sermon on the mount — Andy James

A Strange Kingdom

February 9, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 5:13-20
preached on February 9, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s been a whole lot of talk about salt lately. With the persistent snow we’ve been getting this winter, it feels like we are going through more salt than ever before, and the statistics seem to be proving it. In the last week we’ve even heard about a looming shortage of salt, with public officials all across the country starting to fear that they will not have enough to make it through the winter safely. Salt—or some variation on it formulated for colder temperatures or different uses—seems to be an integral part of surviving the winter these days. Without it, our world would stop for wintry weather even more than it already does, and we would be far less likely to even be here today because of treacherous roads and sidewalks!

But I don’t think Jesus was thinking much about salting sidewalks when he offered these words about salt and light in the Sermon on the Mount. In Jesus’ time, the thought of tossing salt onto a walkway would have been a huge waste—it’s how they would have dealt with salt that had lost its saltiness! But I have to wonder if what he meant when he told his disciples and the gathering crowds that they were the salt of the earth is comparable to the importance of salt for us this winter. In Jesus’ time, salt was an extremely important commodity, used to fertilize and prepare the fields for crops before planting and then to help preserve the staples held over to get through the winter.

Even now, salt continues in these important roles in our world, but in the winter it seems more useful in dissolving the snow and ice that can so easily paralyze our world. We need only look at Atlanta a couple weeks to see what would happen to a modern city that isn’t able to use salt amidst snow and ice. Not only did gridlock reign and the city essentially shut down when too many cars attempted to drive at once, people were stranded for hours, even overnight, after just a two-inch snowfall. As much as any coordination from City Hall or the Department of Sanitation, the response of New York City in winter weather depends on salt just as much as salt was important in Jesus’ time.

So maybe we need to think about being the salt of the earth in this way this winter. Just as salt works to give us traction when things are slippery, as salt of the earth we can help others to regain their footing in times of uncertainty. Just as salt works to melt down the mounds of ice around us these days, we can be the salt of the earth to help melt the hardened hearts of our world. And just as salt takes a little bit of time to take effect and clear the path, so as salt of the earth we may need a little time and patience to join in God’s work of making a way amidst the challenges of this world.

In the same way, when Jesus proclaimed to the crowd that they were the light of the world, he gave them the inspiration to bear something new and different into the world. Just as salt transforms the world and makes new and different things possible, so light brings life to the darkness. The examples that Jesus gave to illustrate his point made this abundantly clear. This light is meant to shine—it is like a city on a hill, like a lamp on a lampstand, bringing light to everyone. This light is meant to bring light to all—not just a select few but to the whole house, to anyone who can see the city shining brightly at night. But ultimately this light of the world is less about the light itself and more about what the light does, about what the light enables others to see, about helping others to give glory to God.

And so in this day, when we too hear Jesus’ command to be the light of the world and to let that light shine before others, how do we let it shine? The light in us is not meant to be a blinding light, so bright that people cannot see anything else, but to be a guiding light that points the way to something and someone else brighter than ourselves. The light in us is not meant to be the only light, shutting out every other source of light everywhere, but to be light enough for the way today. And this light in us is ultimately not our own but rather a reflection of the light of Christ that we receive and share with the world, and so it must not be brighter than its source.

Ultimately, for Jesus the matter of being salt and light is about being part of the kingdom of heaven. To Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is not some far-off time and place, some distant enjoyment of God’s blessings to be inherited upon our death, some world yet to come that means nothing for our world today. To Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is a new way of life in the here and now, a promise of hope amidst the brokenness of this day and age, a different way to approach God and one another that sets aside the measures of the world and welcomes the gracious judgment of God, a way of joy and peace and promise that embodies the fullness of the fast described by the prophet Isaiah:

to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free…
to break every yoke…
to share your bread with the hungry,
[to] bring the homeless poor into your house…
to cover [the naked]
and not to hide yourself from your own kin.

