“The Sermon on the Mount is the necessary, rigorous, and devastating purging of Pharisee yeast. It’s chemotherapy for the Pharisee cancer. Any confidence in one’s own righteousness before God has no authentic way to wiggle through chapters 5–7 of St. Matthew. Any genuine pilgrimage through this Sermon leaves us bereft of self-righteousness, with no pedestals from which to judge other sinners. Jesus, in these passages, leaves us in the only posture legitimately possible on Good Friday: on our knees with empty hands to receive the incomparable and desperately needed mercy of God.”