398 Mountain-tops and Valleys

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Mountain-tops and Valleys”, originally shared on February 12, 2026. It was the 398^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Which are better places to be, on mountain-tops or in valleys? Each have their benefits, but only one has changed the world. Today, we’re going to find out which.

   Football season is over. The Super Bowl championship game was played last Sunday. Between 125 and 130 million people are said to have seen it. Do you remember who won? Probably, but by next month I’m guessing it’s going to be a fading memory. In six months, forgotten.

   If your team won, you are probably still having a mountain-top experience.

   If your team didn’t win, well, researchers have said that the shock can take 3 days to wear off, while the accompanying depression can take months to go away. That’s a valley experience.

   But, for many the game itself was almost irrelevant.

   It was all about the half-time show for some. I myself have been increasingly put-off, though, by the spectacle of the Super Bowl bordering on religion (and sometimes crossing the border) including the half-time show that was particularly crude and offensive this year, while managing at the same time to be boring.

   For others, it was about the food! Super Bowl Sunday is a “cheat day” for people who are watching their diets. It’s a feast, a mountain-top experience.

   So, I imagine, many people awoke the next day in an emotional valley, like the speaker in a portion of the poem “For the Time Being” about a large family gathering after the Christmas holiday celebration, by English poet W.H. Auden,

“There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers.” 

   Most people are much better at recognizing the valleys of this life than the mountain-top experiences. And maybe that’s not so unusual.

   Something truly extraordinary did take place in an event described in the Bible as the Transfiguration of Our Lord, recorded in the Gospel reading that will be shared in most churches all over the world this coming Sunday, Matthew 17:1-9, but not many saw it for the mountain-top experience that it was at the time.

   Today, it’s common to describe anything we like as “awesome”.

   Did some do a small favor for you? That’s awesome! How were your French fries? They were awesome! How was the game? It was awesome!

   But was it? Awesome? Was it a transcendent experience that filled you with awe?

   “Awesome” means to be filled with awe, to be extremely impressive or to be daunting, inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.

   So, no, probably not.

   Can we recognize “awesome” when we see it anymore? Or have we become so focused on our own immediate sensations, on meeting our own needs and expectations, that we can’t?

   Today’s Gospel reading takes place on a literal mountain-top. It describes an event that transcended time, in which Jesus revealed himself in his heavenly glory to three of his disciples. It was truly awesome! And then, as they all came off the mountain to go down to the valley, Jesus told them not to tell anyone!

   What?

   Jesus took three of his first and closest disciples to “a high mountain”, by themselves, and gave them a vision of eternity. We see it in Matthew 17:1-9. It begins with verses 1-2,

   ¹Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ²And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

   Peter had just confessed his faith in Jesus six days earlier. He had said it out loud in front of God and everybody. It was the first time anyone had said, in Jesus’ presence, what the others had only been thinking, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter confessed that Jesus was the one that they had been waiting 1,000 years for, and that Jesus was God.

   “Six days” is also how Genesis describes God’s Creation of everything that exists out of nothing as an act of His will. The creative hand of God is about to be revealed again six days after the confession of St. Peter.

   Jesus is transfigured before these disciples, he is revealed to them in his heavenly glory, his face shines like the sun, and his clothes become dazzling white. And as they were still trying to process this, he reveals who he is in his earthly mission, in verses 3-4,

 ³Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. ⁴Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

   Moses was the person through whom God gave the religious Law that defined the life of God’s people. Elijah was the great prophet, a person who spoke with God’s voice. Together they represented the Law and the Prophets, aka what were then known as the Scriptures and are known to us today as the Old Testament.

   Peter, who we already know is often the impulsive one, seems to be still trying to figure out what this all means. He proposes that the three disciples build a housing development there, three dwellings, one for Moses and for Elijah and for Jesus. He wants to keep them there. He wants to preserve the moment.

   Then, before Jesus cans respond, we see the meaning of the Transfiguration in verses 5-8,

 ⁵While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” ⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

   The disciples knew their Bible, and they knew that people don’t enter into the divine presence of God and live. So, the disciples fall down, overcome by fear. And what does Jesus say? “Get up and do not be afraid.” Jesus is fully human being and fully God. When they are in the presence of Jesus, they are in the presence of God, yet Jesus calms their fear.

