God in "The More than Meets the Eye"

 

John 4:5-42

Lent 3 / Year A

One of my all-time favorite movies is Smoke, a 1995 film about Auggie Wren who manages a cigar store on a street corner in Brooklyn.  Every morning at exactly eight o’clock he takes a Polaroid picture of the store across the street.  Auggie has over 4,000 consecutive daily photographs of his corner all labeled by date and mounted in albums.  He calls this project his ‘life’s work.’

One day Auggie shows the photos to Paul, an author who has been mired in the throes of writer’s block since the untimely death of his wife.  Paul doesn’t know what to say about the photos, but admits he has never seen anything like them.  Rapidly flipping from page to page, he observes with some amazement each picture is the same.  Auggie watches him, and then replies, “You’ll never get it if you don’t slow down.”  Even though all the pictures are of the same spot, Auggie points out each one is unique.  The differences are in the details: in the way people’s clothes change according to the weather, in the way the light hits the street, in how some days the corner is almost empty, and how other times it is filled with people, bikes, cars, and trucks.  “It is just one little part of the world,” Auggie says, “but things take place here too just like everywhere else.” 

The Roman Catholic educator Regina Cole suggests spirituality is an “awareness of the ‘more than meets the eye’ in our daily life.”  By this I think she means life is a sacred adventure.  Every day we encounter signs pointing to the active presence of God in the world around us.  If she is right, and I suspect she is, then Auggie is a model of a person who is spiritually alive.  He has found uniqueness, humanity, and the fingerprint of God’s Spirit in something so ordinary it escapes everyone else’s notice.

Today’s readings from the Old Testament and the Gospel of John describe very ordinary events – trudging through the wilderness and going to outskirts of town to draw water from a well.  I must admit a twinge of sympathy for the people of Israel.  If I was part of their band and I had been marching through the desert and I was hungry and thirsty and tired, I would be complaining right along with the best of them.  I think their shortcomings begin with reducing the ordinariness of the day to the mere pursuit of provisions.  They do not look for the hand of God at work in the world around them and thus they do not detect how God is, in fact, providing daily food and drink.  And through this providing, God is reaching out to be in relationship with them.

If you have ever worked all day to prepare a special dinner, taking great care to set the table, arrange a centerpiece, creatively present the food, etc, and then had your family rush in and attack the meal rather than dine together, then you can imagine how God feels.  All God has created and provided, and the intimacy of the relationship God seeks to establish through it, is met with the response, “We don’t have any water!”  It is not a helpful model of the spiritual life.

Like Auggie, the Samaritan woman at the well provides us with a very different example.  Yes, she sets herself to a very ordinary task, but she is open to it being more than a daily chore.  She encounters God in the person of Jesus and while he remains somewhat elusive to her, she senses there is something more about him than meets the eye.  She pursues him through conversation and at some point rushes off to tell others about him.  She has not formed a concrete doctrinal statement about the nature of God.  She does not sell her possessions and join a convent.  Heck, she doesn’t even commit to turn away from her risqué lifestyle.  But she does sense she has encountered God. 

You can almost imagine how the conversation is going to go back in village.  In the eyes of the townsfolk I’ll bet she is the least likely person in the community to find God and the old well is one of the least likely places for it happen.  She is nobody special and the well is just too commonplace.

The Christian journalist Malcolm Muggeridge writes that, “Every happening great and small is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”  Auggie’s photos and the Samaritan woman’s encounter testify to the truth of his words.  Life is sacred and yet our temptation is to reduce it to secular; to hold God is engaged in an hour of prayer on Sunday morning, but is not found when you are stuck in traffic or doing homework or while taking out the trash.  The temptation is to reduce life to a series of tasks – religion being the task of this hour.  New life comes when we realize in every moment God is reaching out to us to be in relationship with us.  And life is all about getting the message.

