Tag reality

Out of Love for the Truth

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 8:31-36

“Out of love for the truth and from a desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place.  Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter.  In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”

This was the introduction to the 95 Theses which Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Wittenberg University Chapel on Wednesday, October 31, 1517.   We sometimes think that nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the church was an act of rebellion, and in retrospect it was powerfully symbolic.  But it was actually a normal practice.  The church door served as a kind of bulletin board for the academic community.  If you wanted to propose a debate, that’s where you posted the notice, along with the propositions you wanted to discuss.

Luther didn’t intend for the 95 Theses to be a manifesto for rebellion.  He had no idea that his challenge to the practice of selling indulgences would spark a revolutionary movement that would sweep across Europe leading to enormous changes in religion, politics, education, and everyday life, but once that movement started, he gave himself to it body and soul because he was committed to the truth of the Gospel and the love of Christ. 

The truth quite literally set him free from the heavy-handed authority of Rome—the Pope excommunicated him—but the truth also bound him to the proclamation of salvation by God’s grace through faith and to the authority of God’s word in the scriptures.

Out of love for the truth and from a desire to elucidate it…  

According to the Gospel of John, when Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate, Pilate then asked him, “What is truth?”  

In some respects that seems like an almost ridiculous question.  We know what truth is.  We learn about truth almost as soon as we learn to talk.  Sadly, that’s also when we learn to lie, because we learn pretty quickly that the truth may reveal things that we would prefer to keep hidden.  We learn very early on that sometimes truth has consequences that we would like to avoid, and that those consequences might be unpleasant or even painful.  

Truth, the dictionary tells us, is the true or actual state of a matter.  Something is true when it conforms with reality.  To put it another way, reality determines what is true.

Truth means that my desires or imagination do not have the final word in determining what is reality and what is not.

There are twenty-seven verses in the gospels that contain the word truth.  Twenty-one of those verses are in the Gospel of John where truth is not only a central theme, it is anchored in and identified with the person of Jesus.  In John 1:14 we read, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  Three verses later, John puts aside the figurative language of the Word to make it clear who he is talking about: “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

When Jesus sat discussing theology with the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well, he told her that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”  In chapter 14, not long after he has told Thomas that he, himself, is “the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth” and in chapter 16 he tells his disciples that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”  In chapter 17, as he prays for the disciples, Jesus asks that they would be sanctified and consecrated in truth.

“For this I was born,” Jesus told Pilate, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

In today’s Gospel reading from chapter 8 of John’s gospel, we see a hint that some of those who were listening to Jesus were unsure about continuing to follow him.  Some scholars think that this passage may hint at some tension between Jewish and Gentile believers or between Judean and Galilean followers of Jesus in the community where this gospel was written, and John, the writer, is calling both sides back to the middle ground of the truth found in the person and teaching of Jesus.  

“Jesus said to the Judeans who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word—if you remain faithful to my teachings—then you are truly my disciples.  And you will come to know the truth.  And the truth will set you free.”  When they protested that they were descendants of Abraham and had never been enslaved by anyone—apparently they forgot about their own history with Babylon and Egypt—Jesus went on to make it clear that he was talking about the truth setting them—and us—free from our slavery to sin.

But how does the truth set us free from sin?  

Martin Luther defined sin as the state of being curved in on the self.  Sin is when I put my preferences, my desires, my ideas, my plans, my goals above and before everyone and everything else.  Sin is me, me, me, me, me taken to the extent that it harms or disenfranchises or marginalizes or disempowers or diminishes or neglects you, you, you, you, you.  Sin creates a false reality, an illusion centered on my desires, my fears, my imagination—the way I want things to be.  And that illusion is seductive and captivating.  It ensnares.  It enslaves.  It makes me believe that I am the center of the universe, that what I think or believe or even just what I want very, very badly to be true is what is real.

Truth disabuses me of that illusion.

Once again: Truth means that my desires or imagination do not have the final word in determining what is reality and what is not.

We are currently struggling through a time when truth is endangered in our culture.  There’s nothing new about that.  People have always preferred to put their own spin on facts that confront their biases or preconceived ideas.  People throughout history have taken refuge in denial when events or outcomes don’t fit the way they wanted things to happen or give them the results they wanted.  What’s new is how widespread this devaluation of the truth has become.  