   It’s been said that the words “don’t be afraid” or “do not be afraid” or “fear not”, or something like them appear 366 times in the Bible, one for every day of the year plus one if there’s a leap year. 😊  I haven’t counted them. 😊, but if that’s true, there’s one for every day of the year. And I do know that God can be counted on.

   The disciples were having a mountain-top experience. They had been told that Jesus was going to suffer and die in the previous chapter, in Matthew 16:21. Now they were being given the big picture so that they could see what it all meant. That’s what mountain-top experiences do.

   The traditional site for the Transfiguration is Mt. Tabor, about 9 miles from Nazareth. It’s not much of a mountain, but it stands out on the plain near Nazareth. I climbed it when I was a student during a semester abroad in college and it’s no big deal. I climbed it in the rain, though, and when I got to the top, the Greek Orthodox monastery there was not taking in tourists. So, I climbed down in the rain. I did not have a mountain-top experience.   

   The three disciples did have a mountain-top experience, but they couldn’t stay on the mountain-top either. Mountain-tops give us a long view, a grand vision, the big picture, but we can’t live there. Nothing grows on mountain tops. Valleys are where the soil is fertile, where things grow and transform. And Jesus and the three disciples came down from the mountain top to walk the path that led to the cross. They walked from the greatest mountain-top to the deepest valley where Jesus gave his life for the transformation into eternal life for all who believe and are baptized, giving us victory over sin, death, and all the forces that defy God.

   Have you been watching the Winter Olympics?

   The athletes have had to struggle to be where they are, many since childhood. Some have endured great personal tragedies, injuries and set-backs, even deaths of those close to them, yet they endured.

   Maybe you saw on the news a couple of years ago that a study of 1,000 people, a pretty good sample, showed that 40% overall, with 60% of men and 20% of women, believed that they were in good enough shape to compete in an Olympic event. Were they all thinking of Curling? Maybe they meant that they could finish an Olympic event. Maybe they were not aware that the Olympics have qualifying standards? Or maybe the study was just a test to identify the delusional. 😊

   The ancient Olympic Games began in 776 B.C. and ended in 393 A.D. They were a big deal and Olympic sports would have been familiar to Paul.

   Athletes didn’t compete for medals, but for a crown of olive or laurel tree leaves. That’s where our expression for “honors” as “laurels” comes from.

   Paul refers to Olympic sports more than once in the New Testament, but I’d just like to highlight one, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27:

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. ²⁵ Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. ²⁶ So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; ²⁷ but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

   Notice that Paul didn’t describe athletic events from the point of view of a spectator, but as a participant.

   It’s like what happens when we worship. We enter into the presence of God. We confess our sins and repent of them, the valleys of our lives.

   We are assured of God’s forgiveness. It’s a mountain-top experience. We hear the Word of God, confess our faith.

   We’re reconciled with God and with each other and we receive the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, we pray, we are blessed, and we are sent into the world to share the Good News of Jesus Christ that we ourselves have first received!

   Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, once reflected on people who go to a worship service and sit there as spectators, as at a movie or a play. They expect to get something. But that’s consumerism, not worship.

   The question to ask, Kierkegaard said, when worship is over is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I do?”

   We live and work like an Olympic athlete in response to what God has given us at the cross: an imperishable crown of forgiveness of sins, and life and salvation.

   How can we respond to the mountain-top of God’s presence in the Word of God and the Sacraments of Holy Communion and Holy Baptism?

   The disciples wanted to build temporary dwellings. The best memorial to God’s saving work, though, is the lives we live in response to the transformational gifts of God, from the inside out.

   And then Jesus makes a very strange request. No. He gives them an order, in verse 9,

 ⁹As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

   Not only does Jesus not want to let the disciples stay on the mountain top, not only does He not want them to bask in God’s affirmation, Jesus does not want the disciples to tell anyone about what had to be the greatest experience in their lives!

   Why? Why not have them tell everyone about this experience. Wouldn’t it validate who Jesus was. Wouldn’t it make his path easier? And theirs?

   No, that’s not how faith works.

   Jesus did lots of miracles, and he had thousands of followers when he was providing free food and medical care. But when that all stopped His “church growth” graph dropped to zero.

