IN THE MOOD ON THE MOUNTAIN

So, after a few days beating about the bush, here we are at last at the Sermon on the Mount. 

Perhaps it's because we've become so accustomed to hearing it on big occasions, that everyone seems determined to make it not just the sermon on the mount but also the SOLEMN on the Mount, or at the very least the SERIOUS on the Mount. Don't you dare suggest that it's good news, that sounds far too cheerful for proper religion. No, none of that lightheartedness here, straighten your faces everybody and we can begin.

Matt.5: 1 - 12, the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount constitute the first of our five Sunday Gospel readings from Jan 29 until Lent begins in March. (This year, Ash Wednesday is on March 1st, the very same day the crows start building their nests!!! How's that for an encouraging start?)

After all that jovial start let me say immediately that I am NOT suggesting that because a Gospel is serious it can't also be Good News, of course it can and vice versa. But these opening twelve verses certainly must have changed the mood among those listening to Jesus. Of course the words of Jesus as we have them in this so-called Sermon on the Mount, have been stage managed, theatrically arranged even, to help readers get the picture of Jesus the (very) early church believed in and wanted its followers to have. 

Matthew puts the Lord on a mountain to resemble a second Moses. (Luke has him on the flat plain where he comes across more as "one of us".) The whole Sermon is packed with nudges and winks to roots in the Old Testament designed to give it a convincing background.
 I'm suggesting here that this crowd of ordinary people, rich in neither material goods or status, (anawim) must have been over the moon to hear themselves told that, theirs was the kingdom of Heaven.

How better could they be motivated to become this man's disciples! These opening verses are indeed full of scholarly detail, but that should not put us off seeing the sheer unexpected happiness they bring and how they put his hearers in the mood to follow him. If he put a spring in their steps and a smile on their faces, then surely they were in the mood to follow him: the Lord of the dance.