Kingdom of God – Practical Theology Today

Let Your Yes Be Yes: Truth Without Leverage

“Honestly, I’m telling you the truth.”

“I swear to God!” “You have my word on it.”

We’ve all heard these expressions. We’ve probably used them ourselves. They’re ways of adding weight to what we’re saying, hoping to convince someone that we’re really sincere or trustworthy.

But why should our words need that extra reinforcement? Shouldn’t they be trustworthy without it?

It’s a question worth considering as we arrive at the fourth of Jesus’ six “You have heard it said…but I say to you” teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. As we’ve discovered in the previous three, Jesus likely had something more in mind than simply improving people’s religious behavior.

What the Torah Said

Jesus began: “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all.” (Matthew 5:33–34)

Jesus was drawing together several Torah teachings (Leviticus 19:12; Numbers 30:2; Deuteronomy 23:21–23). The instructions were straightforward: Don’t swear falsely by God’s name. If you make a vow, fulfill it. Don’t break your word.

Two Hebrew words help us understand the practice. Neder referred to a vow, usually a promise made to God. Shevu’ahreferred to an oath, often used to affirm the truth of a statement or establish a binding commitment.

We’ve probably all heard a vow resembling, “God, if you’ll just get me through this situation, I promise I’ll…”. Oaths were also common between people. Invoking God’s name added weight to a promise or claim.

Interestingly, the psalmist expressed the practice positively: “I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws.” (Psalm 119:106)

In a 2022 blog post, I explored the Hebrew word translated as confirmed, which carries the idea of establishing or making something stand. The psalmist wasn’t looking for a way around his commitment. He was determined to live by it.

The heart of the Torah instruction was simple: Say what you mean and do what you say.

So why did Jesus challenge the practice?

When Keeping Your Word Became Complicated

By Jesus’ day, oath-taking had become considerably more complicated.

Because Jewish people treated God’s name with great reverence, many avoided pronouncing the divine name. Instead, they might swear by heaven, earth, Jerusalem, or other things closely associated with God. We might call these God-adjacent.

Distinctions developed regarding which oaths were binding and which were not. Jesus later criticized religious leaders who distinguished between swearing by the temple and swearing by the gold in the temple, or by the altar and the gift on the altar (Matthew 23:16–22).

Apparently, some oaths counted more than others.

Think about what had happened. A teaching intended to encourage truthfulness had become a system for determining which promises absolutely had to be kept. Instead of asking, “Is my word trustworthy?” people could debate, “Was the particular oath I made technically binding?”

Jesus wasn’t interested in improving the system. He challenged the thinking behind it.

But I Say to You…

Jesus continued by telling his listeners not to swear by heaven, God’s throne; by earth, his footstool; or by Jerusalem, the city of the great King. He even included swearing by one’s own head, pointing out that we cannot make a single hair white or black (Don’t I know that!).

His point? Everything belongs to God. No clever wording creates a loophole.

Then Jesus offered a remarkably simple alternative: “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)

Jesus was describing a way of living in which our ordinary words could be trusted without special reinforcement.

But I wonder if there’s more going on here than simply being honest.

When Words Become Leverage

Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, offered an insightful perspective on this passage. He suggested that invoking something greater than ourselves, especially God, can become a way of making our words seem more significant or authoritative.

The intent isn’t necessarily to communicate truth. It can be to persuade others to accept our position or do what we want. Then…

Our words can become instruments of manipulation.

Consider an expression familiar in Christian circles: “God told me…”. I certainly believe God guides people. We can develop convictions through prayer, Scripture, wise counsel, and attentiveness to the Spirit.

But consider the difference between these two statements: “I believe God may be leading me in this direction” and “God told me this is what we need to do.” The first invites conversation, discernment, and even disagreement.

The second can effectively end the conversation. After all, who wants to argue with God? When we invoke God’s authority to strengthen our position, disagreeing with us can begin to feel like disagreeing with God.

We’ve played the God card.

Suddenly, we’re not merely sharing a conviction. We’re using God’s authority to give our position an advantage it might not otherwise have. Are we inviting someone to consider what we’re saying? Or are we making it difficult for them to disagree?

Truthfulness Is Not Always Trustworthiness

Jesus concluded by saying that anything beyond a simple yes or no comes from tou ponērou, an expression that can mean “evil” or “the evil one.”

That language may remind us of the serpent in Genesis 3. The serpent used words to question and distort what God had said, influencing how the woman understood God and the choice before her.

Manipulation often works that way. And it doesn’t always require an outright lie. We can selectively present truthful statements, exaggerate our certainty, or invoke our authority to discourage disagreement. We can tell the truth and still use it to manipulate someone.

Throughout the six “you have heard it said…” examples, Jesus was describing a greater righteousness – a way of doing right by God and others that went beyond merely satisfying the requirements of the Torah. He had already challenged his listeners to consider how their anger, contempt, desires, and decisions affected others.

Now he was asking them to consider what their words were doing to people.

Truth Without Leverage

We tend to read Matthew 5:33–37 as a teaching about honesty and keeping our promises. Certainly, those things matter.

But maybe Jesus was asking something more: Why do I need to add something to my words in order to make you believe me – or do what I want?

Jesus was describing life in God’s kingdom, where relationships are shaped by truthfulness, trust, and genuine concern for others’ dignity. In that kingdom, my words aren’t tools for getting my way. They’re part of how I love and honor the person listening.

The opposite of manipulation isn’t merely telling the truth. It is telling the truth without using it as leverage.

Divorce: What Was Jesus Really Asking?

“You have heard it said, ‘Whoever sends away his wife, he must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who sends away his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:31–32)

When Christians read Jesus’ words about divorce in the Sermon on the Mount, we almost instinctively ask: Under what circumstances is divorce permissible?

It’s an understandable question. These are difficult words, especially for those whose lives have been touched by divorce. For centuries, Christians have debated what Jesus meant, particularly regarding the exception he mentioned.

But something interesting happens when we listen through first-century ears. We discover that people in Jesus’ day were asking essentially the same question.

And Jesus seemed determined to change the conversation.

The Debate Behind the Debate

This is the third of six statements in the Sermon where Jesus began with some variation of “You have heard it said…” followed by “But I tell you…”

He had already addressed murder, anger, and contempt, followed by adultery and lust. In each case, Jesus challenged his listeners to reconsider what righteousness looked like.

