Sunday Sermon text - Kingdom Ethics: Light and Salt

Matthew 5:13-20 (Isaiah 58:1-9a)

Kingdom Ethics: Light and Salt

James Sledge                                                     February 6, 2011

Those of you who know me well know that I love technology.  And I probably spend too much time on the computer and on sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  But as big a waste of time as this can be, I do run across a lot of different perspectives, especially on Twitter.  I follow people on Twitter I’ve met at conferences, and through them I’ve found other people to follow.  A lot of these are younger pastors and people connected with the Emerging Church movement.  And it is very interesting to observe some of their conversations threads.

One thing that I noticed early on, these younger pastors come from a very different religious landscape than the one in which I grew up.  In high school, virtually all of my classmates were Christians and church members.  But these pastors have lots of friends and conversation partners who are of different faiths, who are agnostic, who are atheists, who have a very jaundiced opinion of the Church, who do not view the Church as a force for good in the world, but rather as a problem.

These young pastors defend the Church to their friends.  They point out all the good things the Church does in the world, but they are also sympathetic to their friends’ view of the Church.  After all, they can look around at our society and see far too much hate and divisiveness, too much anger and screaming, too much lying and spin, too much demonizing and attacking.  They can also see far too little restraint and humility, far too little listening and considering the other’s view, far too little love.  And quite often, they see the Church a willing participant in this, rather than embodying something better. 

But while these young pastors can sometimes seem discouraged, most of them are working tirelessly to renew the Church, to help her become the agent of hope and love and God’s dream that Jesus calls us to be.

There was a time in my life when, although I knew the Church was supposed to care for people in need, I thought its primary job was to help people get their name in the correct column of God’s heavenly spreadsheet.  We were to help people understand and believe the right things so that they were “saved” by faith, “saved” meaning getting your ticket punched for heaven. 

Jesus does come to save, but when we define save simply to mean getting into heaven, we pervert the good news Jesus proclaims into something Brian McLaren calls “a gospel of evacuation.”  This false gospel says that Jesus doesn’t give a whit about how things are here on earth, only about the status of our “souls.”  But that’s not what Jesus says.  Jesus proclaims the nearness of God’s kingdom, that day when God’s will is done on earth.  And he calls those who will follow him, his disciples, the Church, to begin living now in ways that will help the world see this new day.

In Matthew’s gospel, the Sermon on the Mount contains the core of Jesus’ teachings on what it means to be his followers, his Church.  These teachings include the Beatitudes which we heard last week, and they continue on through our readings today and for the next several weeks, encompassing all of chapters 5, 6, and 7.  And if you sit down and read these teachings, you will discover that Jesus says very little about what we are to believe, but he says volumes about how we are to live and what we are to do.

The entire Sermon on the Mount is about the ethics of the Kingdom, about what it looks like to live as Kingdom people.  And as Jesus makes clear in the verses we heard today, our living by these Kingdom ethics is supposed to provide a light to the world, a way that the world sees the wonderful things God is doing in Jesus.

Jesus is talking about our witness as his followers.  But if you are anything like me, you may think that witness has to do with telling others about your faith.  Or maybe that’s just me.  Growing up in the South I regularly heard “witness” used to describe Southern Baptist styled evangelism where people were asked whether or not they were saved and, if not, then told what they had to do to get saved.  But the witnessing Jesus talks about here has nothing to do with words.  Our witness, our light shining in the world, is our good works. 

We Presbyterians have often downplayed works, seeing them as a threat to the teaching of being saved by grace rather than works.  But Jesus says as clearly as he can that being light for the world, being salt for the earth, is about us being a force for good in the world so that others see what we are doing and say, “Praise God!”

Many lifelong Presbyterians grew up hearing about faith and grace versus works.  But I think much of this conflict between faith and works is a misunderstanding.  True, God’s love for us is not the product of anything that we do.  God doesn’t save us because of our works.  God loves us and embraces us because that’s just how God is.  But Jesus says that those who experience God’s love are called to show it to the world with our good works.  God embraces us in Jesus so that we can share the hope of God’s new day with the world.

I think that’s why Jesus connects our being light and salt with the law and the prophets.  Jesus doesn’t call off the law or prophets because these guide us in our witness.  They describe the shape of God’s new day and help us to move beyond words and beliefs and religious rituals.  As the prophet Isaiah says to us, Is not this the fast (the religious ritual) 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? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?

When a mother who has been laid off receives food and Christmas presents for her children and says, “Praise God,” a tiny glimmer of light shines in a dark world.  When someone who has been told he is worthless and disgusting comes into a church congregation and meets God’s love in people who welcome and embrace him, the light shines.  When the poor and the oppressed know that the Church will be their advocate, will stand up to the powers-that-be on their behalf, the light shines and God is glorified.  When someone steps into a local church congregation and finds a community that together is discovering a spirituality that leads to a life of serving others, the light shines and God is glorified.

A month and a half ago, we gathered here on a Saturday morning to assemble nearly 400 boxes with food and Christmas gifts for needy families.  And one of the things that struck me that day was seeing more people I did not know than I did.  More non-members than members assembled those boxes.  And while some were members of other churches, many were not.  They had simply been drawn to the light that they saw shining here. 

A lot of people are worried these days about how traditional church congregations are doing.  Our culture no longer tells people, “You’re supposed to go to church.”  In fact, our society tempts people with all sorts of other attractive activities at the same time most churches hold worship.  In response to this situation, denominations that have never thought a lot about evangelism suddenly find it a compelling topic.  There are all sorts of programs that train members to share their faith, that guide churches in how to advertise and get their message out.  And there is much to learn from such programs.

But when our light shines, when our worship and spirituality connect to Jesus so that we hear and do the good works he calls us to do, people will notice the light.  Many will be drawn to it, and God will be praised and glorified.

Spiritual Hiccups - All Things?

Today's gospel contains the famous line, "I believe; help my unbelief!"  And I wonder if we wouldn't all do well to embrace the line as our own.  Mark's gospel tells of a man bringing his son to the disciples for healing.  The boy has was sounds like severe epilepsy, something attributed to possession in Jesus' day.  When Jesus comes on the scene, the disciples have been unable to help, and Jesus' exasperation is evident for all to see.  "You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?"

Surely Jesus must feel the same way about me and about the Church from time to time.  Not that we don't work hard at this church thing, but I fear that many who come to us for help feel a lot like the father in today's gospel.  We talk a good talk.  We try hard, but where is the power of the risen Christ?  Where is the evidence of the Spirit's gifts and power at work in us?

Over the years churches and denominations have created all sorts of structures and systems to help us do our job.  Governing boards, mission agencies, seminaries, and so on have frequently contributed to the Church's ability to share the gospel in word and deed.  But it is easy for churches and denomination to become nothing more than the sum total of our structures, systems, and members.  And we can view as impossible anything that seems beyond the reach and power of these. 

After the father in today's gospel sees the inability of Jesus' disciples, his plea to Jesus seem less than confident.  "But if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us."  Jesus answers, "If you are able! - All things can be done for the one who believes." 

All things can be done.  Really?  Can we really accept such a possibility.  I think that father shares our difficulty.  He certainly wants it to be true.  He hopes it is true.  "I believe; help my unbelief!"

We believe, Jesus.  We think our faith makes a difference.  We feel the power of your presence.  But we know well the limits of our abilities, and our congregations' abilities. Please, please, help our unbelief.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Even the Sparrow

Umayyad Mosque

When I was in seminary, I had the opportunity to be part of a three-week-long trip to the Middle East and Greece.  We started our journey in Damascus, Syria, and one of our early stops there was the huge Umayyad Mosque, which has a small shrine in it purported to contain the head of John the Baptist.  The structure is completely open, with almost no furniture.  The floor is covered with carpet and rugs, and you must take off your shoes to walk on it.  And you had best watch your step because there are numerous birds nesting in the rafters, leaving their droppings here and there.

Ancient buildings don't have the hermetically sealed structure of ours.  Birds come and go, making nests the way they do today underneath bridges.  And according to the psalmist, this not only happened in the Jerusalem Temple, but it is as it should be.  "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts."

It is curious the way that Christianity often thinks of God as only interested in the fate of human "souls" when the Bible so often speaks of God as not only delighted in Creation but concerned for it.  Jesus says that not a sparrow falls without God knowing.  Paul speaks of all Creation groaning as it awaits redemption, and today's reading from Isaiah has creation joining in worship. "The mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."

Perhaps this last is only hyperbolic, prophetic imagery, but perhaps not.  I don't agree with those folks who claim that they can worship simply by communing with nature, but I do think they offer a needed corrective to Christian practice that has become detached from nature.  It almost makes this Presbyterian want to figure out how to do a "blessing of the animals."

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Spiritual Hiccups - Being Heard

I love the LORD, because he has heard

  my voice and my supplications.

Because he inclined his ear to me,

  therefore I will call on him as long as I live.

The first lines of today's psalm grabbed hold of me.  I paused, and though I continued reading, I was still thinking about how Psalm 116 begins.  I've read it many times before and not had it affect me this way.  But today, for some reason, I immediately began to think about how rare it is to have someone who will simply listens, someone who isn't figuring out how to respond to you or straighten you out, someone who isn't wishing you would hurry up and finish so he can move on to more important things.

The image of God's ear inclined toward me, God patiently listening to me pour out my troubles and complaints, God treating me as though there was nothing more important at that moment, is a remarkable one.  And it is an image reflected in the life of Jesus, who had time for children, who stopped for the poor, the sick, the despised, and the unclean, who ate with sinners and tax collectors.

No one could carefully examine our world and not surmise that things are not as they should be.  War and violence are everywhere.  Human capacity for cruelty to others and our ability to justify such cruelty is astounding.  Surely God at some point will say, "Enough!" and be done with us.  Indeed many Christian groups speak this way when the talk of a "rapture," people "left behind," and God destroying the earth.  But the Bible does not speak this way.  It speaks of God redeeming all Creation, a rather surprising move, or perhaps not for a God whose ear is inclined toward us.

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Spiritual Hiccups - I Don't Get It

Some days I read through all the texts from the lectionary, and nothing.  I hear the words and recognize familiar stories, but nothing connects; nothing resonates.  I write these daily "hiccups" as much as a spiritual practice for myself as I do for others who read them.  But on those days when when God utters not a peep to me from Psalms, Old Testament, Epistle, or Gospel, these posts turn into something of chore.  I try to think of something helpful to say about the readings, but it feels more an academic than spiritual exercise.

Today was such a day, but after reading the texts, I vowed not to produce any academic notes on them.  So what to say?  I mulled this over for much of the morning and wondered about writing on the topic of not hearing anything, of not understanding.  At one point I came back to the Gospel reading and was struck by Jesus' words to his disciples when they get confused over his "yeast of the Pharisees" remark.  "Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?"  And then a bit later Jesus says again, "Do you not yet understand?"

Well at least I'm not the only one who sometimes hears but doesn't get it.  And I wonder about what I share in common with those disciples who, especially in Mark's gospel, often come off as clueless and doltish.

I suspect that one problem those first disciples had was fitting Jesus into the religious framework and categories they already had.  Jesus challenged so many assumptions about faithful life with God, about what a Messiah looked like, about what authentic human life was, that he didn't fit into the religious slots and containers that people had.  The result, even among his closest followers, was sometimes confusion and bewilderment.

But surely that's not my problem?  Surely all the centuries of Christian faith have provided me with all the necessary tools to decipher and understand Jesus, to distill a neat picture of what it looks like to be a Christian.  


But what if I am much more like those first disciples than I know?  What if my religious labels, categories, and doctrines (however necessary they may be) sometimes need to be shattered if I am to see God's transforming power at work in Jesus?  


Come, Holy Spirit.  Open my eyes to God's presence that won't fit into the old wineskins I've become accustomed to and comfortable with.  Open my heart to the possibility of something new, of something more wonderful than my understanding could ever see.


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Spiritual Hiccups - Finding Hope

Every now and then someone will post a quote on Twitter or facebook from a long dead, famous person such as Socrates or Cicero who was sure that the world was going to pot.  It will talk about how youth have lost all respect for their elders, government leaders have become corrupt, and so on.  I appreciate such quotes. It is helpful to be reminded that our troubles are usually not all that new or spectacular.  They are often rather mundane, and humanity  has weathered such troubles in the past.

Psalm 12 in today's readings provides a similar sort of reminder on the religious/faith front.  "Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind. They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak."  When church folk lament the current struggles of many congregations, it is helpful to remember that this is nothing new either.  It's not as though God's people have simply been humming along just splendidly until we came on the scene and messed things up.

But for people of faith, hope comes from more than realizing that such troubles are not new, that the Church has survived worse crises in the past.  Hope comes from the certainty that the future is not determined simply by how good or how poorly we run the Church.  God has not turned over the future to us.  God will act.  God's purposes will be accomplished.

Psalm 12, when it surveys a desperate situation where "there is no longer anyone who is godly," does not give in to despair.  Instead the psalm expects God to rectify this situation.  " 'Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,' says the LORD; 'I will place them in the safety for which they long.' "  

The promise that God will act is not really something I can prove or explain so convincingly that anyone will believe it.  Trusting the future to God and living toward that future require a deep faith that I don't think can exist without a vivid sense of God's presence at work in one's life.  And that means that helping struggling congregations may be less about learning new worship styles, attending church growth workshops, and adopting proven evangelism techniques.  And it may instead be about becoming more open to God's presence - spending more time in prayer and silence, paying attention to those who seem to have been inspired by the Spirit, becoming more attentive to where God is moving in our individual lives, etc.

I'm one of those people who never used to have much use for "spirituality."  Walking the labyrinth and spiritual directors were fine for other folks, but not for me.  Give me things I could understand like theology and biblical exegesis.  But while theology and exegesis are extremely important tools for me as a pastor, I have discovered that I am of virtually no use as a pastor without a healthy spirituality, without cultivating my own awareness of and openness to God.  Only when I truly sense God's touch can I hope in and work toward God's future, joyfully trusting that God is faithful still.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Made New

I had just finished reading Richard Rohr's daily devotion that discussed men and our resistance to change when I came to the lectionary readings for today.  I suspect that is why I heard the opening of Psalm 62 and Paul's words in Galatians the way I did, as about the need for God to change us.  That may not sound like a particularly remarkable observation, but it strikes me that religion is more often about add-ons than it is about real change.

