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We have listened to the Sermon on the Mount and perhaps have understood it. But who has heard it aright? Jesus gives the answer at the end (Matt. 7:24–29). He does not allow his hearers to go away and make of his sayings what they will, picking and choosing from them whatever they find helpful and testing them to see if they work. He does not give them free rein to misuse his word with their mercenary hands, but gives it to them on condition that it retains exclusive power over them.

Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting it or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his word. He does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To the Reader

Salt and Light became a book many years after Eberhard Arnold’s death. Its chapters were compiled and translated by members of the Bruderhof communities from articles, talks, and lectures from the years 1915–1935. Arnold grappled with the Sermon on the Mount his whole adult life. His relentless faithfulness to its demands bore practical fruit in a community movement that is still thriving today. Although Arnold was addressing a Germany in political and social ferment, his words are not bound to time and place. They direct us out of our bankruptcy to a new, revolutionary way.