Sermon on the Mount: Salt and Light

Matthew 5:13-16 Salt and Light Introduction: This morning we have come to the culmination of the Beatitudes. All that has come before in this sermon has been leading up to this moment when Jesus says, “You are the Salt of the earth… You are the Light of the World.” Now it’s important to mention again that this Sermon is for the disciple of Jesus. One who is a part of the Family of God and his Kingdom. This Sermon is not about doing, but about being; becoming who we are in Christ, and living our our identity as the people of God. Here is the teaching of this passage -The flourishing people of God’s kingdom do not keep their flourishing for themselves but share it with the world! They salt the earth and they light the world! 1. What does it mean? 1. Here in this sermon we see a consistent biblical patter of - The Blessed People being a Blessing. 1. This of course started with Abraham the Father of the Jewish people. God called Abraham out of the city of Ur to the land of Canaan promising to bless him and through him to bless the whole world. Many years later, after bringing the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, God reaffirms this promise and calling on the Jews but adds even more detail of what this is. He says, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” -Exodus 19:5-6 2. God tells Israel that they are to be his special people to show the nations what he is like -That’s what a priest would dorepresenting the god to the people. They were to be a people who were different than everyone else. They were to be his workers of redemption in the world.. But unfortunately this never happened under the Old Covenant.. quite the opposite in fact. Not only did Israel not represent God to the nations, they followed after the idolatry and injustices of the nations and wound up in Exile. Rather than being blessed (Flourishing) and being a blessing, they were under the exilic curse. 3. Even though it seemed that God’s promises had failed to bless the Jews and make them a blessing the prophets said that God wasn’t finished, and that nothing would stop him from getting his blessing and reputation known to the world. 1. Isaiah 51:4, along with many other passages speak of how God is still going to fulfill this call with Israel -“Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation; for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples.” Again..Isaiah 60:1-3 "Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.” 4. I believe that Jesus is telling his Disciples, and all who would follow after him, that these promises are being fulfilled through them. 1. This is the language of the the Beatitudes. One of the reasons they are so misunderstood is because they are ripped from their historical and biblical context. The Beatitudes are the characteristics of God and his kingdom, as we have seen. They are what God’s community on earth should look like as he rules and reins in their midst.… or as Joachim Jeremias says, “What Jesus teaches in the sayings collected in the Sermon on the Mount is not a complete regulation of the life of the disciples, and it is not intended to be; rather, what is taught here is symptoms, signs, examples of what it means when the kingdom of God breaks into the world which is still under sin, death, and the devil. You yourselves should be signs of the coming kingdom of God, signs that something has already happened.” -Joachim Jeremias 2. Now when we come to this next passage, on being salt and light we see that God is calling us to reimagine our role in the world as His agents of redemption - showing the world what God and his kingdom looks like through our own lives. 2. Salt and Light 1. Jesus uses two metaphors for us to picture in order to understand our role and calling in the world as his kingdom people - Salt and Light. 1. There are so many different ways you can go with the salt metaphor, there are literally hundreds of things you can do with salt (just read Mark Kurlansky’s book - Salt: A World History). But the two that make the most sense in context are flavoring and preserving. Light of course helps us to see, it makes things grow, it gives life. In ancient times, and even still today, it was a way to speak of Revelation,Truth, Justice, Knowledge, and Wisdom. 2. Whichever way you go with the metaphors Jesus is clearly teaching that the lives of his people MAKE an impact. 2. Which brings us to the next point - Jesus words are emphatic in the original greek - YOU PEOPLE are the very salt of the earth and light of the world - Meaning there is no other. 1. Christians this means we must take our call as the people of God very seriously - I don’t mean being stoic or stiff but I mean wholeheartedly, with great passion and focus. Jesus’ followers, the people of the kingdom are THE salt and light of the world, they’re is no other. Not the Temple, not the Torah, not Jerusalem, or the Pharisees, Sadducees, or Essenes ( this would have been radical in the ears of the listener). Not the Buddha, Not Mohammed, not some spiritual all inclusive path, Not the peace corp, Not NATO, not Apple, not google, not any government, any country or organization. This should be equally as radical to us 2. I see this as both an encouragement and a warning - Jesus’ people are the true salt of the earth and light of the world - this is a massive honor, it’s humbling to think that God would use us. It is also a call then to set our minds on that mission. To seek first the kingdom, to become what we are, and to be confident of what God can do and will do, as we his people, live out the life of Jesus (as seen in the beatitudes and the SM) in our cities. 3. But then the warning is - if we don’t live as salt and light what hope is there for the World? Often we look around and we want to blame others for the state of the world, we want to blame the church. But the church is made up of individuals who are individually responsible to live out this corporate calling. Instead of complaining and blaming let’s become who God has called us to be. Also, we have this tendency when it comes to our Christian witness to either down play the sovereignty of God, or our responsibility to live righteously and justly as his people. Any time we rely more on one than the other we will be in the wrong. This is what Jesus is talking about when he says, Salt losing it’s saltiness and Light being put under a basket - this makes no sense salt is for flavoring and preserving, light is for shining and seeing. If those aren’t being done what is the point…. 