The Sermon on the Mount has left deep traces in the theological, intellectual and cultural history, but also in the political history of societies impregnated by Christianity. However, it has also radiated far beyond these societies and is also held in high esteem in other world religions.
Even many people who have great difficulties with faith today or who see themselves as decidedly agnostic or atheist can often gain something from the words of the Sermon on the Mount. Many of these words have become "winged words", and many people no longer even realise where they actually come from. Words such as "hide your light under a bushel" (Mt 5:14), "do not change one iota" (Mt 5:18), "no one can serve two masters" (Mt 6:24) or "built on sand" (Mt 7:26). In our journey through the history of interpretation and impact, we must limit ourselves to a few stations. And even these can only be sketchily recalled. In a chronological arc spanning 800 years - from St Francis to Pope Francis - six approaches to interpretation will be presented, with the focus on the recent past and present.
The frame - a key?
The introduction and conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount set an important course for all interpretations. It opens with the words (all Bible quotations according to the 2016 Einheitsübersetzung): "When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain. He sat down and his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:" (Mt 5:1f.) Are the crowds or the disciples Jesus gathered around him the addressees of the following speech? In other words, is the Sermon on the Mount addressed to an elite of those striving for perfection, represented by the disciples? Or is it also addressed to the large group of other people present, which initially stands for the people of Israel, but ultimately for all people? According to the exposition, both interpretations, which are eminently significant for the interpretation and scope of the Sermon on the Mount, are possible. The verse that concludes the Sermon on the Mount makes it clear that Jesus' words were also addressed to the crowds: "And when Jesus had finished speaking, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes." (Mt 7:28f.)
The addressees are therefore both: the disciples and the crowds. Ulrich Luz summarises this aptly in his great commentary on Matthew: the addressees are "two concentric circles, as it were". Long before Luz, director George Stevens beautifully illustrated this concept in his Jesus film The Greatest Story of All Time (1965) by showing the disciples in a circle around Jesus on a summit plateau and the crowd as listeners below. The Sermon on the Mount and its claim are therefore fundamentally aimed at all people. It is not an exclusive 'disciple ethic', although - as in the time of the first of our interpreters - it was long understood as such.
St Francis of Assisi
In the days of St Francis (1181/1182-1226), scholastic theology, with its great master Thomas Aquinas, was largely unchallenged in its position that the Sermon on the Mount stood for a two-level ethic: the claim of Jesus' words recorded there only applied in full to a comparatively small circle. Only a few are called and empowered to actually live the instructions of the Sermon on the Mount: the spiritual elite of men and women, such as religious, clerics, ascetics or holy people. For them, the instructions of the Sermon on the Mount are binding commandments (praecepta), whereas for all other Christians they are merely advice (consilia). For the great majority of believers, a life according to the Sermon on the Mount was practically impossible, as it was opposed by their many inner-worldly obligations.
In contrast to this, Francis of Assisi held the view that the Sermon on the Mount fundamentally applies to all people, although for him, as for the disciples of Jesus, this claim is even more stringent for their 'heirs' who endeavoured to consistently follow Jesus, such as the Franciscan movement. In this respect, the model of 'concentric circles' can already be found in Francis. Francis refers explicitly to the Sermon on the Mount, particularly in his so-called Admonitiones, the "exhortations" to his confreres. In doing so, he picks up on individual sentences that are particularly important to him: The beatitudes take centre stage, in particular (in his order) those of the peacemakers (Mt 5:9), which he refers to twice and thus emphasises (chap. 13 and 15); then those of the poor in spirit (Mt 5:3; in chap. 14) and those who are pure in heart (Mt 5:8; chap. 16). Francis interweaves these brief reflections on the significance of Jesus' beatitudes for the fraternity (and beyond) with a more extensive series of his own beatitudes, which he opens formulaically with "beatus servus" ("blessed is the servant"; better "servant", as Jesus understood himself to be; cf. Mk 10:45). The beatitudes newly formed by Francis are strongly centred on his brothers (cf. chap. 10; 11; 17-26; 28). Francis also imitates Jesus in that he repeatedly combines his own beatitudes with antithetical cries of "woe", following the pattern of Luke's beatitudes (Lk 6:20b-26) (cf. chap. 19-21; 26).
