Institutionalizing the Sermon on the Mount

“The Sermon on the Mount was not given as the ethic of an individual but the ethic of a new city that Jesus is building.”

I imagine most people reading that title would think that institutionalizing our Lord’s great sermon would be a bad thing. We think of institutionalizing as deadening, hollowing, dehumanizing. Institutions certainly can become that way through mission drift and bureaucracy. 

We need a fresh appreciation for institutions. Institutions are some of the primary ways God has worked in the world throughout history. In the Old Testament, both the temple complex and the Davidic kingdom were institutions built to serve the people of God and the Lord’s purposes in the world. They had authority structures and clearly defined roles and policies (e.g., priests, Levites, secretaries, judges). Later, the synagogue was a crucial institution for God’s people of the Diaspora that later transformed into Christian churches. The Lord also invented the institution of marriage as the foundation of human society. So what exactly is an institution? Institutions are structured communities with the primary purpose of forming human beings—things like families, schools, hospitals, social programs, and universities. And God’s central institution is the church.

Now, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus summarizes his goals in the sermon with these words:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. (Matt. 7:24-27)

I have in the past read these verses very individualistically, as if the house is me. I should build my personal life on Christ and his teachings so that, when the storms come, I won’t personally crumble. But the house in the Bible is not primarily an individual person, but God’s house. God’s house was a very communal word. It was his family. It was the temple where he met with his people. It was also an institution with an authority structure and clear boundaries of membership. The house that Jesus is speaking of is the church (1 Cor. 3).

It should also be noted that the Sermon on the Mount was not given as the ethic of an individual but the ethic of a new city that Jesus is building. Toward the beginning of the sermon, he says: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matt. 5:14). The community of Jesus’s disciples is meant to be God’s heavenly city of light established in the earth. Hence, the church is a city that God is building.

Part of our cynicism about institutions is that immoral leaders use them for their own egos. When you get to the end of the sermon, you find that church leaders were on the forefront of Jesus’s mind:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. 

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt. 7:15–23)

Those who “never knew” Jesus were the ones who had successful ministries (prophesying, casting out demons, doing many mighty works in his name) but never prioritized the quality of character Jesus had described in the sermon. The institutionalizing of Jesus’s sermon means that the highest priority for our leaders is that they live out the sermon in their lives.

What would it look like to institutionalize Jesus’s sermon into our life?

So, how does a church build our house or city on the rock as Jesus said? 

I believe the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount must be formalized into the institutional structure of the church. The ethics of being poor in spirit, mournful, meek, hungry for righteousness, merciful, pure, peacemaking, longsuffering, honest, and faithful in marriage; dealing with anger and lust; not returning evil for evil; doing good deeds in secret, like generosity and prayer; not operating out of anxiety or judgment; praying and loving—all these need to be formalized as what is approved by the institution.

The children should be systematically trained in this ethic. The leaders should be repeatedly told this is what is expected of them. The community members should use it as the guide for how they relate to each other. It should be used in our confessions of sin, our membership process, our preaching, our mutual admonishment of each other. All this should say, “These are the qualities that are celebrated here.”

Institutions are always built around certain core values. They communicate regularly about what is important to them and insist that the members adhere to those values. Jesus is saying: the church that will endure many storms—even the storms of final judgment—is the church that has institutionalized these teachings.

How does a church do that? There have been many ways Christians have done this historically. The Rule of St. Benedict was one historic attempt to do this. Rigid rules of humility and hospitality trained monks for over 1000 years in the way of Christ—hence the Benedictine monasteries were enduring. These monasteries laid the foundation of Christian discipleship, mercy, learning, scholarship, manners, and spirituality—all which became the pillars of Christendom—a Christian culture never seen before in history. In the time of the Reformation, John Calvin envisioned Geneva as a full city that ran like a monastery. Everyone lived a holy life in obedience to God, with a life structured around worship and the Word of God. In the twentieth century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic book Life Together is an example of a community built around Jesus's teaching. Bonhoeffer also wrote The Cost of Discipleship, specifically devoted to the Sermon on the Mount. These books shaped the clandestine seminary he led at Finkenwalde, in Germany under the Nazis in the 1930s.

What would it look like for CCB to institutionalize Jesus’s sermon into our life? It is already woven into the lives of students at Trinity Classical School. Over the six years of secondary school, the students work through the sermon line by line during their weekly chapels. They end up going through the whole sermon twice. Grammar school students memorize large portions. All of this is to train the children in the way of Jesus’s teaching.

But even in writing this article, I have had two more ideas on how to formalize our devotion to this teaching:

First, we will regularly work through the Sermon on the Mount for our corporate confessions on Sunday mornings. In the past, we’ve confessed week by week through the Ten Commandments. We should do the same with Jesus’s expansion on Moses’s teaching.

Second, our elders have begun a new practice of mutual accountability, where we pair up every month to ask each other probity questions about our individual growth in holiness. As Jesus’s words are the most probing into the human heart, we’ll use the topics of the Sermon on the Mount to form those meetings: 

1. Where do you see anger popping up in your life? (Matt. 5:21-22)

2. Are there any difficult conversations with people that you are currently avoiding? (Matt. 5:23-26)

3. Have you viewed or been tempted by pornography, or are there any emotionally attractive relationships with someone not your wife? (Matt. 27-30)

4. What are ways you could improve your commitment to your wedding vows? What are some areas where your marriage could be enriched? (Matt. 5:31-32)

5. Have you been keeping your commitments and following through? (Matt. 5:37)

6. Who are the enemies you should be praying for? (Matt. 5:43-48)

7. What are your prayer habits? How do you structure your daily prayer routine? (Matt. 6:1-15)

8. How often have you fasted recently? Is there anything from which you need to take a fast (alcohol, sugar, social media, etc.)? (Matt. 6:16-18)

9. What percentage of your money are you giving to the church? How about other ministries or people in need? In what ways are you tempted to love money? (Matt. 6:19-24)

10. Are you coping with your anxiety in any ways that are sinful (alcohol, drugs, internet/technology, etc.)? (Matt. 6:25-34)

11. Are there any conflicts where you are being critical of others and need to take the log out of your own eye? (Matt. 7:1-5)

12. What are things you should be asking from the Lord in prayer? (Matt. 7:7-11)

We must find ways to make Jesus’s sermon the rule of our life together. Any Christian reads those words and says, “Yes—that is the kind of character I love.” But it is so easy for these qualities to be set aside. May the institution of Christ Church Bellingham be built on this rock, for generations to come.