4. Again, this is an exhortation to become what God has called us to be the salt and light of the world, a colony of heaven in the country of death, a witness that God is at work in the world and has radically changed the course of history through the life, death and resurrection of his son Jesus Christ. 3. So What is the Salt and What is the Light? 1. Being salt and light is displaying through life and words of the kingdom of God as seen first in Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, the Fruit of the Spirit, and the rest of the NT. 2. That display or “Witness will mean embodying God’s renewing power in politics and citizenship, economics, and business, education and scholarship, family and neighborhood, media and art, leisure and play. It is not just that we carry out evangelism in these areas of life. This is important but not enough. It means that the way we live as citizens, consumers, students, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends witnesses to the restoring power of God.” - Michael Goheen, The Drama of Scripture 3. As we’ve been seeing in the beatitudes this is God’s upside down kingdom way - meekness instead of self assertion, humility instead of arrogance, peace and forgiveness in place of retaliation and so on. Jesus’ people display God’s great power in weakness unlike the world, and in this way we follow in the way of Jesus. It is a life not only in light of the cross but shaped by the cross. As Paul says to the Corinthians, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our 4. 5. 6. 7. bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” Our daily lives are to be a display of the cross of Jesus - his humility, his self sacrifice, his love, even the injustice of the whole thing. But who can do that, we might ask? That can’t work for changing the world. It’s powerless and weak, it’s ineffective. But this is where we have to get back to the Jesus Gospel narrative - “Weakness as humans measure power and weakness, IS the way God is and the way God operates in the world. To live in a way that corresponds to this reality may indeed be paradoxical, but above all it is faithful; it is true. To seek power as humans measure it -with wealth, control of others, prestige, physical might - is not merely a mistake; it is to betray and renounce the gospel.” - Michael Gorman, Reading Paul When we live this way it salts the earth, it lights the world; it shines in darkness the way God is, and the way the world is meant to be and the way it will be - it witnesses or displays the coming Kingdom of Christ! The world has seen enough fighting fire with fire, threats with threats, insults with insults, eye for an eye tooth for a tooth, what they have not seen is the way of the cross. Of course, because followers of Jesus are living out the kingdom of God in a world that is still under sin, death, and the devil it makes it does not come without struggle and difficulty. Injustice will happen to us. We will be taken advantage of, we will often be despised and rejected. (Again, paraphrasing Michael Gorman) “Though we live in this tension of the already and not yet (God’s kingdom has come, but is not fully here) we do so according to the way of the cross, in hope that evil will be resolved by God in the future. Our living cannot violate our nonviolent, self-giving, God obeying love of the cross, which determines the structure and fabric of our existence day by day.” Michael Gorman, Reading Paul What if we actually lived as signs of the kingdom? What if we actually put into practice, in our hearts, in our homes, at our work, around our neighbors, in our politics the upside down kingdom of God? We would have an impact! People would see God, and his kingdom on display. When I say we, I mean this community here the way we live and interact with one another should be such a contrast to the way other groups interact with one another - we do so in the way of Jesus - Love, love, love.. 8. The world should see that, and should respond as they did to the early church - see how they love one another.. Our life together should witness the coming kingdom of Christ sadly, the Church of the west often fails to live up to it’s high calling because it is hamstrung by, “A low spiritual state of the church, a lukewarm love for Christ, a sickly worldliness, and a lack of vital prayer. The reason? Self-satisfaction that comes from comfort, compromise with capitalism, and accommodation to the consumeristic spirit of our age” - Michael Goheen, Introducing Christian Mission Today 1. We, Like Esau, are selling our birthright for the comforts of the culture - when God has called us to be the salt and light of the world ! 9. I’ve been saying since the beginning of the sermon on the mount.. all the beatitudes are leading up to this - meaning the characteristics of the kingdom of God, that lead to true human flourishing are to be lived out for the world to see what God is like, what his kingdom is like and how he can radically transform human nature, to be like his own nature..how he can bring them into that same flourishing of his kingdom. When we become who we are in Christ we have impact; some may persecute but others will be drawn to the light of Christ (story of the girl at Hopmonk). Conclusion: Every human being on earth was created by God and for God and when we display his character and his kingdom it is effectual, it has impact - people feel the tugging of their hearts toward God and either move toward him or away from him. We, Jesus’ people, have the thing that every human being longs for - True Flourishing. Will we hide that from the world, by neglecting to become who are? Will we fail to enter that flourishing our selves by compromising Jesus teaching? Jesus, the master, says he is the way of true flourishing. Will we believe him and take him at his word?