Remember, Jesus had said their righteousness needed to surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20). Not simply more religious behavior, but a deeper righteousness – doing right by God and others; treating people with dignity.

Now he turned to divorce.

Behind his words was a debate about Deuteronomy 24:1, which described a husband giving his wife a certificate of divorce after finding something “indecent” about her. The Hebrew phrase was ‘erwat dabar, which could be roughly translated as “the nakedness of a matter” or “something indecent.”

What exactly did that mean? Two prominent first-century schools of Jewish interpretation disagreed.

The school of Shammai interpreted the phrase narrowly, generally limiting legitimate divorce to serious sexual misconduct.

The school of Hillel interpreted it much more broadly. A husband could divorce his wife for almost any reason that displeased him. Later Jewish tradition suggested that a man could divorce his wife for something as trivial as burning dinner – or because he found someone else more attractive.

Though the argument was ostensibly about the meaning of two Hebrew words, someone’s life hung on how those words were interpreted.

Who Gets to Decide?

Modern readers can easily miss something important about this debate. Both schools focused primarily on the husband’s rights.

In the Jewish legal framework being debated, a husband generally had the authority to initiate divorce. His wife did not enjoy the same legal freedom. And the consequences were rarely equal.

For a woman in first-century Jewish society, being sent away could mean losing her home, economic security, and social standing. Without independent resources or family support, her future could become precarious.

The divorce certificate offered some legal protection, allowing her to remarry. But it did not erase the vulnerability of being dismissed.

When a discussion centers on the rights of the person with power, it’s remarkably easy to overlook the person who must live with the consequences.

And that brings us back to Jesus.

“He Makes Her…”

Look again at Jesus’ wording: “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery.” Victim!

New Testament scholar Jeannine Brown draws attention to the Greek grammar of this statement. The verb commonly translated as “makes her commit adultery” is passive. In other words, Jesus seemed to be highlighting what was primarily happening to the woman, the victim.

The husband could claim he had followed the proper legal procedure. He had given her the required certificate. Everything was technically legitimate.

But was it righteous? Was it faithful? Had he done right by the person to whom he had made a covenant commitment?

Jesus Refused the Loophole Question

Later, in Matthew 19, the Pharisees approached Jesus with a familiar question: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” (Matthew 19:3)

There it was – the debate that divided the schools of Hillel and Shammai. They wanted Jesus to weigh in.

Instead, Jesus took them somewhere unexpected. He went back to the beginning. He reminded them that God created humanity male and female and that, in marriage, the two become one flesh (Genesis 1–2).

When they pressed him about Moses permitting divorce, Jesus made an important distinction. Moses permitted divorce because of the hardness of people’s hearts. He had not commanded it. And that concession was not God’s original vision for marriage.

“But it was not this way from the beginning,” Jesus said (Matthew 19:8).

Jesus’ restriction on divorce sounded closer to Shammai’s position than Hillel’s. But he was doing more than choosing the stricter side of a legal argument. He was challenging the assumption behind the argument itself.

They wanted to know where covenant loyalty could legitimately end. Jesus reminded them why covenant loyalty existed in the first place.

The Person on the Other Side of Our Decisions

Our 21^st-century question, “Under what circumstances is someone allowed to divorce?” closely mirrors the question debated in Jesus’ own day. Jesus seems determined to make us ask a better question: “What is happening to the person being sent away?”

That question fits with everything Jesus had been saying.

When he addressed murder and anger, he challenged the contempt that diminishes another person’s humanity. When he addressed adultery and lust, he challenged the tendency to reduce another person to an object of desire.

And when he addressed divorce, he challenged a system that let one person exercise a legal right while leaving another to bear the consequences.

In each case, Jesus directed attention toward the dignity of the other person.

This should sound familiar as we think back to the Beatitudes. Jesus had announced good news to people with little status, influence, or leverage. The poor in spirit. Those who mourn. The meek. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Now he was describing what that righteousness looked like in ordinary human relationships.

Of course, these words are not a complete treatment of divorce, nor should they be used to pressure someone to remain in an abusive or dangerous marriage. Covenant loyalty is not a license to exploit another person. Jesus’ concern for the vulnerable must inform how we hear his words.

But neither should we lose the force of what he was saying. Jesus called his listeners back to the beginning – to God’s vision of human beings created for covenant relationship with him and with one another.

Covenant loyalty is never just about keeping promises. It’s also about the person on the other side of the promises.

Greater righteousness refuses to turn another human being into collateral damage in the exercise of our freedom.

The Parable of the Benevolent King (Revisited)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had several conversations where I’ve pointed someone to The Parable of the Benevolent King, written and published in March 2025. Since it keeps coming up in conversation, I thought it might be helpful to revisit it. So, here it is…

Once upon a time, long ago, in a land where mist settled in the meadows and the sun filtered through ancient oaks, there reigned a king unlike any other. His name was Aldemar the Benevolent, and though his crown was gold and his scepter carved from silver and inlaid with jewels, it was his heart, not his wealth, that made him beloved. Tales of his kindness traveled far beyond the kingdom’s borders — stories of a king who walked the village streets talking with the common folk, a king whose hands lifted burdens rather than added to them.

In Aldemar’s kingdom, there was a place for all. The castle gates were never barred, save in times of danger, and even then, emissaries were sent to guide the lost to safety. His subjects were not mere vassals but partners in building a kingdom where justice, mercy, and love flourished.

The scribes in Aldemar’s court labored not merely to copy laws or record taxes but to pen letters of encouragement to distant villages, chronicling the king’s mercies and sending words of hope to the lowly. They preserved not just royal decrees but stories of kindness done in secret to remind the land that even the smallest gesture was part of the kingdom’s ethos.

Farmers and gardeners tilled the soil not only to produce harvests for the tables but to ensure beauty flourished throughout the land. In Aldemar’s realm, gardens were not just for show but for refuge — places where the weary could sit, smell the fragrances, and know peace.

The healers, trained in herbs and salves, walked the roads beside the peasants, carrying bandages, warm hands, and listening ears. In Aldemar’s mind, healing was not just the mending of wounds but restoring dignity, so the healers gave both.

