09/06/2026
September 6, 2026
Sunday Sermon
Building Relationships
Matthew 18:15-20
Plattsmouth UMC
Most of you have either heard enough of my sermons or had enough conversations with me to know that building and sustaining relationships is one of the most important messages of my Christian ministry. It begins with our relationship with God. God created us to be in community with one another, to participate in the faith community. Christ commanded us to love one another.
Jesus commanded us to “Love one another as I first loved you!”
As a psychologist and minister, I learned that the number one variable in life satisfaction, well-being, physical health, mental health, emotional health, social health, and spiritual health is the quality of our relationships.
Christ called us into a faithful relationship with him just as God covenanted to be our God and asks us to covenant to be His people. This is the basis of the Christian life: building and sustaining relationships. To love one another, as Christ and God first loved us.
Speaking of psychology, my initial interest in Social Psychology— “the scientific study of how people think about, relate to, and influence one another”— came from reading Ann Lander’s advice column.
I always appreciated her values and mostly sound advice about relationship building. After reading Ann Landers, I learned more about relationship building from the Bible. It is great place from which to learn.
Jesus calls us into relationship with one another. Where community does not exist, we are called to create community. The church is an excellent place to start building relationships.
Each week we are building relationships through our Bible study classes, Men’s Bible study on Wednesday, Open Hearts Kitchen on Thursday, weekly worship services and Sunday school, choirs, monthly meals, brunch after worship, as well as a myriad of committees and activities.
FUMC Plattsmouth has a good history of building relationships and creating community. However, history is behind us, and we must live in the present and prepare for the future. God calls us to live and love today!
Sometime back a team headed by Harvard social scientists tracked the lives of 7,000 people over nine years. Here’s what this team found. People with the fewest personal relationships were three times more likely to die than those with strong relational connections. Three times!
In fact, people with bad health habits such as smoking, poor eating habits, obesity, or alcohol use, but who had strong social ties lived significantly longer than people who had great health habits but were isolated.
Harvard scientists simply uncovered, not discovered, a truth of Jesus! In other words, as Pastor John Ortberg quips, it is better to eat Twinkies with good friends than to eat broccoli alone.
Harvard researcher Robert Putnam notes that if you belong to no groups but decide to join one, “you cut your risk of dying over the next year in half.” Folks, if you don’t belong to a church group, please consider joining one. It is good not only for your spiritual life, and the longevity of your life!
In the words of the old Barbra Streisand song, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Love makes the world go around.
Did you catch that? Love is what it’s all about. It’s the fulfillment of all the commandments. The quality of our commitment to Christ is determined by our ability to love our neighbor as our self.
That’s what St. Paul meant when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
This is to say that the quality of our discipleship is determined by how our love for others reflects God’s love for us.
“We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). All love comes from God.
Building relationships is important. Love is the basis of relationships.
Jesus commanded, not suggested, but commanded us to “love one another as I first loved you”. Relationships matter. Relationships with God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, family, self, others, and mother earth.
This is to say we need our relationships to be strong if we want them to last. Now listen to Jesus: “If your brother sins against you, go, and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”
This is a most interesting teaching. It begins, “If your brother sins against you . . .” Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean your brother in a literal sense.
Has anyone ever seen a family relationship grow strained or even break? It happens, doesn’t it? My guess is that there is someone in this room who hasn’t spoken to at least one member of their family in several years. Someone said something catty to you or took a prized possession from Mom’s estate that mom said it was for you after she died.
The reasons are many and varied. Deaths, wills (or lack of), and estate’s often bring out the worst in families. We all know families where relationships have been splintered and torn. It has happened in many of our families.
As a pastor, I have been involved in many family disputes over wills and estates. I have served as a negotiator and mediator. It is often very ugly.
The Bible serves as the best guidance: “If your brother sins against you,” says Jesus, “go and show him his fault, just between the two of you . . .”
Wouldn’t it be great if everyone who was estranged from a brother or sister or friend or co-worker or spouse or parent or child would make an appointment to sit down with that person to iron out their difficulties?
I know that sounds like a dream to many and unrealistic to others.
Feelings of betrayal, anger, hurt, bitterness, resentment can sometimes overwhelm. Some of you have been there, haven’t you? After a while, it may become a matter of pride. The sad thing is that the closer the relationship, often the more intense the anger, the resentment, the bitterness.
And it is very, very difficult to take the first step. Yet Jesus tells us, that is what we must do. It doesn’t really matter who is at fault. Make a call today.
All that matters is the relationship. That is particularly true in families.
Ray Bowman and his wife, Sally, tried hard to raise their children right. They loved and encouraged them, taught them solid values.
But there was one son David, their youngest who nearly broke their hearts. David used drugs at an early age. Eventually he dropped out of high school and before long he was on the streets; homeless. Without a job.
Ray dreamed that one day like the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ story David would come home, and they would welcome him with open arms. It didn’t happen. David stayed on the streets. Drugs ruled his life. It is a common story.
Then one day, Ray felt God calling him to go to his son and to apologize to his son for his resentment of David’s behavior. This was tough, but Ray swallowed his pride and went to his son and asked for his forgiveness.
David accepted his father’s apology with grace. Somehow this was the nudge that David needed. A few weeks later, David came to Christ. He left his drug addiction behind. He is now happily married, has a family, and has a very good and responsible job.
This is an example of swallowing one’s pride and seeking forgiveness.
Many people, including fathers would have real trouble doing that. But in Ray’s case, it worked. If a relationship is important to you, sooner or later you will need to swallow your pride. Jesus tells to take the first step.
“If your brother sins against you,” says Jesus, “go and show him his fault, just between the two of you.”
Barbara Brown Taylor tells a story about a woman who was already dying of cancer when her husband suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. At his funeral people leaned over her wheelchair to console her by reminding her that it would not be long until she and her husband were together again in heaven.
Later when this woman and Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor were alone, the woman with tears running down her face looked at Taylor and said, “I’m never going to get away from him, am I?”
That story will either make you laugh or make you cry. Not every relationship can be healed. Particularly in the case of abuse, not every relationship can be healed, or even should be healed. You may have a friend who brings out the worst in you, who tears you down, who makes you question your essential self-worth. There are some relationships that should be severed. There are marriages that should be ended, so healing can occur.
If a relationship that is important to us cannot be healed, we need to reach out to friends, particular friends in the church, as Christ suggests. But the most important place to turn is to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
We may pray for God to heal the relationship. We may need to pray to God to heal us IF the relationship cannot be healed, to help us to accept the inevitable and to keep us from bitterness, anger, revenge, resentment, or hate.
But even more, we pray that this experience of a broken relationship will draw us even closer to God. For it is from our relationship with God, not with another human being, that we draw our strength and our identity.
A community of faith is in a sense like a sacred choir. Each member of the choir contributes a unique voice, timbre, tone, and resonance; yet singing in a choir is not like singing a solo. A choir is a community praising together within the vehicle of song. The more in tune each is with God, the more in tune they will with each other.
This does not mean that every song will be a harmonious perfection. It’s in our striving, our communal and relational attunement that we find our voice, and the beauty of our faith together.
In today’s world, we find ourselves surrounded often by political and religious divisiveness, dissonance, resentment, hate and discordant voices. What shall we do? We must sing. Sing together. Sing in harmony our praise and prayers to God.
The sound of beautiful music is effective, healing. And so is a community of faith bathed in the Spirit and soaked in God’s peace, harmony, and a higher mission than our own. Build Community. Love one another. Praise God. AMEN.
