Reading the Sermon on the Mount with Dietrich Bonhoeffer (pt 1)
Context and The Beatitudes
Reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship” has been an early highlight of my year. I love the way he doesn’t hold back. “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.
The middle section of the book - chapters 6 to 20, out of 32 - consists of a discussion on the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is one of the larger blocks of Jesus’ teaching, found in the Gospel of Matthew, chapters five to seven. It is very famous, with many memorable sayings and illustrations that we Christians know and cherish.
In this series of posts I intend to reflect on the Sermon on the Mount in conversation with Mr Bonhoeffer. Reading his book certainly shook me with the intensity of the call to discipleship and the hope is as I look at it again, I will be convicted to action Jesus’ teaching in my life. I hope you will, too. My goal is for us to be challenged from God’s word about the life of a disciple of Christ.
Part one covers Matthew 5:1-12.
Context (vv1-2)
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
Verses 1 and 2 set the scene for us. At this point in Matthew, Jesus has been baptised by John the Baptist, began his ministry preaching “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”, called some disciples to himself, and drawn great crowds through his teaching, healings, and exorcisms.
Jesus sees the crowds and ascends a mountain. Matthew doesn’t just mention this because it’s factually correct - where the teaching occurred. This gospel writer loves to evoke the Old Testament, especially the Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy), because he is trying to point to Jesus as the one who fulfils the Torah. Ascending a mountain to receive a word from God? That’s reminding us of Moses at Mount Sinai. But Moses is the only one to ascend the mountain and hear from God. Here, it’s the disciples who ascend the mountain and come to Jesus to receive his teaching. Notice that broad term ‘crowds’ has been reduced to ‘disciples’. Not everyone from the crowds comes to Jesus, but only the disciples. So Jesus opens his mouth and teaches them, not the crowds (at least not directly), but the disciples. The Sermon on the Mount is first for disciples, then perhaps for the crowds. If we are to be disciples of Jesus, let’s listen to the words that follow, hey?
At these two verses, Bonhoeffer emphasises that the disciples have come forward from among the crowd. They are the ones, he says, who will go back among those people and be Jesus’ messengers. And the Beatitudes are for and about the disciples. Here is where Bonhoeffer departs from my initial understanding of the passage. Where I had seen a teaching that appears more general, depicting the way God works in his world, Dietrich locks in on the call to discipleship and grounds his understanding of the beatitudes in it. “Only the call and the promise, for the sake of which they are ready to suffer poverty and renunciation, can justify the beatitudes… the error lies in looking for some kind of human behaviour as the ground for the beatitude instead of the call and promise of Jesus alone.” It is the disciples, he says that are being called blessed, and the crowds, who are privy to but not part of the conversation, are being called to join in that blessing.
I’m not sure how much I agree with this take at a first glance - but I’m eager to learn from it and see where he goes with it.
The Lowly and Downtrodden (vv3-5)
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
The first three beatitudes identify with and declare blessing on the lowly and downtrodden - those who are humble in station. This is in stark contrast to the pattern of the world, where the mighty, domineering, and those of high status and authority are ‘blessed’ - in a material sense. Yet ‘inherit’ means that this blessedness is not a present reality in all its fullness. However, it is guaranteed. God gives authority to those who are lowly in the world’s eyes. The ones who mourn, who suffer grief and loss, shall in turn be comforted. God is on the side of the weak, the vulnerable. I don’t know exactly what ‘the poor in spirit’ means but it clearly implies something along these lines (but obviously from a spiritual angle). And is on a spiritual level that they are vindicated, in fact they are already vindicated because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
We are spiritually in poverty, before God our judge. We need to recognise ourselves as such if we are to whiff God’s kingdom.
Dietrich reads verse 3 as referring to the disciples who have given up all to follow Christ. They are poor because for the sake of Jesus they renounce their security, their posessions, their earthly allegiances, and everything in between. “And in that very poverty they are heirs of the kingdom. They have their treasure in secret, they find it on the cross.” He draws attention to the fact that the disciples who have been called are not spiritually experienced, knowledgeable, or enlightened. They are uneducated fishermen, certainly ‘poor in spirit’, “so stupid, that they have no other hope but him who called them”.
He explains verse 4 in a similar way. This is not at all obvious to me. “By “mourning” Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity”. I unfortunately do not see how this is obvious and so the ‘of course’ in this sentence is a bit maddening. Bonhoeffer is picking up on something, for example, that Jesus does for Jerusalem. A disciple is to mourn for his world, “for its guilt, its fate, and it’s fortune”. (Aside: I was challenged about this very thing this morning from Ezekiel 9:4). And they willingly bear the sadness and sorrow that comes with it. And they are comforted. This man Jesus is their comforter, the one who was rejected and despised by the world himself.
And verse 5, the meek, he reads as the disciple who renounces his own rights, yielding, patiently enduring, leaving all right to judge to God. “We must not interpret this as a reference to God’s exercise of judicial punishment within the world, as Calvin did”, he contends. Rather, the inheritance of the meek is in God’s renewed earth. “The renewal of the earth begins at Golgotha, where the meek One died, and from thence it will spread. When the kingdom finally comes, the meek shall possess the earth.”
