Matthew 5

Amplified Ethics

Posted on by Betsy

When I was a young college student studying journalism, we were required to take an upper-level course on Journalistic Ethics. That may give you an indication as to my age, for surely it appears that recent graduates of communications degree programs are no longer required to study it. The cynic in me wonders if more emphasis is being placed on strategies of click-baiting, how to write a misleading lede, and how to pass off fake news entertainment as factual investigative reporting. Is it just me?

Today we are going to look at Jesus’ famous “Sermon on the Mount” in the fifth chapter of Matthew to explore Jesus’ ethics. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what my professors, news people, politicians, or even world leaders think about ethics. It only matters what Jesus thought. Watch for phrases like “but I say to you” and “therefore.” These are indications that Jesus is about to amplify the current understanding and application of what is ethical.

He begins with the standard Ten Commandment statement on the subject of murder:

Matthew 5 (Common English Bible)

21 “You have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago, Don’t commit murder, and all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment.

This understanding is completely in line with the sixth commandment, “thou shalt not kill.” But watch where Jesus takes it next:

22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgment. If they say to their brother or sister, ‘You idiot,’ they will be in danger of being condemned by the governing council. And if they say, ‘You fool,’ they will be in danger of fiery hell. 

Jesus is warning about the deadly effects of anger, name-calling, and put-downs. By associating these things with murder, he is raising the bar on our understanding of killing. Can you kill someone’s self-esteem with a derogatory remark? You bet. Can you choke the life out of someone’s joy by spewing out your anger at them? You know you can, and you probably have.

Next, Jesus pivots to forgiveness and reconciliation. Here he raises the bar even higher by stating that you should not come to the altar until you make things right with everyone who has something against you. The fact that the pews are filled every Sunday may be an indication that we don’t take this literally, for surely our churches would be empty if this was a requirement of admission:

23 Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift at the altar and go. First make things right with your brother or sister and then come back and offer your gift. 

Then Jesus gives guidance about how to settle disputes quickly in fair and civil terms, rather than drag grievances through the court.

25 Be sure to make friends quickly with your opponents while you are with them on the way to court. Otherwise, they will haul you before the judge, the judge will turn you over to the officer of the court, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 I say to you in all seriousness that you won’t get out of there until you’ve paid the very last penny.

Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:26 to not let the sun go down on our wrath. Jesus urges us to quickly settle our disputes so that they don’t fester and grow, and so that we can move past them and get on with things. In a beautiful figure of speech, he likens a drawn-out dispute to being in prison, where you realize that you’ve become jailed because you didn’t resolve an issue before it was too late. This is also an illusion to the kind of eternity that we subject ourselves to when we refuse to deal swiftly with an adversary.

We will deal with the rest of this portion of the Sermon on the Mount in our next devotional, but for now, consider this: are you guilty of “murder” in Jesus’ definition? Are you killing someone’s joy or hope? Are you harboring a grudge as you worship and pray? Have you let a falling out go on for too long?

According Jesus’ ethics, these things have changed.

So must you.

Don’t Let the Sun Go Down by Carol Riggin

Prayers for Afghanistan

Posted on by Betsy

The scenes and pictures coming from Afghanistan are horrific. The violence, the deaths, the frantic people trying to escape, the fear, the devastation…Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers. When something this shocking happens, it is time to pray. When something this heartbreaking is continuing for days on end, it is time to go to the Lord and immerse ourselves in his presence.

As I have been thinking and praying about these events over the last few days, my mind keeps returning to Jesus’ words to the crowds of people who gathered on a hillside to hear him teach. We know this as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus acknowledged the people that nobody ever sees, and spoke directly to them in the Beatitudes. The poor in spirit, the ones who were grieving, the meek, the persecuted…all of the broken people who were the ones that he loved and cared about, even unto death:


Matthew 5 (New International Version)

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the Afghan people, who are poor in spirit.

Blessed are the U.S. Military families who mourn.

Blessed are the meek women and children, oppressed by a system that gives them no status or protection.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness as they flee.

Blessed are the merciful, who lend aid at their own peril.

Blessed are the pure in heart, who see God all too soon.

Blessed are the peacemakers, attempting diplomacy in a system of terrorism.

Blessed are those who are persecuted. May they find freedom.

