After nine blessings of the kingdom, Jesus transitions his
sermon with another blessing. Just as the poor are not blessed because they are
poor but because theirs is the kingdom of heaven, Jesus makes another blessing,
telling the disciples and others listening, “You are the salt of the earth. You
are the light of the world.” They, we, are blessed because they, we, are the
salt and light of the world. It is a blessing Jesus intends for us to take
concretely. Meaning this is not a blessing about an inner attitude or about
being careful what we do in front of others. It is a blessing that carries with
it a charge live it out in practical everyday ways.
I mentioned last week the importance of the Sermon on the
Mount to the Christian faith. I went as far as suggesting it should be a
requirement for church membership, something I’m starting to strongly consider
the more I study these chapters. The Sermon on the Mount was the most often
referred to biblical passage during the first three centuries of the church. In
his First Apology around 154 A.D.
Justin Martyr quoted fully from the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount—on chastity,
marriage, truthtelling, loving your enemy, turning the other cheek, going the
second mile, giving to the one who begs, not hoarding treasures or being
anxious about possessions but seeking first the kingdom of God, letting your
good works shine before others so that God is praised but not doing good works
to be seen by others (Stassen pg. 128). Justin expected Christians to do these
practices because they bear witness to the teachings of Jesus. And by bearing
witness to the teachings of Jesus, they are to carry out these teachings
because it bears witness to the power of the teachings to transform the way
people live.
Justin emphasizes how Christians are blessed to be the salt
of the earth and the light of the world. But a crack appears in his writings
when we learn that he is addressing his writings to Emperor Antonius Pius and
his son, trying to gain their favor. He quotes Jesus in Matthew 22, “Render to
Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” and in turn interprets it
to mean, “Whence to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly
serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men.” Justin ends up limiting
Christian independence from the emperor to the matter of how worship. He was
apologizing to the emperor, trying to persuade him to be kind to Christians. By
doing so he divided up Christian responsibility so that our worship belongs to
God, while in other things we do what the earthly ruler says.
Centuries later, Martin Luther follows suit. He suggests the
teachings of the Sermon on the Mount where for the inner attitudes for every
Christian. “But the outer self,” he suggests, “that has responsibilities to
other persons should obey the authorities in the world and not the commands of
the Sermon” (Stassen pg. 130). He held to the belief that the Sermon was about
our attitude not our actions. But Luther, like Justin, was concerned with a
ruler. Prince Frederick was defending him and his Reformation against the pope
and Luther needed an ethic, an interpretation of the Sermon that would not
undermine the authority and power of Frederick.
If you ever go to the Cloisters in New York City (something
we should do some day), we would see the beautiful paintings and sculptures
there depict only two themes: Mary and the baby Jesus, and Jesus on the
cross--nothing about what happened between his birth and death. It is like the
Apostle's Creed: 'Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, dead, and buried.' The Sermon on the Mount and all of Jesus's
prophetic teachings are hiding, unseen, unheard, behind a comma that zips him
from his birth to his suffering under Pilate, with nothing in between but a
comma (Stassen pg. 130).
What does this history lesson have to do with being salt and
light? I’m glad you asked. The result of Luther’s application of the Sermon to
the inner life and Justin’s interpretation focus to be about worship was
secularism. The people were taught that the gospel has nothing concrete to say
about how we live our lives in public. The Sermon is reduced to the point, “our
inner motive should be love.” Such a motive can be shaped to mean anything that
fits what we love. Basically it renders the Sermon to be true when it fits with
our loves, meaning we compromise the Sermon to fit anything we think would be
okay. The best example of this is when politicians and others take Paul’s
words, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” to justify cutting
important budget items that protect the poor and elderly, in order to weed out
those who take advantage of those protections. But a gospel interpretation of
Paul helps to see he is referring to a group of believers who were busybodies
sitting up on a hill waiting for the Lord to return. If I were to put in
today’s terms, he would be speaking directly to the believers and pastors who
are more concerned about Blood Moons and astronomical signs for the end times,
than about being salt and light.
The Bible never splits life into one world ruled by a
secular ruler and the other ruled by God. When Jesus says, “Render unto God
what is God’s,” he believed we were to render everything to God because
everything was God’s. Jesus knew God to be the Lord over everything. God has
authority over Caesar, Jesus is saying, so we are to render to Caesar only what
fits God’s will. And that is what it means to be salt and light. It is to
acknowledge the blessing that Jesus identifies us as the salt of the earth, the
light of world and as such we are bound to only one ruler and that ruler is God
alone. We cannot serve two masters.
And I believe Jesus is referring to such when he tells us
what happens when salt loses its saltiness or when a light is hidden under a
bushel. I don’t think he was implying that salt actually loses its saltiness.
I’m not sure it ever does. I know salt dissolves but does it ever lose its
saltiness? I guess we could check the salt down in the church kitchen. It’s
been sitting there awhile. I’m sure it holds some its saltiness. And have you
ever hid a candle under a bushel on a dry summer day? Which reminds me of a
story.
One day my brother took some matches out into the driveway
and began to melt some of his matchbox cars. My parents, being the kind they
are, supervised from a far, and left the water hose running beside him. Well,
our neighbor across the street saw David playing with matches and burning his
cars and decided he wanted to do that as well. Instead of practicing it in the
safe confines of the driveway, he went into the woods, lit a match and set the
pine needles on fire. Next thing you know, the firemen are there with their
cool toys putting out a small forest fire. So we know the bushel doesn’t put
out the fire, and that’s not Jesus’s point.
Jesus’ point is that we are not to be ashamed of being
blessed to be the salt of the earth or the light of the world. He wants us to
see it as a blessing, a blessing that does not call attention to ourselves, or
as we read later on, to be done in public so we receive public accolades. He
wants us to see that we are a blessing to go out into the world and show that
God is indeed at work, that God is indeed alive, and that his teachings,
especially the Sermon on the Mount, are transformative in the lives of others.
He says it best when he tells the Pharisees, “You are like
unmarked graves of which there is no longer any evidence and people walk all
over you without being aware that there’s even a corpse there. There was a time
when at least you had the capacity to raise a stink, but you’ve even lost that.
And you make about as much impact on the world as a corpse that’s been dead and
buried so long that there’s not even any fresh dirt left (Jordan, Clarence.
“The God Movement” The Substance of Faith
and Other Cotton Path Sermons pg. 70). The purpose of salt is to salt, and
the purpose of light is to light, not stay hidden in the dark until its “safe”
to come out.
How do we know if we’re being salt and light? Some believe
the proof is in the fruit you bear, meaning it’s in the number that attend, the
amount given to the budget, or how grand and beautiful your buildings are. But
I would say if you wish to know if a church is being salt and light just take a
look at their spending. Simply take a look at their budget. If the majority of
the church’s budget is marked for maintaining buildings and preachers then the
odds are they have lost their saltiness. A salt filled church is a
spirit-carried away church. It is church that is not bent on maintaining but on
transforming their community. They are bent on getting out and doing the work
of the kingdom. They are not bent on maintaining. The reign of God does not
have room for those who wish to maintain, Jesus says in Matthew.
I’m not a fan of Downton Abbey but Lacy was watching it
during our snow day on Thursday while I was writing and I overhear a
conversation that I had to ask her to play back for me three different times to
make sure I heard it correctly. The conversation went like this (and keep in my
mind I have no idea what the storyline is about):
“Is it from a lack of money why these places are failing,”
Mary asks Charles.
“Usually, but why is that? Because so few of the owners
refuse to make the most of what an estate has to offer. So few think about
income. So few are willing to adjust their way of living.”
“You have to understand what these people are used to.” Lady
Mary responds.
“No,” Charles states empathically, “they have to understand
it’s time to get used to something different. They think nothing needs to
change. That God will be upset if the old order is overturned.”
“But you don’t think he will?”
“No. To farm an estate is hard work. The owners must face up
to that or they don’t deserve to keep what they have.”
For 223 years, our Christian ancestors have farmed this
estate in this community. They farmed it with no intention of growing into a
place that was fixated on maintaining the farm. They farmed it with the
intention of being a place that was continually cultivating the ground as the
seasons changed and years gone by. We did not inherit this farm to maintain its
buildings, its salaries, or its gravestones. We inherited this farm so that we
may continue the work begun two centuries ago, work that began over 2000 years
ago, work that began the very second the Lord said, “Let there be light.”
Jesus did not bless us to be builders of monuments to our
past. Jesus did not bless us to be maintainers of an estate with half a million
dollars endowed to an uncertain future. Jesus blessed us to be the salt of the
earth, the light of the world in the here in now. I have said this before and
it merits repeating:
On the morning of the resurrection, God put life in the
present tense, not in the future. He gave us not a promise but a presence. Not
a hope for the future but power for the present. Not so much the assurance that
we shall live someday but that he is risen today! Jesus’ resurrection is not to
convince the skeptical nor to reassure the fearful, but to enkindle the
believers. The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb,
but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he
lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled community of faith. Not a
rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church. (Jordan, Clarence. “The Humanity
of God”, The Substance of Faith and Other
Cotton Path Sermons. Pg. 25-26).
We are salt and light. We are a carried-away church. Let our
light shine as bright as the sun off a hot tin roof in July.
No comments:
Post a Comment