When lies and spin become so prevalent that they begin to undermine any common understanding of basic facts, the world becomes a more dangerous place.  When people refuse to accept observable facts, when there is no longer the common cultural ground of truth based on fact, then there is no longer a starting point for discussion or compromise.  There is no way to move past confrontation and opposed binary positions that divide us.  When people lift up conspiracy theories and “alternative facts” as justification for their actions or opinions then we stand on the precipice of political violence. 

Sadly, we have seen too many clear examples of that in the last few years.  It has become the sin of our society.

Sin convinces me that I stand apart from the rest of humanity.  But the truth, the fact, is that I am deeply and intimately connected to the rest of humanity and, in fact, to all of creation.  Standing apart is an illusion.  Rugged individualism is a destructive myth—destructive because it undermines and negates the relationships that keep us alive in every sense of the word.

“We must all overcome the illusion of separateness,” said Richard Rohr.  “It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness ‘sin.’ God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship. As 1 John 3:2 reminds us, ‘My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God.’”

As followers of Jesus, we are called to live in the imitation of Christ.  We are called to observe what God is doing all the time and everywhere and then do the same.  We are called to be generous because God is generous.  We are called to be creative because God is creative.  We are called to embrace diversity because God revels in diversity so much that no two things are exactly alike in the entire universe.  But above and beyond everything else, we are called to love.  Because God loves.  God is love.  And, as Richard Rohr has said, God does not love us if and when we change.  God loves us so that we can change.

That is grace—the grace that makes us whole, the grace that heals us, the grace that reunites us, the grace that saves us.  

Claim it.  Revel in it.  Believe it.  Embrace it.

It’s the truth…and it’s the only thing that can set us free.

Waiting for the Light

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Waiting for the Light

Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after that suffering,

         the sun will be darkened,

                  and the moon will not give its light, 

25       and the stars will be falling from heaven,

                  and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 

26 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.  27 Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. 

28  “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.  29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.  30 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.  31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 

32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.  34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.  35 Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,  36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.  37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

As of this weekend, 270,000 people in the United States have died of the Corona virus.  That’s two hundred seventy thousand empty seats at the Thanksgiving table this year, enough people to fill every seat in Angels’ Stadium in Anaheim six times.  

Because of the Corona virus, job losses and general economic disparity, only 44% of American households with children feel confident that they will be able to afford the food they need for the coming week.[1]  Put another way, 56% of American households with children are food insecure.  Twelve percent of those households reported that they sometimes or often do not have enough to eat.  

One in 5 renters in America are behind on rent and worried about eviction.  Persons of color were likelier to report difficulty affording rent because they have been harder hit by pandemic job losses.

In so many ways and for so many of us, this is a grim and precarious time.  The words of Isaiah ring in us like a bell:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

                  so that the mountains would quake at your presence—  

          When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,

                           you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.[2]

O God, why won’t you do for us the kinds of things you did in the past?  Where’s our parting of the sea?  Where is our manna falling from the sky?  

It was a grim and precarious time for the people of Judah when Isaiah wrote those words.  They were suffering under the harsh oppression of Babylon.  They wanted divine intervention.  And isn’t that what we want now?

It was a grim and precarious time when Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives and shared his apocalyptic vision with his disciples.  As we read the story in chapter 13 of Mark, Jesus is telling his disciples about the end of the world not long before Judas betrays him, not long before he is crucified.  And it’s a very perilous time when the writer of the gospel records all this.  If biblical scholar Ched Myers is correct, Mark is writing this gospel some time during the Jewish revolt against Rome, the rebellion that will end with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

“But in those days, after that suffering,

         the sun will be darkened,

                  and the moon will not give its light, 

         and the stars will be falling from heaven,

                  and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 

Those words take on new weight on the first Sunday of Advent when you think of them being spoken during a time of violent political oppression, a time when any hint of opposition is quickly and decisively squashed.  These words have a sharper edge when you think of them being written down and preserved while the streets of the city are filled with the noise and bloodshed of battle between Roman soldiers and Jewish partisans.  

Beware.  Stay alert.  Stay awake.  The advice Jesus gives is practical.  Keep your eyes open.  Don’t fall for false messiahs and conmen. Don’t make yourself crazy trying to figure out God’s timetable because only God knows.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride.  There will be trying times.  Stay awake.

Advent is a time for pragmatism and preparation.  

