February 16, 2014 “BELIEVE IT AND BE IT”
Preface to the Word
Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew is part of what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew begins chapter five by writing: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them saying...”
A few things I’d like to point out about this scene before we actually hear today’s scripture read to us.
First, this occurs on a “mountain,” or “mount.” Mountains have always figured into holy encounters with God. Mountains and hills are mentioned over 500 times in the Bible. Mountains have a logical religious symbolism for biblical cultures since they are “closer to God” who was believed to dwell in the heavens (as in the sky). As a result, God often reveals himself on the mountaintop.
In the Old Testament, the mountains of Sinai and Zion are most significant. Mount Sinai is where Moses received the gift of the Law, the Ten Commandments. Thus, Mount Sinai is a symbol of God’s Covenant with Israel. Mount Zion is the location of the Jerusalem Temple. In the New Testament (Mark and Luke to be precise), Jesus appoints the Twelve on a mountain. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus delivers his Sermon on the Mount, conjuring an image of Moses who received the Commandments on Mount Sinai. Matthew’s mostly-Jewish audience would immediately pick up on the comparison between Moses and Jesus. Matthew, in particular, has 6 significant mountain “scenes” in his gospel: Jesus’ temptation (4:8); the Sermon on the Mount (5:1); a number of healings (15:29); the Transfiguration (17:1); Jesus’ final discourse (24:1); and the commissioning of the Apostles (28:16).
Second, Jesus “sat down,” which is the usual position of Jewish rabbis while teaching. (Makes you wonder how many were able to hear or see him if he was sitting while speaking.)
Third, it says in verse 3 that Jesus “began to speak, and taught them saying… It’s not clear who the “them” is referring to. Both “crowds” and “disciples” are mentioned as his possible audience. I see the first part being addressed to the “crowds,” that is, to everyone in earshot of his voice. This rather lengthy sermon, which in this Gospel gathers up a bunch of Jesus’ teachings into one “sermon,” begins with blessings. There are no should’s here, no musts and no ought’s. Jesus begins his teaching with blessings for those who are unblessed, those who are failures by the way that society judges success or failure.
No commands launch Jesus’ sermon, just blessing for those who are poor in spirit, merciful, peaceful, meek, and persecuted. God blesses those who recognize their need for God and allow God’s grace and holiness to shape their lives.
But then, in verse eleven, the Beatitudes shift from the third person to the second person. Jesus turns his attention away from the crowd. Here, it seems to me, he addresses his disciples.
“Blessed are you…,” he says.
Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:11-20
Sermon I.
A. Can you see it? Can you see him turn? Up to this point, Jesus has been referring to “those” and “they.” But now the pronouns change. Blessed are you. I see Jesus turning to face his disciples to address them directly. And what he says to them he would say to anyone who would be his disciple. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account... in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you.”
Just imagine, this little band of fishermen, tax agents, zealots, women, and people off the street… prophets!
B. I can picture it. Simon Peter swats at a fly that is bothering him. Nathaniel nudges Mary Magdalene who breaks out in a grin. “Us?” they wonder. “Prophets?” they respond.
“Yes,” says Jesus. “Prophets. Interpreters and truth-tellers of Israel. You. You are the salt of the entire earth... You are the light of the whole world. Now shine!” He doesn’t say they ought to be salt or they should be light. He says that they already are.
C. A question is raised in a book on baptism called Remember Who You Are. “Who tells you who you are: Your parents, your children, your nation, your job, your friends, your school, your bank account?”
Think about those first disciples gathered around Jesus. Who were they? Fishermen? Tax collectors? Whores? Zealots? Were they just ignorant, country hicks? Uneducated poor? Unclean outsiders? Who were they?
Jesus was trying to tell them who they were. “You are salt. You are light. Now, go and be who you are.”
II.
A. But why does Jesus refer to his disciples as “salt” and “light”?
What is salt? Today salt is almost universally accessible, and relatively cheap. However, years ago salt was difficult to obtain and so it was a highly valued trade item. Until the 20th century, salt was one of the prime movers of national economies and wars. In the Middle Ages, salt was known as "White Gold." In the time of Jesus, Roman soldiers were paid a salarium argentum, the basis of our modern word “salary.” (A soldier is “worth his salt.”)
Guess what. sal is Latin for salt.
The Bible contains numerous references to salt. In various contexts, it is used metaphorically to signify permanence, loyalty, durability, fidelity, usefulness, value, and purification. It was also used as a component of ceremonial offerings, and as a unit of exchange.
Salt. Just tiny grains, yet utterly essential in its uses. Nobody eats just salt. But it flavors everything it’s added to.
B. You disciples... so small. Yet sprinkle a few of you around in places like your neighborhood, or business, or school and no telling what you’ll stir up, no telling what you’ll flavor. You disciples. You add zest to the earth. You make life interesting.