   I think that Jesus didn’t want people to believe in Him for the show. I think that He wanted people to receive the gift of faith in Him because of what He had done, the love that he was about to show by giving his life on the cross for the redemption of the world, validated by taking his life back again and rising from the dead.

   I think that He wanted people to see that the only life that lasts is the life that comes from God for the sake of the world.

   This coming Saturday, February 14^th, is the Valentine’s Day holiday, a shortened form of St. Valentine’s Day, a holy day.

   Our culture has long abandoned it as a religious celebration. Today, it celebrates romance. There is some basis for that too, though, in the Christian origin of the “holy day”.

   We have no record of a single historic figure called St. Valentine, but several Christian martyrs named Valentine or Valentinus have similar life and death stories that have combined to provide common ground ever since the late 300’s.

   Those elements include doing secret weddings for Roman soldiers and their fiancés when the Roman empire thought that single men made better soldiers and forbade marriage, imprisonment in a nobleman’s home and the healing of his daughter resulting in the whole household converting to Christianity, being sent to prison as a result and sending the girl a letter saying that he had no regrets which he signed, “Your Valentine”, and being tortured and then decapitated on February 14th.

   Red, the color of St. Valentine’s Day, is the liturgical color for martyrs.

   It is a martyr’s holiday for a saint who healed and loved selflessly, and it was so until the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer connected it with romantic love in the late 1300’s. And that’s how most people in our culture celebrate it today.

   Christians celebrate it as an expression of selfless love, as seen most clearly for us on the cross, a love that is no longer a secret. It is a love so strong that we can’t keep it to ourselves.

   I read a story once about a preacher who had delivered a sermon on the struggle of serving God in the world in the army of the Lord.

   Afterward, a man came out of the worship space to shake the preacher’s hand and said, “I too have served here for many years in the army of the Lord.”

   The preacher said, “Really? I don’t remember seeing you at worship before, or in any of our community activities or ministries.”

   The man leaned forward and whispered, “I’m in the secret service.”

   Don’t be that guy.

   There is no secret for us to keep.

   We live on the “after” side of “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

   We live because of what God has done to reconcile us to God’s self.

   We live mostly in the valleys of life where we are called, equipped, and sent to serve, where things change and grow and are transformed.

   What was once a secret we now proclaim to the people we know and to the world that we do not know but that God does.

   We live on the other side of the Resurrection.

   Jesus has been raised from the dead and because He lives, we shall live also.

   We live to make known what was once a secret to the disciples and to follow Jesus with them down the mountain into our local communities, into our country, and into the world.

397 Bad News Good News

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Bad News Good News”, originally shared on February 5, 2026. It was the 397^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   There is lots of bad news in the world today that’s really bad, but the worst bad news is really good news. How is that possible? Today, we’re going to find out.

   This coming Sunday is the Super Bowl, and, in most homes, it will be the biggest secular holiday of the year. In some homes it will be the biggest holiday of any kind all year.

   Of course, it won’t really be a Super Bowl since the Green Bay packers aren’t in it this year. 😊

   It will be a distraction from all the craziness in the world today, though.

   There are demonstrations going on around the country for various causes. We are organizing a military build-up near Iran. Tariffs are being levied, which raise consumer prices, and then they aren’t, and then they are. Some experts are predicting economic inflation this year, others are sure there will be a recession. There has been beastly weather in the Midwest and the East, while we in Southern California have beach-ly weather and higher temperatures than normal. And does anybody know what’s happening in Venezuela?

   What is going on?

   For most people, the answer depends on which news sources they pay attention to and what presuppositions they bring to the news that filter what they see and hear.

   Erwin Knoll was an American journalist in the mid-20^th century who said, "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge". 😊

   That’s true, isn’t it, at least on a factual level?!

   Have you ever watched a politician’s whole speech and then seen the media’s reporting of it? Have you ever seen a demonstration or a police action and then seen how it’s reported in the news? The event and the report can be very different.

   We say that “seeing is believing”, but is it? Does what we believe show us the world as it is, or the way we think it is, or the way we think it’s supposed to be?

   “Believing is a way of seeing.” can be a statement about illusions or about reality.

   In living life, there are lots of options. 😊  Jesus gives us some answers in his teaching from his Sermon on the Mount in this week’s reading from the Gospels, Matthew 5:13-20.

