Salt and Light

5 Ephiphany    A   February 9, 2014          

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)  Psalm 112:1-9  

1 Corinthians 2:1-11  Matt.5:13-20

Lectionary Link

  Listen God, let me make a deal with you.  How about if I promise to come to church every Sunday and if I say the Morning and Evening Offices of prayer each day; and also if I give some money to the church would you exempt me from having to help the poor?  Would you exempt me from having to love people who disagree with me?  You see, if I could assure myself that I am okay and that I can have eternal life if I have the correct theology and I am fully compliant on religious rituals, perhaps I could be exempt from all of that messy stuff about justice?

  Well, this is the kind of subtle religious contract that sometimes we may actually be living with God.  We adopt a religious practice and a religious community as a way to feel good and clean toward God, but at the same time we avoid issue of human justice and care of our fellow human beings.  We can be faithful and loyal to creeds and doctrinal positions because we may hope that being told by religious authorities that we are “orthodox” in our thinking means that we somehow have a good standing with God.

  The lessons which we have read from the Holy Scriptures are totally in opposition to this kind of subtle religious contract that we may have in our lives.

  The Hebrew Scripture tradition, the Gospel tradition, the tradition of St. Paul is about the transformation of our lives, our entire lives.  For transformation to be valid it has to affect our entire lives.

  The prophet Isaiah noted that lots of religious people had made this phony bargain with God.  They performed religious acts of piety, even fasting,  all they while they let their fellow human being live in deprivation and suffering.  And Isaiah warned them that they could not disconnect the meaning of their religious deeds and beliefs from the overall practice of justice and mercy in their lives.

  The Psalmist wrote that people who keep the commandments will be blessed by God even with wealth; and that sounds rather formulaic except the Psalmist goes on to state what it means to keep the commandments: it means being generous to the poor and lending freely.  You want blessing?  Keep the commandments.  But the commandments are not words inscribed on a tablet for public display as a symbol of our moral superiority; the commandments are in the messy details of living our lives as compassionate people in deeds of kindness.

   Again the Psalmist’s message:  You cannot separate the commandments and the blessing of the commandments from the actual practice of kindness and generosity.  This means our  lives exhibit evidence of  transformation by complying with practice of the commandments.

  St. Paul told the Corinthian Church that the significance of his life was not his wisdom or even having wisdom about the mystery of God; the significance of his life was that his life represented a transformation in how he lived his life.  The death and resurrection of Christ were not just historical events; they were not just wise doctrine of understanding God; they were a spiritual method which transformed his life with the power of change.  Paul had been changed from being a persecuting religious inquisitioner into one who invited everyone into a path of transforming their lives.  He became one who invited Jews and Gentiles to this powerful transformation of their lives that could be known when one experienced and accessed this higher power of God’s Spirit.  It was not a theory of wisdom about God; it was the transforming power in practice.

  The words of Jesus in the portion of the Sermon on the Mount that has been read today is also about showing the evidence of a transformed life.

  Jesus warned about breaking the commandments because breaking the commandments at the most profound level means that one separates the laws of what one professes to believe from the actual practice of one’s life.  It does no good to profess that one loves God and then fail to practice the love of our neighbor as ourselves.

  Breaking of the commandments means to fail to realize the power of transformation which enables to not only to profess our love of God, but also to live our love of God in how we treat our neighbor.

  Jesus used the metaphor of salt and light.  If we understand salt  we understand that it is the nature of salt to so interact with plain food in such a way as to complement and add an enhancement to the taste of plain food.  If salt did not do this for food, then we would not use it.  Jesus said that his friends were to be salt of the earth.  To live in our Christ-like natures is to live transformed lives when we unite both the ideals of our commandments with the actual practice of our lives.  Salt makes a difference with ordinary food.  Salt enhances and accompanies ordinary food.  So too, our transformed lives are to make a complementing difference in this world.  Yes, we are to be spicy people; we are to complement and bring out the exquisite sublime taste in this life.  We are here to help people know, "My life is much better because of way that you live.  Your living makes my taste of life enhanced.”  Living our lives as salty Christians means that we make this world, the ordinary world, a tasty world:  A world to be savored because of our presence.  Jesus said that our lives are to make a seemingly ordinary and bland world, a very wonderful and good world.  As spicy and salty people we are to help people to realize just how good their lives are.

  Jesus also called his followers to be lights in this world.  He said just as we don’t violate the nature of a lighted candle by immediately putting it under a basket to be extinguished, so we are to live our lives as wicks that are ablaze with a light.  We are to live our lives to help others see more clearly things that help give them better orientation to their life situations.

  In the season of Epiphany which will end on the Mount of the Transfiguration where the face of Jesus is like the filament of a light bulb fully aglow,  Jesus is declared to be the Light of the World. But Jesus did not keep all of the light to himself; he also lit up the lives of his disciples.  He gave them the light of the Spirit as an inner depth to help them unite what they practice with what they believed.  Jesus provided his friends with a path of transformation.

  You and I are invited to be in this path of transformation today.  In this time and place we are to be salt and light.  We are to make this world a more tasty place because of the way in which we live our lives.  We are to make this world a brighter place because we have known an inner light.  This light has given us direction in the transformation of our lives so that we too can be an aid for others to transform their lives towards the love, wisdom and justice of Christ.  Amen.