A Reflection on the Gospel for January 29th, 2023: Fourth Sunday in Ordinary TimeMatthew  How many heard the Sermon on the Mount? Twelve, or maybe fifty? Perhaps more kept drifting up the mountain to where Jesus sat until even five hundred could catch the odd word. How did He pitch His voice? Like someone talking to a circle or a crowd? Sitting suggests His focus was on those who could see His face, who could hear the intake of His breath as He began another sentence. The crowd’s response of astonishment expressed at the end of the sermon (Matthew 7:28), suggests He included them too, but perhaps they weren’t His intended audience. He sat and waited until His disciples sat with Him, and then He began the core of His message — this covenantal shift — it is the relationship, not the rules, that He has come to renew. The heart He has come to breathe on and bring to life. This is a treasure, this message needed by all. He poured it into the few, letting the many catch what they could, and so His voice has carried farther than any before. In pitching His voice to the apprentices, rather than the adherents, these words are carrying through to today. To you and me. Those early apprentices lived with Him, had their world view rewritten by walking with Him, were readied to be filled with His Spirit, and wrote down what He had said on that Mount — like Moses returning with tablets written on hearts rather than stone. With hearts changed, they wrote of His life, death, and resurrection, and they lived His words and life out with a new circle of apprentices, a growing band of disciples. How many heard the Sermon on the Mount? Can you hear His voice carry beyond the twelve, the fifty, the five hundred. During the lifetime of those sitting with Him, add tens of thousands to those who heard these words. By the time of the Apostles’ Creed, add hundreds of thousands to those. By the time of the Nicene Creed, add millions. Generations of millions, and then generations of tens of millions, and then generations of hundreds of millions. Now, generations of billions. It’s more than hearing a word, it’s feeling a rumble, a shaking, a shifting of world view, a renewing of mind and heart. When I started to follow Jesus at 16, a newlywed young woman spent every Saturday afternoon for a year pouring into me. That’s how the Sermon on the Mount is still heard, and will be heard when you and I are finished here and have moved on to There. It’s heard in how we pitch our voice to the people who can see our face and hear the intake of our breath, and as we pour our lives into someone else. O beautiful Lord, the echoes still felt Blessed are the… Blessed are those… Blessed are you… And blessing beyond blessing… Your face upon us Yourself through us. Amen and amen. Noreen Smith  
1 Comment
Alana
27/1/2023 05:20:44 pm
“That’s how the Sermon on the Mount is still heard, and will be heard when you and I are finished here and have moved on to There. It’s heard in how we pitch our voice to the people who can see our face and hear the intake of our breath, and as we pour our lives into someone else.” Leave a Reply. |
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