Building a House on a Rock: Sermon on the Mount

Around Christmas and Easter I get emails from a musician friend of mine which have no greeting - just Bible Verses and some musical attachments. Not understanding his intention, I usually scan the emails and delete them.

This year, emboldened by my religious quest, I decided to ask him what he intended to achieve by sharing these letters. Used to pushback, he responded a bit defensively as first, but his response also clarified that by not opening the musical attachments I had missed the clever connections he had made between pop songs and the Gospel. He also mentioned that the Sermon on the Mount was excellent for anyone to read, believers and non, and so I promised I would give it a good look.

Reading the Sermon on the Mount made me feel like I was embracing a philosophy of calm, clarity, and compassion. The way I feel when I am wading waist-high in a pool of water.

One of many magical places in Vermont

The feeling reminded me of an experience I had a few months ago while on a visit to Vermont. As a special treat my hippie friend and I left our concrete floor and wood stove and went to a spa with an outdoor pool and hottub, which they had just opened as the outside temperature reached the required 18 degrees. I wrapped my head in a towel and ordered bourbon from the bar to make a hot toddy from the tea service. We sat in the grey stone jacuzzi, surrounded by fluffy mounds of snow, and watched the sun set in a copper blaze over the green mountains, as steam rose from the pool into the wintry air. It was busy that weekend and there were families and kids playing everywhere, but regardless, I had a tremendous sense of calm. I walked around the spa later, in my white robe, with a smile simmering on my face, opening doors for people, gliding everywhere. So relaxed and at peace, and giving. Only the night before I had had a terrible bout of depression, and less than a day later I was floating on air.

I thought to myself, how can I feel like this everyday? How can I feel like this towards others every day? How can I encircle people in kindness?

I envisioned my circular presence forward as a glowing hulu hoop of compassion. Anyone I meet is free to step inside. And I have no need of anger, impatience, or fear.

Heaven on Earth :: TopNotch Spa, Stowe, Vermont

Part of that feeling came from the knowledge that all my needs were met. And there is a refrain in Christ's Sermon that you don't need to worry about getting the earthly goods you need because God will provide. And by accepting yourself, you may accept others, and as you care for others, you care for yourself.

Now if Christ's Sermon makes me feel like I am wading through water, the philosophy of my childhood was that of Ayn Rand, a philosophy that makes me feel as if I am flying off a cliff. That's not to say one is better than the other - both provide clarity, and I would like to make sense of where I land in the middle.

I have always felt that Rand's writing failed to clarify the importance of love and compassion. From her "Virtues of Selfishness", one may assume that acting in self-interest means never helping others, but that is not true. She never says you can't donate money to things you find important, or help someone weak or ignorant, or help clean out your mom's garage. She just wants you to make sure that you are doing these things as a result of YOUR value system and not because society or peer pressure tells you it's important. Which Christ says as well: he urges you to pray and donate and do good deeds privately, because YOU know they are good, not so others will commend you.

There are so many profound teachings in Christ's Sermon that addressing them all would take forever. But I will start with the easy part: by clarifying the things that I eschew.

Firstly, the bits about divorce and marriage and adultery are gobbedley-gook. It sounds like an artist suddenly talking about tax code. At that time in human civilization, there was so little infrastructure as far as laws and communication and employment that monogomous, male-dominated marriage was about all you had to keep the place from utter chaos. He was against divorce because it created chaos. He was for controlling lust and anger, because they led to chaos. He was hoping people would treat each other better, and be happier; he wasn't out to reconstruct all the current customs of civilization.

Of course, no one is a big proponent of divorce and anger or any violent feelings that make us go mad, but we are fortunate to live in a world today where these things do not always lead to chaos, and we have a lot more infrastructure to deal with them, whether that be counseling, sharing relationship advice and best practices, or our good old justice system.

The other very important part of Christ's philosophy that I choose to edit out is the whole reward system: the reward from your Father in heaven. He just lives too far away. Ms. Rand knew that the reward comes from within each individual.

While I believe in beauty and magic and kindness and peace as something bigger than me, I believe it flows from individuals through communities to generations of human beings living here on earth. By following Christ's Sermon in our daily lives, we experience Heaven on Earth, just like I experienced at that spa in Vermont. And again I am fortunate to live in today's age where my life is not nearly as difficult as generations past, and I see beauty and kindness every day, even in my home in treeless Brooklyn.

My beloved corner of treeless Brooklyn, amidst a booming Renaissance

I honestly think Christ looked around at the squalor and indecency around him and thought, "No one is getting their just reward here. Everyone is miserable. I must come up with some idea we can strive towards that feels a bit nicer than everyone's living room."

By the same token, the folks that had any money or access to material goods went crazy for them, not because they liked video games and Jimmy Choos, but because they were happy they would be able to survive past the following winter. The struggle to survive was such that there was no way to serve God and money. You had to pick one.

Nowadays, when I think of my few beloved wealthy friends, I think they have indeed succeeded in serving both God and money. And when I help a young married couple get a rent stabilized apartment in New York, I think we are serving both as well. And when I gather with a bunch of artists in our free time and make music without getting paid, and other times get paid a small fortune, I think we serving both as well. Because that money is in fact in line with our values, and not about status or superiority. 

But perhaps Christ's most valuable message in his Sermon is to challenge humans' skills for compassion, kindness, generosity, and forgiveness, regardless of whether you live in a penthouse or a paper box. In Christ's world, no matter what the circumstances, we must reconcile and forgive whenever possible. We must reach out to those different from us and treat them as family, find the similarities instead of the differences. We must spend time being grateful for the blessings and beauty in our lives, not worry about all the things we lack or what will happen to us in the future. We must know ourselves and ask courageously for what we want.

Only then do we build a House on a Rock.

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." - Matthew 7:13-14