Rev. Gale Watkins, Pastor

From recent Sundays at Westminster: 

March 30, 2025

Matthew 7:7-12 (New International Version)

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Ask and it will be given to you.

We do ask because asking is part of life. 

For instance, before we had cell phones with map programs, people would stop to ask a local person for directions.

That’s asking.

Today, when we get a bill in the mail that is puzzling, we call the company to ask them what is going on.

That’s asking too.

We ask for help all the tine, but we all have our limits.

Asking, when it doesn’t go well, can turn into demanding.

Talking calmly can give way to yelling.

But if all goes well, we ask and what we need is given to us. 

Ask and it will be given.

Asking is a constant part of life.

Everyone is an asker.

Adults ask for help. 

Children especially ask their parents for all sorts of things.

It’s part of growing up.

Asking, and receiving, is simple but it can get complicated.

It’s complicated if you don’t fully trust the other person.

The person on the phone doesn’t seem to care or doesn’t strike you as being competent. 

Trust evaporates, which can even prompt you to hang up on them.

So there is the complication of trustworthiness, or the lack of it.

Another complication is more internal.

We don’t want to be chronic complainers.

We’ve seen people who are so demanding that they are a source of trouble for everyone, and we don’t want to go down that road.

Asking is part of life.

Complications like these are also part of life.

Complications like these can be especially troublesome if we bring them into our relationship to God.

Sometimes, we don’t ask God for the help we need.

Perhaps we’re not sure about the character of God.

Can God be trusted?

Or perhaps we don’t want to be a nuisance.

We don’t want to be whiners. 

We’ve seen how some people don’t only ask for help, they complain and complain and then complain some more. 

We don’t want to be treating God that way. 

We don’t want to turn God into a vending machine!

You will occasionally hear someone make the point that God has bigger things to be concerned with than my little problem.

God is concerned with nations and weather patterns and other matters that are beyond us. So, to be polite, we hesitate to ask God for anything. 

The big question is what God is really like. 

If God is limited, and has to focus on global matters only, then it makes perfect sense to hold back from adding to God’s long list of concerns.

So, in practice we don’t always do what Jesus tells us to do.

Jesus, though, is very clear in his teaching.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 

This is the life that Jesus has in mind for us.


To encourage us to do what he says, Jesus observes that mothers and fathers are in the habit of giving good gifts to their children.

If that is so, how much more will our Father in heaven give his children good gifts.

These words how much more tell us the most important truth, that God is good.

This is still hard for us because we don’t like to be dependent, and Jesus is telling us that we never stop being dependent on the goodness of God.

We ask people for things all the time. 

In some cases, we are obliged to keep asking.

We’ll call the customer service number two or three times if we have to! 

Persistence has its place 

You’ve heard the saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease?

With God, though, it’s a different story. 

We persist, not to get God to take us seriously, but to remind ourselves that God is good.

So, keep on asking! 

But don’t stop there. 

Jesus is wanting us to look to God and also to look at our neighbors. 

Put yourself in the place of the other person.

There is a flow between asking God for what we need and doing for others what we would have them do for us. 

When we have the habit of asking for what we need, and then discover God’s goodness and generosity toward us, that changes us.

We find that we want to share good gifts with others. 

We’re able to put ourselves in the place of our neighbor. 

We’re always asking God for what we need.

We’re not all that different from young children who ask their parents for what they need.

We have a Father in heaven who loves to give good gifts.

And we’ll find ourselves in turn giving good gifts to the people around us.

Scripture and sermon excerpt from March 23, 2025

Matthew 7:1-6 (Common English Bible)

Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. 2 You’ll receive the same judgment you give. Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you. 3 Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother or sister, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when there’s a log in your eye? 5 You deceive yourself! First take the log out of your eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s or sister’s eye. 6 Don’t give holy things to dogs, and don’t throw your pearls in front of pigs. They will stomp on the pearls, then turn around and attack you.

