Sunday, February 8, 2026
Matthew 5:13-20
The lectionary offers us a somewhat awkward selection this Sunday. It combines two units from the Sermon on the Mount that, at first glance, don’t seem to belong together (5:13–16, 17–20). But let’s take a look and I remind you we are still in the season of Epiphany.
The recent snow brought to my attention the hills in a new way. For instance, I was driving down Euclid toward Virginia Middle School the other day and realized that the school is on a much higher level than the land down around Commonwealth. In all my years driving up and down Euclid, I had never noticed that before. It took a new perspective.
When I lived on the Tennessee side, over near King College ten years ago, we lived in a house on a hill in a wooded area. We moved in to that house in the summer time. I loved that the kitchen was in the back where I could gaze at the birds and squirrels in the woods behind the house while doing dishes. These woods seem to go on and on down the slope and away from the house leaving me with the feeling we had moved into a very remote place.
But Autumn came and went and with it had gone the leaves of the hardwoods. So, one day I was gazing out my kitchen window and the view had seemingly been cleared overnight. Behind our house, at the bottom of that hill, was a farm. And it was much closer than I would have thought. There was a large meadow and there were houses and barns and horses and cows and people. I realized that you can never be sure what’s beyond the trees when they are in full summer foliage.
These are images of Epiphany. This is the season when we worship God for the greatest Epiphany of God’s love for us through the gift of the son, the incarnate redeemer. But it is also a time, especially as we move closer to Lent, to do the work of repentance, the work of opening our eyes and choosing to see what God is showing us beyond our usual, immediate view of our bubble.
We have been hearing lots of biblical images in the lectionary readings since I’ve been your preacher. Mostly we have been focused on images of Jesus as “the Light of the World.” Throughout the Christmas narrative we heard all about how Jesus has come into the world as light enters into darkness. The Wise Men followed the light of a star. John the Baptist showed all who would listen that Jesus is the Light. It is as if these gospel writers each take out a flashlight and take us on a tour through the darkness of life to see the real world to which we have been blind.
We have been focused these past few weeks on just this concept: that Jesus is the Light of the World. But today Jesus tells us we are the Light of the World. The flashlight gets turned on us and we are commanded to shine.
Throughout this journey from incarnation through Epiphany thus far, I have often touched on the theme of forgiveness. Recently someone asked me to say more about forgiveness and not just the concept but the practicality of it. The “how” of it. How do we forgive? How can we learn to practice forgiveness?
One of my favorite explanations about the differences between Christianity and other religions came from a scholar who said this: If we are to compare the three Abrahamic religions in the most basic way, Judaism emphasizes family. All of the Jewish sacramental traditions are celebrated around hearth and home or the dining table, as a family. Islam, he says, is about prayer. Serious Muslims pray 7 times a day - and they do this collectively when possible. We should be so committed to prayer.
But Christianity - do you know what he said is our basic value? Forgiveness. We are the forgiveness people.
So, I want to invite you to consider forgiveness with me this morning in reflection on this passage from Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount.
In an interview in 2023, journalist and author, David Brooks was asked to define the phrase, “The American social fabric.” In his answer he told a story about another writer, Jane Jacobs who noted an experience she had while living in a second story apartment in the West Village of New York in the early-1960s. She said that she looked out her window one day, down onto the street and she saw a man pulling a 9-year-old girl firmly by the arm. She didn’t know if this was a kidnapping or a father disciplining his child. She was alarmed enough that she decided that she should go downstairs and check this out. And when she got to the sidewalk she noticed that the butcher had come out, and the locksmith had come out and the owner of the fruit stand had also stepped outside to see what was going on with this child and the man with the child had no idea that he was surrounded.
Brooks used this story to define the social fabric of America. The social fabric of America, he said is an awareness of our surroundings. Eyes on the street. People looking out for each other and extending care when it’s needed. Danger, love, the network of care and seeing each other. He said that we used to live in a society where we were deeply planted and deeply connected within our neighborhoods and with our neighbors.
To get through the Great Depression and WWII, Americans had to adopt a culture of “we’re all in this together.” So it was very connective and very communal and people looked out for each other.