My dictionary offers this intriguing definition of salt: “An element that gives liveliness, piquancy or pungency.” You may not be many, but you disciples are God’s special seasoning sprinkled onto life.
C. A student once came to his pastor to tell him that he had decided he didn’t need to drink alcohol to have a good time at college. His reason for doing so, he said, came from his conviction that “he couldn’t relate to people with as much honesty and intensity as he wanted if he was killing his brain cells with booze.”
He went on to say that while this was a personal decision on his part, he was surprised at how threatening his behavior was to everyone else. People he hardly knew would come up to him at a party and make some wisecrack about being a “Miss Goody Two-shoes.” People seemed to be driven crazy that he said no to drinking, as if they couldn’t party themselves if there was one person left on earth who didn’t need to be drunk to have the courage to carry on a conversation with someone of the opposite sex.
D. This is just one of many examples of how it works. Anyone who has even an ounce of self-possession has a way of underscoring how enslaved everyone else is to the status quo. So they try to convert you for fear that you might subvert them.
You are the salt of the earth, Jesus said. You add the flavor of God’s grace and God’s justice, God’s love and God’s holiness to the earth.
Be who you are.
E. Light, like salt, is important because of what it enables to happen. Most of us don’t stare at light bulbs, themselves. No, the light bulbs enable us to see something else. Switch on a light, and you can see what’s in the dark room.
“You are the light of the world,” says Jesus. Without you, the world cannot see what it is. The world will not see that it is violent, that its national orders and governments are propped up by force, until it meets someone who is not violent.
Many folks don’t know that they’re living superficially until they come face-to-face with someone who isn’t. The world has got to stumble across at least one spiritually “free” person still running loose before it can see how enslaved it is to a host of cruel masters. You are the light of the world. You hide your light under a basket, and everyone is going to stumble around. Shine out the truth of God. Even one small candle fights back the darkness.
F. Disciples who don’t act like disciples and churches that are like chameleons blending into the wallpaper of the culture around them are not much help in showing anyone the way out of the dark. Christ said that salt that has stopped being salt, light that is hidden is “moranthe,” which means moronic, stupid. It deserves no better than to be the doormat of the world.
G. My wife Jan is an avid reader and often likes to share with me something from the book she’s reading that really spoke to her. Once time she read to me a few paragraphs from Annie Dillard’s book, The Living. Some may recognize Dillard as the author of other books including Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
The Living is about the people who settled the Bellingham area of Washington in the late 1800’s. Jan was struck by the way Dillard describes some reflections a mother has about her two sons.
“She has her two sons Clare and Glee now,” Dillard writes, “and they were fine men, but frankly, she had seen better. This had nothing to do with her feeling for them – she felt for Clare and Glee as much as she felt for anyone living or dead – but the times had gotten inside them in some ways as they aged, and made them both ordinary. Which they were not meant to be; no one is. No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.”
“The times had gotten into them and made them ordinary... they wear out their brains learning what folks expect...”
Friends, Jesus Christ wants to get into us and make us salt and light.
III.
A. A recruiter for the “Teach America” program, a program that attempts to recruit bright young prospective teachers from college and university campuses to teach in America’s most difficult and deprived school systems, stood before an auditorium full of Duke University students. She said, “Looking at you tonight, I don’t know why I am here. You are privileged, the beneficiaries of the best of this nation’s educational resources. I can tell, just by looking at you, that you are all bound for Wall Street, law school, med school. And here I stand, trying to recruit you for a salary of $15,000 a year in some of the worst school situations in America, begging you to waste your life for a bunch of ungrateful kids in the backwoods of Appalachia or the inner city of Philadelphia. I must have been crazy to come here.
“But I do have some literature up here, and I would be willing to talk to anybody who happens to be interested. But I know, just by looking at you, that all of you want to be a success and here I am inviting you to be failures. So you can all leave now.
But if by chance somebody here feels called to the worst job any of you can imagine, then I’m here to talk to you. The meeting’s over.”
With that, everyone stood up and stampeded to the front, fighting over the chance to talk to this recruiter, just dying to give their lives to something more interesting than conventional American success, dying to give themselves to something bigger and more important than themselves!
B. It is an awesome tremendous gift for us to know that our lives are caught up in some vast, cosmic program of Jesus Christ. You and I are the way in which Jesus is busy turning the world inside out, enlivening the entire world. The things we do matter, like the way we spend our money, the words we use to speak to or about other people, the way we use our body and other people’s bodies, the jokes we tell and laugh at, the manner in which we spend our time... all these are transformed from being purely personal matters of individual lifestyle into a great, world-altering witness to the Light of the World.
C. Are we surprised when Mr. Light of the World turns his attention toward us and focuses his laser beam of truth upon our ordinary life and calls us his “light of the world?” Are we amazed that he would claim us as his “salt of the earth?”
Well, believe it! And then be who you are.