So, back to Smoke and Paul with his writer’s block.  He slows down his scanning and begins to take his time.  Without warning he gasps aloud.  His wife appears in one of the pictures.  Suddenly he realizes how an ordinary moment in an ordinary day at an ordinary place is a sacramental moment.  There is more – a lot more – than meets the eye going on around us! 

Well, Why Not!

 

John 3:1-17

Lent 2 / Year A

I remember crawling out of bed one morning when I was in seminary and stumbling my way to the Chapel for the 8:15 Wednesday morning Eucharist.  I was barely awake and not entirely tuned in to the first part of the service.  Locke Bowman, a professor on campus, was the celebrant.  When we got to the Great Thanksgiving he read the liturgy: “The Lord be with you.”  We all replied, “And also with you.”  And then, so gently and tenderly he said, “Lift up your hearts.”  Now most priests tend say these words in the imperative: The Lord we with you.  Lift up your hearts (or else)!  Not Locke.  When he said, “Lift up your hearts” his tone was inviting and it caught my attention.  I almost replied, “Well, why not!  I accept your invitation to worship the Lord.” 

The role and place of invitation is so important in the life of the Church.  It is the offer to embrace the faith handed down through saints and scholars, through songs and scrolls, through pastors and parents and make it your own.  When the Church is truly inviting, people are called out of their Chapel slumber and respond, “Who?  Me?  Well, why not!”

When Jesus says to Nicodemus “You must be born from above (or born again) to see the Kingdom of God” is he sounding a warning or issuing an invitation?  Some would say Jesus is saying “You must be born again… or else!”  …or else you will not please God.  …or else your sins will not be forgiven.  …or else you will never get to heaven.  Or else!  I contend Jesus is speaking of an opportunity to see in a new way how God is at work in the world here and now.  I contend it is an invitation.

Jesus never thought of the Kingdom of God only as being eternity in heaven.  For him, the Kingdom of God is here and now, not just in the great Bye and Bye.  Seeing it and entering into it is a matter of understanding the mission of Jesus and how God works through him.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus because he is impressed by the signs he performs.  For Jesus, it is possible (perhaps even likely) to see the miracles and yet to miss the Kingdom.  In order to find the Kingdom, he says, you must be born again; not as in ‘or else’, but rather as “Why not!”

Jesus articulates to Nicodemus his mission and purpose in this way:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him

God did not send Jesus to provide an ultimatum or warning; the big “Shape Up or Else!”  Jesus is sent to save the world, not to condemn it.  The Kingdom begins with God, out of a deep love for us, giving what is most dear and precious to God – namely, God’s only Son – so we might have everlasting life, beginning right now, today.  Jesus makes it clear to Nicodemus he must be moved by God’s self-giving, not the miracles, if he is going to see the Kingdom at work in this world.

Our first reading this morning, though brief, is one of the seminal moments in the Old Testament.  The Lord approaches Abram and tells him to pack up his family and his things and go.  Go where?  Just go until the Lord says, “Stop here.”  Is it an order or an invitation?  I suggest it is an invitation and Abram’s acceptance is a sign of his deep faith and righteousness. 

Do you remember Jesus’ parable about the king who invites guests to attend a wedding?  When everything is ready the king sends out his servants to tell the guests the time has arrived for the celebration.  However, each invited guest decides not to go.  Astonished, the king sends his servants out again to invite whoever they can find.  The party will be open to those who want to attend – to those who accept the invitation.

Every Sunday morning we are invited to enter this place with our whole heart open to worship and praise.  Every day we are invited to participate in the work God is doing in our world.  Every moment we are invited to live out the faith of our Baptismal Covenant and be a blessing to all, as Abram became a blessing to all the families of the earth.  When has this invitation so captured your attention you responded, “Well, why not”?

 

Temptation as Assault on Identity & Purpose

 

Matthew 4:1-11

Lent 1 / Year A

We began the season of Epiphany (as we always do) hearing the story of Jesus’ baptism.  There, in the cool waters of the Jordon River, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove and God’s voice is heard saying, “You are my Son, the beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  We are told in today’s reading soon after this the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness where he fasts and prays for forty days.  Then the temper comes.