This kingdom of heaven is the whole purpose of our being salt and light. The salt helps prepare the soil, clear the pathway, and slowly but surely get the gunk out of the way so that the kingdom of heaven can be real. And the light helps others see the way in the darkness, transforms uncertainty into hope, and gives the glory to God, the source of all light, so that the kingdom of heaven can be visible to all.

Even in our world that doesn’t have all that many kingdoms anymore, the kingdom of heaven is so very different from what is the norm for us. It is hard if not impossible to get in based on the usual measures—Jesus says that the righteousness we need to enter the kingdom of heaven must exceed that of the scribes and pharisees, so getting in must be about something more than righteousness. This kingdom of heaven is a place where the ways of the world matter immensely but not at all, where the law and prophets that have guided things for so long are not so much abolished as fulfilled. And it is the place where God’s full presence abides each and every day, where the prophet’s words become real:

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and [God] will say, Here I am.

This kingdom of heaven, then, is not something we achieve on our own or by any accomplishment of human merit—it is the gracious gift of God for all creation, and we have the privilege of being a part of it as salt and light to make way for others to join us.

So in these winter days, may God help us to be salt and light in this world, working always to help the kingdom of heaven to be be shown more fully in our world as we trust God’s work to make all things new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God for salt and light! Amen.

Up on the Mountain: Seeing Ourselves Anew

February 27, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 7:1-12, the sixth in a series on the Sermon on the Mount
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on February 27, 2011

Preacher’s note: A significant portion of this sermon is highly dependent on two items of copyrighted material. Nonetheless, I will share the framework for the sermon and point you to the resources used. Thanks for your understanding as I seek to respect the hard and creative work of others and yet still want to share!

We’ve been up on the mountain for the last several weeks – with a little break for my vacation last week! – hearing Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount anew, and by and large he’s offered us a new view of the world even from this early place in his ministry. Up on the mountain, Jesus insists that blessing is not a gift to be counted but rather a call to embody a new way of life. Jesus suggests that we need to be both seen and unseen in our work to show and be a part of what God is doing in our world. Jesus makes it clear here that relationship and reconciliation count for far more than exacting adherence to legal codes. In this sermon, Jesus demands that our actions match up with our words – and that everything we do deepen our life of faith on the inside at least as much as it invites others to join us in that way on the outside. And Jesus maintains up on the mountain that God’s economy calls us to live in a different way that counts not the cost but the potential for something new.

So much of the Sermon on the Mount is about how to live in a way that embodies the kingdom of God for others, but in our reading from this famous sermon today, Jesus turns a little more inward. He isn’t addressing the church, per se – such an institution did not exist in his time – but in this section of his sermon he nonetheless seems to be talking a little more about how to live with each other on the mountain as we must do in the church rather than just looking out to the world beyond this place.

First we hear a very familiar verse: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” It’s an incredible verse – an important reminder of our limitations as human beings and our inability to understand and see things as God sees, for judgment is, in the end, reserved for God. But that simple view doesn’t capture everything he wants to say. While Jesus certainly wants us to refrain from harsh or inappropriate judgment, I doubt that he would say that we should not serve on a jury or that someone should escape punishment for wrongdoing because no one is willing or able to bring down judgment. For Jesus, judgment is not so much prohibited as it is reframed – each of us must submit ourselves to the same sort of judgment we ourselves would offer. And so judgment is more about how we see things – not just seeing what others have done but also seeing one another in new ways, seeing our own actions through others’ eyes, and seeing the new thing that God is doing in our midst.

So that we can see things in this way and be honest about how we see others and ourselves as we begin living out this command, I invite you now to join me in a brief meditation on this text, originally used in the Iona Community in Scotland.

In summary, this meditation invites a blinded listener to hear others speaking the truth about their lives, concluding with an invitation to remove the log that the listener does not even realize is in her eye. This portion of the sermon concludes with a symbolic action as worshipers are invited to come forward, remove a piece of wood from atop a mirror to discover that they can see a little more of themselves as the logs are removed. The meditation and action are adapted from “The log in your eye” in Present on Earth, The Iona Community/Wild Goose Worship Group/GIA Publications, p. 219-221.)

