February 5, 2023 Sermon
Sermon title: "Salt and Light"
Scripture: Matthew 5:13-20
(Other lectionary suggestions include Isaiah 58:1-9a, Psalm 112:1-9, and I Corinthians 2:1-12.)
Matthew 5:13-20
Salt and Light
13"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. 14"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
The Law and the Prophets
17"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Today's sermon title is "Salt and Light", and it continues what we started last week, the Beatitudes. As mentioned last week, the Beatitudes are the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with Matthew 5 and goes through chapter 7. Today's portion of that great Sermon on the Mount tells us that we are salt and light, not that we SHOULD be salt and light, but that we ARE salt and light.
What Jesus means is that salt was a preservative back then, and it still is today. Originally Jesus was calling his own people, the Jews of his day, to be faithful to what God had intended for them, to be the salt of the earth. But to quote N. T. Wright, "Israel was behaving like everyone else, with its power politics, its factional squabbles, its militant revolutions. How could God keep the world from going bad - the main function of salt in the ancient world - if Israel, his chosen "salt", had lost its distinctive taste?"
Israel was supposed to be the salt of the earth. What about light? Where does that reference come from? Isaiah 42:6 says, "I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations...." And Isaiah 49:6 says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." What Jesus was hinting at was what if those who were called to be bearers of light were instead part of the darkness, part of the problem? "Jerusalem, the city set on a hill, was supposed to be a beacon of hope to the world. His followers were to be like that: their deep, heart-felt keeping of God's laws would be a sign to the nations around that the one God, the creator, the God of Israel, was God indeed, and that they should worship him."
Some of those listening might have thought, "Hey, we already have the scribes and the Pharisees and other religious folk who are teaching us. What's so different about Jesus?" Jesus is saying that YES, the scribes and Pharisees and others do have a way of behaving in accordance with God's covenant. But if you are going to grasp what I am talking about, says Jesus, the kingdom of heaven that is now breaking in on you, you almost have to be born again to understand what I am talking about. (That phrase is from the Gospel of John, written after Matthew's Gospel - but it seems apropos for today's passage, too.) That's why Jesus says that "those who want to belong to the new world he is opening up must discover a way of covenant behavior that goes far, far beyond anything the scribes and Pharisees ever dreamed of."
Why does he say that? My own personal belief is that the Judaism of Jesus's day had become so legalistic that all the compassion had gone out of the religion. I think Jesus came - in part - to bring some "heart" back into the faith. From what we hear elsewhere in the Gospels, the Pharisees' brand of religion had become a set of rules, and only if you interpreted the rules the way THEY said could you be a good and faithful believer. Instead of looking down your nose at others, said Jesus, why not check on your OWN sins first? That's why I love so much that saying of Jesus in which he says to get the log out of your own eye before you start to remove the tiny speck that is in your brother's eye! I'm sure you'll remember that story Jesus told of the Pharisee and the publican or tax collector standing in the Temple. The Pharisee essentially tells God how good he is, but the lowly tax collector KNEW how sinful he was, and he wouldn't even raise his eyes but insisted on beating his breast and saying, "God be merciful to me, the sinner." Jesus couldn't stand pride, in my opinion, and there was a whole LOT of it in the Pharisees' brand of religion. That's why he says that "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
As I was writing this sermon, it occurred to me that perhaps we don't realize the literary skill of the Gospel writers. As you may recall hearing me say before, in the 19th century they were referred to as the Four Evangelists. They believed Jesus was the Messiah, and they wanted to convince whoever read their works of their belief. But they are also something else. They are story-tellers, yes, but they also write in such a way that they should be considered literary geniuses. If "genius" is a bit over the top, how about "skilled literary gentlemen"? I say this because the Gospels are LITERATURE as well as Holy Books. They are telling the story of Jesus, but they aren't just "clerks", writing down what somebody else told them to write! They have their own ideas that they weave into the stories they tell, and their meanings sometimes surprise us and even take our breaths away.
Here is one example: Jesus is telling us that we are salt and light, and we get that. But Matthew is also saying something else, and it's this: "He was the salt of the earth. He was the light of the world: set up on a hill-top, crucified for all the world to see, becoming a beacon of hope and new life for everybody, drawing people to worship his father, embodying the way of self-giving love which is the deepest fulfillment of the law and the prophets." Isn't that great the way Matthew sees that and puts it into his Gospel? That is what I mean by literary genius or literary skill. Here's the story of Jesus with Matthew's own twist on the account. These sayings of Jesus originally applied to Israel, but "now apply to all those who follow Jesus and draw on his life as the source of their own." N. T. Wright says, "How does this challenge affect us today? Where does the world need salt and light right now, and how can we, through following Jesus, provide it?" Amen.
Pastor Skip
