Not a New Law

What is our position on the Sermon on the Mount? Is it really the way we are called to follow? It seems fundamentally important to me that our community should think deeply about this question, since the Sermon on the Mount is the first step on the path of discipleship. I feel that we need to revisit this first step again, and that we need to be fully united in our understanding of it. Because once we fully grasp the Sermon on the Mount, then – if we really believe it – nothing can frighten us: neither our own self-recognition, nor financial threats, nor the frailty of our community or its composition. And then we will be adequate to the situation, just as we are, with all of our weaknesses.

When we were beginning to walk this path [of communal living], the Sermon on the Mount shook us so powerfully that I simply cannot describe it. It spoke to me and encouraged me with tremendous force and depth. To me, the most vital content of the Sermon on the Mount is the essence of salt, the warming blaze of light, the nature of the city community, and the life-power of the tree.

The central tenets of the Sermon on the Mount make it very plain that it is not a new set of laws – the dedication demanded here does not take the form of a new moral assignment. Instead, it is a matter of forgiveness. This is where Christ is found – in the essence of salt’s strength, and the light and warmth of the Holy Spirit. This is where the inner light is found, and the clarity of the inner eye, and the vitality found in the tree that bears good fruit. This is where the community’s character as a city on a hill – a light for the whole world – is to be found. And this is how we need to grasp it: not as high-tension moralism, nor as an ethical demand, but as the revelation of God’s real power in human life.

Only if we take our devotion to God seriously – only if God enters us as the strength of light, the strength of the tree, the elemental energy which alone makes new life possible – will we be capable of living the new life. That is what is decisive.

If, as Tolstoyans do, we were to interpret the Sermon on the Mount as five new commandments, we would be entirely off the mark. No, the clarity of the law is made even more pointed here – Jesus says so. And his demands cannot be watered down. In fact, he shows us that instead of being weakened by their entrance into the stream of world history, his demands are infinitely sharpened.

Of course, these are only five examples – five hundred or five thousand could just as easily be given – of the formidable effect of this essence of light, and of the living power of this mighty fruit-bearing tree. They reveal how God works in Christ. The fulfillment of the law means that this justice and righteousness is better than that of all the scholars and theologians. What is presented here is completely different; it cannot be attained at all by means of moral intentions, ideas, and concepts. Instead, it offers a whole new way of meeting these demands – the organic way. It is authentic, pulsing life. Just as light shines, just as salt sears, just as a flame flares up, and as sap runs in a tree, so does this life spring from God. It is life, life, life!

I want to say that there is no point whatsoever in our being together if we do not share this primal life in the sense of the Sermon on the Mount.

From Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount.