“Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. 3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. 4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? 8 Then 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. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. – Isaiah 58:1-12
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“Praise the LORD! Happy are those who fear the LORD, who greatly delight in his commandments. 2 Their descendants will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. 3 Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. 4 They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright; they are gracious, merciful, and righteous. 5 It is well with those who deal generously and lend, who conduct their affairs with justice. 6 For the righteous will never be moved; they will be remembered forever. 7 They are not afraid of evil tidings; their hearts are firm, secure in the LORD. 8 Their hearts are steady, they will not be afraid; in the end they will look in triumph on their foes. 9 They have distributed freely, they have given to the poor; their righteousness endures forever; their horn is exalted in honor.” – Psalm 112:1-10
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“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 3 And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 4 My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. 6 ¶ Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. 7 But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”– 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.” – 1 Corinthians 2:1-16
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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. 15 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. 16 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. 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 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. 19 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. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:13-20
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It’s been a tough week in the Partnership this week. Out of our four churches, three either lost members or friends of the church this past week. There were three funerals – two in Brentwood and one in a local Catholic church. At Spencer we lost two; at Fairhaven, we lost one, and then a second the day after the first funeral; and at Carnegie we lost someone we’d been praying for, who was only 45 years old. Hill Top is the only church that has been spared this week, but I’m still feeling a bit raw over the murder of Stacy’s friend a few weeks ago.
I think at times like these we just need to slow down a bit and take stock.
Very often the scriptures we read on Sundays, and the lessons we take from them, almost end up sounding like a to-do list. It’s kind of like, “You wanna get to heaven? Gotta do this, gotta do that…” At times like these, when losses piles up on top of each other, finding more things to do is not the answer. I think sometimes it’s better to just stop, and remind ourselves of who we are in God, who we are in Jesus.
Our reading from Isaiah today tells us that we are, as human beings, deeply imperfect. We try to do what’s right but we miss the mark. Some of us are so hurting or discouraged, we’re just going through the motions these days, trying to survive from one day to the next.
In Isaiah, God encourages us to keep on doing what we know is right: to avoid empty religious actions and be truly faithful from the heart. Religious ritual means nothing if it is not accompanied by right actions. For as one theologian says: “Whenever people take up their calling to see that justice is done, or to tend to those who suffer, God’s presence breaks into the world.” (Juliana Claassens)
The things God mentions we should do in Isaiah don’t really take all that much effort: God says, when we see people bound by injustice or oppression, set them free. If we see someone who’s hungry, feed them; if we see someone who needs clothes, give them clothes. And in this church, it seems to me, we have people with good hearts who, if we see someone in need, we do something about it. We step up. And just doing that much brings God’s blessing. God says “your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly.”
The reading from Isaiah is the only one for today that mentions actually doing something. So if we’re feeling tired and worn out and discouraged right now, we can come back to these verses when we’re feeling a little stronger. For now we’ll move along to the Psalm…
In Psalm 112, David says that those of us who fear the Lord, and who take delight in the word of God and in the commandments of God, are blessed. Why? Because in times of trouble we know what to do and who to turn to. Do we love God’s word? Do we love the justice and right-ness of God’s commands? If so, God says: “It is well with you.”
Again God encourages God’s people to be generous and be just and be gracious – to keep on following God’s commands – but this psalm is more about who we are than about what we do. Or maybe more accurately, it’s about the fact that what we do springs out of who we are. God’s people who stand on God’s word are not afraid; we are secure in God; and therefore we can be generous. And God says we will be honored – if not in this life, then in the next.
As we come to Paul’s letter, Paul points out the difference between the wisdom of this age (which is perishing), and God’s wisdom (which will last forever). Paul says God reveals to us through the Holy Spirit that Jesus is indeed the Lord of Glory, and that God is preparing a place for all of us who love him. Only the Holy Spirit can confirm this truth to someone, and the Holy Spirit reveals this truth when people hear about the cross of Christ and Jesus’ resurrection. The wisdom of this world – if you could call it that – knows nothing about these things.
So even when we are feeling weak and weary, maybe even scared of what the world is becoming, we have in us the power of God through the Holy Spirit. And especially when we are feeling less than our best, we can rest in God’s Holy Spirit and let the Spirit’s power flow through us. God gives us, in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, this precious promise: “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”. What a comfort these words are after a week like this one!
