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February 5, 2023
Penelope Bridges
“You are the salt of the earth … you are the light of the world.” In today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus pays us a great compliment and in the same breath offers us a steep challenge. We are salt; we are light. We have the capacity to change the world, to bring light to the darkness; AND as followers of the Jesus movement we have the responsibility to change the world and bring light to the darkness. In these verses that follow the famous Beatitudes, these are truly mixed blessings.
Let’s think first about the characteristics of salt. Salt enhances flavor; it preserves and seals. There’s an Irish superstition that acknowledges the power of this mineral. It says, if you spill salt you must immediately throw some over your left shoulder to ward off bad luck. Salt is included in rituals of blessing and purification – when we bless water for the font and the holy water stoops, the ceremony calls for us to bless the salt and add it to the water. When you add salt to something, you change it. Salt, used wisely, makes things better. So, when Jesus says you are the salt of the world, he might also be asking, “What are you doing to make things better, not just for yourself but for the world?”
Salt is never the principal flavor of a dish: it is always used to enhance something else. Like salt used by a skilled cook, we are not to draw attention to ourselves, but to be the means by which God’s love is made more appetizing to others. And, like salt, we are to generate thirst – a spiritual thirst, a thirst to know God, to meet Christ, to be fed with the bread of life and refreshed by living water.
The prophet Isaiah reinforces this idea that we are to live in ways that make a difference in the world. Ostentatious religious practices on their own are unconvincing: it’s far too easy for a gap to open between someone’s self-presentation and their actual behavior. Maybe you can think of someone who attends church regularly, who is even prominent in their faith community, but who displays little evidence of being salt and light in the world. And conversely we can probably think of people who are thoroughly decent, loving, generous human beings, who live as Jesus calls us to live, but who don’t appear to be pious or who don’t belong to an established religious tradition.
Isaiah points out that worship is not the point of living as a faithful person; it is not an end in itself. Rather, it is an activity that feeds our faith so that we can live as faithful people. Simply attending church each Sunday, as someone once said, doesn’t make you a Christian, any more than sitting in your garage makes you an automobile. We come together to worship in order to be nourished, strengthened, encouraged, and challenged as we go about our weekday work of being salt and light. Theologian Andrew Foster Conners puts it this way: “[Worship] is the place where we inhale God’s love and grace, so that we can be sent forth to exhale God’s love and grace in a broken world in need of redemption.”
Light is the main theme for this post-Epiphany season, so it’s no surprise to find light showing up in both the Isaiah and Gospel readings. February 2nd, the feast of Candlemas (another reminder of light) was the date when we were supposed to take down the final remnants of our Christmas decorations, but my Christmas lights are still up on the balcony of my home, because it’s a dark time of year and we need every little bit of light and cheer. And, because my house sits high above the street, the little colored lights are visible all over my neighborhood; they don’t just brighten my home but they shine out as a beacon in the dark for all of my neighbors, even the ones I don’t like.
Light is critical to life and also to our spirits. We know that life on earth depends on the star around which we circle: the one sun that lights not only all of humanity but also of our solar system. Just as the sun gives light and life, so God in Jesus gives light and life. John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus is the light of the world. He is the spiritual sun whose light is meant to shine on all the world. Just as we all share the sun’s life-giving rays, so we all share the opportunity to pass on God’s love made known to us through Christ. Christian faith isn’t just about a private, personal relationship with Jesus: it’s about how we are in the world, how we treat others, how we make a difference.
I remember when I learned that the stars don’t go away in the daytime; they are up there all the time, but we can’t see them until it gets dark. Light is most useful in the dark places, and so, as salt and light we are called to go into the dark places of the world: to accompany those who are in the dark; to confront grief, despair, injustice, pain, violence; because that is where the light of Christ is most needed. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to be willing to follow him into those dark places, even to the Cross; and that includes facing the dark places within yourself. Lent is a good time to explore some of that inner darkness and to bring light to it through self-examination and confession.
Jesus goes on to tell his followers that they should observe the law, the law of Moses that was for the Jews not a burden but a blessing, a gift from God to guide them in their life as God’s people. The Law was created so that the people would behave themselves, treat others with compassion, live out their chosenness with integrity. Some of the details that were designed to keep the Jews separate from their neighbors seem odd to us today – the prohibition of shellfish and mixed fabrics, the regulations around sexuality – but the basic principles still apply to us. Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. Or, in the words of the prophet Micah, do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God.
We know that Jesus was Jewish and that he stands in the line of those ancient prophets. In today’s Gospel he is explicit about this identity. He is taking the Law to the next level, not discarding it but refining it and simplifying it. Every word of the Law of Moses was intended to support and guide the people of God in their vocation AS the people of God. But the Law wasn’t intended as a stick with which to beat people. It wasn’t intended as a vehicle for showing off our piety – what today we call virtue signalling – a practice that religious leaders have been prone to over the ages: the Pharisees in Jesus’ time and many, many examples of Christian leaders in the centuries since.
Jesus ends this section of his sermon with a reminder of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is his code for the world as it should be, a world where each of us is salt and light, where all have enough and nobody suffers from injustice or scarcity. The prophet Isaiah gives us the vision of the Kingdom: “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 rearguard. … and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”
Be the salt. Be the light. Amen.