   I heard a story once about a young Jewish man who went to his Rabbi and said, “Rabbi, how can I live without making mistakes?” The Rabbi said, “Gain experience.” The young man said, “Rabbi, how can I gain experience?” The Rabbi said, “Make mistakes.” But, can we ever make enough mistakes so that we never repeat them?

   I went to a four-year residential college and then to a four-year residential seminary (3 academic, and 1 internship years, plus a summer of clinical training), and lots of continuing education. Here are the seven most important things I learned about learning how to live, which cost me a lot of time and money, and I will pass them on to you for free!

1.       “ABL”, “Always Be Learning,” especially when it is not required.

2.       “ABF”, “Always Be Fearless”. Part of Christian humility is being fearless in your learning. Whenever you come to an argument or experience that threatens what you believe, keep learning. God will lead you to the truth.

3.       Know who is responsible. You are the one responsible for your education, not your teachers or professors, or the people you like online.

4.       Decide who you trust. If someone can talk you into believing something, someone else can talk you out of believing it. The main question you should ask when deciding who to learn from is, “Who do I trust?” Who benefits from what you are being taught? Follow the money, but also follow what it takes to get promoted in their world. Being “innovative” or “disruptive” doesn’t necessarily mean that your teachers are being brave. It may just mean that they’re building their brand.

5.       Be part of the solution. Understand and respect people you don’t agree with. If you can’t state the beliefs of people with whom you disagree in a form that they will respond to by saying, “Yes, that is what I believe”, then you’re part of the problem.

6.       There is always more to learn. Just because you have learned something doesn’t mean that you aren’t wrong.

7.       Finally, we learn by observing others. That’s what people did for thousands of years. You learned job skills from your father or your mother. You would apprentice yourself to a worker in a technical field. You did low-level tasks as you learned a profession from an experienced professional like a doctor or a lawyer or a pastor.

   If you wanted to be a teacher, in the classic sense, you literally followed a teacher around and learned from them as they taught. That’s what Jesus invites his first disciples to do when he says to them, “Follow me.”

   How do people follow Jesus today?

   For example, if you thought that another church’s pastor’s life and teachings were not in accord with what you believe is the Christian life, what would you do?

    Two and a half weeks ago, a group of people stormed into a church’s worship service in Minneapolis and drove men, women, and children, young and old, out into the cold.

   They didn’t question the members’ Christianity, only their pastor’s.

   The protestors, some of whom said they were Christians, told the media that they were just like Jesus flipping over the tables of the merchants in the Temple who had moved their money changing tables (for the Temple tax) and the tables used for the sale of animals for the required sacrifices, from outside the Temple to locations inside the Temple.

   Jesus did do that, but I wondered if any of the protestors had actually read the part of that passage in the Bible where Jesus says why he is doing those things?

   We see it in Matthew 21:13,

¹³ He said to them, “It is written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;

but you are making it a den of robbers.”

   A church worship space is a house of prayer, too, but the protestors prevented prayer from happening there. A church’s worship space is a place for prayer, not for political theatre, or for using outrage to get on TV to speak to your base or for building your brand.

   That is not a small distinction.

   Today, in Matthew 5:13-20, we hear from Jesus about how little things can have a big effect, and that when we think we are in control and have all the answers it is we who need the most help.

   The early Christians in New Testament times and a bit beyond lived under the rule of the Roman Empire. As in our society, there were many religions represented within the Empire, even variants of Christianity that weren’t Christianity any longer.

   The Romans themselves believed in many gods. Almost all the people they conquered and occupied believed in many gods.

   And the Romans couldn’t care less about what people believed, as long as they believed that what they believed was just as true as what everybody else believed. The Romans needed that in order to maintain order within the empire. No one was allowed to say that what they believed was true. Only that it was their truth.

   People could believe in as many gods as they wanted as long as they said that everybody else’s gods were just as real.

   The Empire didn’t want to have to use their troops to maintain order within the empire. Troops were needed for border defense and for expansion.

   Then, as the glue to keep everything together, the empire declared that the Roman emperor was a god to be worshiped by everyone in order to provide a point of common worship among all the conquered people in their empire.

   Christians and Jews said, “No. There is only one God.” And both groups were persecuted for what the Romans called their intolerance. Christians were persecuted a little more because the Romans valued the veneration of ancestors and, while Christians saw Jesus has having fulfilled the promises given to their Jewish ancestors, the Romans saw them as having rejected the religion of their Jewish ancestors.