Following the symbolic action, the sermon continues with the following prayer:

Let us pray. God of judgment and grace, we have ignored Jesus’ command: “Do not judge.” We have pointed out the splinters in others’ eyes without recognizing the planks of our own. Remove these specks from our sight, and help us to see with new light. Open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to ourselves and those around us, that we might be aware of our own shortcomings and know the fullness of your grace even as we offer it to others as Christ has offered it to us. Amen.

Now Jesus doesn’t leave things there, though – there is a little more to today’s vision from up on the mountain. From this place, he insists that his listeners will receive all that they ask for, find all that they search for, and have all doors on which they knock opened, even as he demands that they offer others the same respect, love, and grace that they seek for themselves. This is not an open promise to receive all things without question – rather, it suggests that God offers us all that we truly need in graciousness and love even as we too are called and expected to show that same sort of grace and love in our asking of God and our living with and for others.

Living like this is not easy. Jesus’ vision from up on the mountain is rarely in line with our self-interest. We don’t like being honest with ourselves about the planks in our eyes or the ways we constantly fall short, and we demand everything that God can offer us without being willing to make that same offer to others. But this is the vision set before us, a vision we will surely question and maybe even mock or criticize, yet it is nonetheless God’s vision for our world to be made new.

And so we ask so that this way will be given to us. We search so that we might find this something new. We knock so that God will open the door of new life before us and all the world. May then this song be our prayer for this vision to be real among us.

The sermon concludes with the singing of “Lord, can this really be?” (words by William Rutherford, music by John L. Bell) as found in Church Hymnary 4 of the Church of Scotland, #205.

Up on the Mountain: Doing, or Just Being Seen?

February 6, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 6:1-18, the fourth in a series on the Sermon on the Mount
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on February 6, 2011

We here know what it feels like to seem to be doing things in secret. Although our doors are open every Sunday, people around Whitestone often don’t know what we are up to since we just don’t have a high profile. Hundreds of people walk past our door each and every day to get to school, go to work, eat lunch, or just enjoy a nice stroll when the weather is pretty, yet so few of those make their way in our doors! I for one often wonder if people would even notice our absence from the community if we ceased to exist, and my fear is that most folks would only notice us if our building were not here, half out of sadness for the loss of a beautiful building and half out of concern for what sort of thing might replace it. So when we talk about special events and the like, raising our visibility is a prominent theme – how can we help people know what we are doing and simply that we exist? What can we do that will help our neighbors and our neighborhood recognize that we are here and join in?

Jesus actually has a few things to say about visibility, but his words don’t seem to encourage us in our work of being seen. In the section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that we heard this morning, Jesus speaks pretty directly against doing things just to be seen. As he looked down from up on the mountain, Jesus offered a vision of God doing something radically new in the world, and he used three familiar practices of faith to suggest ways to live into the kingdom of heaven – but these were things to be done, not just to be seen.

First, he speaks of the practice of giving alms. Supporting the poor with small gifts was very familiar to Jesus’ first listeners, as it was a longstanding part of Jewish tradition and broader cultural practice of the ancient world. Jesus doesn’t attack the tradition at all – in fact, he encourages it – but he demands that its purpose always be kept in mind. Supporting the needs of the less fortunate must always be about responding to those who are in need of assistance, not about making the giver feel good or be appreciated or noticed. True giving is not about being seen making an important gift – it is about doing what is best for the other, and if the temptation is too strong to get a benefit for yourself, Jesus suggests doing it in secret, not even letting your other hand know what is going on! In doing things in this way, we point toward something greater than ourselves. Jesus then suggests that there is a reward from God for doing this – but this is not about storing up rewards for ourselves in heaven. Instead, it may be, as preacher Tom Long suggests, a reminder of our constant dependence on the infinite mercy of God:

