[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Expanding Your Faith, a podcast that tackles modern day issues with a focus on spirituality, with Bishop Greer-Godsie, Reverend Mark Trim, and Bishop Ben Williams. Thanks for listening. Take a breath, open your heart, and let's expand your faith together. [MUSIC PLAYING]
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of Expanding Your Faith. Bishop Greer and joining me tonight is Reverend Mark. Hello, everyone. And Bishop Ben. Blessings to all. So tonight is our season finale of our podcast. And we're going to tackle a topic that's near and dear to I think to all three of us. The Sermon on the Mount, the most ignored teaching in Christianity. We've all talked about it at some point or another on here.
And so I thought we'd dedicate an episode to that topic in and of itself. So that's what we're going to do. Remember, if you'd like to catch up on past episodes of the podcast, you can do so at podcast.myocci.social or Apple Podcast or wherever you get your favorite podcast from. And a great time to catch up is during September while we're on break. And then we'll be back the first Saturday of October with new episodes for season 15.
The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5 through 7, is arguably the single most quoted and least practiced block of teaching in the entire Bible. That section also was commonly referred to as the beatitudes in it, blessed, where Jesus says such things as blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek and such things that people in modern
Christianity don't particularly care for. Most often we can recite those beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount and various parts of the Sermon on the Mount by heart, but we tend to build lives, churches and even national politics on principles that directly contradict it. So tonight, we're looking at the fact that this was never meant to be an unreachable ideal to admire from a distance. It is a practical
specific livable ethical manifesto. And Jesus himself frames it that way at the end of it. So one of the things I'd like you to be thinking about as we go through the podcast is what would it actually look like if a church, a family or a country tried to build its life around these three chapters instead of just displaying them on a wall. That's very interesting.
thought. So what kind of teaching is this? First of all, look at where and to whom this was given. So Matthew chapter five verse one and two, Jesus goes up on the Mount and he sits down the posture of a teacher with authority and his disciples come to him. This is delivered to his committed followers, not as general public address. He's essentially talking
just to his followers. The mountain setting was deliberate because it echoes Moses receiving the law on Sinai. Matthew is presenting Jesus as the one who both fulfills and represents the law, not the one who abolishes it. That parallel is important because we see those parallels a law throughout Scripture. And then in Matthew five, 17, Jesus says,
Well, it definitely is something that Jesus isn't just sitting around wasting breath on it. It's something that is intentional. It's something that is I heard one theologian basically say this is the
New Testament equivalent of the 10 commandments. And so it's funny to me because a lot of people are interested in putting the 10 commandments on the wall, but you never see to be attitudes put on the wall, which I think that is a description of where people, churches, ministers, pastors, priests have always tried to land on Scripture and that it is a toe
line mindset. It's a command mindset. It's a way that we can control people. And here Jesus is not just talking about something that sounds great is very poetic. He falls into this poetry-esque type, starting it off, which people can collate to in that time period. And he's talking about the blessedness. And here he is giving them that note. And it's more than just
this is poetry. This is what true living is looking like. This is what true life from the divine is going to look like that God is reaching down to bless those of us that are struggling, whether we're poor, whether we're sick, whether we're humbled, but also how we will respond to that in our meekness and our humbleness in our broken state. And I think it tells us that we're in need of
the blessedness that comes from heaven. And it's also telling us that his grand and is as amazing and as powerful as God is interested in, there it is again, the least among us, the small, those of us that are having an issue with whatever it is in life. And so Jesus is not just saying, hey, hope you enjoyed everything I just said wasn't that pretty, but it's really teaching us
when you go through it that if your life doesn't look like this, you're not really living. You're not embracing life that I'm trying to show you that if you will give yourself over to this, you will discover what truly rewarding fulfillment actually looks like. - Absolutely. And Bishop Ben, why does this sermon get ignored so much? - Well, because it's basically a difficult sermon. It's difficult to look at it and use because people say it's inconvenient,
to power, it's very inconvenient for the wealth and their comfort. And also, we look at the historical part of it, the emotions throughout the history have proposed ways to make it softer. - Very true. - Because it becomes costly sometimes, it becomes extremely costly. - Absolutely. And the Beatitudes as we move into the rest of chapter five is an upside down value system as well.