It’s a great thing to be called by Jesus to belong to him.

We’re not alone.

We belong to a community, and this itself is a great gift.

So many people today have no one. They’re trying to make it on their own.

We Christians benefit from knowing some of Jesus’ other disciples.

We are in fact family. We are brothers and sisters.

This is great news, but this family, like every other family, is not perfect.

Issues come up that make family life difficult.

One of these issues is found in this part of Jesus’ teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount.

He tells his disciples, Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. You’ll receive the same judgment you give. Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you.

Jesus is talking about something that is widespread today, in the church and in the wider culture.

We do judge one another. And what goes around comes around. 

Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you.

Jesus is very clear: Don’t judge.

It sounds simple and clear.

Some people who hear these words of Jesus think that he is prohibiting judgment of any kind. Is that even possible?

How can you have a basketball game without an official making a judgment on whether it was or wasn’t a personal foul?

How can a police officer decide whether or not to write a ticket if that officer can’t judge the speed of the car compared to the posted speed limit? 

We make all sorts of judgments all day long.

What, then, is Jesus concerned about? What exactly is he telling us not to do?

What is this judging that threatens the life of the Christian community?

My mentor, Bob Appleby, said that Jesus is talking about something that goes deeper than the judging that makes life possible. He said, “When we judge, we move beyond the behavior to the motives and worth of the person. I’m saying that I’m better than the other person.”

Earl Palmer says that the judging that Jesus is warning us about and prohibiting is actually saying the last word about someone else. “Jesus is thereby teaching that we are not God and we never will be. Only God is able to judge perfectly, because he alone is God, the judge of all the earth.”

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We may hear these words of Jesus about the danger of judging one another, agree with him, and conclude that we must therefore cease evaluating other disciples altogether. 

Jesus, however, has something better in mind, something that goes beyond isolation.

He proposes that we do something that is very unnatural and very unusual in our world.

He wants us to take a close look at ourselves, make necessary changes, and then provide help to our brothers and sisters.

He wants us to be the sort of people who are in a position to be truly helpful, which is only possible when we are honest about our own lives.

This is what his far-fetched, cartoon-like story about the splinter and the log is getting at.

Something tiny, if it gets in your eye, can make it extremely difficult to see.

Imagine, then, a truly massive object somehow getting lodged in your eye.

It will be impossible to see anything clearly, much less a tiny splinter that has found its way into the eye of your Christian brother or sister.

Jesus is teaching us that Christians will aim to help fellow believers. 

In order to help, we first need help for ourselves.

Jesus wants his people to form a community in which we help one another without pronouncing judgment on one another.

He wants us to be sensitive, which is the only way to remove a tiny object from another person’s eye.

He wants us to be sensitive to the timing and the situation of the other person. 

Timing is important. 

What we say to our brother or sister matters.

How we say it and when we say it is also important. 

That, I think, is the reason that Jesus adds his strange-sounding comment about dogs and pigs.

Don’t give holy things to dogs, and don’t throw your pearls in front of pigs.

What is Jesus getting at? Some of our best insights, pearls of wisdom we hope, will do no good if the other person is not ready to hear. I agree with Dallas Willard that Jesus is continuing to instruct us on how to treat our fellow Christians. He says, “Jesus is not suggesting that certain classes of people are to be viewed as pigs or dogs. … It is not worthiness that is in question here at all, but helpfulness. Pigs cannot digest pearls, cannot nourish themselves upon them.”

Jesus has graciously invited us to be with him as his disciples.

He had graciously brought us together as a community.

We live in a world where true community is hard to come by.

So often, we don’t merely disagree with what someone says or does.

We judge.

Judgment of other people’s motives and even worth is an epidemic in our land.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is summoning us to a better way. 

He wants his people to be a community in which we help one another without pronouncing judgment on one another.

When we recognize our own need and receive the Lord’s healing touch by which he removes even huge logs from our eyes, then we can see clearly enough to be truly helpful to our Christian brothers and sisters. 