    So, Christians and Jews weren’t persecuted for their faith. They were persecuted for their intolerance.

    How do we live as Christians in a time of violence and decline in a pluralistic religious environment, not only among people of other religions and of no obvious religion at all, but among Christians who are persecuting other Christians?

   The Bible reading that we’re looking at today begins with an answer from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, beginning with Matthew 5:13,

¹³“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

   Salt was mined from the earth in the time of Jesus’ public ministry. Salt, or “sodium chloride”, cannot lose its saltiness, but it can be corrupted in the mining process. The Romans used that corrupted salt as road construction material. It was literally thrown out and trampled underfoot.

   In the same way, we have the treasure of the Gospel given to us in Jesus Christ. We give our testimony to it every time we say one of the historic creeds together in worship. No one else is sharing this good news but us. All the good we do in the world comes as a product of who we are in Jesus Christ. It is a natural response. But if we are founded and focused on something else, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by the culture around us, we slowly become a human tradition-protecting society, or a friendship club, or a social service agency or a social justice organization using religious language.

   If we accept our culture’s acceptance in exchange for our acceptance of this world, what good are we? Nothing.

   How much salt do we need when we cook? A small amount flavors a large dish. Just as salt only needs to be what it is, we just need to be who we are.

   Numbers aren’t important in order to be God's instruments of human transformation. Our faith is all we need. It is the power of God working through us.

   Our reading continues with Matthew 5:14,

 ¹⁴“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

   How do we let our light shine in response to what God has already given us in Jesus Christ in a time of decline and danger? By being who we are, by being Whose we are.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, purportedly said, “The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”

   Light shows us the way things are, it keeps us from stumbling in the dark, it takes away our fear of what we can’t see, it extends our productive time.

   We make the most difference in the world by maintaining our character as Christians.

   We watched the Grammys last Sunday. It was uneven, there was some powerful music, there was lots of posturing with the body language of power, many jokes fell flat, and it was hosted like amateur night in a small club.

   One of the most impactful moments, though, was when Jelly Roll gave his acceptance speech after receiving the 2026 Grammy award for Best Contemporary Country Album, during which he pulled a small Bible out of his pocket and said, “There was a time in my life y’all that I was broken. That’s why I wrote this album. I didn’t think I had a chance. There was days that I thought the darkest things, I was a horrible human. There was a moment in my life that all I had was a Bible this big and a radio the same size in a 6×8 foot cell. And I believed that those two things could change my life. I believed that music had the power to change my life, and God had the power to change my life. And I want to tell y’all right now, Jesus is for everybody. Jesus is not owned by one political party. Jesus is not owned by no music label. Jesus is Jesus and anybody can have a relationship with him. I love you, Lord!”

   In a time of triumph, his light shined!

   Your light is your story. We all have a story. It doesn’t have to be dramatic or sensational. It just has to be credible to those who know us the best. Our story is, “Why I became a Christian” or “Why I remain a Christian.” Let that light shine! Let God take it from there. 😊

   We point the world to the genuine transcendence it seeks in a living relationship with the one true living God. When the world doesn’t always have the words to ask, we have been given the answer.

   We have been given the Word. It is Jesus. It is the transformed life we have come to know in Him. And it is good news for everybody.

   Our reading concludes, beginning with Matthew 5:17,

¹⁷“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

   Wait a minute. That kind of sounds like bad news.

   The Scribes were people who made copies of what we would call the Old Testament, what might be called in Jesus’ day the law and the prophets. They made their copies by hand and would check their work by knowing how many words, how many letters, and how many punctuation marks were in every book. They checked them reading forwards, and then the checked them reading backwards. They knew the Bible!

   The Pharisees were lay men who had retired from their life’s work to dedicate themselves to learning 613 religious laws and to keeping them every day. They were deeply respected and every man (only men could be Pharisees) wanted to grow up to be a Pharisee.

   How could anyone be more righteous than the Scribes and the Pharisees?

   They couldn’t. That’s Jesus’ point. Nobody’s perfect. Everyone falls short. Nobody keeps God’s laws perfectly. Nobody lives without making mistakes. And breaking any part of God’s law separates a person from God.