- Mark, it's a list that contradicts nearly every cultural view we have. - Well, it does because if you listen further, Jesus really drives home this point when he starts talking about loving our enemies. When our enemies are around us, how we're supposed to do is pray for them, love them and treat them with kindness. And that is diametrically opposed to so much that we hold dear in our societies and ever since the time of Christ.
- Somebody mistreats you, you're supposed to match their energy. You're supposed to match back their energy. And here, Jesus is talking about that later in the sermon. And so when you're reading the first few bits where he's talking about these areas that you're blessed, it's really interesting because this phrase or this word that it was often referred to towards Caesar, blessed Caesar in that day. And Jesus is saying, no, blessed. And then he goes on to list.
- That's the poor, the mourning, those that are meek, those that are hungry, those that are seeking things with pureness of heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness. He's saying, those are people that are blessed because they have a heart that is calling on God, they have a heart that is yearning for peace, they have a heart that is searching for righteousness. There's something in them that's driving them towards the divine.
in them that's hungering for something better in the world. And often when you look at the culture, you look at our society and not much as change, you have people that are hungry for power and hungry for wealth and hungry for influence and wanting bigger armies and stronger this and faster that and so on and so forth. And Jesus is not connecting the blessing of heaven to those things
but rather to people that are pure. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. I've taught that for years. Of course, we think that that's a contradiction because the scripture tells us that no one has seen the Father, no one has seen God. But over here, you're telling me, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. When you're pure in heart, you can look throughout life and you can see where God's moving. That's what Jesus is talking about here.
You can see what God is in because your heart is purely looking and without malice or without ulterior motive. And so God will show you things. The birds singing in the morning, you'll like, Oh, God is in that there's beauty and there's harmony. Sun rising. Oh, God is in that people helping one another. God is in that because that's beautiful. And so it's interesting because not a lot of churches connect
to God, God being involved with those that are broken or God being involved with those that we don't really want around God being involved with those that aren't desirable to be in our camp, if you will. Our church has seen that happen MCC of our Redeemer. MCC as a whole across the world where we that's what we do is we take in the unwanted. We take in the discarded and those people have thrown off to the side whether it's
or we identify with who they love, how they identify through ethnicity, how they identify their beliefs. They don't understand what God's doing and their questioning. We just open our door to all those people as opposed to a lot of churches who want a gathering of people that have quote unquote is all together or seemingly have it all together. We know looks are deceiving, but they seemingly have it all together. And Jesus was up here teaching us
2000 years ago to not worry about any of the thing that we see, but look at the heart and look at the actions and look at the people that have been discarded and focus on those things. Focus on the people that have been discarded because those are the ones that I want to minister to focus on the people that are trying to bring peace because that's a thankless job. Nobody seems to want it, but there are people that really do desire peace. Focus on those people because God calls those type of things.
people that are discarded on the whole. God calls those people as bless and one that he pronounces a blessing upon a hundred percent. Correct. And it's important to remember too that those beatitudes are not just sentimental things either. They're not little catchphrases in a greeting card. They are mean. They're not a mean and their thesis statement for everything that
follows in the rest of chapter five into chapter six and chapter seven of Matthew. It's one cohesive teaching. And every specific command that comes after is an outworking of this upside down value system that Jesus is giving us. If the Beatitudes describe who's blessed, the rest of the sermon describes what life shaped by those values actually look like in practice.
So if you're following the Sermon on the Mount and you're following the Beatitudes and everything else in the Sermon on the Mount after the Beatitudes is what your life will look like if you are if you are one of those blessed. If you're a value system aligns with the value system of heaven rather than the value system of earth. And that's important. So Bishop Ben. Yes.
from Matthew 5 13 through 16. You're the soul of the earth. You're a line of the world. Talk to us about why those are not optional extras. Because Jesus was clear that we were already that and he did not try to become that. He was clearing his teaching that his followers already are that. So it's an ethical practice that we have to put into practice. We have to use it every day. So we don't use it then we're going to end up losing it. It's like everything else we do.
everything in practice. Right. And of course the inverse of that is when he talks about how if salt loses its saltliness then it's no good but to be thrown out. Right. And he says it's for following the community of Jesus. Have to follow that command. Follow those Beatitudes. Absolutely. So the hard sayings specific practical and uncomfortable.
