Now not everyone knows what C25K stands for. So for the uninitiated, it refers to a training programme to get people from the couch to running 5K in a 9 week, 3 times per week timetable. It starts with a modest alternation between walking and running, so in the first week there's a five minute warm up, then you alternate 60 seconds of running, with 90 seconds of walking, for a total of 20 minutes. Each week the effort increases in small increments until by week 9 a 5 minute warm up is followed by 30 minutes running. I know a number of folk who have done this, and some of them would never have called themselves runners. The secret is in being realistic, determined, disciplined and sticking with it.
The Sermon on the Mount can also seem to be beyond any sense of realistic achievement. It's even harder than changing from Couch to running 5K in 9 weeks! Turning the other cheek, going a second mile, not being dangerously angry, not worrying about food, clothes, money and the other necessities of life. It all seems a bit beyond most of us. In fact it's an interesting question how often any of us have ever taken time to read the Sermon on the Mount all the way through; or to read all or some of it with any regularity, attentiveness, aspiration, or even intention of allowing it to quality check who we are, and what we are about, and what matters most. Even Christians, perhaps especially Christians, tend to look on the Sermon on the Mount as an Everest scale ideal, something to be aimed at but without any real hopes of achievement, an inaccessible mountain, shrouded in mist and mystery, both inviting and forbidding.
I wonder what might happen if the C25K principle was applied to the Sermon on the Mount. Might it feel like a kind of aerobic exercise for the heart, soul, conscience, and mind? Supposing the Sermon was to be read every other day for 9 weeks. The first week read only a few verses, think about them, read a few more, maybe take 5 minutes to write down what's important, and a minute or two to pray. By week 3 we are starting to get the hang of this, and ready to ask what has any of this got to do with us, who we are, how we act, what we think?
Six weeks in and we are reading the whole Sermon on the Mount now, every other day. The words are familiar, the rhythm of the sentences is comfortable, but the content and the meaning is beginning to register. This isn't a game, or a mere exercise in self-development. This is starting to develop intellectual muscle, moral stamina, and our mood is now interrogative as questions clarify, and we are examined. Next our mood becomes indicative as we see exactly what these disruptively creative texts are saying to us, and begin to realise climbing this mountain will change us forever.
But finally as we reach week 9 and beyond, the text takes control and we hear a quite different tone, mood and spirit. It is the imperative. These are the commands of the King for those who seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. These are the promises to those who are Blessed. These are the invitations and the warnings, the prayers and the promises, the desires and the disciplines of those who are called to be disciples and who say they will follow.
So for the next 9 weeks I'm going to do this. The C25K training programme adapted to learning to walk in the ways of the Sermon on the Mount. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, time set apart to read and pause, read and think, read and pray, read and write, and to allow these texts to take effect on my inner climate. Alongside careful and regular reading of the text, I'll work through Pennington's The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing. I'll post here and share whatever comes out of this. Of course it will be very particular to me, specific to my circumstances and inner responses, and in that sense subjective and personal - but why not? Goodness! All over Facebook good folk post their progress in C25K. My own reporting and writing here won't be about progress but insight, not about personal achievement so much as making time and space for transformative texts to do their work, and being available to the grace that comes with the demand.
I have always been impressed, and made to think harder, by Jesus words, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me." The burden of obedience, the discipline of listening, the freedom of being constrained to purpose and guided by the Voice of the one who speaks the wisdom of God. In these words of the Sermon on the Mount, I hear what Joachim Jeremias called the "ipsissima vox" of Jesus, the very voice, the essential tone, the unmistakably particular voice of Jesus.
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