We’re back on the hillside again, and Jesus is still talking to his disciples. The Beatitudes constitute a first lesson, which all hangs together when we look at them and reflect upon them. From the end of the Beatitudes through the next two and a half chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, we seem to have fragments from Jesus’ three-year teaching ministry that are strung together in didactic disarray.

One wonders, since neither Mark nor John reports anything like the Sermon on the Mount, and although Luke does have a parallel to it in his sermon on the plain, if Jesus actually gave all of this material at one sitting. Could this simply be various of his sayings strung together for Matthew’s readers? Most of the "sermon" does appear in individual verses in the other Gospels. Jesus was too good a t…