anger reconciliation and the heart behind the law is the next section of Matthew 5 that we move into and that's Matthew 5 21 through 24. Jesus takes the command against murder and pushes it back to its roots unresolved anger and contempt towards another person. He gives us the story and Matthew 5 23 and 24 about bringing our gifts to the altar. If we remember somebody that we've offended somebody
as a grievance with us someone who we've hurt and we're supposed to leave our gift at the altar and go and reconcile with them first. Once that is done we can come back and offer our gift. But he puts reconciliation ahead of the religious ritual. So that reconciliation needs to happen first before we can offer our gifts. This is a very practical issue where it's not asking for private moral
purity is demanding an actual change in how conflict gets handled between real people. It also speaks to the fact that as it said in Amos and other places in the Old Testament that God was tired of people giving offerings knowing the state of their immortal soul knowing that they were carrying around contentment for the poor or contentment for one another or were abusing others.
and then coming and offering gifts to God as though they were okay as everything was fine and God rejected those gifts. So it's a matter of making sure that you are right the community is whole as well. Those around you those people that you interact with on a regular basis are also whole before you offer that gift. And Reverend Mark turning the other cheek and loving our enemies is the next heart saying Jesus.
moves into. Oh you can say that especially in American life and thought process because we love our guns over here in America. This one can be a difficult one because again you're like well then we shouldn't have army armies and stuff like that in the world and wouldn't that be nice. I think that would be the way to be. But we're not really talking about being able to defend yourself as opposed to moving into a place to where as your
standing up for living righteously that you're going to have persecution you have people that maybe even physically have altercations with you and if you're trying to live righteously you're trying to live justly scriptures telling us what to do here turn that other cheek and to move into a place of trying to show them that the love that you have in your heart from God is true and genuine as opposed to
lip service. He addresses the lip service later in the teaching but God doesn't want us to just have lip service. God wants us to have some action to it. Faith with that works is dead. The scripture tells us and then loving our enemies do good to those that hate you. We're not again people will fall back and talk about the extreme warfare and stuff like that. We're not talking about warfare here. We're talking about people that say evil things towards you or people that are
being denigrating towards you. We immediately give them the same energy back and then we scratch our heads going. I don't understand why the God's love is not more widespread than it is because you're feeding back the same energy. You are giving the same energy back to people that are saying words to you that are doing things to you that may not be of a blessed nature. And how are we supposed
to claim that we're God's people when we're immediately name calling back or we're immediately plotting things towards folks or trying to undermine people when the scripture is clear for us to love and to bless those that are enemies and those those. Hey, don't pray for those that despite fully use you. Bless those that curse you. And we're supposed to claim that we're different when we're feeding back the same energy and we're not different.
That's an area that we need to grow in if we're giving that back and Jesus is directly telling us not just to pray for him for a distance but to love them to try to help them. And this is very ignored. This is extremely ignored because we want to match energy and you can't simply match energy with people of that nature. You have to allow the divine of heaven to flow through you both
and your words and your actions. Otherwise we're the same as them just on the different side of the coin. And I watch it all the time. You throw scroll through social media and you see people that are lamb blasting each other in a slot and they have the name Christianity attached to them and you're like, I'm sorry, but that's not what Jesus is talking about here in the Beatitudes. This is not the sermon on the Mount being lived out.
And it's easy to fight back. It's easy to start name calling. It's easy to do all that stuff because it just is. But to love somebody and to go good towards them. That's why Jesus is teaching this is because it's a place that the world needs to get to as a whole. But the only way we can do that is through divine help, strength and inspiration because it is a growing thing that we have to embrace. It is a proverbial weeding our garden.
It is digging so that you can plant the seed in the fields of life. It's definitely not easy. It's easy to do the other. It's easy to name call back people. And Jesus is over here saying, I want you to bless them and I want you to love them, but they don't deserve it. Exactly. That's 100% correct. So Bishop Ben, money and anxiety and where treasure actually belongs. Jesus gets into this in Matthew chapter six verse 19 through 34.