Notice how the first two temptations are introduced by questioning Jesus’ identity: “If you are the Son of God…  Prove it to me and prove it to yourself by making bread out of stones!  Prove it to the world by throwing yourself off the pinnacle of the Temple!  When God’s angels catch you your identity will be confirmed before everyone.”  The proposition to bow before Satan in order to inherit all the kingdoms of the world is a temptation for Jesus get what is rightfully his but to do it in all the wrong ways.  And, it must be said, Jesus is tempted by each of these or else they would be little more than verbal jousting.  The temptations are attacks on Jesus’ God-given identity as well as an assault on how he is to live into his unique purpose and mission.

Our first reading from the Book of Genesis is one of the best known and most discussed stories in all of Scripture.  Adam and Eve receive a calling, which is to be the foundation of their identity.  God puts them in the garden “to till it and to keep it.”  Who are they?  Custodians of God’s creation.  And it is a lush creation teeming with everything they can possibly need.  God invites Adam to eat freely of every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Adam then transmits this instruction to Eve, but their conversation is not contained in the biblical record. 

The serpent questions Eve: “Did God really say you cannot eat the fruit of any tree in the garden?”  She corrects the serpent, “We can eat of any tree, only not the one in the middle.  We cannot eat it or touch it.”  Notice she does not seem to know the tree’s name, only its location.  And notice she adds “We cannot touch it,” when God made no such declaration.  Did Adam not pass along God’s words with fidelity or did Eve not hear accurately or did she add in these new things on her own?  Or, perhaps all three things happened.  No matter what, the damage is done.  The seeds of doubt take root and the question of identity and purpose is challenged.  “Maybe I can be more than a tiller and a keeper.  Maybe I can be like God.  Maybe I can become my own god with the ability to determine who I am and what I want to do.”

The bible never describes what the evil one looks like, but the names it gives this presence tell us much about his work.  Tempter means “cause to fall.”  Think of all the things in life you trip over and how they harm your sense of who God has created you to be and what God has called you to do.  Satan means “accuser.”  I have encountered several accusers in my life.  Most are narcissists whose woundedness has rendered them incapable of acknowledging any personal responsibility for any of the things going wrong in their life.  It is always someone else’s fault and they have no problem letting you know it.  Devil means “to divide.”  Pitting one person against another, one group against another, one nation against another, one race or religion against another.  The Holy Trinity is the embodiment of unity and has brought about all creation in order to share in its relational harmony.  The devil/divider works to bring about the opposite: hatred, alienation, brokenness, strife.

St. Paul writes about how Adam’s inability to live with fidelity into his God-given identity and purpose becomes something we all inherit.  We share in his fall and failure.  And this is not to say God punishes Adam and then us for being sinners.  It means we suffer the consequences of failing to embrace our God-given identity and don’t experience the blessings of living into our calling and purpose. 

As we watch Jesus in the wilderness we see him overcome temptation.  He does not fall.  We see him stand tall and faithful in the face of accusation.  We see him whole, not divided, in his relationship with the Father.  And throughout his life we see him remain faithful to his personal calling and mission; even to the point of offering himself to die on the cross for the sins of the whole world. 

In today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, Paul sums up the impact of Christ’s life in this way:

Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.  For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Through Adam we have inherited a broken sense of self and purpose.  We are unsure of who we are, we don’t know whose we are, and we struggle to discern why we are here and what we are supposed to do.  In Christ we have discovered anew we are children of God and heirs of God’s eternal kingdom.  In Christ we hear again we are called to be caretakers of all creation; partners with God and kindly affectioned to one another, living no longer for self alone.

 

What Do You Treasure?

