I once took a three-day summer course from a teacher at Princeton Theological Seminary, who was a fairly intimidating figure. There was one thing he said that intimidated me much more than anything else. He said that when he taught a full-semester course on preaching, as opposed to the three-day easy one that I took, he insisted that no one could pass the course unless they could memorize the entire Sermon on the Mount and stand up in front of the class and deliver it. For those of you who haven’t checked lately, the Sermon on the Mount runs nonstop for three full chapters in the Gospel of Matthew, about 2500 words. Now my whole life I’ve a hard time memorizing 25 words, much less 2500, so I broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about it.
I was reminded of that class by two of today’s readings. First, the gospel we just heard happens to be the very last lines of the Sermon on the Mount, and they’re memorable lines, to say the least. But back to them in a moment. The first reading is what really brought back that old professor to my mind. It says, Moses told the people, Take these words of mine into your heart and soul. Bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead. Many of you probably know that some Jews still live out this order from Moses by literally wearing these words inside little boxes containing scripture joined by cords, and they wind them around their arm and head before they pray. There are even Jews in some places who wear them constantly.
Now I think we would all agree that both of these disciplines are admirable ideas. It’s great to think that we would love the scriptures so much as to do memorize whole chapters of the gospel, or carry them around with us everywhere. But what is it that makes this more than just a nice, pious idea? Why do we need to literally surround ourselves with the gospel?
That’s what brings us back to Jesus’s words at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Remember that in those first 2400 words, he has completely redefined what it means to follow God’s law. He said we should think of ourselves as the light of the world, never act out of anger, forgive to the point of foolishness, give our possessions to anyone who asks, don’t judge anyone but judge ourselves first, avoid caring about money or food or clothes or status, and perhaps most difficult of all, love our enemies. Beautiful words and ideas, we think, and we come here each week to hear them. But today we reach the climax of the sermon. Jesus tells us that unless we not only hear but actually do all these things, we are building our lives on sand.
None of us likes the idea that we would have our lives built on sand, unstable and vulnerable to disaster. And yet we also have to admit that in some ways our lives can easily become as changeable as Jesus imagines. We all have a tendency to fragment ourselves into different roles, which isn’t itself so bad. But no matter how carefully we try to avoid it, we start using use one set of guidelines and ways of thinking and living for our behavior in one setting, and another set of rules in another.
The world of business, for example, tells us to make what it calls “tough decisions” about how people should be treated, and as you know, these rules are not always how Jesus wants us to treat them. Or we hear voices telling us that the world is a dangerous place, to be realistic, and that the only solution for how to deal with criminals, or with the people of other countries, is to be tough, to act always in our own self-interest — and slowly we allow that way of thinking to guide us, not Jesus’s unrealistic words about loving enemies as much as ourselves. And then there are other voices telling us it’s not sensible to live without caring much about money, and we forget Jesus telling us that what really isn’t sensible is to think that you can care about money without having your life in some way be guided by it.
I’m sure you can think of other examples, but these are some of the shifting sands that Jesus saw, our lives filled with different rulebooks and different goals. And yet in the midst of all that, somehow in front of our very eyes all the time, Jesus wants the words of the Sermon on the Mount to be there to keep us truly grounded people, people of integrity and consistency, people who don’t hear and admire one set of words on Sunday, but live our lives Monday through Saturday following a different leader.
What does it take to do that? We may never get there entirely. But it does seem to start with some sort of total immersion in the life and words of Jesus, some way that we have of staying constantly in touch with his example and what he wanted us to remember. You may not be able to memorize the entire Sermon on the Mount, but the beginning, those famous beatitudes, aren’t a bad place to start. Or maybe you will find it easier to surround yourself with actions rather than words, and bring yourself closer to people whose lives are completely dedicated to service and generosity and simplicity.
But we need to find something that can remind us every day, every hour, that the words Jesus gave us are intended to be lived and not just listened to. When someone in that class I took asked the professor why he had people do all that memorization, his answer was simple: “How else are you going to start making these words your own?”