Right. And if you look at the whole scripture, the whole section of that, it's a direct rebuttal to the prosperity message. We had we even discussed this back in a few episodes back about the prosperity message in the gospel. But the thing is to remember is the sermon did not promise. Well, the site. Well, it's a sign of faith and actually warned against this as an objecting with within the first piece. You have to think about what does that mean? That's very prosperity message. We discussed that in the other podcast.
That's about the greed and the wealth of the communities of the churches. So it doesn't promise that we're going to get faith from that. And we can't serve God and money either. Right. What's in your heart? Can you have money in God? No, we've seen what happens with that, right? We all seen what goes along with that. So you got to pick your choice. You see that you have your wealth as your God or you have God in your heart. Right. That makes perfect sense.
And then as he ends out that section, Matthew six, 25 through 34, he talks about not being anxious about your life. Right. And the whole discussion about look at the sparrow and either labors nor toils, but your father takes care of them. And so he's talking about how we should not be anxious for anything either. That's a huge teaching just in and of itself. Jesus teach a little bit more on that one because that's a hard one. Right.
One of the harder sayings of Jesus, especially right now. And so then judgment, hypocrisy and the log in your own eye is where we start in Matthew chapter seven. Then you want to skip that section? No. Are you sure about it? Matthew seven, one, two, five sayings. Right. He says, do not judge so that you may not be judged. And why do you see the splitter in the eye of your brother? And yet do not consider the law.
You don't call it your own eye. This is one of the most quoted and misapplied verses of the whole Bible. I can say that confidently. Often used to shut down any moral evaluation at all when the actual text is about hypocritical self-blinding judgment. Not about the impossibility of ever discerning right for wrong. I deal with this on a regular basis because we have so many people and so many Christians who attack us because we're
ourselves or progressive clergy. We support the LGBTQIA community. We support women. We support people of color. We support immigrants. We support all of the people that are marginalized. The phrase that our church has coined for that is the least the lost and the forgotten. Those are the people that we support. Those are the people that we love and people are always judging us for that. And so they're violating this command because they see themselves as a moral judge.
Rather than using it as a call for radical self-examination. And Jesus made it very clear with the whole speck and the log thing that is important for us to make sure that our plate is clear, that our house is clinging before we begin trying to police other people's actions, beliefs, where they stand on various things. It's not a call to be more
or only silent. Jesus calls to stand up for justice, stand up for right, stand up for equality. All is required. But it is not a call for people to blindly go out and try to condemn others. It is a Jesus call to first make sure your house is clean first. And even people who are out there saying that it is a warning out of
love, it is not. It is still judgment. That's the problem with judgment. There is no real love. I know I'm going to go over time a little bit, but let me mention this for a moment. I want to use an example. People who come in here and say, oh, the LGBTQIA community is going to hell. You need a change. You need to repent. They are the same people who the moment we point out that they're eating pork, which the Bible says is is forbidden, or they've
the sides of their beards, which the Bible says is forbidden, or they're wearing mixed fabrics, which the Bible says is forbidden. They go, how dare you judge me? Well, if yours is a warning of love, why is ours not a warning of love? Because you down in your heart that is judgment. And there is no love there. And that's what Jesus is trying to get at in Matthew seven, one through five.
Because what is doing it is in conjunction with what you're saying. A lot of times we step back and we go, oh, well, these people come in there. They tell us and they are judgy and all this stuff. And if we don't go back at them, how are they going to know that they're living incorrectly by doing what he's teaching us here that when you love your neighbor, when you embrace blessings towards them, whatever you want them to do to you,
know, that's how you teach and instruct because a lot of times stepping back and going, Oh, well, you're wrong because of this. And no, you're wrong because of this. And bearing on the side of love, erring on the side of grace, erring on the side of responding. Soft answer turns away wrath and going in that direction. If we will embrace the fact that God's mercy doesn't
just end with us, but it should be something that flows through us. And however we want someone to respond to us is how we should respond. It's the actions back when, because most of the time people are saying what they want us, those evil and mean things because they want to get a rise out of you. But when you respond back with, you know, whatever I would have them do to me is what I'm going to do back to them, but they don't have to do it to me first.