The explicit references to the Sermon on the Mount open in chapter 9 with brief thoughts on the commandment to love one's enemies (Mt 5:44) and end in the final chapter of the Adminitiones with a quotation from Jesus' long reflection on "right concern" (Mt 6:19-34): Blessed is the servant "who stores up as treasure in heaven the good things the Lord shows him" (chap. 28; after Mt 6:20).
The Beatitudes quoted by Francis from the Sermon on the Mount and the call to love one's enemies are for him elementary instructions from God for people and as such permeate the entire thinking and work of the saint, including his lifestyle characterised by the ideal of poverty and his spirituality - in other words, everything that he wanted to inspire his brothers and ultimately all people with. He also sought to put Jesus' words about peacemakers and loving one's enemies into practice on a geopolitical level, as we would say today, when he endeavoured to bring about reconciliation between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, albeit unsuccessfully.
Although the arrangement of the individual admonitions may be of an editorial nature, it is certainly no coincidence that they are concluded after the wonderful poetic text "Ubi caritas" (cap. 27) with words from the pericope "On Right Concern" (Mt 6:19-34). The long final section in particular, with its encouragement to be free from worry (vv. 25-34), is of great importance to Francis. For this pericope establishes the decision demanded by Jesus for a fundamental change of attitude, a change of perspective: one should put one's trust solely in God. In an emphatic and poetic way, Jesus refers to the abundance of beauty in his creation as an encouragement to free oneself from concern for earthly things. A few verses may illustrate this:
"Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow, they do not reap, they do not gather provisions into barns; your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" (v. 26) Or: "Why do you worry about your clothes? Learn from the lilies of the field how they grow: they neither labour nor spin. But I tell you, even Solomon, in all his splendour, was not clothed like one of them." (v. 28f.)
With words like these, the pericope "Of right care" becomes the basic text of Franciscan creation spirituality. Its ideas resonate in particular in the saint's famous Canticle of the Sun, his great hymn of thanks and praise to God's creation. Like Jesus in the aforementioned pericope, Francis also expresses his deep belief in this hymn in poetic language that God cares for all creatures. God's love and providence also embraces those parts of his creation that many people consider to be worthless, even superfluous, in terms of their utility value, such as the lilies that 'only' adorn the fields but have no practical use. The topicality of these thoughts on the value of every living being is obvious! Just think of the massive increase in efforts to protect species today, and let at least a small excerpt from the Canticle of the Sun illustrate how the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount resonate in it:
"Praise be to you, my Lord,
through our sister, Mother Earth,
that sustains and guides us
and produces a variety of fruits
and colourful flowers and herbs."
(Fifth praise)
In the footsteps of St Francis, the mystery of God revealed in creation should not only be preserved in our hearts, but should also guide our actions. Inspired not least by the Sermon on the Mount, the saint from Assisi possessed a tremendous ecological sensitivity, the relevance of which has not faded. On the contrary! It is the same with his reception of the Sermon on the Mount: if we read Jesus' words in a 'Franciscan' way, they become an inspiration for our attitude and practice of life.
Martin Luther
Unlike Francis, Martin Luther (1483-1546) not only wrote about the Sermon on the Mount scattered throughout his writings, but also in a coherent and systematic manner: in a series of sermons in Wittenberg that began on 9 November 1530 and was first published there in 1532 (Werkausgabe Vol. 32). For him too, the Sermon on the Mount is the basic text of Jesus' preaching par excellence. We can only outline a basic aspect of Luther's comprehensive interpretation here. As he emphasises in the 'Preface' to his series of sermons with polemical sharpness against 'Roman' theology, for him too, as for Francis, the Sermon on the Mount is not exclusively addressed to those striving for perfection, but is fundamentally aimed at all Christians. For the majority of them, however, Luther softens its obligatory character in consideration of the practical conditions and requirements of life and makes many exceptions, for example, by not rejecting military service in principle, for soldiers from the prohibition of killing and from loving one's enemies.
Of fundamental importance for Luther in his examination of the Sermon on the Mount is its compatibility with his major central theme: the relationship between the law and the gospel, or between the works of the law and justification by faith. This brings a programmatic opening section of the Sermon on the Mount into focus: the pericope "On the Law and the Prophets" (Mt 5:17-20). I will only quote the first two verses:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets! I have not come to abolish, but to fulfil. Amen, I say to you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away until all things are fulfilled."
