Looking In/Looking Out

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Matthew 5:13-16

August 4, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

One of the most basic questions—perhaps the fundamental question—of our existence is this: “Who am I?” In some ways, it’s an easy question to answer, and in others, it’s very difficult. If you were to pick one or two words to describe yourself, how would you answer that question? Who are you? Go ahead, take a moment and tell your neighbor who you are in just a word or two. [PAUSE] So how do you define yourself? Some of you will define yourself by your ethnic group, religion, gender, or where you are from. We might define ourselves by our likes or dislikes, our political party, or our hobbies. Most often, I think, in our world, we define ourselves by what we do, what our occupation is. But do any of those really define who you are as “you”? Who are you? And what happens when we don’t know how to answer that question? There are times in our lives where everything is up for grabs. “The greatest moments of emotional stress and upheaval occur when our self-understanding is challenged or violated, when we don’t know who we are” (Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 20).

Somewhere around the year 70 in the tiny province of Israel, the world was falling apart. Up until that time, Christians had been a small sect within the larger religion of Judaism. They still attended synagogue worship, they were accepted into the community, they just had this curious belief that Jesus of Nazareth was somehow the savior of the world. But there was tension brewing. In fact, among the Jewish leaders, there was a movement to expel Christians from the synagogue, from the community. At the same time, some Jews were seeking to make Israel an independent nation again, and open rebellion was brewing. Sort of picture what’s happening in Egypt today, as a people who feel oppressed are openly rebelling against the government that’s in place. That’s sort of what was happening in Israel, and in the year 70, Rome responded. With force. Deadly force. They came in and destroyed the rebels, brought down the city and destroyed the Temple, the holiest site in all of Judaism. In that one, horrible action, everything the Jewish people held as important, sacred and holy was gone. What would they do now?

The time was ripe, many leaders decided, to reformulate what they believed, to reshape their religion. What would Jewish faith and practice look like with no Temple, no sacrifices? Many writings came out of that tumultuous time, and one of them in particular was aimed at this Jesus sect. A series of benedictions were written that were meant to be a statement of faith for the newly reformed Jewish people, and one of those benedictions read this way: “Let the [Christians] and the [heretics] be destroyed in a moment.” With the stoke of a pen, Christians were no longer part of the community. In an instant, they were no longer Jews. They were outcasts. Heretics. False believers. They had the roots of their life stripped away. The Temple was gone, the community had abandoned them, and they had no idea who they were anymore (Card 16-20). Perhaps you can relate. Perhaps you’ve found yourself in a situation where everything you thought was true was changed. A job was taken away. A marriage ended. Children refuse to speak to you anymore. Questions bigger than you can answer haunt your faith. You lose your house because of a loss of income. You have to relocate to a brand new community, far away from family and anyone you know. Who are you now? What is your identity? That’s the sort of thing facing the believers in the late first century, the folks to whom Matthew writes. And as he writes, he’s trying to help them remember who they are. Matthew tells stories about Jesus that are meant to help them see who Jesus calls them to be.

In many ways, those early Christians aren’t all that different from us today. Not just individually, though in Disciple class we often make the comment that people haven’t really changed all that much in 2,000 or 6,000 or more years! But I’m thinking more of the gathered people of God—the church. And specifically, I’m thinking of us—Portage First United Methodist Church. Sometimes even churches forget who they are and why we exist. Every church starts out with a dream and a sense of calling to change the world. Every church. Why else would you start a church? One hundred and seventy-eight years ago, here in the little town of McCool, Indiana, a group of people who wanted to change the world started a little Methodist church. And, as we’ve been remembering over the past few weeks, that little Methodist church grew and grew and grew. That passion to change the world caused them to build and build and build to what we have today. Churches do that. But a hundred and seventy-eight years is a long time. That’s nearly five generations of believers who have worshipped here, and who have come together with a dream, a passion, a goal of changing the world for Jesus Christ. Is that still our passion? Is that dream still alive? Who are we, Portage First? Who do we want to be? As one of the largest churches in Portage, what is our responsibility to the larger community? Those are questions we’re going to tackle over the next four weeks, as we see to remember who we are. We’re called to become a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ, and we do that by loving God, loving others and offering Jesus. But to do any of that requires that we resist the urge to become an inwardly-focused community and instead get out of the box so we can change our world. Today, we’re going to talk about the “why” of getting out of the box, and then in the next three weeks, we’ll talk about the “how.”

