Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Grace and Deliverance

by Glen H. Stassen (Jossey-Bass, 2006)
Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Grace and Deliverance by Glen H. Stassen (Jossey-Bass, 2006)
Reviewed by Warren Rachele
 
The Sermon on the Mount has challenged Christians and non-Christians alike with its call to a way of living that was, is, and always will be contrary to the status quo. Christ抯 words were astonishing enough in the first century, but they are particularly foreign to 21st-century ears accustomed to messages of self-empowerment and personal gain. Some may dismiss the challenge as purposely inflated, taking the view that Jesus overstated his kingdom requirements in order to give humankind an ethical standard to work toward. Disputing the ethic position in his new book, Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Faith and Deliverance, Glen Stassen issues a bold call to the church to recover an understanding of this sermon as a message about God抯 presence and the deliverance for a vulnerable people who need God as much today as the Israelites once did on the edge of Egypt.
 
To prepare the way for his exegesis of the verses in Matthew, Stassen proposes two requirements for understanding his position. First, in order to grasp the linkage between what God had done and what God is doing, it is necessary to read the sermon with Matthew in one hand and, in the other, Isaiah with its parallel themes of deliverance and justice. Second, and of greater application to the contemporary church than the first, is the idea that the sermon is not about human effort but instead about God becoming present in Jesus and bringing with him the justice and healing of the kingdom of righteousness.
 
It is in this light that Stassen invites us to a new reading of the sermon, one that encourages us to align our lives more closely with the words of Micah: We will seek justice and mercy and walk humbly, knowing the immediate presence of God. Recognizing the immediacy of God抯 presence helps us to climb the initial hurdle of the Beatitudes, viewing them not as an agonizingly high standard to be struggled toward but rather as the evidence of grace resting upon those God is delivering. Stassen抯 fine book makes a defining contribution to the church of reconciliation in by showing how this deliverance contributes to overcoming the 搗icious cycles?of human interaction.
 
Recovering the ideal of being swept up in the wave of God抯 deliverance is crucial to the restoration of a faith that is less personalized and self-focused and more attuned to the common work that God is doing through the interconnected lives of his people. Stassen has brought this notion to life by combining his scholar抯 mind and his socially aware heart in the writing of this book. Not a how-to as much as it is an undeniable beacon of hope, Living the Sermon on the Mount urges us as the redeemed to live moment by moment in grace rather than on the treadmill of impossible ideals.
 
Warren Rachele is a pastor in Denver, Colo., leading a community focused on racial reconciliation and mercy ministries. 

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