Luther must be somewhat embarrassed by these words, as he cannot help but recognise that Jesus did not want to abolish the "law" preserved in the Old Testament with the Sermon on the Mount, nor did he want the Sermon on the Mount to be a new law. Rather, Jesus wants to "fulfil" the law by presenting a definitive interpretation of God's will. This will, which has already been handed down in the Old Testament, is not to be changed or even cancelled by one iota, i.e. not by the smallest letter. In the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, however, the core idea of Luther's theology is that man is not justified by the law or the "works of the law", i.e. placed in the right relationship with God, but in the end by faith alone. Just as Paul pointedly put it in Galatians: "We know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ." (Gal 2:16) The key witness for Paul here is Abraham, who, despite his decades of childlessness, believed God's promise of a son and of whom it therefore says in the book of Genesis - as Paul quotes in Gal 3:6: "He [Abraham] believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." (Gen 15:6)
For Luther, this naturally raises the question: if faith is decisive, what is the meaning and significance of the law, from which Jesus does not want to deviate one iota in the Sermon on the Mount? Luther's answer to this question is also sketched out in St Paul (cf. e.g. Gal 3:6-18): No human being, not even a priest or monk, is free from sin, and no one can fulfil all the commandments. In this respect, the unfulfilled nature of the law makes us aware of our need for redemption and is therefore a kind of 'mirror of sin' that sensitises us to our limitations. In the end, we only become righteous before God through faith and the grace given by God. However, this does not invalidate the law or render it superfluous. For the law not only makes us aware of our sinfulness, but for Luther it also remains eminently important for regulating human coexistence: It restrains evil and protects the good.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Let's take a big leap into the 20th century, but stay in Protestant theology - with Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). Bonhoeffer developed his view of the Sermon on the Mount primarily in his book Nachfolge, published in 1937, which was written during his time as a lecturer at the Finkenwalde preacher's seminary. Bonhoeffer was a supporter of the Protestant grouping Confessing Church (since 1934: Barmen Theological Declaration), which was critical of the Hitler regime and the German Christians who were ready to close ranks with it. He wanted to renew the church as a whole: it should take the Sermon on the Mount seriously and follow Jesus' words without reservation. In contrast to Luther, who had strongly emphasised divine grace as the basis of human justification, Bonhoeffer also emphasised the need for decisive action in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount under the impact of Nazi rule. In doing so, he repeatedly emphasised the "extraordinary" nature of the Sermon on the Mount, its "non-triviality".
According to Bonhoeffer, this "extraordinary" must be done - out of obedience to God, but not for the sake of the extraordinary itself. The call to obedience and consistent discipleship is especially directed at a narrower circle, today's "disciples", as Bonhoeffer calls them, and cannot be demanded of everyone. This should also be seen against the background of the life-threatening resistance against National Socialism. For Bonhoeffer, consistent discipleship includes the willingness to follow the cross. With a view to Jesus' words "of the two ways" (Mt 7:13-14), of the narrow and the broad way, Bonhoeffer writes in Nachfolge:
"The disciples are few and will always be few. This word of Jesus cuts off any false hope of their effectiveness. [...] The disciples go to their doom. What can be the comfort of the disciples in such an experience if not only this, that they are promised life, the eternal fellowship of Jesus?"
The disciples are called to walk the "narrow path", which is actually an "unbearable path" on which "apostasy threatens at any moment". It can only be travelled if "I see Jesus Christ leading the way, step by step. If I look to Him alone and follow Him, step by step, I will be preserved on this path." Bonhoeffer himself was first banned from speaking and then from writing in 1940. He was imprisoned in 1943 and murdered in Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945 - just one month before the surrender of the German Wehrmacht. One of his last texts is the well-known poem Von guten Mächten treu und still umgeben. In poetic language, it summarises the thoughts just quoted about following the disciples and, in particular, the confidence of being preserved on the "narrow path" until passing through the "narrow gate of the cross of Jesus Christ to life", as he had written in his book. At the same time, this wonderful text with its basso continuo of security in God also breathes the spirit of Jesus' encouragement "Do not be anxious" (Mt 6:25), which had already inspired Francis so deeply.
