Peace Podcast: The Nonviolent Sermon on the Mount

This is not the Sermon on the Mount that you might be used to! John Dear takes us on a new path to understand what Jesus was saying to the world with the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke of loving our enemies, do unto others as you would have done to yourself, and passing through the narrow gate. John reminds us that Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount every day of his life and felt it was the blueprint for a successful life. John speaks of active nonviolent resistance to the evil we are experiencing today. He comments that the church's Just War Theory does not fit to what the Sermon was teaching. He talks of noncooperation and systemic injustice. War is about money, John says and he reminds us that God is nonviolent.

John Dear discusses the six antithises where Jesus takes common learnings from the bible and reframes them in the context of nonviolence. These antithises come after the beatitudes and go to the core of nonviolence in the world: into the feelings we cultivate in our own hearts. Just as Gandhi found inspiration for his work in the Sermon on the Mount, John encourages all who pursue nonviolence to find inspiration in these fundamental principles.

The Peace Podcast is available on our website here. There you can also find the previous episodes where John discusses Psalms of Peace, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, the beatitudes, and nonviolence as a part of Advent. The podcast is also available on iTunes where you can subscribe and listen as soon as it’s released. If you enjoy this new Peace Podcast, please share it with others to continue to build a mainstream culture of nonviolence.