That's how Christ does it. That's how Christ is encouraging us. It's a radical way to live. It's in, it's a paradigm shift, if you will. It's, it's taking back divine love and placing it into the world, whereas putting what we want to do out there and just perpetuating what we already have. What's the old saying in sanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting
different results. If we are having the same attitude of the person that we're looking at, that we're despising what they're doing, but we have that same attitude, Dr. King told us hate, responding to hate just keeps the hate alive. So Jesus is the one that taught us it right from the beginning. So we have to move in this manner. Otherwise, we're just perpetuating what we're praying to God to solve and to get out of the world. That's absolutely correct.
So why is this a manifesto and not an ideal? The church has often treated it as aspirational rather than actionable. Various theologians over the years have proposed that the sermon applies only to a future kingdom, only to especially devoted disciples like monks or a clergy or only in its spirit rather than its specifics. Each of these readings function to soften the text direct command on
ordinary believers daily lives. We're all called to live the Sermon on the Mount. This is not like the book of Leviticus. It was just for the priestly class. This is about everybody living this call, living these commands, living these precepts. And Matthew 724 through 27's closing parable makes it clear this teaching was intended for practice by everyone who hears it. Not a specialized subset of especially holy people.
And we need to keep that in mind as we continue to grow and expand as Christians as we try to expand our faith that Jesus rarely spoke to the religious and holy people specifically unless of course he was condemning their religiosity or their hypocrisy. Most of the time his teachings were for everyone. We all have to strive to live those
teachings. And so Reverend Mark, what a congregation actually built around this would actually look like. I often ask my people when I'm preaching along these lines, imagine a world where half of us did the works of Christ as far as living the way, having that life of Christ. If we wanted Jesus as someone we worship and follow versus just a mascot, then we would take these principles that he's teaching these truths
this way of living this blessed teaching. And we would say how do I make this work in my life and then really and earnestly seek Holy Spirit to help us to teach us how to do it every day to show us the opportunities every day and then grow and learn in that. And we would move to a place to where we would separate from power. Christianity would separate from power and then move instead of trying to figure out
how to marry up with power, we would try to go into the places where the least among us live and try to connect there. And the reason churches don't do that is the same reason why faith healers rarely go into hospitals and pray with people because there's not an audience. It's not because I don't believe in divine healing, which I do. It's because people, there's no audience there and so they can't take up an offering and they can't be
seen and they're not going to put that on their weekly broadcast. That might be a little harsh, but it's the truth. I've been around this for a minute. I was involved in Christian media for a while. And I can tell you right now that that's not a thing that is on the top of any of their list is let's go to the hospital and see if we can empty it. And the reason why churches don't go into places and try to help the homeless to the degree that we should
or demand that we do everything we can to those that are in need is because what can they do for us? And that's the point is God came to earth, brought Christ and the message of Christ to a whole group of people that couldn't do anything for God and still blessed us beyond measure just because of love. And that's the point of the summer on the Mount here.
is you can't do anything to deserve all this. That's the point of grace. And so it really is the question. Imagine the church actually keeping. We'll just go not with all of them. Let's just say a third of these teachings. Don't tell me the world wouldn't change overnight. Those people that are in positions of power that claim to be Christians. If they were to adopt this, how would they rule? How would they legislate? How would they go?
absolutely. And Bishop Ben living these teachings is costly. And that's the point of it, isn't it? Right. And if you look at it, that sermon's difficulty was not interpretation to be smooth over. It was a thing of did you one half of the cost of discipleship and then we read this manifesto. It must like this.
is the gospel between Jesus and when he actually taught. So if we look at, we discussed this and we had our reading with our book that we did read with one Harvard in the book study, we had cost of discipleship. And he discussed on how costly it is to be a disciple. So it relates to this too. It's being following the sermon on the Mount. It is a costly thing, but is it worth it? Yes. It is. Is it hard? Is it easy? No, it's not easy, but it's going to be hard to do.
