“Did you hear?” When we hear those words, we know we’re about to receive some previously unknown information. Sometimes it’s happy and exciting: Did you hear that she’s pregnant? Did you hear that he received the scholarship? Did youhear about the new restaurant coming to town?

 

Sometimes, the news isn’t so great: Did you hear about the layoffs? Did you hear his cancer has returned? Did you hear what the president said about the economy?

 

Sometimes, the news really isn’t important at all: Did you hear what happened at the Oscars? Did you hear about the trade our favorite sports team made?

 

Sometimes, this phrase simply signals our astonishment at something we’ve just heard. I’m pretty confident that was often the case for the people who heard Jesus speak. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus identified His listeners’ well-worn ways of thinking. “You’ve heard it said…” Then He went on to challenge their limited perspective. “But I tell you…”

 

And with that, Jesus introduced a new way of understanding what they’d heard for so long; a fresh way of interpreting old rules that had become too familiar.

 

You can hear the crowd murmuring to each other at the conclusion of His sermon, “Did you hear what Jesus said about blessings? About divorce? Lust? Murder? Revenge? Worry? Forgiveness?” Jesus wasn’t afraid to tackle tough topics. In fact, it was just the opposite. He hit the hard stuff head-on. But He did so with the perfect mixture of truth and grace, in a way that prompted His listeners to lean in and listen up. Over the next few weeks, we will listen in to what Jesus said about some of those tough topics. We’ll do our best to capture the spirit in which He spoke those words, and I’m confident we’ll find that His words still echo truth for us today.