At first glance these four instructions of Jesus--two of them expressing some famous ideas like turning the other cheek and going the extra mile--seem to have nothing in common. Look closer and we find not only their coherence but the underlying...

While, it is said, actions speak louder than words, the actions that follow our words speak loudly of ourselves. Why are we prone to use our words so carelessly? Imagine how our lives would be different if we only said what we meant and were prepared...

He who was not married, nor had any children, still had much to say about marriage as worthy of highest esteem and care. Why? How does that speak to married, divorced, and single alike?

No extended sermon on what outlines the highest good would be complete without discussing the intimacy of body and soul that has the power to work both great good and enormous harm. Christians are often accused of being fixated on sexual union, but...

Anger is foundational to what it means to be human. The question, though, comes when we consider what we do with our anger. Jesus has some very sobering words for us when our anger proceeds unchecked - especially when, in anger, we view others with...

Everyone has a rule of life. We all abide--or at least claim to abide--by particular ideas and values we consider binding. Some we discard over time, others we retain--the latter because we believe following them leads to life. Jesus’s growing group...

Some of the most liberating (or tyrannizing) words we can ever hear are those telling us who we are. In knowing our identity we begin to grasp our purpose. Jesus’s first words after the Beatitudes tell us we are those who are for this world—and that...

The Beatitudes end on a bracing note, both assuming and preparing us for rejection on a spectrum from pointed ridicule to lethal violence. That experience continues unabated in more places we care to imagine, but also here where the rejection takes...

Every relationship is liable to rupture. Yet our own physical bodies do better in their efforts to rush healing to ruptures than our souls do? Why? How can the peace wrought by Jesus lead us to seek true peace when we’d prefer rupture--or a false peace?

Jesus affirming the “pure in heart” may make us inwardly think, “ha--who can he be talking about?” But when He says the pure in heart will see God we may inwardly sigh, “hmmm...really? How can it be?” Notwithstanding our inclination to lose heart in...