And that's the whole point of it. Right. That statement years ago, anything worth doing is typically hard. Right. Well, I wanted to say, we often talk about the cost of discipleship and it's costly. It's costly. But I want to throw something into a light that I've preached many times before. It costs me what? My unforgiveness. Right. It costs me my doubt. It costs me
my anxiety. You see, there is a cost. It costs me sometimes keeping my mouth shut. Right. But it costs, but it also costs me the ramifications of not keeping my mouth shut. Right. And so there is a cost where I have to, Paul said, I buffet the flesh or as we say in Southern buffet the flesh, where you have to bring the what we want to do under control. And yes, that is part that is one of the costs
that we have. But on the flip side, letting go of regret, letting go of unforgiveness. Yes, it costs me those things if I embrace the whole of the gospel. And so it's not just we're fasting 24/7 and we can't ever eat food yet again. Cost fasting is good and all that kind of stuff. But we also have to understand that cost is some of those things. And those things I would gladly give up.
And even in my life, when I was learning in seminary to be attitudes, I still find it hard to live to be attitudes because of the world we live in, learning how to hold your tongue. And you're right, it costs a lot. And then when not to hold your tongue, speak the truth to somebody. It can definitely be a difficult road to navigate. And I think that it's very appropriate that you mentioned those things that it cost us. It cost us essentially what
we have come to accept as who we are for a better version of ourselves. Because so many people are stuck in the rut of unforgiveness. Right. So many people are stuck in the rut of anxiety and greed and power. But we can be better versions of ourselves. If we follow these teachings, it leads us to a better way. But it's not a worker way to salvation checklist either. No, it is not. It is part
of Matthew's large or gospel narrative of grace, forgiveness and the cross. But grace does not erase the call to actually live differently. That is so important. So many people think that all you have to do is go sit in the pew every Sunday, get that grace imparted to you and everything else just works out. Right. And that is not the way it works. We actually have to live a life transforming teachings of the
on the Mount. All right. And grace put in practice is what we see in Matthew five chapter five through chapter seven is grace put into practice. But it's also not a bar to clear in order to earn God's favor. As we went through first, second and third, John in our Bible study recently, we hear that repeatedly that God first loved us. In other words, God has already given us favor before we ever knew
we needed it. So we don't have to do anything to merit that favor. But if we truly want to live as God has called us to live, then we have to put grace in action. Right. And also caveat to that we were adding to that is when we did the book study with Richard Bonhoeffer, he even discussed the cost of grace and cheap grace. So you apply those to everything else we are discussing today. It even becomes even more
costly. You got to think about it too. You know, what cost is it to you? Is it going to cost you being nice to somebody or loving somebody? Yes, it may. But you know what? That's the way is where Jesus was. But he also told the truth too. Well, and sometimes telling that truth to power is what makes people think that you're not nice. Right. This power does not like to be told it's correct. You are correct about that. All right. Well, this has been excellent.
podcast. The Sermon on the Mount is not a beautiful ideal to admire from a safe distance. It is a specific, practical, and costly ethical manifesto that Jesus explicitly intended his followers to act on reconciliation over grudges, enemy love over retribution, treasure in heaven over treasures on earth, humble self examination over hypocritical judgment. These are not poetic suggestions.
There are a blueprint for a life built on rock rather than sand. So my invitation to you all tonight, listening, pick one specific command from tonight's conversation and actually try to put it into practice this week rather than simply admiring it again. I want to thank Reverend Mark and Bishop Ben for being here tonight. Thank you for having me. That's worth a pleasure. Thank you for hosting. Always a pleasure. And thank you to our studio audience.
who has joined in this evening to help us out as well. You can always reach out to me at Bishop God see at my OCCI dot org or by visiting our st. Francis dot org and clicking on the contact link. If you have any ideas, suggestions or comments on the podcast, we'd love to hear them. You can also check out past editions of the podcast at podcast dot my OCCI dot social and Apple podcast. Just a reminder that
this ends season 14 of our podcast season 15 will pick up the first Saturday in October when we once again go live every Saturday at eight p.m. Eastern time on you now.com forward slash Bishop Greg and on TikTok at expanding your faith until we once again attempt to expand your faith. Keep shining bright, my friends. Thanks for spending this time with us on
expanding your faith. If today's conversation encouraged you, share the episode. It helps more people find the show. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts and you can also find us online at podcasts dot my OCCI dot social and our St. Francis dot org. Follow us on Facebook at expanding your faith. Our producer is Bishop Ben Williams. Expanding your faith is an outreach ministry of St. Francis parish and outreach in Augusta, Georgia.
Pollett and Community Church of our Redeemer in Augusta, Georgia. Until next time, keep expanding your faith.