You may remember our Sunday lectionary is on a three-year cycle—and this is the year when most Sundays the gospel lesson is from Matthew. Saint Augustine of Hippo is credited with calling the first and longest of Jesus’ five discourses in Matthew, from which today’s gospel lesson is taken, the “Sermon on the Mount.”[1] New Testament scholar Ulrich Luz calls it “a happy choice” because it reminds us of Moses going up to Mount Sinai and receiving the tablets of the law[2]—and since we are talking about the Sermon on the Mount, it’s worth noting that Luz is among the scholars who think the Greek word usually translated as “blessed” is better, but not perfectly, translated as “happy.”[3]
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