Which brings us to Matthew. The passage we heard today is a continuation of the Sermon on the Mount which we started last week. Jesus is teaching his disciples while other people are listening in: mostly the sick (or the recently healed) and their caregivers. The surprising thing for this crowd is that Jesus calls them salt and light. They’re the ones who were so recently sick, so recently hurting, so recently at the bottom rung of society… and now Jesus is telling them they are the ones God has chosen. “God has made you, and blessed you, to take a role in creation’s redemption.” (SALT)
At first glance Jesus’ teaching about being salt and light sounds another spiritual to-do list. Gotta be salt! Gotta be light! Except that… exactly what does salt do to be salty? Nothing, right? Salt is just salty! And it only takes a little bit of salt to spice up a dish. Jesus says, “you ARE the salt of the earth.” This is an existing condition, not something we have to work to become. Individual grains of salt are small, so they’re usually used together with other grains of salt – which is why we need the church. And salt is tasty. Salt preserves things. Salt doesn’t do anything to be all these things. It just is – and we just are – what God has made us to be.
Side-note: Salt was a valued commodity in the ancient world. Salt was not just for flavor and for preserving, it was also a purifying agent. And if salt was not of good quality people might use it as something to prevent slipping on wet surfaces (much as we do with rock salt today). This rock-salt would be the salt that is ‘thrown out and trodden under foot’ – not good enough to eat. Salt was so valuable, people back in Roman times were sometimes paid in salt rather than money, which inspired the saying that someone is “worth their salt”. And for those of us who grew up in the “steel city” – a city built on the strength of one industry – in Europe there is a “salt city” built around the nearby salt mines. The name of that city is Salzburg – which means literally “salt city”. [End of side-note.]
We have the same basic idea with light. We don’t need to light ourselves up. Light simply is, by its nature, something by which we see. God has created us to BE light. And just a little bit of light – sometimes just one candle – is enough to bring light into a room. God is not going to put us out, or hide us under something; God will put us somewhere where we can shine for the benefit of others. We just need to be sure not to hide who we are, or to let anyone put out our light.
What God wills for our lives comes about by the power of the Holy Spirit, not by human power. All we need to do is be what God created us to be, and stay connected to God who is the source. We don’t do these good things in order to get a blessing; God has created us to be a blessing.
At Jewish funerals sometimes you hear people say “may his (or her) memory be a blessing.” That’s the general idea. A person who has lived with God and walked with God – the memory of that person is a blessing. I’m happy to say all the people who went home to God this week leave behind memories that are a blessing.
The one warning Jesus gives is that we need to be careful not lose our integrity. Faith and moral standards are ‘salt’ in this world; and our light is a beacon of love. So we need to hold on to what we have been given, in the power of the Spirit.
There’s an online group of Christian creative people who call themselves SALT (I’m still not sure what that stands for), but every week they put out what they call a “theologian’s almanac” – things that happened that week in Christian history. The almanac for yesterday – February 4 – reminded us of the birthday of Rosa Parks. Those of us who were alive back in the 50s and 60s remember her well. She was the African-American woman in Montgomery AL who, in 1955, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and was arrested for saying ‘no’. She told her biographer that people thought she’d had a rough day and was tired. She said, “that isn’t true. I wasn’t tired physically… I wasn’t old… I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Before she died, Rosa Parks wrote her memoir called Quiet Strength, which focused on her Christian faith. In it she says her ability to love her enemies and to stand up for what she believed in were gifts from God. She says, “I had the strength of God and of my ancestors.” Rosa Parks is a perfect example of being salt and light in this world just by being what God created us to be.
In Matthew, Jesus adds one more note: He doesn’t want the people listening to think he has come to replace the law and the prophets. The truth is, if we do what Jesus is teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, we will actually end up fulfilling the law of Moses more completely than if we just tried to obey all the rules. Jesus says: “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it” – and he teaches us to do the same by the way we live.
Jesus calls us ‘salt’ and ‘light’ – small things that can make a huge difference in the lives of others and in the world around us. All we need to do is to be the salt and the light God has created us to be. And when Jesus says “you are the light of the world” or “you are the salt of the earth” the word ‘you’ is plural: all y’all, together.
One last thought. When Jesus says “let your light shine” into the world, this statement is in the form of a command – to the light. Think about it: the very first thing God says in scripture is “let there be light” – or as the old English version says, “light, be made”. Jesus’ command is “light: shine!” – through each of us. Any good works we do come from God, and they come into the world through us. Our job is to trust God and to be willing, and give all the glory to Jesus. AMEN.
Preached at Carnegie United Methodist Church and Hill Top United Methodist Church, February 4, 2023
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