How will you respond to the preaching of Jesus?
The responses over the centuries are varied.
The Sermon on the Mount has a strange way of making us better people or better liars.
DEAN SMITH
The Sermon on the Mount is not a statement to be treated in a cavalier fashion — by saying that this or that isn't right or that here we find an inconsistency. Its validity depends on its being obeyed. This is not a statement that we can freely choose to take or leave. It is a compelling, lordly statement.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
What Jesus teaches in the sayings collected in the Sermon on the Mount is not a complete regulation of the life of the disciples, and it is not intended to be; rather, what is taught here is symptoms, signs, examples, of what it means when the kingdom of God breaks into the world which is still under sin, death, and the devil. You yourselves should be signs of the coming kingdom of God, signs that something has abready happened.
JOACHIM JEREMIAS
A man comes forth in Israel to make today's prophetic vision tomorrow's agenda; one for whom the teachings of Mount Sinai do not suffice because he wishes to penetrate beyond to the original divine intent; one who, despite war and tyranny, dares to pursue the biblical love of neighbor to its ultimate consequence in order to brand all our souls with an ideal of human possibility that no longer allows us to be content with the threadbare, run-of-the-mill persons we are but need not be.
PINCHAS LAPIDE (Orthodox Jew)
When you read the sermon on the mount, found in Matthew chapters five through seven, how do you respond?
How will you?
