From the staggering account / Of the Sermon on the Mount / Which I don’t pretend to understand at all

This line from Leonard Cohen’s song ​“Democracy” expresses what many throughout the ages have felt about Jesus’ most famous sermon: awe-filled recognition of its beauty and power mixed with bewilderment about what it means.

I was taken aback the first time I read Dallas Willard’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, especially his take on the Beatitudes. The nine ​“blessed are” statements, Willard contends, aren’t ideals to which we aspire. Instead, Jesus, the master teacher, is turning upside down assumptions about who is blessed by God. Those who are normally thought of as God-forsaken — the poor, the hungry, the grief-stricken, the persecuted — Jesus says are God-favored.

This interpretation lifts the weight of legalism off the Beatitudes. Instead of what we need to do, they are about what God is doing: welcoming outcasts into the Kingdom of God.

Still, I’ve never been able to shake the sense that there might be more to these statements than simply being a list of who is blessable (as important as that is). Is there a way to think about the Beatitudes that invites an active response without making them into a burdensome new law? That’s what I hear in Mark Scandrette’s approach.

“What if Jesus is naming nine areas of human experience,” Mark Scandrette says on the Renovaré Podcast this week, ​“where we get to experience newness of life.”

His upcoming book, The Ninefold Path of Jesus, offers very practical ways to respond to the Beatitudes.

For example, being poor, or having a mindset of lack, can lead to being survival-oriented, close-handed, and worry-focused. Mark provides exercises for how, in the light of being blessed by God, we can release worry and move toward openhanded trust.

I should mention that Mark is one of the most boots-on-the-ground kind of people I’ve ever met. He’s spent his life creating communities of practice where people actually try doing the things Jesus taught (imagine that!). That kind of real-world experience makes me lean in a little more to hear what he’s saying.