The knights were formidable, but their first loyalty was not to conquest but to the protection of the vulnerable. Each knight swore an oath to defend the weak, to stand in the gap between danger and the defenseless, and to ensure that no cry for help went unheard.

Cooks, weavers, and smiths understood their work to be sacred. A meal offered with joy, a cloak stitched with care, a plow forged to last — each was an offering, a gift that built the kingdom. The king taught them to see that even the unnoticed labor, when done in love, added to the strength of the realm.

Even the children had their role. They carried garlands of flowers to new arrivals at the gates, reminding all who entered that they were welcome, not because of what they could do, but because of who they were — beloved by the king.

People clamored to enter the kingdom…

Beyond the borders of Aldemar’s reign lay kingdoms ruled by greed, fear, and ambition. In those lands, taxes crushed the poor, soldiers enforced the whims of selfish lords, and kindness was mistaken for weakness. News of Aldemar’s kingdom was like a beacon shining in the gloom.

Travelers outside the kingdom spoke of a king who knew his people by name, who sat with beggars, who wept with widows, who offered justice tempered with mercy.

Word spread that in Aldemar’s realm, one was not only provided for but cherished. Pilgrims crossed deserts, forded rivers, and braved robbers to reach his gates. When they arrived, they found themselves welcomed not as strangers but as long-lost family. King Aldemar believed that every soul bore the image of the Divine, and to mistreat one was to wound heaven itself.

Some chose to leave…

Yet, not all who entered remained. Some could not abide Aldemar’s ways. They were those who desired power for themselves — who longed to sit above others rather than beside them. In a kingdom where all served one another, there was no place for those who sought to hoard wealth, status, or control.

Some chafed at the king’s mercy. They demanded harsher punishments for those who failed, forgetting that they, too, had stumbled upon their arrival. They desired a kingdom where strength meant dominance, not gentleness. To them, Aldemar’s kindness and humility were weaknesses. So they left, seeking thrones of their own.

There were others — not wicked, but restless. The call of distant lands, the lure of personal glory, or the simple fear that such goodness was too good to be true, led them away. They doubted that a kingdom built on love could endure in a world so harsh, so they sought fortunes elsewhere, mistaking freedom for isolation.

A kingdom still open…

Even for those who left, Aldemar never shut the gate. His knights stood ready to guide the lost home. His healers kept salves for wounds inflicted in the wild lands. His children wove garlands anew for prodigals who found their way back. And the King, each night, stood on the highest tower, lantern in hand, scanning the horizon for the shadow of a returning wanderer. For in Aldemar’s kingdom, no one was beyond welcome. No one was beyond hope.

The light continues to shine in the kingdom of Aldemar the Benevolent. And even today, the gates stand open for any who would come.

A postscript: The etymology and meaning of the fictional name Aldemar (not tied to any historical figure). Aldemar’s roots loosely combine elements from Old Germanic languages. “Alde” can relate to old or wise, emphasizing a sense of enduring wisdom. “Mar” could stem from elements meaning fame, greatness, or renown. Aldemar, loosely interpreted as “renowned for wisdom,” suits a king whose greatness is found not in exercising power, but in serving others with kindness and wisdom.

Your Father in Heaven

I had read the Sermon on the Mount more times than I can count before I noticed it.

I was working on my last post about Jesus’ words, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world,” when I came to Matthew 5:16:

“Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

“Your Father.“

This was the first time in Matthew that Jesus referred to God as Father. Jesus hadn’t used the word while delivering the Beatitudes. But beginning here, he used Father seventeen times before the Sermon ended – ten of them in Matthew 6:1–18 alone.

Once I noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it. I began to wonder if Matthew was giving us another important lens through which to read the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe we haven’t paid enough attention to the Father.

Jesus Didn’t Invent the Idea

It is sometimes said that calling God “Father” would have been completely foreign – or even unthinkable – to Jesus’ Jewish audience. That’s overstating the case.

The Hebrew Scriptures occasionally described God as Father. Moses asked Israel, “Is he not your Father, your Creator?” (Deuteronomy 32:6). Isaiah prayed, “You, LORD, are our Father” (Isaiah 63:16). Other Jewish writings before Jesus also used Father-language for God.

Jesus didn’t introduce an entirely new idea. But the frequency and familiarity with which he used it in the Sermon were striking.

Jesus repeatedly talked with his disciples about “your Father.” Not just my Father, but your Father!

Your Father sees. Your Father knows. Your Father forgives. Your Father feeds. Your Father gives.

And right in the middle of the Sermon, Jesus taught them to pray to their Father: “Our Father in heaven…”

Father became part of the vocabulary through which they understood their life with God.

Children Look Like Their Father

We encountered this a couple of weeks ago in “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” I called it the Family Resemblance.

Jesus returned to that idea only a few verses after mentioning “your Father” for the first time. He told his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them “that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44–45).

Then Jesus pointed to the Father. The Father caused the sun to rise on both the evil and the good. He sent rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The point wasn’t simply that God had issued an extraordinarily difficult command to love enemies. Jesus grounded that kind of love in the character of the Father. And that children bear the family resemblance.

I won’t belabor the point, but it’s worth remembering as we continue. Maybe Jesus wasn’t merely telling his disciples what to do. He was showing them what their Father was like.

Who’s Watching?

Then we get to Matthew 6, and Father-language suddenly appears everywhere.

Jesus addressed three familiar Jewish practices: giving to those in need, prayer, and fasting. He assumed his disciples would practice them.

The problem was the audience. “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them,” Jesus said (Matthew 6:1).

That phrase may unlock the entire section: Who’s watching?

Jesus described people who gave, prayed, and fasted so others would notice. He repeatedly redirected their attention away from the crowd: Your Father sees what is done in secret.

That changes everything. Kingdom righteousness isn’t performance. It doesn’t require applause or even recognition. The Father’s attention is enough.

And that raises an uncomfortable question for those of us who have spent a lifetime around Christianity: How much of my spiritual life depends upon someone else noticing?

Our Father in Heaven

Right in the middle of this discussion, Jesus taught his disciples how to pray:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done…”

Notice the tension.

Our Father.

There was intimacy there, but Jesus didn’t make God smaller to make him approachable.

He is our Father in heaven. His name is still holy. His Kingdom is still coming. His will is still to be done. Intimacy didn’t replace reverence. Jesus held the two together.

