Sunday, November 2nd, 2025:  Jesus is leading us to the new self on a new path, which is the total transformation of consciousness.

In his teachings, and in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus critiques and reorders the values of his culture from the bottom up. He “betrays” the prevailing institutions of family, religion, power, and resource control by his loyalty to another world vision, which he calls the reign of God. 

Such loyalty to this vision of a new world of love, free of hate, racism and violence, costs him general popularity, the support of the authorities, immense inner agony, and finally his own life. 

By putting the picture in the largest possible frame, he calls into question all smaller frames of traditional power structures so familiar to all of us. Jesus lived in the time of Roman superiority and control. Of control by a caste of local politicians and tax collectors who followed and prospered from the rules set down by Rome. The frames he wanted to love away were the hard and fast rules set by the priests of the time: rules about purity and blood sacrifice and the uncleanness of women. 

Jesus invites his hearers into a radical transformation of consciousness. Many were not ready for it—nor are many of us today. 

To understand the Sermon on the Mount, we need to clarify where Jesus is leading us.  

It’s not to the old self on the old path, which would be non-conversion and non-enlightenment.  

It’s not to the old self on a new path, which is where most religion begins and ends. It involves new behavior, new language, and practices that are sincere, but the underlying myth/worldview/motivation and goals are never really changed. If I keep my old self on a new path my anger, fear, hate and ego remain the same and are merely transferred to now defend my idea of God or religion.  

Jesus is leading us to the new self on a new path, which is the total transformation of consciousness, worldview, motivation, goals, and rewards that characterize one who loves and is loved by God.  

Matthew sets the stage for the Sermon with three simple sentences: “Seeing the crowds, he went onto the mountain. And when he was seated his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak” (Matthew 5:1–2). Remember, Moses came down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments. For Matthew’s Jewish audience, the message is clear: This is the new Moses going back to the mountaintop, reproclaiming the truth, bringing down the new new, transformative law of love. That is very important context: In a certain sense, the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ revisioning of the Ten Commandments.  

The Beatitudes (sometimes translated as “happy attitudes,” or even congratulations in a secular sense) are addressed not to the crowds but to Jesus’ disciples. The Sermon is addressed to those who are still being initiated – still working through the vision of the kingdom of unconditional love. That’s all of us!

It seems there is a very real plan in Jesus’ delivery of the Sermon. He is aware that his message may doom him in a real way and to our dying to our egos. But he is ready to share his own profound vision leading us all to the new self on a new path, which is the total transformation of consciousness. He understands there is suffering to come for him and for us as we realize every day the wideness of his vision. 

At the early stages, we are not ready for the hard words of the gospel; we are unable to hear the message of the cross. Is it only in the second half of life that we come to understand that dying is not opposed to life? Dying is a part of a greater mystery—and we are a part of that mystery. In Richard Rohr’s experience, it is usually the older psyche that is ready to hear such sober truth.  

Jesus is leading us to the new self on a new path, which is the total transformation of consciousness, worldview, motivation, goals, and rewards that characterize one who loves and is loved by God.