Advent is a time to walk into the turmoil and the pain of life with your eyes wide open.  In an age and a season when it is all too easy to live in denial, when we would love to jump straight to Christmas, Advent calls us to take a hard look at the world around us.  Advent calls us to see the world as it really is, to see ourselves as we really are, to open our eyes to things that we maybe don’t want to see, to listen to things we might prefer not to hear.  Advent calls us to be realistic…about the world and about ourselves. 

In 1952, as the Korean War was dragging on and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was becoming more intense, William and Annabeth Gay wrote a haunting and profound hymn that, to my mind, perfectly captures the spirit of Advent for our age.  The title that Annabeth gave it is Carol of Hope, but you might know it by its first line which is how it’s titled in most hymnals, a line that sounds anything but hopeful:  Each Winter As the Year Grows Older.

Each winter as the year grows older, we each grow older, too.  

The chill sets in a little colder; the verities we knew

seem shaken and untrue.[3]

When race and class cry out for treason, when sirens call for war, 

they overshout the voice of reason and scream till we ignore

 all we held dear before.

Yet I believe beyond believing that life can spring from death,

that growth can flower from our grieving, that we can catch our breath

and turn transfixed by faith.

So even as the sun is turning to journey to the north,

the living flame, in secret burning, can kindle on the earth

and bring God’s love to birth.

O Child of ecstasy and sorrows, O Prince of peace and pain,

brighten today’s world by tomorrow’s, renew our lives again;

Lord Jesus, come and reign!

Advent calls us to be realistic about the shadow side of life, to mark where we’ve not only grown older but colder, where the verities we knew seem shaken and untrue.  Advent calls us to identify those voices that overshout the voice of reason so we can be more attentive to reason and to the Prince of Peace and pain.  

But Advent doesn’t simply ask us to dwell in gloom and shadows.  Advent also calls us to bring light—four lights to restore brightness and health to a self, a nation, a world stumbling in murky obscurity—four lights to prepare the way for the true light of Christ. 

And the first light is Hope.

“Genuine hope is not blind optimism,” said Jürgen Moltmann.  “It is hope with open eyes, which sees the suffering and yet believes in the future.”

And perhaps Barack Obama was thinking of Moltmann when he said, ““Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”

Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us.

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver. “And the most you can do  is live inside that hope.  Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”[4]

So on this first Sunday of Advent we light the candle of Hope.  

On this first Sunday of Advent as we begin a new year in the calendar of the Church, we light the candle of Hope.  If the sun is darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars seem to be falling, light the candle of hope.

If we are suffering now because of the pandemic, Saint Paul reminds us that, “suffering produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”[5]

“If we hope for what we do not see,” he said, “we wait for it with patience.”[6]  

So if it looks like the sun has been darkened and the moon won’t shine and the stars are falling and the world is more or less metaphorically ending, in the spirit of Advent, let’s be realistic and honest about it.  Let’s stay awake and aware.  And then let’s light a candle of Hope.  Because Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.[7]

[1] https://www.cbpp.org/blog/as-thanksgiving-approaches-fewer-than-half-of-households-with-kids-very-confident-about;  also https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/07/44-of-americans-fear-they-wont-be-able-to-afford-food-poll-finds/ (Marketplace/Edison Research)

[2] Isaiah 64:1-2

[3] Each Winter As the Year Grows Older, William Gay, 1920-2008;

  Tune: Carol of Hope, Annabeth Gay, 1925-2020;  Evangelical Lutheran Worship, #252

[4] Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

[5] Romans 5:4-5

[6] Romans 8:25

[7] Romans 15.13

Saint Don of Long Beach

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Matthew 5:1-12

My sense of time is out of sync.  With Covid messing up all our internal clocks and scrambling our routines, Summer didn’t so much fade into Fall as crash land into it.  Halloween just didn’t feel like the big seasonal transition point that it has been in past years, and after seeing everyone in masks for nine months it lost a bit of its punch.  Still, this is where we are in the calendar, so it’s probably best for all our psyches if we acknowledge the season and move forward.

Since Halloween and Reformation Day happen at the same time—you do remember that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg University Chapel on All Hallows Eve in 1517, right?—I always used to suggest to my confirmation students that they should dress for Halloween as great characters from the Reformation.  You know, Martin or Katie Luther, Phillip Melancthon, Duke Frederick the Wise, Father Staupitz, Cardinal Cajetan, Pope Leo X….  For some reason none of the kids ever did it.  

