Online Contemplative Worship Blog

 House Building So as we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount we are told simply to ask...although we might need to remember to be careful what we ask for! The Law and the Prophets is about doing to others as you would like to be done by... which is simple.... isn't it? Well which of knows what we really want? Even less do we always know what we need! This gateway is narrow... it's something we commit to or we don't, we can't be half hearted or do this just when we fancy. There are plenty of people out there who know what's best for us... there have always been infuencers, role models and celebrities. Always the politicians after power and the con man after your money. Just step back and see what they do.. it's not so much a judging of then - which we are not to do - but deciding that we don't want to live with them And the religious people, the charismatic leaders who gather adherents... they're the ones we need to avoid most, it seems. For we are...

 Pearls before Swine Pigse don't get much of a press from Jesus. Think of the Gadarene swine possessed by the Legion of devils and plunging to their deaths. Think of the disgust of eat pig food as in the Prodigal Son, and not this. But Jesus was a Jew and this was a natural way to look at this unclean animal. The poor old dogs don't fare much better either! But what's Jesus doing? If you have been following me over the past few weeks you'll remember that I have been trying to make the case that the Sermon on the Mount is not a moral lecture with suggestions about how to behave. On the contrary it's a master class in hyperbolic teaching in which Jesus uses extreme language to point out that we can't be moral by trying that being moral was never the point, and that what Jesus wants from us is to commit to being holy , which is not achievable by following moral or ethical codes. Being holy is giving ourselves me and more to God so that there is less and less of ...