All that we have, all that we are, comes by the mercy of God. So, when we are generous toward others, we are not writing checks on a limited account. We are drawing from an inexhaustible flow of divine grace; works of mercy never deplete the supply. (Tom Long, Matthew in the Westminster Bible Companion series)

After lifting up this practice of almsgiving and showing how it reminds us of God’s mercy and grace toward us, Jesus moves on to the practice of prayer. His words on prayer start out very much like his words on almsgiving, with an affirmation of the practice but a condemnation of how it is frequently carried out. Too often, he suggests, prayer becomes a matter of showing off – praying in public settings so that everyone can hear every word, using flowery words, focusing on the prayer itself rather than on those lifted up in it and especially the one to whom it is directed. Instead of all these things, Jesus suggests a very simple prayer instead. This incredible prayer is now so well known that we probably miss its radical nature and intent, but the reality is that the Lord’s Prayer points less to the kinds of requests for healing and protection that get lifted up so frequently in our midst and more toward asking God to make the way of heaven real in the world. In these words of the Lord’s Prayer, prayer becomes less about the one praying and his or her needs and more about becoming engaged with what God is doing to renew the world, not a series of wishes to be granted by an all-powerful genie but rather a practice of faith grounded in our hope to be a part of what God is doing all around us.

The final practice is one that seems a little more foreign to us Protestants these days: fasting. I must admit that I have never found personal spiritual value in this, nor have I tried it for myself. Nonetheless, for Jesus’ listeners and for many others of other religious traditions, fasting is an important part of the spiritual life, but Jesus insists that it be kept in the right perspective. Just as almsgiving and prayer should be rooted in real practices and not just in drawing attention to the doer, so true fasting seeks to deepen the internal spiritual life far more than it is noticed by others. So Jesus goes so far as to suggest that his audience ought to disguise the fact that they are fasting if they are tempted to find righteousness in the practice rather than its fruits, if they are more concerned with being seen than actually doing something to be a part of the coming kingdom.

There is definitely a fine balance at work for us between doing what enriches our faith and being seen at work by others. On the one hand, it shouldn’t matter that we are doing good things in our world in the name of the church, but on the other, we also carry a command to make the name of God known all around us. In our world, where good works abound but understanding of the Christian life seems awfully absent, where people enjoy looking at church buildings but almost never set foot in them for worship, it would almost seem more important than ever to be recognized for why we do what we do.

However, Jesus’ admonitions still apply today. We shouldn’t care for the needs of others just so that others will pay attention to us, let alone place conditions of being seen or heard on our help. Prayer should not be a tactic used to show off, suggest the superiority of one way of life, inject religious content into a properly secular moment, or even proselytize in the public sphere, for it should always draw attention to God and the new way that God places before us. And other spiritual practices like fasting must draw as much attention to the internal life that grounds them as they draw to themselves. Jesus doesn’t mean that we should only give to the poor in secret, only pray alone, or engage other practices that deepen our spiritual lives only in ways that they cannot be seen – he simply suggests that these practices must always point to something more if they are seen.

The three practices of faith that Jesus lifts up here – almsgiving, prayer, and fasting – are only three of a multitude of things we can do to deepen our spiritual lives and point to the true grounding of our faith and action. Other practices can also enrich our walk as we seek to engage more faithfully with what God is doing in the world – things like practicing Sabbath, finding spiritual companionship for the journey, singing the ups and downs of our lives, and even finding words to describe how God has been at work in our lives and our world. Things like these can help us to engage more faithfully with all the new things that God is doing all around us. If in doing these things, we can demonstrate to the world the quality of life in the kingdom of heaven without becoming smug or haughty or focused just on being seen, then we can and should be a part of what God is doing even now to make all things new.

Our visibility in these days certainly matters – people need to see and know what we do and why we do it – but that visibility is only a fruit of the incredible things that God calls us to do as the community of faith in the church. Next Sunday after worship, we’ll be talking a bit about this calling – and some specific ways to make it real through our own commitments – so I encourage you to make plans to join us after worship next Sunday for this important conversation.

