5 Epiphany A February 9, 2014
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Isaiah 58: 1-12 + Psalm 112: 1-9 + 1 Cor. 2: 1-16
Matthew 5: 13-20
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In our reading from Matthew’s Gospel today, we join the Sermon on the Mount, already in progress. Just prior to our reading for today, Jesus has talked about how completely different life in the Kingdom of God is going to be. We call that section of Scripture the Beatitudes, or the Blesseds….blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth….Jesus talks about all of these unexpected blessings. The next thing you know, he’ll say Blessed are the Seahawks fans, who waited patiently for their day!
And then, Jesus continues with what we just heard this morning: two very bold and very direct reminders, to those who had gathered to hear him then and to us, who have gathered to hear him today:
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
Not, you are like salt or you are like light….not you are going to be salt someday if you try hard enough to get salty – or when you are old enough to understand then you’ll be light.
No, Jesus is clear. We are salt. We are light. Right now.
Oh, sure. We are reminded of this right from the start, at our baptisms when this verse from Matthew is read so we won’t forget: Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.
Jesus knew that the people who had gathered to hear him teach on that day needed to know what it meant to follow him, what it meant to be his disciples. How did they become good enough? How could they ever do enough? And Jesus says, in effect, you are enough. We are enough. Salt and light.
Now, when I got to this part of writing this sermon this week, I was very pleased. We are salt! We are light! Yes! And then….that was all I had. And while you might have been very happy with half of a sermon, I knew that there was more. I knew that the Holy Spirit was still stirring around in me…that I had half of it, but not the rest.
After all, salt and light, well alright then. So back to the text I went. Context often proves useful when we are stuck in Scripture – who, where, when, why….those sorts of things.
And there it was.
Remember, this is the Sermon on the Mount, for Matthew’s Gospel it is one of the most important passages. Here, Jesus says more at one time about what it means to follow him than anywhere else. It is something like his keynote address, what he believes most strongly his ministry is to be about. In a deeper way, this collections of teachings that constitute the Sermon on the Mount also interpret Jesus’ own life and vice versa. Or, to put it another way, what he says is what he does, and what he does is what he says.
And here, near the beginning of his ministry, after he has called the disciples, he is not instructing them one on one, he is not interested in them working as individuals and he never treats them as such.
Jesus is building community. This sermon is not intended for individual ears, it is not intended to grow Matthew or Mark or Philip or Andrew or any of the disciples into what they might become. That will happen on its own as they live into the Kingdom together. This sermon is not a work ethic or a how to guide….it is not “Discipleship for Dummies.”
This sermon is the calling together of a people, because no one can live into what this sermon demands…no one…and that is precisely the point. The demands of this sermon on the mount require that we rely on God and on one another. That we rely on God and on one another.
Our only hope of living into this way of living that Jesus describes and calls us to, as a community, is to acknowledge that we do not hate, cheat, lie, steal, worry, back bight, argue, or otherwise behave badly because it is not in the nature of our God that we do such things. But when we do them, as individuals, and we will, the community to which we belong is larger than we are. The task of the community is to carry us back, to re-direct us, to loves us in our shortcomings and failures and to remind us, when we gather of the love and mercy that surround us on every side.
This sermon on the Mount, is not, then, a list of do’s and don’ts; rather, it is a description of a community that gathers around and is gathered by Jesus.
So the Beatitudes that precede our reading today and can seem puzzling…are better seen as a descriptor of the community as it gathers. Jesus is saying Don’t be surprised when you find the meek among you and the mourning among you and the poor in spirit among you. We ALL make up the kingdom. And we might find ourselves there on some days. We may be the ones who are mourning or feeling especially uncertain or it may be our spirits that are feeling poor. And on those days, in those times, the community of faith, holds us up and carries us forward.
So, what of salt and light? Jesus is telling those earliest followers that the community of faith must be a visible community. It and we must be visible to the world or else we are not who God has called us to be.
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it like this: For the followers of Jesus “the only decision possible for them has already been made. Now they have to be what they are, or they are not following Jesus. The followers are the visible community of faith; their discipleship is a visible act which separates them from the world – or it is not discipleship. And discipleship is as visible as light in the night, as a mountain in the flatland. To flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him.”[1]
Sisters and brothers, we, the community of faith as it gathers here in this place and time, are salt and light. We ARE a city on a hill. How will we let our lights shine so that the Kingdom of God is made known in the world?
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (2001. 113)