 

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ash Wednesday

Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”

When we use the word treasure today we typically speak of one of two different things: either some form of wealth or a precious belonging (which or may not have much of a monetary value).  In Jesus day it referred to something different.  The Jerusalem Temple had a treasury to which people contributed (remember how Jesus once said a poor widow who put two mites – a couple of pennies – into the treasury box gave more than anyone else because she gave all she had).  These offerings were used to take care of the priests and to purchase ceremonial vestments and all the other appointments of the Temple.  So, in a sense, when Jesus speaks of treasure he is talking about the things we keep in our Sacristy along with the windows and furnishings which make our space sacred.

This helps us to make sense of what Jesus means when he says, “Store up treasures in heaven where moth and rust don’t consume (think polishing the brass) and thieves cannot break in a steal.”  All of these earthly things one day will perish.  Now, obviously we cannot send flower vases and communion chalices to heaven.  So the question about where is your treasure, is, in some ways, asking what is it that you treasure? 

Yvonne Bertovich is a writer and blogger who, in one post, named the ten things she treasures most.  Listen to her list and ponder what might be on yours:

Music

Loved Ones

Food & Nourishment

Shelter

Learning & Education

Natural Spaces

Plants & Animals

Culture & Discovery

Religion & Spirituality

My Health

Your list might look a little different or have a different ordering, but Yvonne helps us to think about what it is exactly that we treasure in life.  Notice she does not mention a 401k or clergy stoles. 

So this is one question: what do you value you?  And the other is in what are you invested?  Jesus tells us what we value either will direct our hearts toward God or it will direct our hearts away from God.  He says it is just this simple.  What do we have to invest?  Well, money of course.  We also have time and how we use it is an investment (ever sat through a bad movie and at the end said, “Well, there are two hours of my life I can never get back?”).  We can invest effort, energy and work into someone or something.  We can invest emotion.  The more we invest of ourselves in people or things, the more we care about them.  Given this, Jesus asks a basic question: Do the things you invest in and the people you invest in draw you closer to or farther from God?

This is a good question for us to consider on Ash Wednesday; on a day we remember our own mortality and recognize we have only one chance to live life and then ponder if we are living it well.  In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes fictional characters who go to heaven only to turn back because it is neither what they want nor expect it to be.  They have spent their entire lives longing for something other than God and, as a result, when they have a chance to be with God, they turn it down because they long for something else. 

Lewis discerns an important truth about life.  We are free to choose, free to desire, free to invest as we will.  The choices we make have eternal consequences in that they shape and form us either to love God or to love something else.  The choices we make become patterns that become habits that become who we are and God honors who we are by allowing us to receive the blessings or the curses of the choices we make.

In a few moments we will pray the Litany of Penitence.  It is a description of some of the choices we make: pride, hypocrisy, impatience, self-indulgent appetites and ways, envy, intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts to name a few.  These are things in which we invest ourselves and, true to our nature, our heart follows.  And once your heart gets settled on something, it becomes you and you become it.

This is a day (and Lent is a season) to make an honest self-assessment.  On what has your heart become settled?  How is it shaping who you are and what you are becoming?  Ponder these questions and doubtless you will discern those ways in which the treasure-heart-self path is leading you toward God and a deeper love of your neighbor and doubtless you will discern ways the path is leading in the other directions, away from love of God and neighbor.

The holy season of Lent invites us to a period of discipline and self-denial so we might die to some of the ways leading us from God and strengthen some of the ways leading us toward God.  I always get a chuckle from learning what people are giving up for Lent, especially if it is rhubarb or marathon running.  I find those who want to use Lent to die to self often don’t talk about the specifics of their Lenten devotion because it is too close and too personal casually to share with others.  This, I think, is what Jesus is talking about when he teaches about practicing your piety in secret.

The goal of Lent is simple.  It is to shift your treasure from one thing to another; to shift how you invest your time, your money, your energy, and your emotion from something leading you away from God to something leading you toward God.  The goal of Lent is to die to certain aspects of yourself so that by Easter you can rise to newness of life with our Resurrected Savior.  May God be with each of us over the next forty days in this time of disciplined dying to our old self in sure and certain hope God will raise us up to something new and holy.

 

Kabod

 

Matthew 17:1-9

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

When my pilgrim friends and I walked the Way of St. Cuthbert, a 62-mile long trail along the Scottish and English border, we experienced one day which featured every kind of weather imaginable.  We began the day walking in sunshine, but conditions changed dramatically.  By the time we reached the highest elevation along Cuthbert’s Way the temperature had dropped and we were completely enveloped in the clouds.  They swirled around us, seeming to come from every direction, even below as we crossed along the summit.  At one point we couldn’t see more than 25 feet in any direction.  It was damp and it was bone-chilling cold, but it was also a very powerful, moving experience.  It was like being caught up inside something which was alive; all at once disorienting and womb-like (if not for the cold… did I mention it was cold?). 

Today’s readings remind me of that day as God is mysteriously present at two different times on two different cloud-shrouded mountains.  One particular Hebrew word dominates each event: kabod.  It is a word which can be translated in two different ways.  One points to weight or strength or power or ability; the other to honor or glory or magnificence or dignity or splendor.  The first sense has something to do with value, like how a precious stone of great weight is worth more a smaller one.  In this sense, kabod raises the question of who or what matters most.  The second sense is used more to refer to a person’s nature or being.  When used in this way in the Old Testament it almost exclusively refers to God and is most often translated as glory.  It asks us to ponder who or what is most deserving of your admiration and allegiance.

God’s kabod is manifested in the cloud which enshrouds Mt. Sinai.  Moses enters it and will pray to God, “Show me your glory.”  God will answer, “I will make all my goodness (some translations say character, others moral beauty) pass before you.  But you cannot look at my face and live.”  So God will direct Moses to stand in a crag between two rocks and to look only briefly as God passes by.  Even then, Moses will only glimpse God’s back.  (33:18-23).  The cloud is necessary to mask the kabod of God because humans cannot glimpse it fully present and survive (think the ending of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark).

At the Transfiguration, Jesus is revealed as God’s Son and he radiates with God’s kabod.  In Jesus, God sends a person who can show forth God’s own goodness, character, and moral beauty.  Years later Peter writes of experience on that cloud-covered mountain:

We have been eyewitnesses of Jesus’ majesty.  For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 

Did you notice in the Collect of the Day we asked as we behold the light of Jesus’ countenance (his kabod) we might be changed into his likeness?  Just as Moses is forever changed by his experience with God’s kabod, so too are we changed as we encounter Jesus’.  It suggests if even a small ray of the brightness of God shines upon us, we will more purely reflect the goodness and moral beauty we are shown.

It occurs to me no generation in history has gained more knowledge and more understanding of the created order than ours.  And sadly, no generation seems to be less interested in the One who created this order than ours.  We are too caught up in the luster of something else—something less than the glory of God. 

C.S. Lewis, in his book The Weight of Glory, contends each person has a deep desire to be acknowledged, but nothing other than God seems to satisfy this innate longing.  The problem, he says, is our desire is far too weak.  We are content to pursue the vanities of this world while the infinite glory of heaven is offered to us.

Lewis goes on to offer this insight:

We do not want merely to see beauty… we want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

I hear in this the spiritual experience of being enveloped by clouds on a mountain top.  This is how Lewis describes the deep longing each of us has to be acknowledged.  It means being caught up in something which is weighty and worthy. 

Every day, Lewis says, we have the possibility to live our lives in two different ways.  The choice is ours.  One way is to be known, appreciated, and delighted in by God who will say to us “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  The other way is to be forgotten, shamed, and dismissed by God who will say to us, “Depart from me.  I never knew you.”

Beyond, what the prayer book calls “the changes and chances of this mortal life” – after all, each of us is affected by the ebbs and flows of daily existence (we all have our good days and bad ones) – I suspect our awareness and acknowledgement of God’s kabod is seminal in how we will live our lives and conduct ourselves.  Who or what matters most?  Who or what is most deserving of your admiration and allegiance? 

