During the late 1970s I was struggling through a difficult time. My family situation required that I go back to work after almost twenty years as a homemaker and mother. As a result of listening for God’s guidance in prayer, I was eventually able to find a job that was a good fit for me—secretarial work at a local university. Still, this was not what I had been expecting my life to be.
Then one day I came across this statement in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings: “To my sense the Sermon on the Mount, read each Sunday without comment and obeyed throughout the week, would be enough for Christian practice” (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 11). This made me realize how important Mrs. Eddy considered these teachings to be for all followers of Christ Jesus.
Jesus taught the scientific truth of being. He taught his listeners that God, Spirit, is the Father of all, and he illustrated in healing that each of us—as God actually created us—is spiritual, perfect, and that we live in Spirit, not in matter. His teachings and healing works appear throughout the Bible’s four Gospels. But in Matthew, chapters 5, 6, and 7, some of his most familiar teachings, including the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer, are gathered together in what has become known as the Sermon on the Mount.
The ways in which the Christ may touch our hearts, educate us spiritually, regenerate and heal us, are without limit.
As I thought about this, it occurred to me that I might try reading the Sermon on the Mount once a week. That would be in addition to my daily study of the Christian Science Bible Lesson, which I’ve found to be essential to my spiritual progress and well-being over the years. I had no particular expectations about this weekly practice, but after several months of thoughtfully studying the sermon once a week, I found that changes were taking place in my life. The spiritual truth expressed in Jesus’ teachings had begun to permeate my thinking. I began to see more clearly that my true identity wasn’t a shy, friendless mortal in an unhappy situation, but God’s loved and loving child. I knew I was in my right place, and that I was engaging in an activity that was appropriate for me at that time, and blessing others as well. I found that my job included many opportunities for the “Christian practice” of kindness, patience, and genuine joy in helping others, both faculty and students.
My weekly study of the sermon went on for more than a year, and then I set it aside for a while. During the remainder of the five years that I worked at the university, I received two promotions, which brought new and interesting duties. Eventually I was able to gracefully leave that job in order to enter the public practice of Christian Science.
Over the many years since that time, I’ve occasionally taken up weekly study of the Sermon on the Mount for shorter periods of time. I’ve often wondered, “How is it that these teachings are able to quietly uplift someone’s whole life?” I found an answer to that question in one of Jesus’ parables.
I’ve always loved his parables, his brief stories that teach us something profound. Recently I was looking at those found in chapter 13 of the book of Matthew, and one of them suddenly stood out to me with new meaning. It was the parable of the leaven, where Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened” (verse 33).
The action of leaven in bread-making takes place invisibly, slowly causing dough to rise until it’s ready to bake. And that seemed to describe what had taken place in my life. The spiritual truth of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, active in my thought week after week, had acted as leaven, gently lifting me out of disappointment and unhappiness into spiritual progress and preparation for what would come next.
Christ Jesus’ words speak to each of us individually when we seek them out, whether we come to them in need or with a simple desire to learn and grow. The Christian Science textbook says that Christ, which Jesus so fully demonstrated, “is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332). The ways in which the Christ may touch our hearts, educate us spiritually, regenerate and heal us, are without limit. And we can certainly experience this powerful divine influence through Jesus’ teachings as recorded in the Bible. The truth embodied in his words can silently bless us, even before the deeper meanings of those words are understood. As we study his teachings prayerfully, and ponder them, we will learn from them and be healed by them.