And given everything we’ve been exploring over the past year, something else jumps out: Father and Kingdom belong together.

The God whose Kingdom Jesus announced was the God he taught his disciples to call Father.

The King is Father.

That means living in the Kingdom isn’t merely submitting to a different set of moral teachings. It’s learning to live in relationship with the Father whose Kingdom has come near.

Your Father Knows

That became especially important when Jesus talked about worry. He didn’t simply say, stop worrying. He said, “Your heavenly Father knows what you need” (Matthew 6:32).

The birds are fed. The flowers are clothed. Your Father knows what you need.

Then, in Matthew 7, Jesus compared God with earthly parents who knew how to give their children good gifts: “How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (7:11)

The Father Jesus described isn’t merely watching to see whether his children measure up. He sees, knows, provides, and gives.

And His children can learn to trust Him.

Maybe We’ve Been Reading the Sermon Wrong

This matters as we move into the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

It’s remarkably easy to turn Jesus’ words into another version of what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism¹, the assumption that Christianity is largely about being a good person, with God somewhere in the background helping us when we need him.

Read that way, the Sermon becomes a particularly demanding collection of moral teachings: Don’t get angry. Don’t lust. Keep your promises. Love your enemies. Give. Pray. Forgive. Don’t worry. Don’t judge.

Try harder. Do better. Be good.

But what if we have missed the Father standing behind all of it? Jesus wasn’t simply describing how good religious people behaved. He was describing a people learning to live under God’s reign as children of their Father.

So as we continue through the Sermon, maybe we should keep asking two questions:

What does this tell us about the Father?

What does a people increasingly bearing his family resemblance look like?

Before we go any further into the Sermon on the Mount, maybe we need to notice who has been standing behind it all along.

Your Father in heaven.

¹Smith, C., & Denton, M. L. (2005). Soul searching: The religious and spiritual lives of american teenagers. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Salt and Light: The Town Just Ahead

The first time I drove across the prairies at night, I learned that a town’s lights can be deceptive.

Far ahead, on the horizon, a small glow appeared. It looked close – just over the next rise, perhaps. But mile after mile of road passed beneath me. The lights remained ahead of me, steady and unmistakable, while the town itself was still far away.

A city on a hill can do that. Long before you arrive, its light tells you that someone is there.

That may be part of the force of the words Jesus spoke in Matthew 5:13–16: You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Jesus had just finished the Beatitudes. He described those who were blessed in God’s kingdom: the poor in spirit, the merciful, the peacemakers, those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness. Then, as he turned to his followers, he told them what this kind of life meant beyond the hillside where they were listening.

“You are salt. You are light.”

Not, “Try harder until you become salt and light.” Not, “Make yourself more visible.” Jesus spoke in the present tense. He named what his people were becoming because they belonged to him and to his kingdom.

An important detail is hidden by English translations: the “you” was plural. Jesus was not handing each person a private assignment in spiritual influence. He was speaking to a people – his followers.

That mattered. A single lamp could light a room, but a city’s glow came from many lamps, many homes, many lives gathered in one place. Jesus imagined a people whose shared life would become visible.

What Followed the Beatitudes

Within the Sermon, the salt-and-light discourse was a hinge, carrying Jesus’ listeners from the Beatitudes into his unfolding vision of kingdom righteousness.

The Beatitudes describe what kingdom-shaped people look like. Salt and light showed what happened when that kind of life entered the world. The rest of the sermon gives the picture greater detail: reconciliation instead of contempt, truthfulness instead of manipulation, mercy instead of retaliation, even love for enemies.

In other words, Jesus was not calling his followers to a vague kind of cultural influence. He was describing a life so different that it became recognizable.

As N. T. Wright observes, Jesus’ language echoed Israel’s calling to be God’s light for the world. Jesus gave his followers a share in that vocation.¹ They were to embody God’s arriving kingdom in the places where they lived.

Salt That Still Tastes Like Salt

Salt carried several associations in the ancient world. It flavored food (Job 6:6), and it was part of Israel’s worship: every grain offering was to include “the salt of the covenant” (Lev. 2:13; cf. Ezek. 43:24). Numbers referred explicitly to an “everlasting covenant of salt” (Num. 18:19; cf. 2 Chron. 13:5), language that evoked permanence and faithful covenant relationship with God.

Jesus may have allowed those associations to echo in the background, but his warning kept the main point close at hand: salt had to remain salt.

“If the salt loses its saltiness,” he asked, “how can it be made salty again?”

The image is not merely about Christians making the world better. It is about remaining distinctively faithful. Salt that has become useless cannot do what salt is for.

That is an uncomfortable question for any Christian body. We can be active, vocal, busy, and even admired, while gradually taking on the same habits Jesus confronted: contempt, dishonesty, retaliation, status-seeking, indifference to a neighbor’s need.

His point was not to make his followers strange for strangeness’ sake. It was to keep the character of the kingdom.

Mont Saint-Michel off the coast of Normandy, France

A Light for the World

Jesus then gave his second image: “You are the light of the world.”

The words echoed Isaiah’s expansive vision of God’s light reaching the nations: God’s instruction would go out from Zion and bring peace (Isa. 2:2–5); the servant would bring justice and become “a light for the nations” (Isa. 42:1–7); and God’s salvation would reach “to the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). Isaiah called God’s people to “walk in the light of the Lord” (Isa. 2:5) and portrayed the nations coming to God’s light and glory (Isa. 60:1–3).

Jesus then said something astonishing: his followers shared in that vocation. Their light was not their own brilliance. It was the reflected brightness of a life shaped by Jesus.

That was why the image of the city was so fitting. Jesus did not say that every believer had to become famous. He said that a city set on a hill could not be hidden. The point was not celebrity. It was presence.

A people who forgive, practice mercy, welcome the overlooked, tell the truth, seek peace, and love their neighbors will become visible – irresistibly visible. Their life will tell the world that another kingdom is possible.

Jesus then narrowed the image from city lights on the horizon to a lamp in a house. Nobody would light a lamp and put it under a bowl. A lamp was placed on its stand, where it gave light to everyone in the house.

Light is meant to help someone see. It is meant to make a place more livable. It serves the people nearby.

Perhaps that is a good test for our witness. Does our presence make it easier for our neighbors to see the goodness of God? Does it bring more clarity, mercy, justice, courage, reconciliation, and hope?

