There’s a popular conception out there, as prominent in the Church as outside of it, that Christianity is about “going to heaven when you die” — that, if you ‘believe in’ Jesus, you’re on the 'right team' and when things get sorted out, you’ll be sorted accordingly. These days, this black-and-white, team mentality has turned … Continue reading This One’s for the Losers: A Reflection for All Saints Day 2024
Over the last two posts in this series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we’ve seen how the sermon begins with the Beatitudes, a collection of apocalyptic Wisdom sayings that overturn the general ways things work in human societies. Rather than it being the world’s ‘winners’ who are blessed, Jesus insists it’s those who are … Continue reading Salt and Light
The other day, in part one of this brief exploration of the Beatitudes of Jesus, we looked at the eschatological (i.e., ‘end-oriented’), apocalyptic, and wisdom assumptions lying behind Beatitude as a literary genre in the Ancient Mediterranean world, and saw how the first three of Jesus’ Beatitudes promote an ethic based in a radical acceptance … Continue reading The Beatitudes (Part II)
As we saw last time, the first teaching we get from Jesus in his public ministry is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” I’ve written extensively on repentance in the past, but to summarize, to repent is to undergo a change of mind, heart, and disposition such that one begins to see … Continue reading The Beatitudes (Part I)
This series is about the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ first major teaching discourse, which can be found Matthew 5-7. But before we get into that, it’s important to see how Matthew sets the stage for it. And that’s what today's post is about. The Gospel according to St Matthew begins — rather inauspiciously for … Continue reading Setting the Scene: A Survey of Matthew 1-4
Matthew Root 