A review of Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount by Richard Rohr. SPCK (London 2023). 208 pages. £16.99.
Do we need another book on the Sermon on the Mount? Richard Rohr, a widely published and respected Franciscan priest, spiritual director and globally recognised ecumenical teacher based in New Mexico, thinks we do. And I agree.
It is widely recognised that every individual, community or nation needs a narrative or set of core values to live by, that give cohesion and purpose to life. As Rohr writes, ‘the existential temptation that you and I face every day, [is] the doubt as to who we are’ (p.115) and is the central challenge that the Gospel addresses. Sometimes this is called a moral compass and as such the Sermon on the Mount is something of high water mark in the moral development of humanity. It deserves to be constantly set before us.
However, this book is not just another commentary on the Beatitudes. In fact Rohr doesn’t get round to talking about what he calls the ‘Happy Attitudes’ until towards the end of the book (chapter 8). Before that he devotes several chapters to describing the cultural world in which Jesus lived, particularly its social order, to which he refused to offer allegiance and against which he defined his own ‘new world order’: ‘Jesus was undercutting the system of human society, refusing to take it seriously.’ (27)
This essentially apocalyptic vision was not, Rohr avers, about the reform of the world but its end in anticipation of a new age. An important caveat is that this is not the end of history. What we read in the apocalyptic announcements is ‘not so much of a final end of history, but an end to our own personally constructed worlds.’ The transposition from the social to personal gives Rohr the gambit to focus on what must happen ‘in our own psyche, in our own relationships, and in our culture’ and the much wider issue of ‘the malaise of Christianity today’. What he deems this to be is the facade that ‘People keep up the external observance of reliance upon God, whilst underneath they depend entirely on themselves.’ (123)
Expanding on this theme he points to ‘the danger of postmodern liberal society’ in which ‘most people have no place to stand,’ (71) everything is relative, in constant motion. His contention is that we need to hear the solution, ‘plan’, of Jesus which is to move the boundaries to a greater world vision, the Reign of God, that calls not just for renewal but transformation:
‘Transformation, though, is not the same as change. Change is when something new begins. Transformation is the opposite: It happens… when something old falls away.’ (129)
The assumption underlying Rohr’s diagnosis is a very clear belief that there is a God – ‘of course there’s a God’ – as he goes on to dismiss atheism as ‘a modern, rational phenomenon of the Western world – a little blip on the screen.’ (126). Until we meet a benevolent God and benevolent universe we will not be at home in this world, Rohr tells us: ‘No matter what religion or belief people may hold, underneath it all are three possible worldviews: the universe is against us, the universe is for us, or the universe is neutral.’ Thanks to grace we can come to see that ‘God is in charge and that this God is good and involved’ (125).
To my mind what is strange in all this is that at no point does Rohr actually elaborate on what this word God means other than as some positive, controlling, universal force. There is no sense of the need of the crucial challenge of modernity to reimagine God, as Lloyd Geering attempted so perceptively in his book of that name. This radically changes the way we now conceptualise ‘Jesus’ alternative plan’.
Rohr concludes his book with a chapter on Bridges and Boundaries: Liberals and Conservatives and trying to keep a balance. Well, good luck with that. Anyone who has been following, for example, the fraught debates of the recent Anglican synod may wonder at Rohr’s breezy confidence that, ‘The reason Christianity has the power to be universal is precisely because of (the) doctrine of open table fellowship.’ I can envisage quite a number of groups who may take a different view.