GROWING TOGETHER

We are here looking at ways to practice the Sermon on the Mount. What is given below is merely my way of jump-starting your thinking with the hope that you will take it from there, discovering ever new ways to apply the Sermon on the Mount to your daily life. One warning: space allows me to use only isolated sayings, and to truly understand the height and the depth and the breadth of the teaching we must see it in its full context. But then, that is the task of our study for the months and years to come.

1. In the “beatitudes” Jesus takes up various kinds and classes of people that in his day were thought to be unblessed and unblessable, and he shows how the Kingdom of God is available to them and how they too can be blessed. No wonder the poor heard him gladly! As the Simon and Garfunkel song goes, “Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.” In The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard gives contemporary expression to these “unblessed and unblessable-–“the physically repulsive . . . the bald, the fat, and the old . . . the flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned outs. The broke and the broken. The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV-positive and herpes-ridden. The brain-damaged, the incurable ill.

The barren and the pregnant too-many-times or the wrong time. The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled, the shoved aside, the replaced. . . .” (pp. 123-124). Ask yourself: How can I make the kingdom God available to individuals who are humanly hopeless? Then as you go about your days, learn to take time to point out the natural beauty of every human being.

2. Take an afternoon to travel through your town on public transportation. Observe those who use this service. If you are not normally dependent on public transportation, consider how you would have to rearrange your life if you were always dependent on a bus schedule. As you ride, pray about being open to someone you meet on the bus. “Being open” might mean striking up a friendly conversation, showing concern, offering help of some kind, praying for someone or sharing the “good news” with them. (Adapted from Dallas Willard’s Study Guide to the Divine Conspirary, p. 47.)

3. Jesus had some very strong words to say about human anger (Matt. 5:21-26). Ask yourself: What situations in my life set off recurring angry impulses? After you have identified several situations, take the most pressing one and consider how you might respond differently in light of the reality that your