Very often we want God to make things better for us without changing who we are in any fundamental way.  We would like to be happier, healthier, wealthier, more fulfilled, or more of something else.  But we do not want our lives turned upside down.  We do not want to become someone different from who we are now.

Perhaps Rohr is correct and this is more of a problem for men than women.  I don't really know.  I know that I like to be in control of things, and I know quite a few women who like control as well.  But if we take seriously biblical language about being made new in Christ, about the power of the Holy Spirit to empower, gift, and propel people into ministry and mission they would never have even considered on their own, then it would seem Christian faith requires letting go of control and a willingness to be changed at the most basic level of our being.

Speaking of "salvation" and of "being saved" is common among Christians, but all too often these words are understood to speak of nothing more than one's status.  Paul certainly included status before God in his understanding, but that was only the beginning for him.  He understood himself to be a totally new person, operating from totally new motivations, finding his greatest joy from giving himself, at great personal cost, to the work of sharing God's love in Jesus. 

I think that one of the great gifts our society has given us by no longer propping up religion, by no longer enforcing an ethos of "you're supposed to go to church," is a chance to rediscover the change and newness Paul experienced.  A new vitality in the faith is beginning to emerge as more and more congregations discover spiritual practices that shape them to be more Christ-like.  This new vitality is not restricted to any particular worship styles.  It is not a matter of traditional or contemporary.  It is about a desire to encounter and be transformed by the risen Christ.

When Jesus began his earthly ministry, he spoke of God's kingdom drawing near.  And he spoke frequently of that kingdom during his ministry.  While there has been an unfortunate tendency to turn kingdom into a synonym for heaven, Jesus was clearly speaking of God's rule on earth, a day when God's will is done here as it is in heaven.  And this means that where we are now cannot be where God plans for us to be.  As individuals, and as faith communities, we are working for and living by the ways of a day that is still to be. 

When congregations long for God's new day, that precludes longing for the good old days.  Longing for the old days is a depressing and life killing exercise that wishes for what is gone.  But longing for God's kingdom is a life giving pursuit that moves toward what God is still doing... which of course requires that you and I, our congregations and the world, must change.

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

When we set the preaching schedule, I'm not sure I realized what "juicy" lectionary passages I was passing up by not preaching today.  Not only do we get the Beatitudes, but there is also the famous passage from Micah that asks, "And what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

I think that both passages undermine some popular notions of faith.  The Micah passage speaks quite plainly against religious ritual that isn't accompanied by a changed heart.  The Beatitudes locate God's special favor in some pretty unpopular places.  And both passages challenge Christians to examine what it means to follow Jesus.

Over the years I have often heard people thank God for their "many blessings."  But rarely, if ever, are they speaking about the sort of things Jesus names on his list.  Very often, the culture determines what we think of as blessings.  In our country that means things such as a good job, a nice house, a new car, and so on.  Most Christians don't go so far as a Joel Osteen and his "God wants you to be rich" message, but we have difficulty conceiving of being "reviled and persecuted" as a blessing.

I think Jesus sees this as a blessing because he, like most prophets, has a clear sense of God's hope for the world.  Because Jesus lives in full communion with God, he longs for the world to be as God wants it, as God means it to be.  And so he is acutely aware of the tension between how things are and how they will be.  And he expects those who draw close to God through him will experience this same tension.  He expects that they will find it impossible to simply accept how things are and ask God to make it a bit easier for them.  He expects that, like him, his followers will live in ways at odds with how things are, in tune with how they will be.  And he is quite sure the world will not appreciate this.

Someone asked me the other day about how my spirituality and faith had changed over the past few years.  As I tried to answer her question, it occurred to me that the most profound change has been a partial bridging of the gap between spirituality and living the faith.  Though I don't think I ever would have articulated it this way in the past, I often thought of spirituality as an esoteric pursuit meant primarily to enhance my private faith life.  But I have begun to realize that those who do the most good in the world are more often than not those whose hearts have been bent toward God's vision for the world.  And at its core, that is what spirituality is about, about our hearts becoming one with God.  And with such hearts, it is hard to live lives that are out of sync with God.

I have to admit that as a pastor, I often spend far too much of my time trying to figure things out.  What programs will work?  What should I say in next week's sermon?  What does the Bible say about this issue of that one?  And while understanding is important, it is not the same thing as faith.  Faith is more of a heart thing, and I need to spend more time allowing God to work there, so that I can perceive more as Jesus does, and so act more as Jesus would have me act.