Leonhard Ragaz
Just a few years after Bonhoeffer's successor, another book on the Sermon on the Mount was published in Switzerland, which was also to have a major impact. Its author was the Swiss Protestant theologian Leonhard Ragaz (1868-1945). Unlike Bonhoeffer, he did not write because he was directly affected by political terror, but because of his existentially distressing perception of social hardship and social injustice. Leonhard Ragaz came from a small farming family in Graubünden. After studying Protestant theology, he held various pastorates in Switzerland and was finally appointed to a professorship for systematic and practical theology in Zurich in 1908. Throughout his life, Ragaz was very committed to social causes: for workers, for women who had long been very disadvantaged in Switzerland, for the socially marginalised and, during the two world wars, for conscientious objectors and refugees. He also campaigned for peace and international understanding. After the First World War, he became a leading figure in the international peace movement.
In 1921, Ragaz gave up his professorship and moved to a working-class neighbourhood in Zurich so that he could be closer to the poor and devote himself fully to his social and political activities. This commitment also underpinned his book The Sermon on the Mount, which was published in 1945, the year of his death. It is not written for an academic audience, but primarily hopes to find readers among the people Ragaz had endeavoured to reach throughout his life. In this respect, the book is also the sum and capstone of his work.
Ragaz is deeply convinced of the social and political relevance of the Sermon on the Mount. He therefore rejects interpretations that centre it on the religious elites as well as those that focus strongly on the individual and their faith. In doing so, he also opposes Luther's interpretation: for him, the "justice" that Jesus speaks of is first and foremost a social and political imperative. Ragaz wants a new interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount that exposes its social meaning. This is already expressed in the programmatic headings he gives to his chapters. For example, he titles his comments on the Beatitudes "The Magna Charta of the Kingdom of God" (chapter 1) or the chapter on the pericope "On Right Concern" (Mt 6:19-34) "The Overthrow of Idols" and then discusses the relationship between poverty and wealth. This is the pericope that had already so inspired St Francis of Assisi, and it is not surprising that Ragaz felt a particular affinity with this saint - as well as with Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi with regard to pacifism and non-violence. The beatitude of the poor, which opens the Sermon on the Mount, becomes the leitmotif of his interpretation. Here, Ragaz follows the Lucanian version, which speaks of the poor without the ambiguous addition "in spirit", which he understands as a shift in the social profile towards the spiritual.
Ragaz spells out the "new righteousness" demanded by Jesus in his discipleship as a condition for entering the kingdom of God, which is "greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees" (Mt 5:20), with a view to the social and political reality of his time as follows - and in doing so summarises the central moments of his thoughts and actions: "God creates freedom and human dignity. God demands justice. God radiates truth; liberty, equality and fraternity, liberalism, democracy, socialism, communism - all properly understood - are such radiations." We must limit ourselves here to this brief definition of our position. But this much should already be clear: Ragaz is a pioneer of political theology with his new interpretation, which seeks to uncover the meaning and action-guiding potential of the Sermon on the Mount for the social and political present. His reinterpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and his numerous other writings, as well as his lifestyle as a poor man among the poor, make him a forerunner of both the Christians for Socialism movement, which experienced a brief heyday in the early 1960s, and a precursor, indeed possibly the first representative of the theology of liberation.
His Sermon on the Mount book is still worth reading. I myself felt very reminded of Ragaz when, almost twenty years ago, in April 2004, a so-called "dossier" was published by the magazine Publik Forum - under the title "The Sermon on the Mount. Vision for the 21st century". If he had lived to see it, Leonhard Ragaz would certainly have been among the authors, and might even have edited this issue.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
When it comes to the gospel, it is not a long way from Leonhard Ragaz to Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), one of the most important European artists and intellectuals of the 20th century. Pasolini was socialised as a Catholic, but later renounced his faith and classified himself as an atheist. Nevertheless, he remained inwardly very attached to Christianity. I think his renunciation was closely linked to his homosexuality, because he believed he could escape the feelings of guilt that fuelled the Catholic morality of the time and weighed him down. Pasolini also suffered from the (Catholic) Church and persistently criticised it, just as he hoped that it could become an important ethical, social and spiritual force as soon as it gave up its positions of power, became poor and renewed itself from the ground up.
In 1964, Pasolini presented his film adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew, which he dedicated to the memory of Pope John XXIII. For Pasolini, as for Ragaz, Jesus' option for the poor and the social relevance of his preaching are of crucial importance. His film The First Gospel - Matthew participates in the spirit of optimism of Vatican II and is also a prelude to the theology of liberation, the movement to which the title of Gustavo Gutierrez's seminal work gave its name ten years later. At the same time, the film is an artistic commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, which also provides a variety of impulses for exegesis.
