SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2023 | EPIPHANY

Prelim

Isaiah: it is not the rituals that saves, but we are saved in our rituals…if we have the intent to serve the Lord in the world and not just to boast or appear righteous

1Cor: to truly discern, one has to believe - gospel eyes

Mt 5:13-20 ““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. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In 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. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For 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. Therefore, 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. For…”

Sermon continues

salt, light - mundane things and yet important

things need to serve their purpose

Let your light shine....not for your, but for God and God’s glory

Law of the prophets is not to be abolished, but fulfilled - you gotta step up and be better than religious hypocrites

Good morning!

It’s been rather cold and strange week with a polar vortex or the Chinese balloon being shot down, but our text is a little bit more predictable as it picks up where it left off last week.

Today, the sermon of Jesus continues and I think a lot of has to do with commitment to the mission. You are the salt of the earth (kosmos)! You are the light of the world (das Licht der Welt)!

And in Isaiah, we learn that God didn’t bless us to merely go through the prescribed rituals such as fasting and continue to go on our merry way. God calls on those that fast and then continue to oppress their workers to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke (Isaiah 58:6). But also to share their bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into their house, cover the naked, and not to hide themselves from their own kin (Isaiah 58:7).

All these things are important for being the light of the world, because then the Lord proclaims:

Revised Common Lectionary 2-5-2023: Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

8Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly;

your vindicator shall go before you,

the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

I think it is safe to say that if we choose to simply go through the rituals without seeking to live out the love and justice of God that accompanies it, then we are simply putting our light under the bed. dampening its light.

And well, it is similar with salt - salt of course enhances any existing flavors. There is a fairy tale movie in my country that covers the importance of salt - a king that is slightly too full of himself asks his daughters to tell him how much they love him. The first one goes for a safe, obvious option - as much as gold! The second one, the one that is more practically minded, says I love you as much as salt! The king is insulted by this and asks the princess to change it, but she refuses. As a result, the king kicks this princess out of the castle and goes on to prove her wrong. He declares that all salt from across the kingdom must be brought to the castle to be destroyed, all of it! After that is done, he makes his chef to cook without salt to, you guessed it, terrible outcomes that makes the food inedible. He imprisons the chef and tries to make food without salt himself, but even pancakes need salt as he discovers. Oops. So in the end, he goes to a neighboring kingdom with a carriage loaded with gold to buy some salt, but meanwhile the princess is staying with the local witch that makes it so that all salt crossing the borders will turn to gold. The story goes on for a while, but in the end, the king is forced to admit he was wrong and beg his daughter’s forgiveness for being a fool. The moral of the story is not to underestimate the necessity of the mundane, such as the salt! Even the kings need it.

And we better not make the same mistake - being the salt of the earth is a great honor to be! And the threat of the salt losing its usefulness is also serious. If salt cannot be salt, this all flavor enhancing wonder, then it is just a useless substance to be thrown out. Yikes.

So let’s try to be the opposite, shall we!

In the context of the text, it appears that Jesus is teaching the disciples, as well as the crowds that are gathered, but we can assume his priority lies with his disciples that will be sent later to proclaim the kingdom of Heaven and call upon the people to repent. As we noted last week, Jesus did not call some well-off or well-educated men, but fishermen, a needed working class in those times, but as with most working classes in all times, severely underappreciated. Fishing remains a hard work, even with all the technology we have now, so it is hard to imagine how difficult it must have been then!

As Bonhoeffer notes:

“The [disciples] have visibly left the people to join him. He has called each individual one. They have given up everything in response to his call. Now they are living in renunciation and want; they are the poorest of the poor, the most tempted of the tempted, the hungriest of the hungry. They have only him. Yes, and with him they have nothing in the world, nothing at all, but everything, everything with God.”

In a practical sense, they did not advanced their careers by joining him - on the contrary, their families and friends must have been really weirded out by their decision to become disciples, proteges, groupies to this traveling Rabbi. It wasn’t exactly “a sweet, easy gig” to go on. Sure, we can all be wishing we could see Jesus in person and see him at work up close, but I am not sure that we would quite enjoy the working conditions and the life situation Jesus and his disciples were in. I think it set the precedent early that one should not expect to be all cozy and warm all over being a follower of Jesus Christ. Instead, it may be the exact opposite sometimes.

I think it is important to see the Sermon on the Mount in such a context. His primary audience are his disciples that not only see the poverty and lack of the world around them, but also experienced it. And not only in one place, but in various places and its variants. I have traveled a bit and I think it gave me a perspective that our world is full of people that are impoverished and needy and it can be overwhelming. Some places are just better at hiding or pushing them out. Jesus preaches to the disciples and they are surrounded with those that need the light and the salt. Talk about preaching in context! In that sense, Jesus talking about fulfilling the law makes a ton of sense - the core of the Jewish Law is about justice and care for those in need. I like to teach on the Book of Ruth, because that story shows that well - laws about gleaning or kinsmen-redeemers take on another meaning, when they are shown for what they are supposed to be - a much needed infusion of God’s mercy in the vast mass of world’s injustice.

Similarly, the disciples of Jesus Christ are called to be a light in an immense darkness and salt in a place that is not unlike that from the fairy tale earlier, but instead of lacking salt, it lacks justice and mercy for those that need it the most.

And plot wist - we are the very same disciples as well! We are not just the onlookers standing at the mount that are not in a position to be the light or salt, but we are the inner circle that should listen really carefully. Sure, we are not Jewish and we do not follow Judaism and the specific ways it sees the Law, but we are not free from it either. We are called to live out the core of the law that Jesus exposed to us after cutting through all the bloat that amassed over years of build-up religious tradition - the core that tells us we must love God as ourselves and love our neighbors as ourselves! Again and again, it comes back to love....and I bet we all know there is never enough love in the world. A good religion, I think, is meant to help its followers to love more and do so more deeply, genuinely, and openly. To love without the need for reward, to love even our enemies, to still love, when we are hurt and down… Because if there is no love in the world, what’s the point of existence? All good things are from God and they run on love, fueled by acts of mercy, justice, kindness, and care. To piggy back on Augustinian concept of good and evil, I believe that evil is where there is lack of love.

But in God and through God, there is love and Jesus calls on us to become the conduits of God’s love with our imperfect and, to be perfectly honest with ourselves, aspirational acts of love. In that way, we can be the light and the salt and thus ever expanding the tight circle of love, so that evil has no chance to squeeze in! Amen.