame is the year 313. That is the year of the Edict of Milan or the Constantinian Revolution. It is then that the Church changed dramatically and changed sides dramatically. Up until that time the Church was by and large of the underclass.

Now Emperor Constantine thinks he’s doing us a favor in 313 when he makes Christianity the established religion. Yet it might be the single most unfortunate thing that happened to Christianity.

He intended us to operate from the minority position, from the position of “immoral” minority much more than the moral majority. When you’re protecting your self-image as a moral, superior or “saved” person, you always lose the truth.

Yet those who are not enjoying the fruits of the system are always longing and thirsting for the coming of the Kingdom, for something more. They are not as likely to vote for the status quo, which is invariably built on those bottom lines of money, power and God-talk.

Whenever you try to hold opposite energies together—liberal/conservative, masculine/feminine, right/wrong, black/white—anything that’s conflictive, you’re going to get crucified.

…God wanted all fullness to be found in him and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through his death on the cross. (Colossians 1:19-20)

What the gospel is saying, pure and simple, is that wherever you’re going to start building your bridge, you better start from the side of powerlessness, not power. Because if you start on the side of power you’ll stay there forever. You really won’t build any bridges.

During Jesus’ time, most of the world lived in agrarian societies.

With that in mind, it might be more obvious why most of the Jewish leadership cooperated in having Jesus killed. Jesus was making God too accessible. He ignored the debt codes, the purity codes and the honor-and-shame system which held the whole thing together.

At the time of the Reformation religious orders owned more than half of Europe. The serfs worked for the monks. (I can understand why my father Saint Francis forbade Franciscans to own land. For some reason the religious establishment always gets into real estate.) The Reformation was more about politics than theology. It happened because of the moral and economic corruption of so much of the Church and because the Church owned so much land. The priestly class was tied up with land and buildings in Jesus’ time too.

Besides the five ruling classes in agrarian society, there were lower classes. They comprised at least eighty percent of the society. Those who farmed the land were the peasant class.

Jesus came from this lower group. He was a Galilean peasant. Some new studies even question whether Jesus was literate. Jesus was a poor, simple man who knew how peasants struggled. We must understand that to understand his message more fully. Most to whom he talked were people in the same situation. Jesus and his audience understood each other.

The “unclean” still exist in all societies today, although the label is more subtle and often unadmitted. (Poor people, people of color, gays and lesbians, old people, people with disabilities, non-Christians, foreigners—all these are the modern version of the unclean in Western society.) Jesus has a great deal of contact with this group.

Before moving on, we should note a sad connection to our own society: At the close of the twentieth century, it’s that final class which is growing so quickly, the expendable people who are unemployed and unemployable. There’s no way we need you, we say, in effect. We will undereducate you, undertrain you and undervalue you. We even hope you kill one another. We hope the drugs and guns will allow you to kill one another because we can’t fit you into our definition of success, our definition of reality. Yet it was the bottom of society that Jesus most consistently showed concern for. They seem to be the measure of how well we understand the new world order.

Older Catholics may understand this idea easily. The idea of the patron saint came out of the Mediterranean world. In a patronage society someone has to stand between the individual and the overlord. The patron saint is the same idea.

Protestantism embraces patronless theology because it in many ways was a reaction against corrupt feudal institutions. Protestants as a whole don’t understand Mary or the saints; Protestantism doesn’t want any go-betweens.

Isn't Roman Catholicism fundamentally about patronage, primary patron being the priest?

All of that is background for understanding the Sermon on the Mount. Until you understand patronage society you won’t understand a lot of the Sermon on the Mount or much of the rest of Jesus’ teaching.

The Kingdom of God is in your midst (see Luke 17:21). You don’t need to go through the brokerage system in Jerusalem or worship the emperor in Rome. What a threat to the system!

In Jerusalem there was a watertight system for getting into the Temple and getting your sins forgiven, for getting worthy, for declaring who’s in and who’s out. Now we have this joker out in the desert just saying God is as available as water and “God can raise up children of Abraham from these very stones” (see Matthew 3:8). No wonder the religious establishment wanted him dead!

Jesus is accepting the new world order that John the Baptist is pointing to! Yes, he says, God is as available as water in the river.

We’ve missed most of the story of history. That’s a new insight for many people in the modern age. Yet there are some exceptions, and the Bible is one of them.

With the exception of Leviticus and Numbers, written by the priestly classes, most of the Bible is written by or about people who are occupied, enslaved, poor or disenfranchised in some way!

