Monday, June 16, 2008

THE SERMON


Hello ChAlSiPaDaJeDa,

In keeping with our intentions to immerse ourselves together in the Sermon on the Mount, I wanted to offer some words of guidance.

First-- let's work off of a shared translation--- The TNIV (Today's New International Version). You can find a printable version of the text via this link.

Second-- my encouragement is to spend the next 30 days reading the text one time per day in a slow and deliberate fashion. If possible, do it first thing.

Third-- I would like to see a blog post from each one of you over the next 30 days that simply reflects on how the daily reading of this common text is impacting you.

After this we will work together to develop some "rememberizing" strategies (as my son David likes to say).

Could there be a more significant sermon (or collection of Jesus sayings) in all of the Bible? Has there ever been a more significant sermon ever put together? We have a great opportunity to gather around it as a team and then to let it shape our KingdomTide semester ahead.

Hope you are having a good summer. Would you mind entering a comment to this post to let us know that you are up and on board with the blog?

6 comments:

dan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dan said...

deal!
30 days of SoM!

chad said...

Chad here....

I remember when I first decided to start reading the gospels-instead of the usual war stories in Joshua/Judges or whatever epistle we were talking about in Sunday School.

The SOM seems to be one of the easiest, yet hardest texts to wrangle with in the entire Bible. It pretty much is spelled out for his right here. If you want to see why Jesus was killed, this is a great way to start. I know that it is trendy right now to read matt5-7 as some sort of subversive social commentary, but that is what it as always seemed to me.

I am excited about the amount of time we will be spending in this over the next 6 months.

jeremiah said...

Stoked for the next 30 days...
I forget who to credit for this thought, but I know i wish it was mine:

The SoM is not rules for Christians to live by but the INDICATIVES of the Kingdom of God.

These arent things that Jesus is asking us to do now that we're apart of the family of Abba, but these are the cogs that make the Kingdom go round. His Kingdom is HERE, among us, inviting us, and pointing us to Abba.

47 said...

yo, yo, yo!!

enjoy the feast.

good stuff.

Danielle Knapp said...

I'm here. I'll try for a more substantive post on the SoM later.