He waxed poetically about life in the 1950s as a time before television or computers when neighborhoods within cities and small towns in America were communities. This was especially true in the summer time when, before air conditioning and television, people would socialize in their neighborhood outside. Children would run from house to house, coffee drinkers would hang out along fence lines, there were volleyball games and pickup basketball games and sharing of food. In fact, you had to work really hard to be alone. They did not have then the concept of privacy that we have today. Today it would be a gross violation of privacy to knock on your neighbor’s door at 8:30 at night, but not back then.
But Brooks says that “we rebelled against that culture against that communal way of living because it was seen as too racists, too anti-semitic, too conformist and too boring. And, he added, the food was really pretty bad in the 1950s.”
And so, “in the 1960s, we began to adopt an attitude of extreme individualism in which each person could be free to ‘be myself’ where I don’t have to conform to anything and I can live the way that I want to live.” And while Brooks believes that this was the right move, he says that this has caused us to come to this place where we are too distant from one another, too buffered from each other, too removed, too isolated. And this is why loneliness, alienation and suicide are on the rise. Now we live in a society of bitterness and division where we really don’t see each other anymore.
We really don’t see each other.
The man pulling on the arm of the child is not seen either. Not to mention the child.
It is in the midst of this reality that we take this all too brief moment in our lives to sit here together this morning and ponder this part of the best of Jesus. This is the meat of our most favorite of the sermons of Jesus. This is where Jesus calls us to live as a community who loves each other and also holds each other accountable.
Jesus steps onto the scene of the Sermon on the Mount and has a lot to say about community and accountability. Yes, he lists all the ways we are bless-ed. And he reminds us to keep the 10 Commandments. He also has a lot to say about how to live in harmony and community.
Throughout his ministry Jesus taught us to love and forgive each other. He said. Love your neighbor as yourself. He said love your enemy. He said love one another as I have loved you. And more particular to this setting, he said we are bless-ed. We are blessed because we are already meek and pure in heart and merciful and because we persevere for righteousness even though we also mourn, are poor in spirit and are persecuted.
We are also held accountable to the commandments of this Jesus whom we follow. And one of the most important commandments Jesus gave us, to add to the first 10 which God gave us through Moses, was love of neighbor.
And in order to love our neighbor, we have to learn to love each other. And in order to love each other we have to learn to forgive each other.
Forgiveness is in line with repentance. We must first change ourselves before we can make change in the world. So we must practice forgiveness before we can follow Jesus.
Forgiveness is a daily practice, not a once and done thing. It is imperative to remember that in this effort we also must realize we live in God’s time. We must work at these things but also we must wait on creation to flow, on the season to change. We can’t force the changes we desire. Ours is only to live in love and flow with creation.
The other image Jesus uses in this passage from the sermon on the mount is salt. And this was another thing I pondered when I first got out to drive around Bristol this week. The salt they use to open up the roads for our use is miraculous, even if it is messy.
One of our Lutheran scholars put it this way: “Communities of Jesus-followers do not exist for themselves. No matter how powerless, they are not to live in retreat from or avoidance of the imperial world. Rather, their mission is to manifest God’s empire that contests the status quo and envisions an alternative societal experience.
But why the image of salt? Well, “Salt performs multiple functions: transforming, flavoring, preserving, and purifying substances. Salt does not exist for itself but affects other elements. Likewise, the community of disciples is commissioned to impact “the land” or the earth or the world where Israel and the entire population live under Roman rule (Matt. 5:16; 6:1).
The beatitudes have described this inhabited world. This world is marked by wealth and poverty (5:3), loss and grief (5:4), oppressors and oppressed, those with resources—land—and the dispossessed (5:5), injustice and acts of justice (5:6), mercy and cruelty (5:7), purity and impurity (5:8), war and peace (5:9), opposition and reward (5:10–12). Jesus-followers are missional participants in this society with the huge task of “salting” and transforming it.
So, if you want to know how to forgive your neighbor, take a deep look at your own need for transformation and your own redemption. Shine the flashlight on your own soul and take a look at all the ways you have received forgiveness and grace and love. Then just pass it on.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly
1 David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, Random House (2023)
2 Warren Carter, Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-513-20-6, accessed Jan. 3, 2026.