Or does it mostly draw attention to us?

Jesus ended with the purpose of it all: “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

The goal is not that people would be impressed by Christians. The goal is that they would catch a glimpse of the Father. Like a town glowing across the prairie, the church is meant to be a sign that there is life ahead – a place of light, welcome, and hope.

The question is not simply whether we are visible. It is whether, when people see us, they can see the Father.

¹N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–15 (London: SPCK, 2004), discussion of Matthew 5:13–20.

Family Resemblance

“You must be here for Remy.”

Our grandson, Ephraim – Remy to everyone in the family – just turned thirteen. When he was younger, everyone said he was my “spitting image.”

I remember one Sunday when he was about four or five. We were visiting Remy and his family and had attended church with them. After worship, I volunteered to pick him up from Sunday School. I was prepared to explain to the Sunday School “gatekeeper” who I was and why it was okay for me to take him.

Before I could say a word, she looked at me and said, “Oh, you must be here for Remy.” Apparently, no explanation was necessary. She recognized the family resemblance.

I wonder if Jesus had something like that in mind when he said: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9)

What if peacemaking is one of the ways God’s children become recognizable?

What does a peacemaker actually make?

The word Jesus used for “peacemaker,” written in Greek by Matthew, is eirēnopoios. It is a compound of eirēnē, “peace,” and poieō, “to make” or “do.” That’s worth noticing. ¹

Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are those who love peace,” or even, “Blessed are the peaceful.”

He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” There is something active about the word.

And what kind of peace did Jesus have in mind?

His Jewish listeners would have heard eirēnē through the rich Hebrew concept of shalom. Shalom meant much more than the absence of conflict. It carried the idea of wholeness, well-being, flourishing, and restored relationships.

Peace, in other words, isn’t simply what happens when people stop fighting. Peace is what happens when what is broken begins to be made whole.

That changes the picture considerably.

Peacemakers aren’t necessarily peacekeepers

There’s an important difference between keeping the peace and making peace.

A peacekeeper may be primarily concerned with stopping the conflict. Keep things quiet. Don’t rock the boat. Avoid the difficult conversation. Preserve the appearance of harmony.

A peacemaker wants something deeper. A peacemaker moves toward what is broken with the hope of restoration.

Sometimes that means listening. Sometimes forgiving. Sometimes telling the truth. Sometimes confronting injustice. Sometimes having the conversation everyone would rather avoid.

Biblical peacemaking isn’t built on pretending that everything is fine. Jeremiah confronted those who proclaimed, “Peace, peace,” when there was no peace (Jer. 6:14; 8:11). Jesus told his followers to pursue reconciliation with those they had offended (Matt. 5:23–24).

A peacemaker isn’t someone uncomfortable with conflict.

A peacemaker is someone who is committed to what lies on the other side of conflict: reconciliation, wholeness, and shalom.

“They will be called children of God.”

This, I think, is where Jesus’ Beatitude becomes especially interesting.

The Greek word translated “children” in the NIV is huioi, literally “sons.” In the ancient world, being identified as someone’s son communicated more than family status. It also communicated identity, representation, and resemblance.

Children look like their parents.

Sometimes it’s physical. Sometimes it’s in their mannerisms. Sometimes it’s in the way they talk, laugh, or respond to people.

And sometimes it’s in their character.

Jesus makes this connection explicit just a few verses later. After telling his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them, he says, “that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

Why love enemies?

Because that’s what the Father is like.

God’s children begin to look like their Father.

And what does the Father look like?

He is a God who makes peace. As the visible expression of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), Jesus showed us what the Father looks like. And Jesus was a peacemaker.

Paul described what God had done through Christ this way: God was reconciling all things to himself, “making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20). The verb Paul used there is the related Greek word eirēnopoieō – to make peace.

When we participate in peacemaking work – when we move toward reconciliation, when we refuse retaliation, when we seek wholeness rather than simply winning – we begin to look like him.

Family resemblance

Maybe that’s why Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are the people who keep things peaceful.”

He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Because peacemaking is more than a behavior. It is evidence of an identity.

God is at work making all things new. His Kingdom is breaking into a world fractured by hostility, resentment, injustice, and fear. And the people who surrender themselves to that Kingdom begin participating in what God is doing.

They become people who make peace. Not perfectly. Not easily. And certainly not without cost.

But increasingly, they look like their Father.

And perhaps that’s what Jesus meant when he said they would be called children of God. Not simply that God gives them a title. Not that peacemaking earns them a place in the family. Rather…

…their lives begin to make the family resemblance visible.

The Sunday School teacher didn’t need me to explain who I was. She saw Remy in me.

I wonder what people see when they look at us.

When we’re hurt. When we’re angry. When someone disagrees with us. When relationships break down. When we’re given the opportunity to retaliate – or reconcile.

Do they see someone who simply wants to keep the peace? Or do they see someone willing to enter the broken places and work toward shalom?

Because every time God’s peace passes through human hands, the family resemblance becomes a little easier to see.

¹ See Woodworking and God’s Poiema focused on Ephesians 2:10: For we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do. The root Greek word for workmanship is poiema – it describes God’s creative activity. It’s the word from which poem and poetry are derived.

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)

Sooner or later, there comes a hush in every person’s life – that moment when the unthinkable happens and we are left alone with our thoughts.

What then?

What happens when the phone call comes? When the diagnosis is confirmed? When someone we love is suddenly gone? When a relationship cannot be repaired? When the future we had carefully imagined disappears before our eyes?

We grieve.

When Grief Finds a Voice

Grief is the internal experience of loss. It is what happens within us when something – or someone – we deeply value is taken away. Grief can leave us exhausted, disoriented, angry, numb, confused, or unable to imagine life ever feeling normal again.

Mourning is something slightly different.

If grief is the inward experience of loss, mourning is the outward expression of that grief. We grieve within; we mourn when we give our grief a voice. Mourning happens when sorrow finds expression through tears, lament, prayer, silence, stories, rituals, or simply the willingness to admit:

Something precious has been lost, and life will never be quite the same.

In our culture, grief is often treated as something private – something to process quietly and eventually move beyond. We may be given permission to grieve for a while, but sooner or later there can be an unspoken expectation that we will get back to normal.

The biblical world understood mourning differently.