May it be so!

March 16 Scripture and sermon excerpt:

Matthew 6:25-34 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

My topic today is worry.

Lots of people today are worried.

Any of us could come up with a long list of things that people, including ourselves, worry about.

We all seem to worry about something.

Worry is huge now, but it’s nothing new.

Long ago, Mark Twain said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

That’s worry for you!

Way before Mark Twain came along, Jesus spoke to those who had joined him about a lot of things, and one of those things was worry.

It was and is great to be with Jesus as one of his disciples.

Becoming a follower of Jesus is the best move you can make.

For those who were there in the early days, it was a whole new world.

God’s kingdom had drawn near in Jesus, and they were included.

So life is good. 

But it’s not entirely good.

There are some hazards along the way.

One of the common hazards for them, and for us, is worry.

It’s Mark Twain all over again.

We have a lot of worries. 

Even those things that never happen can cause us a lot of trouble and suck up our energy.

So Jesus gives those first disciples, and ourselves, some help.

Help is needed because worry can feed on itself and take over our lives.

Jesus knows us well enough to instruct us, to help us with our habit of worrying.

In his instruction, he tells us about ourselves, and he tells us about God.

Concerning ourselves, he says that we matter.

This is a very important teaching.

Jesus says that we matter greatly.

Other things matter too, including the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.

But, says Jesus, we matter more than they.

There are times when we don’t really believe this.

If we aren’t sure that we really matter, our anxiety will increase.

So let’s cling to that word more that Jesus uses over and over. 

We are even more valuable than the birds and the flowers that God also loves.

Jesus goes on to tell us something else about ourselves, and this is unsettling to hear.

You may even take it as Jesus making fun of us. 

He calls us you of little faith.

That’s better than being of no faith, I suppose, but when your faith is tiny, that opens the way for worry to grow and to take over.

So Jesus says that we worry so much because our faith in God is microscopic.

This leads to the second matter that Jesus addresses, and that is the nature of God.

When we are little faith people, we don’t have a very high view of God.

We aren’t sure that God really is invested in our well-being.

If God is not trustworthy, not really caring, then all we’re left to do is let worry have its way.

The most powerful part of Jesus’ teaching, then, concerns the goodness of God.

That’s what makes Jesus’ comments about the birds and the flowers so important. 

The most powerful antidote to a life of constant worry is the conviction that God is good.

God is personally invested in our well-being.

This is the reason that Jesus tells his disciples that God, the Creator of everything, is also your heavenly Father.

God is our heavenly Father.

God cares about and provides for birds and flowers.

If God takes such good care of the birds and the flowers, how much more will God take care of human worrywarts! 

So Jesus has told us about ourselves, and he has told us about God.

If we agree with Jesus on who we are and who God is, then we will also agree with him that worrying is not helpful.

He puts it in the form of a question that may make you chuckle.

Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?  

Any takers?

Jesus’ question makes the point that worrying is not helpful, and could in fact do us harm.

Maybe it will actually subtract from our span of life!

Our worrying is a problem because, as Mark Twain’s saying shows, it focuses so much on things that haven’t happened..

It revolves around what may or may not take place.

Thus, Jesus wants to give us a better way to live.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

If we agree with Jesus on who are and who God is, we will live, as we like to say, one day at a time.

We’ll be more attuned to what is happening today.

In Jesus, God’s kingdom and a new form of rightness have come near,

Assured that we matter to God, and are even more valuable than the birds and the flowers, we can live without worry dominating our lives.

We can instead live as Jesus calls us to live.

Jesus invites us: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

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March 2, 2025 Scripture and sermon excerpt

Matthew 6:7-15 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray, then, in this way:

Our Father in heaven,

may your name be revered as holy.

May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread. 

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. 

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,  but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Jesus offers us, his followers, a model prayer. 

We call it the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s just about the most commonly spoken prayer there is.

