(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Bad News Good
News”, originally shared on February 5, 2026. It was the 397th 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-20th
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 16th 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 2nd, 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.