I like how in his comments on verses 4 and 5 he points out the Christ-likeness of the meek and the mourning. And indeed, it’s through Christ that they will receive their comfort and their inheritance. Christ and his gospel is the guarantee of the truth of the beatitudes.
Those After God (vv6-9)
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Verses 7-9 seem to me to be connected to the first three beatitudes by verse 6. A disciple of Jesus is to hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they live in a world where righteousness is scarce, and scarcely enough to satisfy a person. Yet most do not even hunger for righteousness, but care little about it. But those who do hunger for it will be satisfied; they will one day see God make all things right. Those who have their hearts after God; who are merciful, like God is merciful; who are pure in heart, having been washed clean by him; who are peacemakers, as God makes peace; those are the ones who will be rejoicing in God’s kingdom when it comes. They will be the ones to see God face to face, and not die. They will be adopted to sonship. They will be shown mercy when God judges. So we shall care about justice. We shall show forgiveness. We shalll set our minds on what is good, and we shall be peacemakers as God makes peace with us by his blood shed on the cross.
Bonhoeffer has a take on verse 6 that I did not consider. That it refers to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness in themselves, and must rely on God’s future righteousness, since they are unable to make themselves righteousness. “In their hunger they are sustained by the bread of life, the bliss of sinners.” They are the ones who long for God’s forgiveness, and through Christ, they are the ones who will be satisfied when they receive it.
Verse 7 is even more stark in application. For Dietrich, those who show mercy are those who renounce their own dignity to extend love to the down-trodden, sick, wretched, wronged, and the outcast. They are characterised by their non-shame at extending to the lowly. They are shaped by God’s non-shame at extending mercy to us, the disgusting and the lowly. This take made me think of Jesus being mocked for being a friend of sinners and tax collectors. We ought to be merciful like how Jesus is merciful.
The ‘pure of heart’ is taken to be “a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus.” This is interesting to me as most people and teachers probably think of the conscience as helpful friend that God has appointed us to help us obey him. Fallen but generally good. But here it is held in contrast to a simplicity of obedience that is admirable - but I do not know if anyone has such a heart this side of Jesus’ return.
Finally, the peacemakers are those who “renounce all violence and tumult”, who would rather endure suffering than inflict it on others. They “maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce all self-assertion, and quietly suffer in the face of hatred and wrong”. I think we are particularly terrible at this one in our current context. Self-assertion is such a difficult thing to renounce, because it is the spirit of our age. I do not see Christians around me being particularly good at it either.
Again - I love how Christocentric his reading of the beatitudes is. How Jesus fulfils every line and how the disciple is to live out each one. I’m especially challenged by the notion of renouncing self to the point of suffering, and that of the simplicity of obedience. Is my obedience to Christ as simple as it could be?
Those Who Face Hostility (v10)
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Here is our first repetition. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven” - and the motif of persecution enters for the first time. This is something to be expected in a world that is hostile to righteousness. In fact, because true righteousness is exemplified in Christ, allegiance to his ways will entail the receiving of his kingdom. The world that is hostile to Christ is hostile to his righteousness - and the disciple who is persecuted for the sake of that righteousness will receive Christ’s kingdom.
Mr. B notes that the message and works of the disciple will be received by rejection, not recognition, by the world. The disciple can expect to be persecuted not only for being disciples of Christ, but for any just cause they might suffer. The world is offended at righteousness because it is offended by the righteous One.
You (vv11-12)
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
“Having reached the end of the beatitudes, we naturally ask if there is any place on this earth for the community which they describe. Clearly, there is one place, and only one, and that is where the poorest, meekest, and most sorely tried of all men is to be found - on the cross at Golgotha. The fellowship of the beatitudes is the fellowship of the Crucified. With him it has lost all, and with him it has found all.”
The final beatitude is the only one that address the disciples directly. From ‘those’ to ‘you’, the final blessing is for those who are right now following Jesus. And it’s a surprising yet unsurprising call to rejoice! Rejoice in reviling, in persecution, and in false accusation. Follow Jesus into lowliness, poverty, and grief, whilst hungering and thirsting for God’s righteousness and his kingdom to come. That is the mark of the disciple. Just as prophets were persecuted for speaking God’s word to a hostile world, rejoice, rejoice, rejoice that you are following God when you follow Jesus, and you will receive great reward from him.
Dietrich points out that though the disciples bear much, yet it is actually Jesus who bears it for them. We can rejoice because we have a comforter, because we have a kingdom, because we are sons, etc.
“The echoes of this joy reach the little flock below as it stands beneath the cross, and they hear Jesus say ‘Blessed are ye!’”
Challenge: Are you meek? Are you a peacemaker? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Are you ready to be persecuted for the sake of Jesus?
Pray for us, the community of the cross. Pray that we will hear this call and find blessing in Jesus’ footsteps.