When something is familiar, though, it can become too familiar, so familiar that we say the words without thinking about what they mean.

Let’s pay close attention, then, to this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, so that it will help us live this new life that Jesus offers.

This model prayer that Jesus gives us is made up of requests only.

Over and over, we’re asking God for something.

Of course, before we ask for anything, Jesus wants us to be clear about who we’re addressing.

So he has us begin, Our Father in heaven.

After we’ve addressed God, we have three requests that have been called you-petitions.

We’re asking our Father to act on God’s own concerns, God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will.

Dallas Willard says that these petitions concern God’s position in the human realm.

For instance, Let your name be sanctified expresses our desire for God’s name to be uniquely respected, not dragged through the mud.

We want people far and wide to recognize who God is.

I view these first three requests as a sort of protest.

When we call for God’s name to be exalted, God’s kingdom to come, and God’s will to be done, we’re saying that we are not content with the way things are.

We know that heaven is the realm in which God’s will is done fully.

For us, though, it’s not good enough for God’s will to be done in heaven.

We want this for the world we inhabit!

The first half of the Lord’s Prayer is our cry for things to be different.

We are embracing God’s own concerns and longing for this world and its people to be transformed.

Jesus then gives us three additional requests in the second half of this model prayer.

Robert Guelich call them the we-petitions because we’re now considering our own life.

The first of these is about our bodily needs, summed up as daily bread.

Jesus encourages us to ask our Father in heaven today for what we need today. 

We have many needs.

We have physical needs, we have relational needs, we have moral needs.

All of them are embraced by the petitions that Jesus includes in this prayer.

For the whole range of our lives, all of these different realms, we cry out for help.

John Stott puts it like this: “In the second half of the Lord’s Prayer … we turn from God’s affairs to our own. Having expressed our burning concern for his glory, we now express our humble dependence on his grace.”

In this prayer, Jesus encourages us to start with God, then move to ourselves.

Of course we pray for our own needs.

But when we begin with our great concern for God’s reputation and God’s will, that helps us see our own concerns in a new way.

N.T. Wright likens this prayer to a framework.

When you’re building a house, the framework isn’t the whole thing, but it gives form and direction to everything that you add, all of the finishing touches that make that house a home. 

Here, then, is a gift from the Lord Jesus himself, a model prayer that can be a framework for all of our praying.

It’s a prayer that we make our own.

We can literally say the words given to us by Jesus when we meet together.

It’s good to pray the Lord’s Prayer together.

But it’s just as good to adapt it to our own joys and concerns, to let this be a helpful framework for a whole life of prayer.

Jesus wants us who have begun to follow him to be people who pray, and he’s given us teaching and a model prayer to help us follow his lead. 

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February 23 Scripture and sermon

Psalm 63:1-8 (New International Version)

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land

where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 

I will praise you as long as I live, 

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;

with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you;

I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help,

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

I cling to you; your right hand upholds me.

Matthew 6:1-6 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

 2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 

 5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” 

If you look around and pay close attention to what is around you, you will notice that Phoenix has a lot of signs.

Streets signs, Business signs. All sorts of signs.

In our neighborhood, I see signs that say Beware.

Beware of dog!

This is a warning sign, and when you think about all the signs that are around us, you realize that a fair number of them are warning us about some sort of danger.

It may be a dog that bites, or it may Do Not Enter because a car could be speeding in your direction, or it may be Warning: High Voltage!

Warning signs are so common that we may stop noticing them, but paying attention and acting accordingly could save your life.

Beware appears on signs that are posted to keep us safe. 

That same word Beware is spoken by Jesus to his disciples.

Beware because there is danger.

Yes, we know that the world can be a dangerous place.

But in this case, Jesus’ Beware warns us not about dangers out there but about the world within.

Did you realize that when we walk in the way of Jesus, there is danger, and that not all danger is out there?

Beware! There is danger within.

Jesus says what he says because he knows us so well.