Did you dress up for Halloween?  Did you put on a costume or a disguise?  I think we should stretch the All Hallows fun for a while.  I was thinking a kind of masquerade might be fun.  It might even help to take some of the anxiety out of election day.  

I think we should all pretend to be Saints.  Wouldn’t that be a great way to celebrate All Saints Day?   And the best part is, you don’t have to wear a costume or make yourself look different in any way.  You would need to wear a mask if you go out in public.  Because that’s what a saint would do. To protect others.  But other than that, you could just look like you.  Because if you’re a disciple of Jesus—if you’re someone who is really trying hard to listen closely to Jesus and live the way he calls us to live—you are a saint.

Somewhere along the way in the last two thousand years we got the idea that saints have to be dead—that saints are particularly holy persons who have performed miracles both before and after death.  Somewhere we got the idea that to be a saint you have to be people put through a rigorous certification process by the Roman church. 

Well, those people definitely are saints.  They deserve our respect, and any number of them can serve as good examples of how to live a saintly life.  But when St. Paul addressed his letters to “all the saints” in Phillipi or Corinth or Rome he wasn’t talking about people who had been canonized by an official process that didn’t yet exist.  And he certainly wasn’t talking to people who were dead.  The word he used, the word we translate as “saints” was hagiois.  It means those who are consecrated or dedicated to following Jesus and serving the community of the faithful.  It was Paul’s way of referring to all those who had been baptized.

So, if you’ve been baptized—consecrated to Christ—you are a saint.

So see!  No costume! 

Except there kind of is.  A costume.  Of sorts.

It’s a very subtle disguise we wear, we saints.  So subtle that most never see it.

Our costume, our masquerade, is that we actually live in a different world, a different reality, than everyone else, a world that is in, with, and under, and around, and through, and over the world everyone else is living in.  We who are saints are called to live in the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is not some future reality that we may accomplish someday.  Well, it is that, but it’s also a present reality that we can be living into right now. 

The kingdom of heaven is not some abstract life after life.  It is not some mythical place with pearly gates and golden slippers and halos and harps.  It’s not fluffy clouds and angels.

The kingdom of heaven occurs when people take the words of Jesus to heart and live into them.  Here.  Now.  Always.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus describes the contrast between heaven and earth as something that isn’t as binary as spiritual versus physical or now versus later.   Heaven is, quite simply, where God’s will is done.  Heaven is where God rules rather than where “the kings of the earth” hold sway. Heaven is the place God is constructing and inviting us to enter. Now.  Not in some indefinite future.  Not after death.  Now.

Heaven is both present and future, since God is both present and future.  God’s kingdom is not yet fully established “on earth as it is in heaven,” but we are invited to live into it now and to help make it more fully a reality.  The thing is, though, even though we are saints we need instructions on how to do that.  Fortunately, Jesus gives us those instructions.  

The Sermon on the Mount is, as Amy-Jill Levine describes it, “the beginner’s guide to the kingdom of heaven,”[1] and the Beatitudes which we see in today’s gospel lesson (Matthew 5:1-12) are the first lesson in that guide.  This is the lesson where the saints learn how to see, because living in this other reality, the kingdom of heaven that’s layered over the world of everybody else, requires a special kind of vision.  

The first thing we need to learn to see is who are the blessed ones.  We need to learn to see this because common wisdom tells us that the blessed ones in this world are the rich, the powerful, the well-connected—the people who know where are all the strings are and how to pull them.  The blessed ones, according to common wisdom, are the healthy, the well-fed, the well-housed, the well thought-of, and the well-off –those for whom everything is going pretty darn well.  

Jesus would quibble.  Those folk may or may not be blessed.  Certainly they are fortunate.  But blessed, as Jesus is using it here, is different.  Blessed means God sees them.  Blessed means God takes note of them.  Blessed means God is on their side and in their corner.  

So who are the blessed?  

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says Jesus, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  I’ve always struggled with understanding exactly who “the poor in spirit” are, with what exactly that phrase really means.  One understanding has said that the poor in spirit are those who struggle with or are weak in their faith.  Maybe, but that has never felt quite right to me.  Another definition says the poor in spirit are simply those who are not being conceited or prideful.  That might be closer, but it’s not quite there.