 

Your Choice

 

Matthew 5:21-37

Epiphany 6 / Year A

It happened without warning on Thursday afternoon.  I was driving my car and glanced down at the dashboard only to see the check engine warning light was on.  Ugh!  The car felt fine.  The engine was humming along.  It was not making a funny sound.  There was no strange odor.  What to do?

Every automobile comes with an Owner’s Manual.  It spells out in exacting detail how to operate and maintain your vehicle in order to get optimum performance and long life out of it.  Now, if you want, you can ignore some of the advice.  You can put off having the oil changed.  You can fail to properly inflate the tires.  And, in my case, you can wait to see if the check engine light will disappear – which it did yesterday – or deal with it once smoke starts wafting out from under the hood. 

Or, instead of being negligent, you can be downright rebellious.  You can put oil in the gas tank, gas in washer fluid container, and washer fluid in the oil case.  No one is stopping you.  After all, it is your car!  However, these decisions will have consequences; consequences which will affect your car’s performance and longevity.  It is up to you.  You get to choose.

In today’s first reading from Scripture we hear a portion of what is known as “Moses’ farewell speech.”  The Hebrew people are about to cross the Jordon River and enter the Promised Land after wandering forty years in the wilderness.  Moses himself will not go with them, so these are his final words as he reminds them of God’s commandments.  And just as the directions in your Owner’s Manual are far from arbitrary, so too God’s commands are not just directives selected willy-nilly by the All-Mighty.  They set out what to do and how to do it in order for human life and society to flourish.    

And just as you can choose to adhere to the Owner’s Manual or not, Moses says you can choose what to do with God’s commands.  What you choose, he says, has consequences.  One leads to life, the other to death.  And the death comes not because an angry, vengeful God is going to punish you for being disobedient.  It comes because you have ignored or rejected the principles which God has conveyed to optimize life.

Our reading from the Gospel of Matthew is another portion of Jesus’ teaching known as “The Sermon on the Mount.”  In it he offers a critique of the commandments revealed through Moses.  Jesus has already said he has not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them.  So, something about the life Moses offers is incomplete.  Jesus does not want to eliminate these laws.  He desires to deepen them.

Consider the commandment, “Thou shall not kill.”  It places a restraint on behavior, but not on thought.  You may be angry with your boss, you neighbor, or a family member, but if you don’t take their life then you have kept the commandment.  But Jesus says anger itself is a problem.  It is not enough simply to suppress your temper, your temper itself is a destructive force at work in your life.  If you seethe with hatred and bitterness you are not living at an optimum level.  In order to let go of your inner rage you must have a spiritual transformation of the heart.

St. Paul writes the Old Testament laws function something like a set of shackles.  They prevent you from doing things you may want to do, but shouldn’t.  Those who are in Christ, he says, are free from the law and have no need for it because, in their hearts, they live it to the fullest intention.  It is like the difference between my dog and my neighbor’s.  I have a fenced in backyard because without this restraint my dog would run off.  My neighbor’s dog sits on the front porch with no leash or gate.  It is free to roam off the property if it wants, but doesn’t.  It knows what its owners want it to do and not to do and complies willingly.  Paul says those who are in Christ are like this.  Even more, we know why Christ desires this for us.  We have a heart for the Lord.

I have invested, so far, more than six hours writing a memorial resolution for diocesan council for the Hon. Rev. Dr. Canon Joe Green who died in early January.  He truly was a remarkable person who combined faith with love of the church and leadership in the community.  He served for thirty years as Rector of Grace Church in Norfolk.  He was appointed to the Norfolk School Board and then elected to city council, the first person of color on it since Reconstruction.  For ten of his twenty years on the council, he served as Vice Mayor.

