Sermon preached at Duston United Reformed Church, 9 February 2014. Text: Matthew 5:13-20.
The psalmist wrote: “O taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are those who take refuge in him.” And today I’m going to talk about salt and
light, the way we enable others to taste and see Jesus in our lives.
A couple of years ago, we were due to drive up to Scotland
for Christmas. We hadn’t finished off all the work needing doing, and we were
all a bit poorly, so we postponed the journey by a day. The next morning came,
and it was snowing heavily. But we were committed to going, and the car was
packed, so we set off. It was slow driving, the visibility was poor, and the
roads were in danger of becoming icy. We were protected by two things: the
lights of our car and those of other cars around us; and the salt which had
been put down on the road. Light and salt. Salt and light.
They’re familiar, everyday things. Yet they’re also metaphors, images that help us understand a particular
way of being followers of Jesus. Given the winter we’ve had this year, I’ve
been reflecting this week what it would mean to be umbrellas and sandbags to
the world!
The trouble with metaphors is that they become an end in
themselves. And the trouble with these two metaphors, about salt and light, is
that they get taken out of context. Here’s a diagram about what happens when you take bits of the Bible
out of context. Last Sunday at the evening service, we heard Micah’s words
about seeking justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God. That verse
is often quoted by itself, with all the rest of Micah – good solid
destruction-and-repentance OT prophet stuff – being ignored.
So it is with this passage. It’s really important not to take
it in isolation, but to see it in its context. The text we’ve just heard is sandwiched
between two much longer chunks of the Sermon on the Mount. First comes the
Beatitudes, Jesus’ great teaching on who would be blessed in the kingdom of
God. And after it comes a whole series of moral teachings, on themes such as
murder, adultery, divorce, violence, and love for neighbours. In each of these
teachings, Jesus begins by saying “you have heard it said” and gives the usual
account from the Jewish law, and then follows it with “but I say to you” and
presents a really radical reinterpretation of the law. So what Jesus has to say
about coming to fulfil the law not abolish it is a very important introduction.
The keeping of the law of Moses, the Torah, was absolutely central to
Jewish identity (and still is). Jesus says that his followers – that our –
righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. The poor old
Pharisees have a bad press now, but they were hugely respected in Jesus’ day.
They were righteous people, they lived upright and decent lives and encouraged
others to do the same. The problem was that they didn’t always match up to their
own aspirations. It’s a familiar enough image from our own times – those who do
all the right things outwardly, but inwardly know they’re just doing it for
appearances.
And Jesus gives his disciples, gives us today, these two
clear images of what it means to be his disciples. He says that we are the salt
of the earth,
and that we are the light of the world. These are big statements, which might
seem quite daunting. Salt had a big spiritual significance – it was seen as
divine by the Greeks, a symbol of purity to the Romans, and was mandated for
the Israelites both as part of their sacrifices to Yahweh and as a seal of
covenants of friendship. And light – well Jesus is called the light of the world, who shines
light in our darkness, many times in the gospels, especially in the gospel of
John. I think I’ve shown this picture before here – for me it bursts with light
and life. So for Jesus to give this title to his disciples is a big statement.
Notice that he doesn’t order us to be these things, he
doesn’t do “thou shalt”, he doesn’t even say it’s better if we’re salt &
light than not. He says that we are salt,
that we are light – that by living
in his way, those who follow him are salt of the earth and light of the world.
It’s worth pointing out – and I don’t think this is just nit-picking – that the
“you” in the Greek is plural both times. We are called to be salt and light in
community. We are called to a common enterprise of shared discipleship, to act
together as disciples to make the world better.
Let’s look a little bit more about the images, and why they
matter. First, salt. Here’s the most obvious connection with salt in Jesus’ time: food. It must be lunchtime soon! In the ancient world, salt acted as
flavouring and as preservative. It made food worth eating, and it kept it
fresh. Then as now, salt’s flavour works best in moderation – too much and it
overpowers the food. But I love the idea of Christians being called to give
flavour to life. Jesus said that he came that we might have life, and have it
in abundance. Too often, the public idea of Christianity is of rather serious
people. The writer Robert Louis Stevenson once recorded in his diary, as if it
were a rare event: “I have been to Church to-day, and am not depressed”. But we
are a people who know joy through following Jesus, through his life and his
example and his sacrifice. We can give flavour to the world, bring hope to
others through our actions to help them and through the lives we lead. The
URC’s own John Proctor, who teaches at Westminster College, compares salt and
honey, and writes that “there is an honest tang about wholesome Christian
integrity: salt is clean, rather than cosy, whereas honey coats everything,
however sour and rough, with the same artificial film of sweetness. Trying to
be all things to all people can strain us beyond credibility. Being ourselves,
where we are and as we are, is what Jesus asks of us.” We’re talking about salt
and light, not sweetness and light.
And in this way, Jesus’ calling us to be light to the world
carries a
similar message. Light is not always comfortable or easy – it can be a
searchlight just as much as a gentle candle – but it shows up what is to be
found in dark places, and it’s the very stuff of life. Every bit of life on the
planet, ultimately, comes from sunlight. So being called to be light is
powerful calling. Again it’s about hope. The founder of the Iona Community,
George Macleod, wrote the following: “Follow
the light you have, and pray for more light”. We have a great deal of light,
individually and together. It’s sometimes easy to forget about it, but we can
be radiant with light. Even if it feels hard, the light of Christ is waiting within
us, and if we nurture it, more will be given to us.
One last thing. Jesus talks about us falling short from this
great calling. He’s not suggesting that this is sinful or inevitable, but that we will become less useful as disciples. The salt of his time was often rock salt, typically gathered from the edges of the Dead Sea, roughly the same stuff as we put on
roads in winter. If the salt was washed out of it, all that was left was rock. And
of course he talked about the foolishness of putting a lamp under a bushel
basket, which at
best would hide the light and at worst start a nasty fire! If being salt and
light are ways that Jesus wanted us to think of ourselves as disciples, then he
was warning us that it wasn’t inevitable that we’d stay that way. Because we do
lose flavour, we do risk becoming bland; and we too often don’t let our light
shine. But Jesus offers us the opportunity to do so.
I’m going to end with a prayer from a writer called Peggy de Cuehlo from
Uruguay:
You placed me in the world to be
its salt.I was afraid of committing myself,
Afraid of being stained by the world.
You placed me in the world to be its light.
I was afraid of the shadows
And my light slowly faded away.
You placed me in the world to live in community.
Thus you taught me to love,
To share in life,
To struggle for bread and for justice,
Your truth incarnate in my life.
So be it, Jesus.
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