Amy-Jill Levine defines the poor in spirit as “those who recognize that they are both the beneficiaries of the help of others and part of a system in which they are to pay it forward and help those whom they can.  Poor in spirit are those who do not sit around saying ‘Look at what I’ve accomplished,’ or worse, feel resentful because they have not received what they consider sufficient honor.  They know they did the right thing; they know God knows, and that’s sufficient recognition indeed.”[2]

The poor in spirit see their privilege.  They are aware of their interdependence.  They see the gap between what they have and what others do not have and they have a vision of leveling the field.  The poor in spirit feel empathy for those who do not have what they have and that spurs them to generosity. They are blessed because they have that insight, that vision of the kin-dom, an understanding of their common humanity with others. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” 

Let’s back up for a moment to our definition of blessed.  The Greek word here is makarioi. It literally means the blessed ones but in most of our translations it becomes blessed are.  But it’s still a tricky word.  Makarios, the root word, can mean happy, fortunate, free from care, favored.  It can also mean a gift bestowed.   None of those definitions seem to go with “those who mourn.”

As I noted a moment ago, Jesus is using the term blessed a little differently.  Remember, this is lesson one in entering into the kingdom of heaven.  This is learning to see how God is present and at work in our lives, even in the excruciatingly painful moments.  Even when we mourn. 

Death is painful.  Death is real.  And the Bible takes death seriously.  The scriptures do not diminish mourning with platitudes.  Jesus weeps for Lazarus.  The disciples mourn for Jesus.

So where is the blessing for those who mourn?

“In part those who mourn are blessed because not everyone can mourn.  To mourn is to say, ‘I loved this person, and I desperately miss this person’—a heart that knows how to grieve is a heart that know how to love,” writes Amy-Jill Levine.[3]

Being able to mourn also means taking time to mourn.  Our culture is so uncomfortable with loss and grief that we tend to want to rush through it and diminish it.  We say the most inane things to each other instead of acknowledging the loss and listening with open hearts and open arms or simply sitting in silence.

Blessed are those who mourn because they take time to mourn.  Blessed are those who mourn because God stands with the brokenhearted. 

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”  Meek does not mean insignificant.  It does not mean being a doormat.  The Greek word that’s used here is praus. It’s the same word that’s used to describe a wild animal that’s been tamed.  A tame lion is still a lion.  It might be more helpful to think in terms of gentle.  Blessed are the gentle.  Blessed are the nonviolent.  Blessed are those with great authority who do not lord it over others.  Blessed are those who model servant leadership rather than despotism.  Blessed are those who do not use their power for exploitation.  They shall inherit the earth.

To inherit the earth is not a windfall.  It is a responsibility.  Creation is handed into your care and stewardship.  It is something to be treasured and tended and cared for.  It is an inheritance to be passed along to bless future generations.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  In the Gospel of Matthew, righteousness is one of the central themes of Jesus’ ministry.  Righteousness is also one of the hallmarks of the kingdom of heaven.  In Greek, the word is dikaiosyne. It’s a compound word combining dike, justice, and syne, together.  It means to be just together or to create justice together.   Righteousness affects the whole community.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Blessed are those who want to live in a just and fair world where laws and economics and opportunities are applied evenly and fairly to everyone regardless of their station or standing in life.  

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  They will be filled because their hunger and thirst will move them to address the inequities and inequalities of the world one by one as they encounter them.  Their lives will always have purpose and they will know that they are doing good as the prophet Micah described it: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

And so the list goes on—the beginner’s guide for entering the kingdom of heaven.  We keep learning– learning to see life through the blessed eyes of the merciful and the pure of heart, learning to be peacemakers.  Learning to endure persecution if we must.  Learning to live in this other reality that is in, with, and under the day-to-day world.  Learning to live into the kingdom of heaven.  Learning to be saints.

And yes, this is All Saints Day, the day we pause to remember the saints who have gone before us.  Saints like St. Teresa of Avila and St. Francis of Assisi.  But also we remember our local, everyday saints.  Saints like St. Mike and St. Marion and St. Don of Long Beach.  This is the day we stop to remember how they were blessed, and how they blessed us.

This is a day to remember that, now and always, we are blessed.

[1] Amy-Jill Levine, The Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven; Abingdon, 2020; xiii

[2] Ibid, 8

[3] Ibid;12