Pray with me:

Loving and Gracious God, we lift up the people in Afghanistan and pray for their safety and well being as the forces against them move with a strong and mighty arm. We pray that you would shield them from evil and protect them from harm. Watch over our military, who have placed themselves in harms way as they fight for the cause of freedom. Lord, help those who have fled and now find themselves to be refugees in foreign lands. We pray that the world would acknowledge the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding and rush to their aid. We pray for the women and children. And we pray for our government leaders, that they would be strengthened and emboldened to act swiftly and securely to bring this situation to an end. AMEN

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. “All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish. Though you search for your enemies, you will not find them. Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all. (Isaiah 41:10-12)

Do Not Be Dismayed by Victor Miles

No Time for Goodbye

Posted on by Betsy

A girl I love is a few months away from graduating from High School. We met a few weeks ago in the “before-time” at a local coffee shop and talked about colleges, scholarships, growing up, and life in general. The sun illuminated her strawberry blond hair as we sat at an outside table with not a care in the world. As I said, it was in The Before.

Now that we have arrived in The After, I can only see pictures of her on FaceBook. She just had her senior pictures taken. What I probably won’t get to see is her dressed in a cap and gown walking across the stage. I won’t see a hundred shots of her in her prom dress with her boyfriend in a matching tie. I won’t see beach pictures of her running in the waves on a rare day off from her summer restaurant job. And we had no time to say goodbye.

Teachers who miraculously scrambled to put their lessons online with one day‘s notice are just now allowing themselves to grieve the loss of being with their kids in person. Healthcare workers are having to quarantine themselves in their garages or at the hospital for fear of infecting their children at the end of work. My Alma Mater just announced that Spring Semester is over. The students moved out weeks ago, thinking they would be back after an extended Spring Break. Now it’s over, don’t come back. It was so unexpected, they had no time for goodbyes.

I miss my congregation so much it stings my eyes every time I think of them. I miss Miss Jean’s sweet bent-over hug. I miss Bonnie’s grin. I miss Jonny’s laughter. I MISS SINGING TOGETHER. God, I miss singing together. I miss them all. I didn’t know that the last time I saw them would be the last time I would see them. No time for goodbye.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus reminds us that we are blessed when we mourn:

Matthew 5 (The Message)

3 “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

4 “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

5 “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

6 “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

When everything you know and love gets stripped away, there is God. For such a time as this, we were made to seek him out for comfort and companionship. Blessings WILL happen in The After.

7 “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.

8 “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

This is especially poignant for The After. Being stuck inside allows us to get our inside world put right.

9 “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

The After is a time of no goodbyes, but also a time of saying hello to a whole new set of blessings we never would have discovered in The Before. God is with us. We are with each other.

And the good news is, we are one day closer to the end of this thing. Thanks be to God.

One Day Closer by Wende Pritchard

I SAID dNO!

Posted on by Betsy

Nora Jean is one feisty chick. She comes by it honestly, as she is the progeny of a whole line of feisty chicks. Take her grandmothers, for instance. A super-energized nurse who raised three kids while her husband flew for the Navy, and then the airlines. The other grandmother is a super-energized chick pastor, who raised two kids while her husband flew for the Navy, and then the airlines. (That is not a typo. Both grandfathers are Navy/Airline pilots. Imagine the odds of THAT happening!)

And then there is her mother, the feistiest of the feisty-clan. SHE kicked cancer, danced in a 46-hour marathon 9 months after her last chemo, got two degrees, and is raising three kids while her husband flies for the Navy….oh Nora Jean, you are surrounded.

So it is absolutely no surprise that at age two, Nora J can express herself with great clarity. They took her and her less-feisty brothers to a restaurant called The T-Rex Cafe. T-Rex is a bigger-than-life venue of pre-historic trees and vines, loud animal noises, dark spaces, and oh, yes…a ginormous T-Rex and his friends. Nope, said Nora. Nope, nope, nope, and if you didn’t get my meaning, let my shrieking do the talkin’. So without even sitting down, they exited.

Oh, but wait! Nearby is the much gentler Rain Forest Cafe, with quiet waterfalls, monkey sounds, and lush foliage. So in they went, and out they came. The same dark, immersive environment was also not to Nora’s liking, and the volume of nonononononono was actually heard in the gift shop next door.

As her mother took her outside to see if a little explanation and cajoling might help, Nora took her mother’s face in her hands, looked her in the eye, and said, “I SAID dNO.”

Matthew 5 (The Message)

33-37 “And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.

Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no, like a boss two-year-old!

It is interesting to see how The Message applies this to religious talk. How many times do you say to someone, “I will pray for you,” and then never do? Peterson calls that “religious lace.” In other words, we can see right through it. Worse, so can God.

I think there is a lot of smoke-screen-religious-speech happening right now. I would hazard a guess that there has always been a lot of it, if Jesus was addressing it over 2,000 years ago, calling it an issue that is “embedded deep in our traditions.“

We should strive for clear, accurate communication that is free of manipulative words that we use just to get our own way. Let us stick with the truth, and stop trying to making ourselves sound more religious with unnecessary embellishments. God calls us to mean what we say, and say what we mean.

Let your dNO be dNO.

My dNO means dNO.