What do we make of a sermon that declares the poor blessed and commands us to love our enemies in a culture where profit equals power and war is endless?
The Sermon on the Mount is a call to resistance. It has always been subversive and counter-cultural because of its core ethic of nonviolence and its insistence on the blessing of the powerless.
Jesus blessed the people on the margins of his culture by embracing them, showing solidarity with them, building a community in which those who had always been shunned were welcomed and loved. As the body of Christ, we are called to be that blessing.
Of course, this means we must stand with the immigrants and refugees who seek opportunity or simply survival in our nation, but it also means we must stand with those who mourn their loved ones in the wake of our government’s drone attacks and our society's economic exploitation.
The resistance Jesus teaches is neither acquiesce to evil nor returning evil for evil. Jesus instructs us to reject oppression by asserting our own dignity with firm compassion, refusing to participate in or perpetuate the cycle of violence. In doing so, we refuse to be either a helpless victim or a heartless monster, reaffirming not only our own humanity, but also that of the one who would dehumanize us.
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