And so from up on this mountain may we have a clearer vision of the kingdom of heaven – and how we can be a part of making it real – so that we can also help others to see it and invite them to join in through our life together. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Up on the Mountain: The Way of Righteousness

January 30, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 5:17-48, the third in a series on the Sermon on the Mount
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on on January 30, 2011

Snowstorms tend to bring out the legalist in me. Life is frustrating enough these days without the people who refuse to shovel their sidewalks or who block the road with their insanely large SUVs! But there is little that annoys me more than people who clear the snow from around their cars or in their driveways and throw it into the street. It makes the street slick, moves the snow only so far that someone else has to move it again, and just doesn’t reflect any degree of kindness for neighbors, pedestrians, or drivers. Not only that, though, it is against the law, and violations carry fines of up to $350, and I for one figure that not enough people have been assessed the fine for shoveling snow out into the street! I shudder to admit that I’ve taken to acting on my own to protest my frustration with these self-centered actions since the city seems to be quite lax in its enforcement, so I drive a little closer to the edge so I can spray a little of the snow back on the person throwing it into the street or honk my horn and shake my head as I drive past.

All this reminds me of how I can be a very legalistic person – I definitely want to follow the rules very carefully and avoid doing something wrong, and I expect others to demonstrate a similar respect for them. I could catalog many, many ways of how I embody this in my life, but I’ll leave that for a conversation with a therapist sometime!

This kind of legalistic attitude seems to be very much present in our reading from Matthew’s gospel this morning. This portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount deals with how to follow the law – but it is immediately clear that Jesus has quite a different perspective on this for his time and ours. Jesus starts out making his purpose clear: “I have come not to abolish [the law or the prophets] but to fulfill [them].” From the beginning, he reminds the people that he isn’t encouraging them to stop following the law – in fact, he suggests that following the law and teaching others to do the same will bring honor in the kingdom of heaven.

But then he surprises everyone by setting the bar even higher: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees” – those known for their exacting attention to the details and minutia of the law – “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” But I think righteousness for Jesus here isn’t quite what it seems – it’s certainly not in the details and minutia of the law that were the focus of the scribes and the Pharisees. In six “case studies” of the law that indicate the form and content of this extremely high standard, Jesus makes it clear that the way of righteousness is not so much in exacting attention to the details of things but more in embracing the fullness of the spirit of the law.

Each of the cases Jesus offers helps to describe that spirit in light of a well-known law and so open up the way of righteousness.

“Do not murder” demands more than just not ending a human life – it demands that brokenness be avoided and reconciliation stand at the center of all relationships.
“Do not commit adultery” suggests that even more than specific sexual acts are prohibited – even the beginning desires of these things go too far.
While divorce may be permitted, Jesus finds that it should not be the ideal.
While some may say that oaths are permitted and even encouraged to discern truthfulness, Jesus suggests that a simple, honest “yes” or “no” from the very beginning should be enough to make righteousness clear.
The law may say “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” but Jesus suggests that responding in vengeance is futile, instead recommending that one give even more than one is asked and offer abundant grace in the midst of hatred and enmity.
And the law may suggest that love can be limited to those we know or like, those we can immediately identify as family, friends, or neighbors, but Jesus insists instead that the real commitment should be to love even our enemies – a far more difficult challenge!

So he concludes with the greatest challenge of all for the way of righteousness: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

All these things seem like a very high order, and they are. This standard of righteousness is far more difficult to meet even than the city law against tossing your snow in the street, if you ask me – but strict adherence is not what matters. In fact, in bringing these cases Jesus makes it clear that the law must be interpreted beyond its basic meaning, not just to figure out whether and how it applies to a particular situation but also to determine how the broader principles of God’s intentions can be realized in the particular moment. Just because something is not explicitly prohibited by the law does not mean that it is allowed in the way of righteousness.

