This weekend we will continue our series on the Sermon on the Mount by looking at Matthew 5:17-32, especially Jesus assertion that he came to “fulfill” the “law and the prophets.” We will look at what Jesus meant by “fulfill” – his radical claim to be the surprise “ending” or completion of the Story of Israel. And we will look at how Jesus teaches us to re-read that story – told in the Old Testament – in light of himself. We will see that Jesus claims to complete and “fill out” God’s vision of “whole living” – of human flourishing – of what it means to live in loving relationship to God and others. Jesus’s vision continues to exert a radical call on our lives as Christians – a call to live out his kingdom vision in ways that are just as counter-intuitive and surprising today as they were when he first preached the Sermon on the Mount.