Throughout Scripture, mourning was visible, embodied, and often communal. People tore their clothes, wore sackcloth, sat in ashes, fasted, wept aloud, and gathered together in sorrow. Their mourning was not hidden or hurried. It created space to acknowledge that something was terribly wrong.

When Jacob believed Joseph had died, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and mourned for many days (Genesis 37:34–35). When David learned that Saul and Jonathan had been killed, he composed a public lament and invited the people to join him in remembering what had been lost (2 Samuel 1:17–27). When Nehemiah heard that Jerusalem remained broken and its gates had been burned, he sat down and wept. For days, he mourned, fasted, and prayed (Nehemiah 1).

Biblical mourning was brutal honesty. It was the refusal to pretend that everything was fine when everything was not fine.

Blessed Are the Mourners?

Perhaps that is why Jesus included mourning among the Beatitudes.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Once again, Jesus’ words sound strange to us.

We naturally assume that the blessed life is the life untouched by sorrow – the life in which our families remain healthy, our relationships flourish, our plans succeed, and tragedy keeps its distance. We often use the word blessed to describe the moments when life turns out the way we hoped.

But Jesus declared the mourners blessed.

The Greek word translated “mourn” is pentheō. It describes deep sorrow or grief that is openly expressed. Pentheō carries the sense of lament – the kind of sorrow that can no longer remain hidden.

Jesus was not saying, “Blessed are those who feel sad.” He pronounced blessing upon those willing to face loss and brokenness honestly – those who refused to numb their sorrow, deny their pain, or look away from suffering.

Eugene Peterson paraphrased the Beatitude this way in The Message:

“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

Peterson captured something deeply human in Jesus’ words. Loss has a way of stripping away our illusions of control. When what is most dear to us is gone, our usual explanations may no longer satisfy us. The things we depended upon to make life feel secure suddenly seem fragile.

And there, in the quiet left behind, we may discover that God is not standing at a distance. He draws near. Not with platitudes. Not with easy answers. Not by minimizing our loss or rushing us through our pain.

He meets us in our mourning.

Mourning What Is Broken

But Jesus’ words likely reached beyond the personal grief we experience when we lose someone or something we love.

Throughout Scripture, people mourned not only death but also sin, injustice, oppression, exile, violence, broken relationships, and the consequences of humanity’s rebellion against God. The prophets mourned what had become of Israel. Ezra mourned the people’s unfaithfulness. Nehemiah mourned the broken condition of Jerusalem.

They looked honestly at the world and recognized that it was not as God intended it to be.

Kingdom people do the same. They mourn what sin has done – to themselves, to others, and to God’s good creation.

They mourn when children suffer. They mourn when the vulnerable are exploited. They mourn when violence becomes ordinary. They mourn when power is used to protect the powerful rather than serve the powerless.

Mourning is what happens when we stop looking away.

It is what happens when we allow the suffering of others to affect us. It is what happens when we become honest about our own failures. It is what happens when we remember that the world we experience is not yet the world God intends.

This Beatitude naturally followed the first: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Those who recognize their spiritual poverty also begin to recognize the depth of the brokenness within them and around them. Once we stop pretending that we have everything together, we become free to see more clearly.

And what we see causes us to mourn. Kingdom people have learned to see!

They Will Be Comforted

Yet Jesus did not end the Beatitude with mourning.

“For they will be comforted.”

The comfort Jesus promised was more than reassurance that someday we would feel better. His promise pointed toward the kingdom of God – the restoration of all things.

The prophets had spoken of a day when God would comfort His people, bind up the brokenhearted, rebuild what had been devastated, and exchange their mourning for joy (cf. Isaiah 40:1–2; 61:1–4; Jeremiah 31:13). Jesus announced that this long-awaited kingdom had drawn near.

And one day, everything that causes mourning will be made right.

Until then, Jesus invites his followers neither to deny sorrow nor to be overcome by it. He invites us to bring our grief into the presence of God – to mourn honestly while trusting that sorrow would not have the final word.

Sooner or later, the hush comes for all of us. The unthinkable happens. We find ourselves sitting with questions that have no easy answers. What then?

We mourn. We name what has been lost. We refuse to pretend that everything is fine. We bring our sorrow into the presence of God.

And somewhere within that sacred space, we discover the promise hidden inside this unlikely blessing:

“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

Leaning Into the Beatitudes

A Quick Reminder About “Blessed”

In my previous post, we explored the words ashrei and makarios, the Hebrew and Greek words often translated as “blessed.” We discovered that these words carry far more meaning than a simple description of happiness or good fortune. They point toward a life that is flourishing because it is aligned with God’s purposes and experienced under God’s favor.

That understanding becomes especially important when we come to the Beatitudes.

For many of us, the Beatitudes have been familiar for so long that we no longer hear them. We read them as a list of virtues to acquire or spiritual achievements to pursue. We assume Jesus is giving us a set of character traits that we must develop if we want God’s blessing.

But what if that is not what Jesus was doing?

The Upside-Down Kingdom

It was New Testament scholar George Eldon Ladd who famously described the kingdom of God as an “upside-down kingdom.” Dallas Willard used similar language. The kingdom announced by Jesus often appeared to reverse the values and assumptions of the surrounding world.

The powerful are not necessarily the ones who flourish. The rich are not always the fortunate ones. The successful are not automatically the blessed.

Again and again, Jesus turned conventional wisdom on its head.

Yet perhaps “upside-down” is not quite the best description. From God’s perspective, the kingdom is actually right-side up. It is our world – with its obsession with power, status, wealth, and self-promotion – that has been turned upside down. Jesus came announcing that God’s reign was setting things right.

And remarkably, the right-siding work would happen through ordinary people.

Not celebrities. Not religious elites. Not political insiders.

Ordinary people…

People who mourn.

People who feel spiritually bankrupt.

People who are overlooked.

People who hunger for something better.

People who have been wounded and are trying to show mercy anyway.

When God is in Charge

The Beatitudes describe what life looks like when God is in charge.

Remember Luke describing the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry? In Luke 4, He entered the synagogue in Nazareth and began reading from Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor…” (Luke 4:18)

The passage continues with freedom for captives, sight for the blind, and liberation for the oppressed. Jesus concluded by declaring that this Scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing.

The Isaiah passage ends with a fascinating phrase announcing “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:19). In a way, Jesus had been describing God’s favorites.