And so Jesus establishes some broader principles for living in the way of righteousness. Evil and good aren’t always immediately distinguished, and evil is certainly not to be eliminated at the expense of doing good. Brokenness of any sort and any origin is not God’s intention, and the specifics of the law require that we do whatever we can to bring about reconciliation, even when the law suggests otherwise. And even the difficulty of perfection is clear – so clear that there is no choice but to leave room for grace to permeate the situation and make room for God alone to make things perfect. Even as he proclaims that he has come to fulfill the law and not abolish it, Jesus makes it clear that the way of righteousness is built not on the letter of the law but rather on the quality of relationship that the law produces.

As commentator Stan Saunders puts it,

“While Jesus fulfills and affirms God’s law, he also understands that where laws implicitly or explicitly confirm the existing, broken order, they may be abandoned in favor of reconciliation, restoration of relationship, and wholeness.” (Preaching the Gospel of Matthew, p. 41)

Following the law for Jesus is clearly not about fulfilling a checklist – instead, it opens the way of righteousness through relationship and reconciliation.

In many ways, looking at this text on a day when we spend so much time dealing with the particulars of business as a congregation seems a bit strange. The congregational meeting that follows worship today is one of the most scripted and prescribed moments in our life together, as we have very particular rules about what we can and must and cannot do, and we spend most of our time and energy making sure that all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed. Like those moments when my stress rises because of snowy streets, we often turn to the rules to figure out how best to proceed as I did in looking up the penalty for throwing snow into the street! But what would it be if we saw this important gathering as an opportunity and invitation to walk in the way of righteousness together? What would it be for us to deepen our attention to reconciliation and focus us on displaying the way of righteousness in relationship that Jesus describes as we go about this important work today? What would it take for us to set aside our attention to all the details of standards that we will never get perfect and right and focus on how we can best walk together in the way of righteousness in the days before us?

And so I think Jesus calls us in times like these to walk in this way of righteousness – not focusing so intently on the particulars of the law that we lose sight of its spirit, not getting so worked up when others ignore the particulars and intent of the law that we take it into our own hands as I tend to do in these snowy days, but instead embodying the reconciliation, relationship, and wholeness that it offers us as we seek to be like those who live in the kingdom of heaven. It is clear that we will never meet this very high standard, but God nonetheless calls us to walk in the way of righteousness as best we can, trusting that every step we take in this way will be a part of the coming of God’s kingdom into the world.

So may Jesus’ vision of this new way of righteousness from up on the mountain inspire us to join in his new way, setting aside all our brokenness and trusting God’s power to heal and make new as we join in this work of relationship and reconciliation until we see all things restored and made whole in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Up on the Mountain: Salt and Light

January 23, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 5:13-16, the second in a series on the Sermon on the Mount
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on January 23, 2011

As we spend these weeks up on the mountain looking again at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel, I’m reminded that I’m often a bit envious of Jesus’ preaching style. He always seemed to be able to tell the right story at the right time to make his point so well. He found effective ways to connect everyday experiences and even objects to the life of faith. And he was always able to speak to the crowds with grace, even offering peaceful and gentle words to those who disagreed with him. On average, I’d say I’m successful at just one of these things each week, sometimes missing them altogether but maybe hitting the trifecta of all three in a single sermon once or twice in the over 250 sermons I’ve preached over the years!

Today’s section of the Sermon on the Mount is one of these moments when I think Jesus got all three of these things right at once, and I hope and pray that I can relay a few of my own insights even half as effectively as he did! After opening this address from up on the mountain with a description of the radical nature and direction of God’s blessing, Jesus turned quickly to a some imperative statements, moving beyond descriptions of the direction of God’s blessing and the coming of God’s kingdom to invite his listeners to take concrete steps to be a part of these things taking hold in the world.

