Embracing Authenticity: Freedom in the Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount, I think initially for me, I just found it, on the surface, just immensely challenging. I remember as a youth pastor early on teaching it to students and wrestling quite a bit, like, I don't know that this sort of life is possible. You know, like, I don't know that it's possible to forever not lust after a woman, because if I do, that's adultery. Or, oh gosh, I've been angry at people, so I'm a murderer, you know, that sort of thing. [00:01:11]

The more I spent time in it, and you know, because we've journeyed together in the same church family for a while now, our church spent like two and a half years slowly going through the gospel and spent several months in The Sermon on the Mount and really like a month and a half just on the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. This sort of long, slow immersion of the text, it's moved from frustrating to freeing in many ways. [00:01:48]

For me, I think the anchor point in terms of finding freedom in his teaching there is kind of the middle of the sermon in chapter 6, which is where we find the Lord's Prayer. But that whole section begins with Jesus talking about, he says, you know, don't practice your righteousness to be seen by others. It's just so interesting, especially in our day and age, you know, social media platforming and all of that. [00:02:08]

When you give, don't give this way, give that way. When you pray, don't pray so that everyone sort of thinks you're holier than thou, but pray very simply and beautifully as a child to a father. And when you fast, don't fast so that everybody knows you're really pious and struggling for the Lord or something. That's been tremendously freeing to see the entire teaching through that lens. [00:03:06]

What Jesus is saying, I think at least in part, is you don't have to act your way to holiness. You can just every day sort of surrender yourself to becoming the person you know that I can live free in God's kingdom because his kingdom economy is just so different than ours. [00:03:33]

The way he begins the sermon, you know, blessed are, and then it's just a bunch of stuff that nobody hashtags blessed on Instagram while in mourning. No one posts a photo from the funeral and says blessed hashtag, right? But that's what Jesus does. Again, it's challenging on the surface, but then the more you think about it, it's like, oh my gosh, that's so freeing. [00:04:22]

There's blessing in the weakness and smallness, and the church ought to be a place where we can bring our weakness and smallness. I was at a church yesterday, and a woman came up and she could just hardly say the phrase, and it said, my son is incarcerated. So often in church, it can be a place where people will say, well, all their children are walking with the Lord. [00:04:46]

It's like, that's a good thing, good for them, I'm really glad, but it's not everybody's story. Often just under the surface is the thought, if you just do it the way that I did it, if you just follow the formula, then you will have those kind of results, rather than this is The Fellowship of the withered hand and we can't, and we're messed up, and this is the place where it's okay to come and be messed up. [00:05:01]

The world is really enamored with achievement and measurement, but Jesus knows you can fake all that stuff. I'm not saying everybody comes to church faking it, but we feel the pressure to do that, you know, Sunday best and all that sort of thing. The Sermon on the Mount is really freeing because in some ways, I think he's saying, like, don't fake it. [00:06:34]

I try really hard, it's not easy, but I try really hard to put myself in places where I'm small, where I feel small. Just a very simple practice, it's not for everybody, it's unique to my life, but you know this because you know this better than me because this is the life you've lived for so long in church world as a pastor. [00:07:24]

After every Christmas and Easter, my wife and I and the kids, we always try to go to as many national parks as we can. We go to a national park, I take some time off right after Christmas and Easter, and we'll try to go to either a national park or some sort of vacation somewhere where I can feel really small. [00:08:39]

Standing in the shadow of these giant rocks that have been here for longer than I can conceptualize, I just felt so small. You're just like, man, this has been here, beautiful and expansive like this, long before I was here, it'll be here long after I'm gone. It's like this really profound, beautiful reminder, like me and my life is just a blip, and yet at the same time, being there with my family and the presence of God, I feel so sane. [00:09:08]