He knows that there are things to beware of that are so common and seem so harmless that we can get into trouble without even realizing the danger we’re in.

Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

That is Jesus’ warning.

Some dangers are so obvious that you wonder why there is even the need for a sign.

Slippery when wet. Doesn’t everyone know that? Maybe, maybe not.

Steep cliff. Isn’t that one obvious?

But in this case of danger within, Jesus is warning us about something that comes so naturally to us that it’s second nature.

We are constantly aware, whatever we’re doing, of who is in the vicinity and who may be  paying attention.

We are making impressions on each other all the time. It’s part of life.

We notice what other people are doing. 

Other people notice what we’re doing. It can’t be helped.

What, then, is the big deal?

Jesus says that in our life with God, when we do the things that those who are serious about God like to do, we may actually be playing to the audience so much that God himself is an afterthought.

Some who have walked this path before us coined the term an audience of One. 

The One is none other than God.

These disciples mean to say that they’re interested in pleasing God, even if other people are not paying any attention to us at all, or even if they see us but are plainly unimpressed.

God sees us, and that is what matters.

But it’s very difficult for us.

We like to be noticed. 

We like to be admired.

It’s not easy to live with an audience of One. 

So there is danger in Christian life.

No wonder Jesus begins his teaching on this matter with Beware.

In his teaching, Jesus talks to his followers about rewards, two different kinds of reward.

The first possible reward that he identifies is a reward you can have right now.

It’s the reward of being seen by others, of being noticed and appreciated.

Jesus says that when we’re after that reward, and when it comes our way, we’ve been paid in full.

That’s all the reward you’re going to get.

You’ve been paid in full.

But there is another reward that Jesus identifies.

This one is the reward that comes from God, our audience of One.

However, this reward will not come to us when we’ve set our hearts on the first reward, the reward of being noticed by human observers.

So it is that Jesus speaks to us about these two different rewards.

Jesus is showing us that there is a reward that we receive when we do good things, such as giving money and praying, in the right way. 

You can also do these things in the wrong way, which Jesus describes graphically.

He shows that you can give money and even say your prayers in a way that blocks the spiritual benefit that would otherwise accompany them.

Jesus teaches his disciples by drawing some pictures, such as someone literally tooting his own horn.

This cartoon-like picture brings Jesus’ warning home to his disciples.

Jesus also gives them some other pictures to show us how to give and how to pray in a way that makes sense.

Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

That is, don’t talk constantly to yourself about how great you are.

Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.

Wherever we are, we can pray as though we’re hidden away, and nobody knows where we’ve gotten to.

Even if you’re out of sight, even if no one even knows that you pray, God knows what you are up to. 

People around us may be able to see what we’re doing, but God’s vision is better.

God sees what we’re doing wherever we are. God sees in secret. 

Even if the people who know us wonder where we’ve gone, that is not a problem for God.

Jesus is giving us a better way to live, a better way to give and a better way to pray.

His teaching lines up with what we find in one of the Psalms, Psalm 63.

There is no pretense here, no playing to the crowd.

It’s all about God.

Earnestly I seek you.I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

I cling to you.

There is no phoniness here. 

Here is sincerity. Here is the approach that makes sense. 

This is vastly superior to what Jesus sees in the hypocrites of the day.

There is also a fitting reward in Psalm 63.  

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.

Yes, there is a reward in Christian life. 

It’s better than the applause of other people.

Its the reward of being with the Lord, and of the Lord being with us, keeping company with the Lord all the time.

What could be better than that?

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Scripture and sermon from February 16, 2025

Matthew 5:38-48 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Jesus has a vision for those who have joined with him as his followers, people like ourselves.

He wants us to live a new kind of life.

We are part of the coming Kingdom, God’s Kingdom..

This Kingdom is different from the surrounding world.

It’s a new and better life that Jesus has in mind for us.

But, in order for us to live as Jesus wants us to live, we need help, lots of help.

Help has come in the teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount.

