Thematic Structure in Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: A Systemic Functional Approach

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a useful tool for analyzing the message of a clause since it is centered around a clause by determining the themes and the thematic progression/theme-rheme patterns associated with clauses. Analyzing the Sermon on the Mount from a linguistic perspective offers a new insight beyond theological issues on how Christ structured His sermon to convince the rebellious Jews in His generation. That being said, this study aimed to determine the themes present in the Sermon on the Mount and the theme-rheme patterns formed by the themes of the clauses. The study employed a descriptive-qualitative method to meet the objectives of the study. The study utilized the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) as one of the free Bible translations that Bible Gateway Online offers to analyze the text of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5 to 7. In addition, the study employed purposive sampling to collect the needed data for the study. Consequently, results show that the Topical theme dominates the sermon, while the dominant thematic progression is the Constant pattern. The former implies that the sermon is Topic-oriented, which means that Christ utilized various subjects to convey the message of His sermon effectively. Meanwhile, the Constant pattern indicates that Christ created a sense of repetition and emphasis on a particular subject by repeating it; thus, it is a way to keep the reader’s attention firmly on a single subject. Overall, the thematic patterns in the sermon augment our understanding of how they are being structured to create a cohesive and memorable message that edifies the audience and may provide a generic template on how a sermon should be structured in a particular context so that listeners may gain deeper insights.