So, when we arrive at the Beatitudes, we hear the same kingdom message. Jesus is identifying the very people upon whom God’s favor rests.

A Different Way to Read the Beatitudes

I want to encourage you to spend some time with the Beatitudes from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message.

Interestingly, Peterson never set out to write a paraphrase of the New Testament. As a pastor, he found himself continually rephrasing biblical passages in sermons, Bible studies, and conversations so that the people in his congregation could hear them with fresh ears. Over time, those pastoral paraphrases eventually became The Message.

Whether or not you regularly read paraphrases, Peterson often helps familiar passages sound unfamiliar again – and that can be a gift.

The Beatitudes are one of those passages.

Many of us hear “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and immediately begin wondering how to become poor in spirit.

Peterson’s rendering slows us down. It invites us to hear Jesus speaking to real people in real circumstances in their everyday language. With Peterson’s help, instead of sounding like a spiritual checklist, the Beatitudes begin to sound like an announcement.

An Invitation to Listen Again

As we continue our journey through the Sermon on the Mount, I want to encourage you to try a simple practice. Read The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) every day for the next week or two from The Message.

Read it slowly. Read it prayerfully. Read it more than once.

And see what happens.

Eugene Peterson’s Paraphrase of the Beatitudes…

^1-2When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:

³“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

⁴“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

⁵“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are – no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

⁶“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

⁷“You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.

⁸“You’re blessed when you get your inside world – your mind and heart – put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

⁹“You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

¹⁰“You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.

^11-12“Not only that – count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens – give a cheer, even! – for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

Addendum: This is NT Wright’s translation from Matthew for Everyone* – another opportunity to read the familiar in a new way.

³Wonderful news for the poor in spirit! The kingdom of heaven is yours.

⁴Wonderful news for the mourners! You’re going to be comforted.

⁵Wonderful news for the meek! You’re going to inherit the earth.

⁶Wonderful news for people who hunger and thirst for God’s justice! You’re going to be satisfied.

⁷Wonderful news for the merciful! You’ll receive mercy yourselves.

⁸Wonderful news for the pure in heart! You will see God.

⁹Wonderful news for the peacemakers! You’ll be called God’s children.

¹⁰Wonderful news for people who are persecuted because of God’s way! The kingdom of heaven belongs to you.

¹¹Wonderful news for you, when people slander you and persecute you, and say all kinds of wicked things about you falsely because of me!

¹²Celebrate and rejoice: there’s a great reward for you in heaven. That’s how they persecuted the prophets who went before you.

* Wright, N. T.. Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-15 (The New Testament for Everyone) (pp. 34-35). Kindle Edition.

Before We Climb the Mountain

In the coming weeks, we’ll be digging into Jesus’ Manifesto, the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon is arguably Jesus’ most famous body of teaching. Even people who know very little about Christianity have heard pieces of it.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”
“Love your enemies.”
“Turn the other cheek.”
“Do not worry about tomorrow.”

These words have shaped cultures, inspired movements, challenged assumptions, and comforted countless people through the centuries.

Yet familiarity can sometimes keep us from hearing what Jesus was actually saying. Before we begin walking through the Sermon itself, I think it will be helpful to spend a little time considering the context.

Some Context…

So, let’s spend a little time considering the four narratives that house the story of Jesus – the four Gospels (remembering that gospel = euangelion = good news). Where did these four accounts come from, and who were the evangelists who authored them?

The four Gospels were written within the lifetime of people who had seen and heard Jesus.

An important thing to consider.

Matthew was not merely an observer of Jesus’ ministry; he was one of the disciples personally called by Jesus. His Gospel reflects the testimony of someone – a hated tax collector – whose life had been profoundly altered by the One he followed.

Mark likely recorded the recollections of the apostle Peter, another disciple personally called by Jesus. His life, too, was profoundly transformed by Jesus. Luke carefully investigated the events he recorded, drawing upon eyewitness testimony and earlier written accounts. John, writing later than the others, offered the reflections of yet another eyewitness who had spent years walking with Jesus.

Why does this matter?

Take a moment and ponder the richness of these four narratives. Imagine the time spent recalling experiences, stories, and feelings – looking for the right words to express them. Imagine remembering and capturing three years of your life in a way that would inspire your readers? That’s what we have here – way more than information. So it matters!

For years, whenever I worked with students, I wanted them to wrestle with a foundational question: Who is Jesus Christ, and why might I want to follow him?

I wanted them to understand why the Gospels mattered. Simply telling them they were important wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted them to crawl into the stories and experience Jesus!

So, I would bring a box of my journals into the room and invite students to read entries from various years of my life. Afterward, I would ask, “What do you know about me now that you didn’t know ten minutes ago?”

(Their responses were always quite interesting.)

Then I would show them a photo of my grandchildren and pose a hypothetical question: What if something tragic happened to me and those grandchildren never had the opportunity to know me personally? How might they learn who their grandfather was?

Eventually, someone would say it. “They could read your journals.”

Mic drop!

The Gospels are not private journals, but they serve a similar purpose. They preserve the testimony of people who knew Jesus, walked with him, listened to him, and devoted the rest of their lives to telling others about him.

The Gospel writers were not detached observers. They were participants. They had encountered Jesus personally, and their lives had never been the same. And because of their testimony, we can still hear His voice today.

Jan Brueghel the Elder’s *Sermon on the Mount* (circa 1598)

More Than a One-Time Sermon

The Sermon on the Mount is found primarily in the gospel of Matthew, chapters 5–7, with a shorter but related version appearing in Luke 6. Only Matthew and Luke record such a sermon in this form.

Many of us have been influenced by Hollywood portrayals of the Sermon on the Mount. The popular television series The Chosen depicts it as a singular, dramatic event, and it may well have been exactly that.

But there is something important to consider.

The themes and teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount appear throughout the Gospels. We encounter them in various settings, conversations, and moments in Jesus’ ministry.

That should not surprise us.

Most effective communicators return repeatedly to their central message. Good teachers often have a handful of foundational themes that they express in different ways over the years. Jesus appears to have done the same thing.

The Sermon on the Mount may be the most concentrated collection of Jesus’ teaching, but it is not an isolated collection of ideas. Rather, it provides a window into the message he proclaimed throughout his public ministry.

