2023-02-06
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
2-5-23 Homily: Salt and Light Rev. Betsy Wooster
Today’s Scripture reading comes from the Gospel According to Matthew.
Matthew 5: 13-20
13 ‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.
14 ‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
17 ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Let us pray:
Gracious God, you preserve and give flavor to our lives, like Salt. You have made us in your image, that we might reflect your love beyond ourselves, like Light. Speak to us through the scriptures, so that we may become participants in your vision for the world. Amen.
What is the right way to live faithfully in difficult times? Maybe discipleship would be easier in a world that was totally at peace. But that is not the world we live in, and it was not the world of the people that Jesus spoke to on the mountaintop.
Today’s text from the gospel of Matthew is a portion of Jesus’ ongoing sermon on the mount, which follows immediately after the Beatitudes section that we heard last Sunday, in which Jesus said Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for God’s vision, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers…..and, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. In other words, persecuted for participating in God’s vision for the world in a way that differs from the way of the worldly powers.
What we just heard in today’s scripture passage is Jesus further unpacking a new way for the Hebrew people to respond to their lives under Roman occupation. There were two divergent groups within Judah who were at odds with one another over how to respond. Jesus suggests to them a third way. He begins by highlighting the qualities of Righteousness, salt, and light.
What does is mean to be Righteous? What does it mean to be salt? What does it mean to be light? Jesus is lifting, and then answering these questions for the crowd gathered before him, the very people who were struggling to safely regain their lived practice of following the Torah in every aspect of their lives.
Jesus’ delivered this treatise to the people of Israel during a time of heated debate about how they could best live out their faith while under occupation by the Roman Empire. This was a persistent question. Over the centuries, they had been conquered by Babylon, taken into exile, and their Temple destroyed. Though they returned, and built a second Temple, they had seldom maintained sovereignty.
As Jesus spoke on that mountain, they had long been under the rule of the Roman Empire, whose power extended to local puppet kings and even to the Temple itself, with hand-picked priests who collaborated with Rome. Theirs was a culture where religion and politics were never separated, so you can imagine their anxiety about their homeland, God’s holy city, fully occupied by outsiders. Where was God in all of this? How to respond to living in a land no longer their own? How to continue to be faithful to God and to their religious practice while under persecution? Where. Was. God?
Judaism was under assault, and, as has happened the world over for centuries, those who were under attack held different views on the best way to respond. Theologian Edwin Vandriel aptly describes these two different factions of first-century Judaism as having had their own responses to their occupation, “ranging from realistic collaboration with the occupier, more common to the Sadducees, to a widespread desire to take up weapons and fight the empire, the Zealots, which was somewhat more common among the pharisees.”
The two factions operated in extremes: Those who could see they were no match to the power of the empire, and that taking up the sword would end in destruction, chose to delve deeper into their private study of Torah. They studied privately and quietly to preserve their cultural and religious identity as God’s people, a people who could stay faithful until God would ultimately reign in the future, in God’s own timing.
The zealots, on the other hand, thought that the only way to preserve their overall identity was to take up arms and conquer their occupiers with the sword in order to usher in God’s reign. This group was made up of a portion of the Pharisees who saw violence as their only path toward a future in which God would free them from occupation. They read the torah in the context of the sinful world which they were trying to overcome, one that God would eventually set right so that Judah would again become an independent nation. It makes sense. They felt called to conquer by force to preserve the dual nature of political independence and religious freedom.
I sympathize with both groups. Isn’t it natural that during a time of trauma people would find hope and comfort by digging deeper into their scriptures and gathering privately to worship God, who was their only refuge and strength? I get that they may have seen this as their only way to live out their faith while they waited for God’s ultimate reign to unfold for them, for their children, for their children’s children, and so on.
I also can see why others would want to fight to get back control of their land and their lives. Would we accept anything less for ourselves? We see, all over the world, and especially now in Ukraine, where one nation attacks another with brute force to gain entire political and cultural control, while also reaping the benefits of the land and potential new subjects under their control.
Jesus took a different path than the Zealots. Jesus taught “love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” But Jesus also took a different path than the movement to withdraw into private religious observance. Faithfulness is a gift to be shared.
It was in this fractious environment that Jesus gives the teaching that “15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” There was no reason to hide the light for a future date when God would “officially arrive.” Jesus said to them YOU are the light of the world. Share your light.
Unlike the Sadducees and Pharisees, Jesus read and practiced the Torah from a perspective of God’s abundance, not from the perspective of the world’s sin.
In his ministry, Jesus had already been teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and sickness among the people, preaching that God was already doing a new thing: No one lights a candle in order to hide it. We light the room in the dark corners of our lives in order to see better, in order to understand better.
Jesus was telling his audience on the mountain, and through the scriptures, is telling US, that we are the salt of the earth, and we are the light of the world. Only by God’s grace are we these things, but Jesus’ words to us are clear: “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” It’s a lot to take in. That’s a task, friends, but one we are capable of doing, because God has given us the gifts to carry out this call.
We are called to inaugurate God’s ways into the world we live in. We are not to hide our light when we have every ability to shine it, so that others will find healing within it. Part of our work as followers of Jesus is to elicit goodness on the earth, to preserve the earth’s flourishing, to preserve human flourishing, to preserve the flourishing of all living things.
In our time, I think that for many Christians, we are tempted to treat our faith as a matter of private observance, within our homes, within our churches.
I bet that many of us are concerned about going public with faithfulness in a way that is unhealthy – we don’t want to seem judgmental and holier-than-thou; we want to respect other faith traditions and people’s own choices. Those are good concerns. People have done terrible things in the name of Jesus.
Episcopal Priest Debbie Thomas writes that she is fully on board with these concerns, but she reminds us that, quote: “The Good News Jesus embodied was news. Something to share, to proclaim. So, at what point does our silence become offensive in its own right? Offensive as in withholding, ungenerous, inhospitable?”
There are healthy ways of acting faithfully in the world. We are disciples of Jesus, whose redemptive love is good news – it is a joyful, restorative, inclusive faith that we practice!
It’s the kind of light that should not be hidden.
It’s the kind of salt that should not go to waste.
Amen.