   The Gospel, i.e. the Good News, is that, though we only deserve punishment, God has given to us a Savior, Christ the Lord.

   Knowing the Bad News brings us to receiving the Good News.

   That’s the point that Jesus is making. Not that we need to be more righteous than the Scribes and the Pharisees, but that we can’t be. That’s the bad news.

   We need a savior who makes us righteous before God, and we have one in Him, Jesus Christ. That’s the good news.  

   How can we make it known? 

   Savannah Guthrie, co-host of NBC’s Today Show, has been dealing publicly with the disappearance, and at this writing probable abduction, of her mother, Nancy.

   She has said that, "The greatest gift my mother gave me was faith and belief in God."

   Last Monday, February 2^nd, she posted on Instagram, next to a graphic that said "PLEASE PRAY”,

“we believe in prayer. we believe in voices raised in unison, in love, in hope. we believe in goodness. we believe in humanity. above all, we believe in Him.

 “thank you for lifting your prayers with ours for our beloved mom, our dearest Nancy, a woman of deep conviction, a good and faithful servant. raise your prayers with us and believe with us that she will be lifted by them in this very moment.

“we need you.

 “’He will keep in perfect peace those whose hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.’ A verse of Isaiah for all time for all of us.

bring her home.”

   In a time of unimaginable sorrow and vulnerability, she let her light shine.

   How can we put as much passion into leading the spiritually lost, who we know, to receiving Jesus?

   How can we let our light shine when so many of our churches are so small, and getting smaller?

   Jesus tells us not to worry too much about our numbers, but only to be who we are. It doesn’t take a lot of light or salt to make a big difference. It only requires that we continue in the quality of our transformed lives that was won for us on the cross.

   That is all that we need in order to offer our people what they need, to bear witness to the good news of Jesus for them, for our friends and for our families, and to be the salt, the light, and the people of God for the redemption of the world in Jesus Christ. 

396 Saints at The Wrong Time

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Saints at The Wrong Time”, originally shared on January 29, 2026. It was the 396^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Doing the right thing for the right reason is our goal, right? But is doing the right thing for the wrong reason bad? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Sally and I went to the 44^th Annual Asian American Expo at the Fairplex in Pomona a couple of weeks ago. It’s the largest Lunar New Year celebration in the country.

   There was a whole pavilion dedicated just to anime culture with lots of cosplay. There were 7 pavilions filled with food and cultural enrichment. There was live entertainment, and I got to speak some of the Mandarin I’ve been leaning. The place was packed!

   I had bought our tickets online in advance because its promotional material said that it might sell out.

   But when we got to the entry gates, we saw that there were several lines for ticket holders, and one line with a sign over it that said that if you are 70 or older, you could get in free!

   I told Sally, “Let’s go in there. Maybe if we don’t scan our tickets, we can get our money back. (that’s another story).

   So, we went through that line and, when we got to the front, the guy there asked for Sally’s ID. He checked it and waved her through.

   Then I stepped up. He took a look at me as I reached for my ID and said, “That’s OK. Come on in.” (!) 😊

   But aging doesn’t bother me.

   In fact, one thing that you may not know about me is that I can travel through time.

   I didn’t always know that I could travel through time but, one day several years ago, I realized that I could.

   It’s called aging. It just happens very slowly. 😊

   I’ve learned many things by traveling through time and one of them is that time moves pretty fast.

   One day you’re young, and the next day you’ve got a favorite pharmacy. 😊

   But the only day that we are conscious and alive is in the present. It’s weird, isn’t it? 😊

   Bil (yes, that’s the correct spelling) Keane, the cartoonist who drew “The Family Circus” comic said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”

   So how do we live our lives, right now, when we believe that these lives are gifts from God? What does it mean when Christians suffer in these lives? What does the Christian life look like in our largely secular culture?

   All of those questions and more come into play when we look at the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches this coming Sunday, Matthew 5:1-12, AKA The Beatitudes, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

   Some people say that the Beatitudes represent the radical love that the teachings of Jesus call his followers to live by, but do they?

   I would say that every word in that sentence that you just read is wrong.

   I would say that because I grew up on another planet. Yes, in addition to being a time traveler, I grew up on another planet. 😊

   Or, at least, it seems like that to me more and more every day.