The Declaration of Independence was written by rich white male landowners and it was talking about the enfranchisement of rich white males. The mythology of private property, guns and violence, racism and sexism is at the very foundation of our country.

The lie was that we believed that we believed all people were created equal! What made us think we were this great free society? Those at the top believed it then, and we at the top believe it two hundred years later. That’s the power of myth.

My point here is that the gospel is not primarily a set of facts but a way of seeing and a way of being in the world because of God. Jesus speaks to the heart, saying (1) God is on your side; (2) God can be trusted; (3) the universe is safe and benevolent; (4) trust yourselves, one another and God; (5) there is no reason to be afraid; (6) it’s all heading toward something good! He does this primarily by touch, relationship, healing and parables.

The one story where it might seem that Jesus is dismissive and derogatory toward a pagan woman, telling her it is not fair to toss the children’s (Israel’s) food to the dogs (Mark 7:24-30 or Matthew 15:21-28), turns out to be exactly the opposite. He initially seems to reflect the cultural, male or religious prejudice toward her, but then accepts her rejoinder, admits he is wrong, praises her—and apologizes by healing her daughter! This is a perfect morality play of prejudice and patriarchy overcome.

Jesus truly was dangerous: He was creating a following with a kind of thinking that was much more on the side of inclusiveness than exclusiveness. That tension between exclusiveness and inclusiveness is one of the central themes of Jesus’ ministry.

In Jesus’ world of the first century, the dominant institution was the kinship system: the family, the private home. That’s why first-century Christian Churches were house Churches.

In Matthew’s Gospel the word house is used many times. Jesus is always going in and out of houses. And, like today, what happened around the tables in those houses both shaped and named the social order.

The power and meaning of table fellowship in Jesus’ life probably is why the Eucharist stayed on, especially in the Catholic tradition, as the central symbol. The Eucharist builds upon Jesus’ tradition of eating in a new way.

The dominant institution in our society is the system of production and consumption. The central value of our culture is buying and selling. It pervades everything.

Quite simply, it is wealth. Status in our society is attained by having money and the freedom to use it.

There have been cultures where the religious meaning dominates.

Today we have the same in the Islamic states, and it’s scaring us to death. Religion as the primary institution has more power to gather people than anything else because religion speaks to the depth of the soul. Islam is again a force to be dealt with in the world because it still has what we once had in the twelfth century: the culture held together by the power of the image of God.

When the economic institution is our primary lens, religion tends to be diluted by pragmatic, win/lose and power attitudes. God is bought and sold more than loved, waited for or surrendered to.

The whole system is skewed to protect those at the top at all costs, he said. In fact, I added, it’s to protect the system itself, because the system is our goal.

And in this context, the reason why Donald Trump was elected is obvious.

In a kinship society like Jesus’, status was achieved through the honor/shame system.

The system around Jesus didn’t ask the individual to think in terms of “who I really am before God” (as Jesus did), or “what I feel about myself (our culture), but rather, “How does my village see me?” Tribal cultures to this day are built on some kind of honor/shame system.

The honor/shame system is largely gone for us. It is a stronger enforcer of morals than mere religious commandments.

It should be obvious: For new wine we will have to have new wineskins. Until you have new wineskins—a new social order—it doesn’t make a bit of difference to teach people “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not be greedy.” Our system is set up on the assumption that greed at the top will “trickle down” to the poor on the bottom.

In New Testament times, shame and honor were in fact moral values that people felt compelled to follow. If a situation called for retaliation, you had to retaliate. Not to retaliate would have been immoral, because you would have abandoned your honor.

Which is why the parable of the prodigal son is so subversive. The father was obligated to defend his honor and instead chose love.

Once challenged, Jesus’ listeners were given a new place to find their identity: in God. Who you are in God is who you are. That’s the end of ups and downs. My value no longer depends upon whether my family or village likes me, whether I’m good-looking, wealthy or obedient to the laws. Jesus’ message is incredibly subversive in an honor/shame society! Yet as he takes away their old foundations, he offers a new, more solid one: neither shame-nor guilt-based, but based in who-you-are-in-God.

Who you are in God is a beloved daughter or a beloved son; you are no longer dependent on culture’s or even your own estimation. Through your prayer, your awareness of God within you, you continually discover your true identity: “[T]he life you have is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3b).

Only prayer lets you realize that who you are is who you were in God before anybody thought anything: before you thought about whether you are good or bad, before anybody else thought about whether you are good or bad. You came forth from God and you will return to God. You are eternal. That’s the only solid ground.