Scriptures: Isaiah 58:1-12, Micah 6:1-8, I Corinthians 1:18-31, 2:1-16, Matthew 5:1-20
(Note: There is no sermon from Jan 29, as Pastor Dave was doing a baptism at a neighboring congregation and we combined worship, with their pastor preaching. The February 5 service combined lectionary texts from Jan 29 and Feb 5. )
Salt and Light
Today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel starts off a series of
readings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, an extended compilation of the
teachings of Jesus. Like Moses going to
Mt Sinai to receive the law, Jesus is on the mountain, explaining what we might
call Jesus’ new law of love. Actually,
it’s the same law – because, as Jesus said near the end of today’s reading, not
a letter of the law of Moses would pass away until all is fulfilled. But Jesus radically reinterpreted the law,
moving from a focus on keeping external rules to a focus on love. Indeed, Jesus’ own life and death provide
the best lens through which to understand the law of Moses.
Jesus begins with what are called the Beatitudes – a series
of blessings Jesus gives to categories of people that we would typically not
consider blessed – the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the
peacemakers, and those who are persecuted.
These are not the people who are normally considered the movers and
shakers in the world. These qualities
will not get you mentioned, for example, in Steve Shulman’s “Businesses to
Watch” radio ads.[1] These
are generally not the folks who get the headlines – and to the extent that
someone does become famous for being merciful, such as a Mother Teresa, or for
being a peacemaker, such as a Gandhi, they are made saints or treated as saints
– that is to say, someone we can admire
with our words but ignore in our daily lives – someone admirable, but
irrelevant. But Jesus is lifting up
qualities that are countercultural – that is to say, qualities that contradict,
are contrary to, the world’s normal way of operating. Indeed, when our lives reflect these
qualities, we are living into the Reign of God which Jesus taught and lived. And he’s saying that it is people with these
qualities – not the Herod’s and Pilate’s of Jesus’ day or the politicians and corporate
lobbyists of our day, but people with the qualities Jesus names, who are
“people to watch”, people whose lives, however obscure or unnoticed by the
world, make a difference by helping others, by helping to hold communities
together – in a word, by letting their love for God flow into love for
neighbor.
And for followers of Jesus, it’s often not a conscious thing
– it’s not like we are to go through our day consciously checking off boxes – “Did
I remember to be poor in spirit? Did I remember
to show mercy? Did I remember to hunger
and thirst after righteousness? Oooh, I
only got three of these right; I’ve gotta shape up and do better tomorrow…” Nor should these be taken as a kind of
self-help course. Instead, these
Beatitudes, these blessings are as a description of qualities in the lives of
the followers of Jesus. As people turn their
lives over to Christ, as they commit to following Jesus and Jesus works in
their lives, these qualities just blossom without our having to force them. These Beatitudes, these blessings, are like
seeds that are planted in the lives of believers; we have only to let them grow
of their own accord and not allow the weeds of worldly thinking to choke them
out. Or, as the prophet Isaiah might put
it, as God works in our lives, these qualities are written, not on tablets of
stone, but on our minds and on our hearts.
Jesus goes on to speak of his followers as salt and
light. We are mostly familiar with salt
as something that adds flavor to food.
In Jesus’ time and even today, salt is also used as a preservative, to
keep meet and fish from rotting. I was reminded
at our dinner church on Wednesday that it can also be used as an antiseptic…..for
example, my dad, in the days before commercial mouthwash, used to gargle with
salt water. Salt is small, but has an
impact far beyond its size. In ancient
times it was valuable, so valuable that people were paid in salt. And I think Jesus had all these qualities in
mind when he compared his followers to salt – to heal, to preserve and maintain
community, to bring our own distinctiveness to any situation we’re in. In order to do that, of course, we need to be
at work in the world, bringing our message of love. As valuable as salt is, nobody would sit down
to dinner to eat a block of salt. Salt’s
only good if it’s mixed in with food.
Similarly, we only accomplish what God needs of us if we are in
conversation with people who may not share our priorities. Jesus also called us to be light, and, of
course, light helps us see in the dark.
It’s hard for us city folk to imagine – maybe slightly easier for those
who live in the suburbs - but remember that in Jesus’ time, at night there was
no ambient light from electric lighting- no streetlights, no illuminated shop windows –
just the light of the moon and stars.
When it got dark, it got really dark, especially if the skies were
overcast. And of course, inside one’s house, which might have had only one
window if that, without a candle, the darkness could be overwhelming. And the
lighting available at the time wasn’t spotlights, but candles, providing just
enough light to see around for a few feet.
And again, Christians are to bring the light of our faith into the
darkness that surrounds us. We’re
candles, not spotlights. But for what
God needs from us, candles are sufficient; so long as we let our light shine,
so long as we don’t hide our light.
In these uncertain times, we need to hang onto Jesus’
teachings to remind us who we are – and to help us discern who others are as
well, and whether we should follow where they try to lead us. We can
easily get caught up all that we hear from the government, all we hear from the
media. And mostly what we hear is fear
and resentment: Be afraid. Be afraid of Muslims. Be afraid of Mexicans. Be afraid of refugees. We’re told that these are dangerous people
and we should hate them. We’re told that
only the government can protect us from them.
But consistently throughout Scripture, Old and New Testament, God’s
message to us is “Fear not. Be not
afraid.” The Apostle Paul wrote that God
has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound
mind.[2] Without the teachings of Jesus to hold us as
an anchor, we can get swept away in a tidal wave of fear and hate, until we
can’t even recognize ourselves, until we don’t even know who we are anymore.
As an extreme example of what can happen when people forget
who they are, when they have no anchor to hold them: after World War II, the American journalist
Milton Mayer interviewed a number of Germans who had lived through the Hitler’s
Third Reich. And he asked them: how did this happen? How could your neighbors - civilized,
cultured, refined people, many of them churchgoers – how could you yourself -
turn against people in your own communities and allow them to be killed by the
millions. From one person he
interviewed, Mayer heard the following:
“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well
explained, or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that….unless one understood what the
whole thing was in principle….one could not more see it developing from day to
day than a farmer in the field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head…..And then one
day, too late, your principles….all rush in upon you. The burden of
self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my
little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine’, collapses it all at
once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed, and has changed
completely under your nose. The world
you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were born in at
all. The forms are all there, all
untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the
visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.
But the spirit….is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear,
and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves…..”[3]
So truly, this is the importance of being salt and light as
Jesus said, of staying anchored to the life and teachings of Jesus, of speaking the loving message of Jesus in
season and out of season, of reminding ourselves, each other, and our neighbors
who we truly are in God’s sight. In our Old Testament reading, Isaiah was
speaking to the exiles who had returned from Babylon and rebuilt the
Temple. For all that God had done for
them in bringing them back from exile, they struggled to rebuild. They wanted to restore Judah to its former
glory, and it just didn’t seem to be coming together. They felt that, despite their many sacrifices
and their fasting, God had forgotten them.
In response, Isaiah wrote the following, as his prescription for making
Judah great again:
“Is not this the fast
that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your
bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you
see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then
your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up
quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be
your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry
for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the
hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in
the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you
continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones
strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose
waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall
be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall
be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”
(Isaiah 58:6-12) The prophet Micah
summed much of this up with one verse: “Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with
your God.” (Micah 6:8)
“Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.” “Let the oppressed go free, offer your food
to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted” “Be salt and light”: these are the words God
has for us in our time. May we hold fast to these words in our minds,
and live out these words with our neighbors, and in all we do, may we look to
Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
Amen.
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