   I grew up in a stable home where several generations of my family were alive and lived close by, where a skilled worker could buy a home and support a family, where kids could tell their parents that they were going out to explore in the morning and their mom would tell them to be home before the street lights came on and wouldn’t think about it for the rest of the day, where I actually did walk to school with holes in my shoes, in the snow, and it was uphill, both ways! 😊

   And, I learned that a good climbing tree had lots of branches and that I could climb it by looking up and grabbing the first branch. And then I could look up and grab a higher branch, and then another branch, and another, and keep going up until there were no more branches or they were too small to support me, and then I would look out and I could see forever.

   That’s how identity, confidence, and trust were built. Not by the baseless affirmations of others, but by doing something hard.

   We see that life lived in this week’s Gospel reading.

    It points toward a life that the world thinks of as hard and away from everything that the world values today. It points us to the reign of God, who makes no promises that life will be easy, but only that He will never leave us or forsake us.

   Is that enough?

   What would you need to call yourself blessed?

   Take a look at who Jesus calls blessed, in Matthew 5:1-12,

   ¹When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ²Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

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 receive 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 for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ¹¹“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

   What is He talking about? Could this be any farther from the values of this world?

   What Jesus is saying is what theologians mean when they talk about “the theology of the Cross.”

   Jesus says that being blessed is knowing that you have nowhere to turn but to God, and that you turn to God.

   Being blessed is living in the freedom that knows that this world is not all there is, but that there is a better life that has been prepared for us.

   Being blessed is knowing that you are not alone, that God enters into our weakness, our mourning, our desire for a better world, our work for peace, and our testimony to the reliability of God in Jesus Christ, and God meets us there.

   The Beatitudes project a message that makes no sense to the world, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:18,

¹⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

   We are sinners separated from God. We can’t save ourselves. Our only hope is for a Savior. The message of the cross is that God has come and   our Savior, our Savior from ourselves.

   The message of the Beatitudes breaks into our world from the outside. God is made manifest in it. It’s an Epiphany!

   Which is why, I guess, that we get the same text today, in the season of Epiphany, that we’ll read again in nine months, on November 1^st, on All Saints Day. We are saints today, but at the wrong time. 😊

   Earlier, I said that some people say that the Beatitudes represent the radical love that the teachings of Jesus call his followers to live by. And I added that every word in that sentence is wrong.

   Why? Because many Christians today are saints, but at the wrong time.

   Because following Jesus is about who we are first. What we do comes second. It is the natural outcome of who we are Jesus Christ.

   It’s like the climax of T.S. Eliot’s play/poem “Murder in the Cathedral”, where a character says, “The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

   The Christian life is lived in response to the new life that God has given us in faith.

   Doing the right things to appease or to satisfy God is a betrayal of that gift. That’s why Jesus was always knocking heads with the Pharisees.

   Who we are is a gift from God, not something we have to earn. We have been born again in our baptism, we have been made a new creation in the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created, restored for us by Jesus on the cross.

   What we do isn’t what makes us Christians, it’s who we are that makes us do what we do. That’s what makes us Christians.

   It’s like the situation we sometimes find ourselves in when someone tells us, “You don’t have to believe it. You just have to do it.” When that happens, as someone said online, you can be pretty sure you are living in an oppressive system. Our Gospel reading for today describes the people who don’t do it, who resist the temptation to go along to get along, who don’t conform to this world.

   All who believe and are baptized shall be saved, not those who think that they can earn their way by their actions.

   So, when we see people on the news describing their social and political actions as an expression of God’s radical justice found in the Beatitudes, they may pride themselves as being radical, but they are not nearly radical enough.

   The word “radical” comes from the Latin word, “radix”, for “root” or “source”.

   The truly radical vision of the Kingdom of God is life transformation, at the root of our natural human nature, that comes to all those who receive the gift of faith through God’s grace and are baptized. It comes from the source, from God within and among us. We live from the inside, out.

   “Justice” in the Bible has one clear definition: it is doing God’s will. It comes from our inner transformation, not from the Bible verses I can find that agree with my politics.

   We can’t pick only the causes that draw media outrage today and justify our personal sense of righteous rebellion “by any means necessary” and call that the Christian life. We live on a much larger, more radical, scale.