We need encouragement and instruction in so many different areas of life.

One of these areas is the realm of relationships.

Now, relationships are a gift.

In fact, the biblical story of the creation of the man and the woman includes the Lord God saying, It is not good for the man to be alone.

We thrive when we have one another.

But, you will tell me, the people I know are not that easy to get along with.

They have issues, and sometime we wonder if it’s worth it.

Jesus knows how life works. He knows that his disciples are going to have trouble unless he gives them some help in the form of a whole new vision, something better than what usually happens.

There are two major relationship crises that Jesus identifies, retaliation and hatred.

Living in 2025, we know all about both of these.

Retaliation and hatred are easy to find.

The saying, An eye for an eye, was meant originally to put the brakes on the cycle of violence.

Once hostilities commence, the level of harm done tends to increase.

This provision in the law was given as a safeguard.

Don’t overdo it!

It was meant to save lives, but like a lot of good ideas, it fell short.

The reasons is that conflict seems to have a life of its own.

One thing leads to the next, and before long, there is bloodshed.

Of course, in 2025, we have found other ways to retaliate.

We can cause damage to the person who has harmed us without doing something that will land us in jail. 

We have discovered new weapons that are very convenient and effective.

Now you can be unfriended or ghosted.

So it is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The other crisis that Jesus identifies is hatred of enemies.

Highly respected religious leaders turned to the Bible, where it says, You shall love your neighbor.

That sounded great, but they thought it would be even better to add a little something to complete the thought.

So they made what seemed like a sensible addition to the biblical text, And hate your enemy.

People must have eaten that up!

There is nothing more satisfying than finding new and more effective ways to humiliate the enemy you hate.

I’ve heard of social scientific studies, conducted recently, that reached the conclusion that in our politics, it’s no longer good enough for our side to win.

We now want to destroy the other side.

A shocking number of those polled say that there comes a time when politically-motivated violence is justified.

When Jesus was speaking, those who loved the law added something that wasn’t there because, while there are people we love to love, there are others that we love to hate.

The hatred of enemies that Jesus observed in the first century seems to have made its way into the twenty-first century.

Jesus has come, carrying a vision for his friends that is out of the ordinary.
Non-retaliation! Can you believe it?

Love for enemies! Can you believe it?

He expects us, his disciples, to practice the greatest act of love, which is prayer, on behalf of the very people who would would be glad to hear that we have suffered a major accident.

We naturally say to Jesus, this is impossible!

Life doesn’t work like that.

We have to be realistic.

I expect that Jesus would agree up to a point.

What he has in mind is impossible if it depends entirely on our own energy.

We’re caught up in the way of the world around us, and we’re shaped by our own personal history. Left to our own devices, we will join everyone else in escalating conflict and enthusiastically hating identified enemies.

We benefit from Jesus’ challenge to be different.

Having the challenge before us, impossible though it is to meet, is a step in the right direction.

But Jesus offers us more than that, and this is the good news I want to offer in my sermon.
He tells us about God!

Your Father in heaven, he tells his disciples, gives good things to everyone, the evil and the good.

It’s exactly what we read in the Bible, in places like Psalm 145, which says, The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.

Here is the really good news that makes Jesus’ teaching on these difficult realms of life encouraging rather than discouraging.

God, our Father in heaven, has loved us, even us.

As we receive that love, we are transformed, so that we find ourselves doing strange things, such as praying for people who despise us, or not getting even with the other person, the one Jesus dares to call evildoer, when we have the opportunity.

Jesus has a compelling vision for us. He wants us to be different from the rest of the world, different from what we used to be.

Teaching us, he uses the word more.

If you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?

He goes even further than that when he says, be perfect.

Ordinarily, that would be the most discouraging thing ever.

We would be defeated completely.

But in the context of his teaching, he’s telling us that our heavenly Father is kind and generous to everyone.