As we move through this series, we’ll focus on Matthew’s version of the Sermon.

Reading the Sermon Through Kingdom Eyes

One more thing is worth mentioning as we begin: Our recent conversations about the kingdom of God must travel with us into this series.

One of the challenges of reading the Sermon on the Mount is that we can mistake it for a collection of moral instructions. We hear “love your enemies,” “do not judge,” or “turn the other cheek,” and immediately begin asking, How do I do that?

But before asking how, we should ask why.

Jesus did not begin his ministry by announcing a new ethical system. He announced that the kingdom of God had drawn near.

The Sermon on the Mount is rooted in that announcement. It describes what life looks like when God’s reign is welcomed and reveals the character of people learning to live under the loving rule of the King. The Sermon on the Mount is not primarily about what people should do. It is about the kind of people God’s kingdom is forming.

If the kingdom is the message, the Sermon is one of the clearest pictures of kingdom life.

An Invitation

As we begin this journey together, my hope is not simply that we will study a famous sermon.

My hope is that we will encounter Jesus.

We’ll wrestle with his words. We’ll allow them to challenge us. We’ll let them expose assumptions we didn’t know we had. And perhaps, along the way, we’ll discover that the Sermon on the Mount is not merely something to be admired.

It is an invitation into the life of the kingdom.

So, before we climb the mountain, let’s remember whose voice we are about to hear.

Jesus’ Manifesto

The Word Makes Us Nervous

The word manifesto makes some Christians nervous. It sounds political. Ideological. Revolutionary. Maybe even dangerous.

For many, the word conjures images of angry movements, cultural upheaval, or ideological extremism. In our modern moment, “manifesto” often feels politically charged before we even define it. Some immediately associate the term with revolutionary movements on the far left or far right, with propaganda, coercion, or attempts to seize cultural power.

And to be fair, history has certainly produced destructive manifestos. Some have fueled oppression, violence, nationalism, or utopian visions untethered from humility and love. So, the hesitation is understandable.

When we view a manifesto in a category that belongs exclusively to political radicals and cultural revolutionaries, rather than recognizing it more broadly as a public declaration of vision, convictions, and way of life, we have flattened the value of the term. It then becomes difficult to recognize that Jesus Himself spoke in ways that were deeply public, deeply disruptive, and deeply challenging to the social and religious assumptions of His day – manifesto-like.

I recently read about a pastor preaching a message focused on The Sermon on the Mount. Afterward, one of the church leaders confronted him about his “woke ideologies.” The pastor responded that he had simply been repeating the words of Jesus. The man replied, “Not my Jesus.”

Whether the story is apocryphal or not, it captures something revealing about our moment. We have become so discipled by modern political categories that the teachings of Jesus can sound foreign – even threatening – when heard without the filters we normally place on them.

A Domesticated Jesus?

Perhaps part of our discomfort is that we have grown accustomed to thinking of Jesus primarily in private and personal terms – as though His teachings were mainly about individual spirituality or moral inspiration rather than the announcement of an entirely different kind of kingdom and humanity. In a sense, we have domesticated Jesus.

When Jesus ascended a hillside in Galilee, sat down with His disciples, and began speaking about blessing, enemies, lust, anger, money, anxiety, prayer, power, integrity, retaliation, and the kingdom of God, He was not offering detached religious reflections for private inspiration. He was announcing an entirely different way of being human under the reign of God.

In many ways, the Sermon on the Mount reads like a manifesto.

What Manifestos Actually Do

A manifesto is a public declaration of vision, values, convictions, and way of life. It names what is wrong with the present order and calls people into an alternative reality. Manifestos challenge assumptions. They form identity. They summon allegiance. They announce that another way is possible.

The Declaration of Independence functioned as a manifesto. It publicly declared that the existing relationship with the British crown was no longer acceptable, articulated foundational convictions about human dignity and governance, and called for an entirely new national identity to emerge.

Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses served as a manifesto for reform within the Church. What began as an academic dispute became a public challenge to corruption, spiritual abuse, and distorted theology. Luther was not merely complaining; he was calling people back to a different understanding of the gospel and authority.

Likewise, The Rule of Saint Benedict functioned as a manifesto for an alternative kind of community. Benedict laid out rhythms, values, practices, and shared commitments that shaped how people would live together under the lordship of Christ. It was not simply theoretical theology. It was an embodied vision.

The Manifesto of the Kingdom

Manifestos do not merely describe ideas. They seek to form people. And that is precisely what Jesus seemed to be doing in the Sermon on the Mount.

We can easily reduce the Sermon on the Mount to one of three things:

impossible moral standards meant to make us feel our need for grace,
inspirational sayings suitable for coffee mugs and wall art,
or ethical suggestions for especially serious Christians.

But Jesus presented the Sermon as none of those things. This was the manifesto of the kingdom of God. Jesus announced a new reality breaking into the world: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

God was indeed king.

And the Sermon on the Mount described what life looks like when people actually live under His reign. This manifesto was radically counter-cultural then, and it remains radically counter-cultural now…

Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Reject performative religion.
Tell the truth without manipulation.
Refuse vengeance.
Seek first the kingdom.
Do not store up treasures on earth.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

None of these fits neatly into modern ideological categories.

Jesus confronted both religious nationalism and moral compromise. He challenged hypocrisy and self-righteousness. He critiqued greed, status-seeking, lust for power, anxiety-driven accumulation, and hatred toward enemies. He called people into a life marked by humility, mercy, purity, courage, integrity, generosity, reconciliation, and radical trust in the Father.

That is not Republican.
That is not Democrat.
That is kingdom.

And perhaps that is why the Sermon still unsettles us.

More Than Private Spirituality

We have become remarkably skilled at admiring Jesus while explaining away the direct implications of His teachings. We sentimentalize the Sermon on the Mount because actually obeying it would require a profound reordering of our lives, priorities, politics, relationships, economics, ambitions, and identities.

Jesus was not merely offering spiritual guidance for getting into heaven someday. He was forming a people who would embody the life of heaven here and now – “On earth as in heaven.”

A manifesto.

Not enforced through coercion or violence.
Not advanced through domination.
But through surrendered hearts shaped by the reign of God.

In the coming posts, we will spend some time walking through the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus’ kingdom manifesto – not as abstract ideals, but as the invitation into an entirely different way of living in the world.