Although Pasolini basically follows Matthew closely, he also allows himself some interesting modifications and concretisations in the staging and contextualisation of the Sermon on the Mount. For example, he inserts the "healing of a leper" (Mt 8:1-4) between the collective account of Jesus' first appearance (Mt 4:23-25) and Matthew's immediately following prelude to the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1). In doing so, he breaks up the Matthean succession of proclamations of words and deeds and allows the Sermon on the Mount to be surrounded by the first example of Jesus' active care for the poor, including the stigmatised sick. The healing and the joy over them have the effect of a prelude to the truthfulness of the promises of the subsequent "Beatitudes". (The Sermon on the Mount sequence can be found on the Arthouse - Kinowelt Home Entertainment DVD under chapter 7; 38:55-42:34).
As simple as Pasolini's staging of the Sermon on the Mount with Jesus speaking frontally into the camera may seem at first glance, it is nevertheless interpretatively effective on closer inspection:
- Pasolini recognised the compositional character of the Sermon on the Mount with artistic intuition and, to a certain extent, unravelled this composition. He arranges the sequence of pericopes differently in places and naturally has to make a selection, not least for reasons of time.
- For Pasolini, the Sermon on the Mount is not a one-off, big 'event'. Rather, his Jesus speaks the words in a wide variety of places, always outdoors, at any time of day or night and virtually in any weather.
- Jesus' addressees never come into the picture, but they are certainly not the religious elites in the cities or in the temple, and the wealthy landowners will hardly have gone out to Jesus either. His addressees are the people in the countryside, the small farmers weighed down by the tax burden and the exploited day labourers. Indirectly, the Sermon on the Mount thus becomes a basic expression of Jesus' option for the poor.
- However, the audience in the cinema in particular is also the addressee: each individual is addressed directly from the screen. This means that the message of the Sermon on the Mount is also aimed directly at the present. Jesus speaks to us in close-ups, whereby his words are often lent even more urgency by small camera pans or zooms. Wim Wenders works in the same way in his film about Pope Francis, when he repeatedly has him speak to us directly from the screen. This is certainly an homage to Pasolini's film about St Matthew, which Wenders greatly appreciates.
- Jesus speaks his words in a wide range of tones, as should always be considered as a possibility when reading the Sermon on the Mount: The range extends from uplifting and encouraging to urgent, demanding and sometimes even sharp. To a certain extent, Jesus pulls out all the stops to convey his message effectively.
- Immediately before the call to decision with the pericope "Of the Two Ways" (Mt 7:13-14), with which Pasolini concludes his Sermon on the Mount, he places an extensive passage from the long pericope "Of Right Concern", more precisely its summarising part in the verses Mt 6:25-34. This prominent positioning and the extensive citation are also Pasolini's homage to the great saint from Assisi, to whom these words were so important. Pasolini has Jesus speak them in a gentle, almost tenderly wooing voice and fades in sounds from the wonderful, meditative Adagio of Bach's E major Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (BWZ 1042). Pasolini's famously high regard for St Francis combines spirituality with an emphasis on the socio-political relevance of Jesus' preaching, both of which are condensed in the Sermon on the Mount. It is no coincidence that in the central Francis episode of his film Big Birds - Little Birds (1965), which immediately followed the Gospel film adaptation, Pasolini has his Francis speak words from Pope Paul VI's so-called "Peace Speech" to the United Nations General Assembly (on 4 October 1965), in which he calls for class differences to be overcome and for global peace.
demanded justice.
Pope Francis
Jorge Mario Bergoglio (born 1936) has emphasised how much he also reveres Saint Francis by choosing his papal name. The Pope quotes the Canticle of the Sun by the saint from Assisi in the title of his second, important encyclical Laudato sì on "care for the common home" (2015), as its subtitle reads. And, as we have seen, the Franciscan spirituality of creation is strongly inspired by the Sermon on the Mount: by Jesus' appeal to be "free from care", which he justified by praising the beauty and well-being of creation. And this praise also includes a strong imperative to preserve creation. The Sermon on the Mount undoubtedly underpins the Pope's entire work, especially his actions "ad extra", i.e. into the world: his commitment to peace, to refugees, to the victims of social injustice and much more, for which he has received and continues to receive great recognition worldwide. However, Pope Francis rarely refers explicitly to the Sermon on the Mount. When he does, his attention is particularly focussed on the "Beatitudes". During a stadium sermon on 1 November 2016 in Malmö, Sweden, he once said in his own somewhat casual but programmatic way: "The Beatitudes are in a way the Christian's identity card, which identifies him as a follower of Jesus."