Back in the mid-sixties, Joe and his cousin enrolled at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Suwannee, TN.  There, as with much of his life, he encountered unimaginable racism in the era of Jim Crow.  Once, after all the white people had left, Joe and his cousin went for a swim in a pool.  The next day it was closed “for repairs” and never reopened the rest of the semester.  It makes me angry just to read about this episode and I’m sure it made Joe angry too.  I first met him in 2007.  Every time I was Joe he had a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.  He knew the secret to optimum performance and longevity.  Joe had Jesus and Jesus’ love deep in his heart.  This gave him the ability to endure and even to thrive in the midst of every indignity, every slight, every injustice, every slur, every insult.  It is possible only when you know Jesus’ love for you and for every human being is absolute and unfailing.

It is a secret I hope you know and it is a secret I hope you share. 

Salt and Light for...

 

Matthew 5:13-20

Epiphany 5 / Year A

I have heard many preachers and teachers contend Christianity is a verb, not a noun.  It is not merely a label one wears.  It involves action.  When Jesus says “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world,” he is not offering a description of who we are.  Rather, he is putting forth metaphors for what we do.  Each statement is in the plural emphatic tense… “All of you are salt and light” 

Like “the good Samaritan”, “salt of the earth” is one of those biblical phrases which has made its way into our common vernacular.  Interestingly, we typically reserved for men and use it – positively – to describe a particular type of person: “He is the salt of the earth.”  Who do you know you would describe as being “the salt of the earth?” and what personality traits do you associate with this saying?     

And while there is nothing particularly wrong with the entomological changes of this phrase over time, given Jesus uses it to describe an action, not a way of being, for this morning’s purposes we need to hear it in a way which takes it back to its origin, to its roots.  In order to do this, let’s translate Jesus’ words this way: “You are salt for the world”, “You are light for the world.” 

The image of light is pretty straightforward.  Salt is a little trickier.  In Jesus’ day salt was used primarily as a preservative.  It kept food from spoiling, thus making it possible for people to do more each day than scavenge for food.  It paved the way for civilization by freeing up human activity to rise above a sustenance existence.  It was quite a valuable commodity and Romans soldiers were paid with it by the pound.  Our word ‘salary’ is actually a derivative of the Latin word for ‘salt.’

A colleague of mine noted this week that if, as followers of Christ, our impact on the world can be compared to light and salt then this means the world is a place of darkness and decay.  And you don’t have to look very hard to find examples of each.  The murder of Tyre Nichols is the most recent manifestation of the darkness.  The infighting and petty squabbles on Capitol Hill provide vivid examples of the decay.

What are we as salt and light supposed to do in order preserve what is good and illuminate what is right?  Our first reading gives us an answer.

The prophet Isaiah carries out his ministry some 500 years before the birth of Jesus.  The people of his day can’t understand why all their pious actions neither garner God’s attention nor secure God’s support.  The Lord tells Isaiah what is lacking:

Is not this the fast 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?

This is what it looks like to be salt and light.  This is what it looks like to convert your faith from a noun to a verb:

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.

Being salt and light for the world blesses the lives of those we touch and transforms how we live and move and have our being in it.

Today we hear Jesus teach our righteous must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees if we want to experience what life can be like in the Kingdom of Heaven.  God’s word to Isaiah describes, in part, what this looks like.  We are to advocate for public policies which support God’s vision.  Our parish is called discern ways we can meet the needs of our community.  As individuals we are directed to give of our time, our talent, and our treasure as we encounter poverty, hunger, and injustice.

In meditating on today’s gospel reading it did not escape my attention while it is positive and uplifting when Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world”, after each he offers a cautionary tale.  “If the salt has lost its saltiness what is it good for?”  “Why would you light a lamp and hid it under a basket?”  

As I ponder our faith community, I recognize we are not perfect… and wow, who other than a trained religious expert (i.e. Pharisee or scribe) would be able to recognize our numerous flaws!  But, as I pondered who we are and all we do, I was overwhelmed by how we live our communal life as verbs; in our common life, in our community, in the wider church, and in our world.   We are being salt for the earth.  We are being light for the world.