Stephen Mattson says:

"Despite the fact that the Bible documents Jesus only presenting a few public sermons, much of our faith tradition has become structured around the attendance of a weekly sermon presented by a church leader.

Although a large percentage of our Christian existence is made up listening to teachings, Jesus only had one talk that was labeled a sermon: the Sermon on the Mount. It’s within the middle of this Sermon on the Mount that Jesus declares “… whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

The great irony of our modern Christian practices is that we spend a significant amount of our time participating in the discipline of listening to sermons, upon which we learn that Jesus spent a significant amount of his time facilitating acts of social justice.

We’ve transformed Christianity into a set of beliefs rather than a state of being. Discipleship has become a matter of theological indoctrination, denominational certification, and philosophical training rather than a way of loving our neighbors."

-On Love and Mercy: A Social Justice Devotional

Stephen Mattson is a writer and activist whose work has been published in Relevant, Huffington Post, Sojourners, Red Letter Christians, and a variety of other venues. Mattson graduated from Moody Bible Institute, served as a youth pastor, and now works at University of Northwestern—St. Paul. He is the author of The Great Reckoning: Surviving a Christianity That Looks Nothing Like Christ, published by Herald Press in 2018. He and his wife and children live near Saint Paul, Minnesota. His first book, The Great Reckoning: Surviving a Christianity That Looks Nothing Like Christ, released in 2018. You can order On Love and Mercy here.