I found a helpful comment on this saying made by Dale Bruner: The kind of perfection to which Matthew’s Jesus refers, as the context shows, is the perfection of mercy, of wide- and whole-heartedness, not the “high” perfection we associate with impeccability.

You see, when we discover that God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous, including ourselves, that works a change in us.

If we’ve been loved so lavishly by the Lord who is good to all, even us, our hearts will be transformed.

And then Jesus’ vision for us to live a new kind of life will come about, not because we grit our teeth and try with all our might to change, but because we have discovered and received the goodness of God, which changes us for the better, and which we are happy to share.

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Scripture and sermon of February 9, 2025

Psalm 141:1-4 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

I call upon you, O Lord; come quickly to me;

give ear to my voice when I call to you.

Let my prayer be counted as incense before you

and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.

Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord;

keep watch over the door of my lips.

Do not turn my heart to any evil,

to busy myself with wicked deeds

in company with those who work iniquity;

do not let me eat of their delicacies.

Matthew 5:33-37 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ 34 But I say to you: Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.” 

Today, we come to a part of the Sermon on the Mount that doesn’t seem to have the same weight or urgency as other parts.

Oaths? Is that really worth worrying about?

Oaths seem to us a formality, a small nuisance you have to put up with.

It’s signing your name below the fine print, the terms and conditions that no one actually reads.

For some reason, Jesus thought that his disciples needed to hear his teaching about oaths.

At the time when Jesus was speaking to his friends, oaths were a big deal.

Formulas were becoming more and more elaborate.

The reason that oaths were popular was that people didn’t always tell the truth.

When you can’t trust the other person to say what they mean and mean what they, it’s hard for a community to function.

So you try to convince people that you really are telling the truth by swearing an oath.

It’s a serious issue that Jesus is addressing. 

Even devout people found ways to escape the demands of truthfulness.

They knew that it’s a serious matter to misuse the name of God.

That’s clear enough in the Ten Commandments.

You don’t want to renege on a promise you make in God’s name, because God just might strike you dead. 

So prominent leaders counseled people to keep from saying God in your oath.

It sounds like a great arrangement.

The problem, though, is that it didn’t make people tell the truth.

You can’t trust people, even if they do utter a fine-sounding oath.

Jesus knows that his disciples will have to make their way in a mixed-up world.

I wonder if we too have to make our way in a mixed-up world.

Can you believe everything you hear?

The check is in the mail! Really?

Don’t worry about a thing because we’ll take care of you! Really?

You can count on me! Really?

After you’ve been disappointed again and again, you don’t know what to believe, or who to believe.

Business relationships, for a company or for an individual, are complicated by the uncertainty of our words.

Promises are not always kept.

So we try different strategies to make life work better.

We may not have the elaborate oaths that Jesus was talking about, but we do have plenty of safeguards in place, and still, it’s a mixed-up world that we inhabit.

Jesus has a vision for his disciples.

They will be different.

You won’t have to pin them down to be sure that they aren’t dodging the truth, because they are truthful all the time.

No oath is necessary for them.

When these people who have been keeping company with Jesus say Yes, that is exactly what they mean.

Their speech has been shaped by Jesus.

You see, Jesus is the very embodiment of truth-telling.

It’s not that these disciples are inherently better than everyone else. 

It’s their association with Jesus that makes the difference. 

For us who follow Jesus as our Lord, the oath and the signature aren’t necessary.

The reason is that our Yes means Yes, and our No means No.

Jesus’ vision for us is that we are truthful all the time.

This makes sense because our Lord is the very ideal of truthfulness and trustworthiness.

However, shaped by a world in which everything is so murky, and influenced as we are by our old habits, we may have a long journey ahead.

To make this journey, it will help if turn to a prayer found in the Bible,

It will be good to make it our own.

This prayer comes from Psalm 141, and goes like this: Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.

We need help with our speaking, and thus we pray.

I suspect that this is a prayer that God loves to hear, and answer.

The God whose Word is true wants us to people people who say what we mean and mean what we say.