In 2018, the Pope dedicated a long passage to the Beatitudes in his Apostolic Exhortation On the Call to Holiness in the Modern World, which he entitled Gaudete et exultate (Mt 5:12: "Rejoice and be glad"), i.e. with the opening words of the last Beatitude. His personal approach to the Beatitudes became even clearer two years later in his nine-week catechesis dedicated to them at the general audiences in the Vatican (online at: www.vatican.va/content/francesco/de/audiences/2020.html). Here we can see how Francis endeavours to make the words of Jesus meaningful for the lives of individual believers by interpreting them in a practical and spiritual way. Let us illustrate Pope Francis' approach using his words on the beatitude that comes closest to his motto as Pope as an example. This quotes the great theologian Beda Venerabilis and reads Miserando atque eligando, in other words: "Through mercy and election". The first motto word determines the fifth beatitude (Mt 5:7): "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." As Fraziscus notes, this beatitude has a special status, as it is the only one in which "the cause and the fruit of happiness coincide." (This and the following quotes are from the catechesis of 18 March 2020.) It is spoken in the language of "reciprocity" typical of Jesus, which we also know from the Lord's Prayer, from the request for forgiveness of guilt, or when Jesus says: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." (Luke 6:36)
Francis understands mercy first and foremost as forgiveness, and receiving forgiveness is inseparable from granting forgiveness. Francis recognises the great difficulties in being able to forgive and that this also requires the grace of God. But he reminds us: "We are all debtors, we all have a 'deficit' in life. And we need mercy." To underline how important forgiveness is to him, the Pope took this opportunity to recall his first Angelus prayer in St Peter's Square as the newly elected Pope (on 17 March 2013) in front of well over 100,000 faithful. The Sunday Gospel at the time was the episode of the adulteress whom Jesus forgave and saved with his famous words: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone!" (John 8:7) Since that Angelus, mercy has remained the leitmotif of his pontificate. He felt, he says, "that this is the message I have to convey [...]: Mercy, forgiveness." Because: "Mercy is not just one dimension among others, it is the centre of Christian life." What's more: "It is like the air we breathe."
Let us hope that Pastor Francis remembers these words when it comes to his reaction to the decisions of our Synodal Path today, ten years after his first Angelus!
Conclusion
Many other receptions of the Sermon on the Mount would have deserved to be presented: For example, the interpretation of Albert Schweitzer, who understood Jesus' great discourse as the centrepiece of an interim ethic, spoken in anticipation of the imminent completion of God's reign. Or the significance of the Sermon on the Mount for Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. All three emphasised Jesus' demands of non-violence and love of enemies and lived them as non-violent resistance against colonial rule (Gandhi) or racism (King). It would also have been interesting to discuss views that were reserved or even hostile to the Sermon on the Mount. Max Weber, for example, largely denied its relevance as a guideline for action, as he was convinced that evil could only be resisted with violence. Probably the most radical despiser of the Sermon on the Mount was Friedrich Nietzsche, who rejected it as an expression of "slave morality". - Even our brief, fragmented journey through the history of the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount should have made clear the enormous pluralism, if not the heterogeneity, of perspectives on this key text. In a different, positive way, one could also say that the history of interpretation reveals the dynamics of meaning, the almost unfathomable potential for meaning in the Sermon on the Mount and biblical texts in general. The biblical texts always provide new answers to new questions, to views from the most diverse temporal, spatial and socio-political contexts. Not all of them can be upheld according to today's exegetical criteria; many of them are exciting, if not contradictory. But regardless of this, the diversity of approaches to the Sermon on the Mount is an impressive reflection of the constant struggle for the right understanding of this challenging text. And thus an expression of the outstanding relevance that has always been attributed to it.
When Martin Stiewe and François Vouga extend the title of their beautiful book The Sermon on the Mount and its Recension with the subtitle A Brief Exposition of Christianity, they hit the nail on the head. The pluralism of the interpretations and their respective historical conditions are an encouragement and implicitly an appeal in our current situation, in which the church must dare to make important new departures: like an understanding of the text, an institution can only remain alive if it does not limit itself to supposedly unchangeable points of view.
but is open to new orientations that not only recognise the "signs of the times" but react to them with courage.
