Abstract
Perhaps no other text in Christianity equates with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) as a teaching on social ethics, yes, but also as an exposition on the appropriate condition of being with which to navigate the troubled waters of daily life. Jesus spoke not to great scribes or scholars, leaders of the faith or the wealthy of society, but rather to the vulnerable and the defenseless, the broken, the forgotten, the poor, the abandoned, and that very act of preaching to that audience marks a prominent recalibration of perspective and meaning. While Jesus, as a Jewish rabbi, was not necessarily breaking completely new ground in all the exhortations of the Sermon, he was, as my paper argues, urging those before him to move more fully to other ground and to reorient their understanding of holiness and spiritual strength from exterior performance to interior reflection, from a condition of religious prowess to a status of spiritual (and personal) vulnerability. Jesus was asserting that the condition of being vulnerable, open-hearted, forgiving, and pacific, is the proper condition with which to confront God, yes, but also the only moral condition with which to live in the world and work for its transformation. My paper is a study of the Sermon as a validation of the transformative potency of vulnerability and refers also to some thoughts on the Sermon by Pope Benedict XVI and by Rabbi Jacob Neusner.
Presenters
June-Ann GreeleyProfessor, Catholic Studies and Languages and Literatures, Sacred Heart University Fairfield, Connecticut, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Fragile Meanings: Vulnerability in the Study of Religions and Spirituality
KEYWORDS
SERMON ON THE MOUNT, VULNERABILITY, TRANSFORMATION, CHRISTIANITY
