Somersaults on a Mountainside

February 22, 2026 - March 22, 2026

During the season of Lent, we’ll catch up with Matthew’s Rabbi Jesus as he teaches his disciples and the crowds on the mountainside. The first of several long discourses in Matthew’s gospel, the Sermon on the Mount comprises various teachings on personal piety and righteousness, elaborations on Torah, and an upset of standard religious morality.

It is this last that is hard to recapture for contemporary Christians: that Jesus’s “sermon” is meant to shake loose the calcified religious standards for a more expansive, nuanced response to God’s preference for those who bring little to recommend themselves. By “somersaults” I hope to capture the dizzying effect of his teachings on those hearers, and recapture the same for us.

We’ll read the entirety of the SOTM in just four weeks! Meaning, we’ll use parts of the readings for both our primary and secondary readings. We’ll employ various means to involve the congregation in each reading.

Blessed Are the Who Again? This is where Jesus pokes the bears of empire, of religion, of capitalism – of all the systems that compete to define “success” and assign power to the “winners.” For him to claim God’s blessing on the losers – and furthermore to name them as the influencers, the “salt” and “light” for the rest of us – is a weird, wild flex.