Books and articles on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount abound. Some are worthwhile, but most you can easily ignore. So when a friend asked me what books I'd assign if I were teaching a course on the Sermon on the Mount, and why those, I immediately thought of these six: Three must-reads and three recommended.
Must-reads
1. Eberhard Arnold, Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount
It's a collection of lectures given in Germany between 1915 and 1935. Arnold calls decisively for a revolutionary discipleship. Each chapter speaks to a particular part of the Sermon, and when taken collectively, readers are compelled to action. For Arnold, the Sermon is rightly not just a new moral code or an ethic but a proclamation that God's Kingdom is here. Discipleship and community life belong together, because both belong in God's Kingdom of complete love with justice.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship
Bonhoeffer drives home Arnold's point of obeying Jesus. This is perhaps one of the most inspiring books on the Sermon because it blends illuminating Scripture with a pastoral heart. It was Bonhoeffer who convinced me to follow Jesus. Writing under the nose of the Nazis, he develops this emphasis on discipleship as a matter of "costly grace" -- a call to make visible one's allegiance to Christ within true Christian community in everyday life.
3. Scot McKnight's Sermon on the Mount
This is a marvelous practical and theological book that hits all the exegetical hot spots in the Sermon. But he does so in a way that moves you from text to real life. And he's no less adamant that the Sermon is about discipleship which is "supremely and irreducibly ecclesial".
Recommended reads
1. John Stott, Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount
What I love about this book is Stott's emphasis on Christian character and the radical nature of discipleship.
2. Glen Stassen's Living the Sermon on the Mount
I can't leave off a list on the Sermon on the Mount without an Anabaptist viewpoint. That's Stassen's book. How can we pursue God's justice in the world? Following Jesus in the way of alternative power, nonviolence, and purity.
3. The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries, ed. Greenman, Larsen, and Spencer (Brazos Press)
Anyone who reads the Sermon on the Mount (or any other part of Scripture) does so historically and contextually. That's what makes this book so refreshing. This book helps readers approach the Sermon with fresh eyes by reading with Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Yoder, and Pope John Paul II, among others.
There you have it. The readings for a course I'd teach on the Sermon on the Mount.