   The comedian Garry Shandling once reflected on Leo Durocher, the ruthless coach of the Dodgers when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers, who famously said, “Nice guys finish last.”

   Garry Shandling said, “Nice guys finish first, and anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know where the finish line is.” That is radical.

   Jesus proclaims it in every time he says “blessed” in this week’s Gospel reading to people who have done or experienced hard things, mostly because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

   Of the poor in spirit he says, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To those who mourn he says, “they will be comforted.” To the meek he says, “they will inherit the earth.” To those who hunger and thirst for righteousness he says, “they will be filled.” To the merciful he says, “they will receive mercy.” To the pure in heart he says, “they will see God.” To the peacemakers he says, “they will be called children of God.”

   To those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake he says, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To those who are reviled and persecuted and spoken against with all kinds of evil falsely on His account he says, “rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. ‘

   None of those things are what most people would describe as the blessed life today.

   In fact, in Jesus’ day, they, especially the religious leaders, would have said that those people were getting what they deserved for being sinners.

   But Jesus called them blessed. Why? Because they knew that they needed a Savior, and that they had one on Jesus Christ.

   But things have not changed much in some ways since then.

   I read an interview with an editor of “Christianity Today” magazine who is a former church leader in the Baptist denomination. He said that pastors are increasingly telling him that church members are coming up to them, after even parenthetically mentioning the Beatitudes and asking the pastors where they got those “liberal talking points”.  

   When the pastors would say that they were literally quoting the words of Jesus Christ, the response was, “that doesn’t work for me anymore. That’s weak.”

   That reaction is an excellent example of the contrast that historic Christianity brought to the idea of what it means to be a man in this world. It is a change grounded in this week’s Gospel reading.

   I read a review some time ago of Nancy Pearcey’s book The Toxic War on Masculinity, praising it as a "splendid" and nuanced analysis that navigates modern gender debates by contrasting the "Good Man" (the Christian ideal of responsibility/sacrifice) with the "Real Man" (the secular, aggressive stereotype).

   The Real Man was “tough, strong, aggressive, highly competitive, unwilling to show weakness, unemotional, imposing, isolated, and self-made. They grab all the guns, gold, and girls they can get, and don’t care much who gets hurt in the process.”

   The Good Man, the man of God, is characterized by “honor, duty, integrity, and a willingness to sacrifice. They’re responsible and generous, and they provide and protect, especially the weak.”

   We all struggle with putting ourselves at the defining center of our lives and not God. It’s the tendency that is at the center of our national divisions and partisan diatribes. What can we do to bring the temperature down?

   Popular wisdom was once, “If you can’t say something nice about a person, don’t say anything at all.”

   The 16^th Century Church reformer Martin Luther’s takes that wisdom a bit further in his Small Catechism with his explanation of The Eighth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

   He said, “What is this? (or What does this mean?) We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

   In our world, some people would take advantage of that kind of empathy. They would weaponize it and use it against us.

   But what if everybody practiced Luther’s meaning of the 8^th Commandment? It would make the world an almost unfathomably much better place, a much holier place, because it would reflect the grace of God in action.

   Sally and I often drive through LA on our way to the Museum of Tolerance where Sally is a docent or to some doctor’s appointment.

   Sometimes, we take a route that brings us to this sign, “Welcome to Beverly Hills. Police drone in use.”

   We used to see signs that said, “Speed enforced by aircraft,” though I don’t think that I ever saw any speed enforcing aircraft. And these days we’ve never actually seen a speed enforcement drone. Yet. 😊

   I’ve thought that maybe the signs were only set-up to be a deterrent. A threat to control our destructive behavior. Sometimes we need that.

   There is no threat in The Beatitudes, however. They are signs that point us to God. 

   They are a reminder that we are called to be saints at the right time. Anything else is just self-righteousness, a lack of trust in God.

   They are a reminder that doing the right thing for the right reason is the foundation of the Christian life when the reason is Jesus.

   The Beatitudes are a reminder that we are not protected from challenges, even suffering, in this life but that we live in God’s promise, which we see plainly in Hebrews 13:5b,

for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

   It’s by doing the hard things that God has called, equipped, and sent us to do, to be saints at the right time, to do the right thing for the right reason, that we live.

   It’s like climbing a tree. We look up and grasp the hand of God.