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Posts Tagged ‘Sermon on the Mount’
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Reflection Questions
- The Book of Leviticus is a special collection of ‘laws’. This book was special for the ‘Levites – Priests’. Amazingly, Jewish people developed the 10 commandments of Exodus into 613 laws to guide their life. Today we receive the essential teaching: be holy and love your neighbour as yourself. Have you ever re-imagined the invitation ‘love your neighbour as your own flesh’? What would it actually look like for you to live this invitation this week? This year?
- ‘Do you not know that you are…..?’ is a question about identity. Knowing your identity shapes your behaviour and life-style. Imagine if you were actually a Prince or Princess? Paul invites us into a profound reflection: ‘Do you not know that you are a temple of God’? If God’s spirit is in you what does this do to your ‘identity’? Use your imagination to ponder the consequences
- Gandhi famously quoted this saying of Jesus when he concluded: ‘an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.’ Jesus today is taking some basic and well known ‘laws’ and challenging his followers to be very different – revolutionaries of a radical love! Examine your upbringing and cultural expectations about life: ‘you have heard it said…..’ Are there any attitudes and values that you accept as normal from your parents and upbringing but in fact they are opposite to values you see lived by Jesus? Is there anything you are doing in your life that Jesus wouldn’t do?
- In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is teaching the heart of a Christian life-style. Some people have called Matthew Chapters 5-8 the ‘Be-Attitudes’. Why offer no resistance to the one who is evil? Hand over your tunic and cloak? Give to anyone who asks? Love your enemy? Pray for your persecutors? Is this silliness or a wisdom that can change the world? Does Jesus ‘uncover’ the violence of society and invite his followers to not be part of it?
- Many people feel distressed that they are not ‘perfect’. We all know our failings. However, Saints are not perfect, they are people who have sinned but keep on getting up! Christian spirituality encourages us to know that love practiced, grows, and overcomes darkness. Do you only love those who love you? Why? Can you glimpse God’s unconditional loving watering the earth… on good and bad alike. Would you like to abandon your life to this type of loving?
- What is one action that you will do to be ‘livingtheword’ this week?
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Reflection Question 3: The gospel today concludes the Sermon on the Mount, the ‘New Law’ fulfilling the old law of Moses’. Jesus reminds disciples his words are to be ‘lived’ not simply ‘learnt’. Knowledge of Jesus and prayers to Jesus will not bring entry into the kingdom of heaven. The gap between ‘hearing’ and ‘doing’ is obedience. How could you practise obedience to God?
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Reflection Question 3: In Matthew Jesus goes up the Mountain and gives a new law in contrast to Moses going up Mt Sinai and giving the Law of the Old Testament contained in the 10 commandments. Jesus is the New Moses. The Beatitudes are understood as a profound insight into the core teachings of Christianity and what it will mean to follow Jesus. Some people have called the Beatitudes the ‘Be’ – Attitudes. Jesus wants disciples to ‘be’ like him.
if you want to see what the kingdom of God could be like, if you want to live a blessed life, take the world as youknow it and turn it on its head. Imagine a world free of the tyranny, poverty, oneliness and greed that now hold it in thrall. Imagine it free of ignorance, arrogance, and indifference … imagine the hungry fred and the just vindicated, the poor satisfied and the pure sanctified. Imagine a world governed by compassion rather than a will to power. Imagine this because this is what God imagines… and this is what God wants us to make of ourselves. Imagine such a world, then live in accordance with it. Live it into being. Live as though the world is turned upside down, because when you do you will see the kingdom, if not come, then at least coming. Live the ‘Be-Attitudes’