His first two instructions that we consider today were seemingly simple: be salt and light. “You are the salt of the earth,” he said. Salt tends to get a bad rap in our world these days – even though salt can dramatically enhance flavor, the high-salt diet common these days has brought a significant increase in the occurrence of high blood pressure, and we’re disconnected enough from the growing and preparation of our food that we don’t always recognize how salt can be an important fertilizer and a simple and safe preservative. He even warned them against losing their saltiness and losing the ability to enrich growth, preserve against decay, and enhance flavor, for when salt loses its saltiness, it is worthless, for it is no longer salt and best just tossed out to add to the dirt on the path.

But throughout all this, salt is basically unseen – it is mixed in to enrich the dirt when no one can see it, added in the back rooms to preserve when we aren’t looking, and ground so small that we easily miss it when we add it to our food. And most of the time it takes a while for salt to do its good work – plants aren’t magically and immediately changed by salt but only when it has worked its way into the soil over time, and other foods aren’t preserved right away but only after the salt has made its way through. It often takes a while for salt to be noticed – but when it is missing, you certainly know it!

So Jesus insisted that his listeners are the salt of the earth, deeply enriching the growth of things around us at the roots, safely preserving the things that stand at our core against decay, and enhancing the flavor of life every step of the way, even when its effects can’t be seen right away. While we weren’t in that first crowd up on the mountain, we too are called to be the salt of the earth, working our way through the soil slowly but surely to enrich life at its roots, protecting and preserving against decay and disease from the outside in, and bringing new flavor to our boring and drab world.

I invite you to think and pray for a couple minutes on how you can be the salt of the earth – and even more how we can be the salt of the earth together, then talk with a neighbor or two about your reflections (or post in the comments here).

(time for reflection and discussion, then sing chorus of “Bring Forth the Kingdom” before time for sharing)

As much as Jesus wanted his listeners to be the salt of the earth in all these ways, enriching things from the roots in unseen ways, he also told them, “You are the light of the world.” Unlike the somewhat invisible salt, light exists to be seen. Like salt, though, light has multiple purposes – it reveals everything that is hidden, spreads easily to every dark corner, lights the way in darkness, and draws attention back to its source. Just as salt can bring high blood pressure and damage things if overused, so light can shine too brightly – we need only compare the night sky here in Whitestone with what you might see in some less urban part of the world to see how too much light from the wrong source can actually keep us from seeing the beauty of the night sky! Nonetheless, light is extremely important in the right quantity and balance, for it points us to something more and shows us something new even as it invites others to see things in a new way too.

And so Jesus instructs his listeners not to hide their light and “let [it] shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to [God].” The light of the world doesn’t exist for its own glory but instead points to something more, shining in new and different ways to illumine the world.

Just as we thought and talked a bit about being the salt of the earth, I invite you to think for a minute or two about being the light of the world, both individually and especially as this community, then turn to your neighbor and talk about your ideas (or post them in the comments below). We’ll then come together again by singing before we share a bit of how we can shine light together.

(time for reflection and discussion, then sing chorus of “Bring Forth the Kingdom” before time for sharing)

As we put all these things together and seek to be both the salt of the earth and the light of the world as Jesus was able to preach so well, I couldn’t miss the incredible difference between these two things that he puts before us: we don’t really see what salt is doing, but light can’t be missed. Even amidst their differences, they are both important. Salting the soil alone will not get a plant to grow in darkness, and light alone will not convince a seed to sprout.

Too often we miss Jesus’ double imperative here, choosing to be only salt or only light by focusing only on the hidden, slow work of salting the earth or only the illuminating, bright work of shining light for the world rather than the more difficult task of doing both. We end up frustrated that our efforts to salt the earth and make God’s new way real in our community aren’t showing immediate fruit or disappointed that our light isn’t shining brightly enough to be seen in the way we would like. But the good news in this is that Jesus calls us to be both salt and light, both seen and unseen in our efforts to bring forth God’s kingdom, working and praying and hoping for a new and different way to take hold in clear and obvious ways even as we trust that God is working even when we can’t see it to make all things new.

And so may our saltiness be at its best and our light be focused and bright as we seek to be a part of the new kingdom community that Jesus envisioned and lived from up here on the mountain. Lord, come quickly! Amen.