Michael Frost has noted that, “the work of exile is to rediscover the teachings of Jesus and the practices of the early Church, and then to apply them to life on the soil of a post-Christian empire.” Using the Sermon on the Mount, that’s what we’ll do. As in every part of the Bible, what matters is not only “What is written in the Scripture; (but) how do we read it?” (Luke 10:26). And the way we read the Sermon on the Mount will be as a charter for a new society that Jesus is forming in every age around the world. Those who learn to do what he said, who come to actually believe in his values, are both happy and whole and they are as strange to the world as they are necessary for saving it (Matt. 5:13-16). Beginning with an understanding of the gospel and how this gospel must take shape in a practicing community, we’ll explore a handful of things that these people practice.