When it comes down to it, there are really only two options for churches, two distinct personalities that they take on. Remember, they all begin with the desire to change the world, but that mission is hard, and often seems to produce so little results. So eventually, over a period of time, a church can become inwardly-focused. I don’t know of any church that would put that on their stationary or claim it as their mission statement, but it can become true nonetheless. Inwardly-focused churches are those in which the main goals are getting people to the building and taking care of themselves. Inwardly-focused churches spend most if not all of their resources on generating activity within the four walls of the church. That’s not to say there aren’t great things happening there. They may indeed have passionate worship, excellent teaching, fun youth groups and even vibrant small groups, but at the end of the day, the main point of all the activity is increasing the number of folks who walk through the door. It may even be said of such churches that they are very loving, or even very “spiritual” or “religious.” They may have a healthy budget, good giving, and a lot of folks who spend time in prayer (Rusaw & Swanson, The Externally Focused Church, pgs. 16-17). Hear me clearly: none of those things are bad by themselves. In fact, most if not all of those things are necessary for any church to exist and function well. It’s not that inwardly-focused churches are bad, or that bad people go to them. It’s just that the focus is not the same focus as what Jesus gave us. With inwardly-focused churches, it always stops with “me,” and never moves beyond that. The members of the church are most important. The problem is, church was never meant to be primarily about “me.” Church is about responding to the call and the command of the Gospel.

So what is that call? In the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives two images that describe it, two images that we often rush past and don’t think much about. As I said last week, this sermon makes up the first large block of teaching in Matthew’s Gospel (Card 51)—it covers three chapters—and in many ways is the “constitution of God’s kingdom.” Jesus covers a lot of ground as he sits there on the hillside overlooking the beautiful Galilean Sea. The passage we read this morning comes right after the beatitudes, those familiar blessings Jesus pronounces on such unlikely people as the poor in spirit, the meek, the mourners, and the persecuted (5:3-10). After these blessings, Jesus tells his followers who they are, or who they will be: “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world” (5:13-14). Some forty years after this time, a Roman naval and army commander who was also an author and philosopher, Gaius Plinius Secundus (better known as Pliny the Elder), said this: “There is nothing more useful than salt and sunshine” (qtd. in Card 54). Some suggest that was a proverb for the Romans even in Jesus’ day (cf. Augsburger, Communicator’s Commentary: Matthew, pg. 67), but regardless, Jesus is tapping into two things that, for the people of his day, were very valuable. Salt. Light. Small, common things (Texts for Preaching, Year A, pg. 134). What is it about these two things, things we take for granted, that is important enough for Jesus to use them as symbols for the church, his followers?

We use salt mainly for flavoring today, even though we’re often told it’s bad for us. For some, there might be no sentence worse than a no-salt diet. Cathy’s grandpa was put on one of those, but he learned how to deal with it. When he visited us in seminary, we found out he would wait until during the prayer, and while everyone else had their heads bowed, Grandpa Cobbum would put salt on his food. When we caught him, he just had a smirk on his face! Salt was much more than a flavoring in ancient times, though. Salt was, in fact, highly valued in the Roman world. In some places, Roman soldiers were paid in salt, and the world “salary” comes from that practice (Augsburger 68). But, primarily, salt had three functions in the ancient world. First of all, as it still is, salt served as a preservative. There was, of course, no refrigeration in Jesus’ world, and I can tell you, summers there in Galilee are hot. Without refrigeration, meat in particular would spoil quickly. So salt was used to preserve the food, to keep it edible. Salt was also used, as it is today, for flavoring. It helps, as one author put it, to help food taste “foodier,” bringing out flavor that might be hidden if it weren’t for the salt. Salt makes food taste more authentic. And thirdly, in the ancient world, salt was a symbol of purity. Perhaps it gained that symbolism because of its color—white—or the way it would glisten in the light. But because of that sense of purity, salt was often used as a sacrifice to the gods (cf. Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 [Revised Edition], pgs. 119-120). Even in Jewish tradition, sacrifices were often offered with salt. Leviticus (2:13), for instance, instructs the Hebrews: “Season all your grain offerings with salt…add salt to all your offerings.”

So, for the ancients, salt represented preservation, flavor, and purity. Is there any parallel in those symbols to what Jesus intends for his disciples? Well, yes. First, Christians are to be a preserving force in the culture. When we see corruption, when we see things falling apart, we are called to be those who stand up for what is right. When there is injustice, we’re called to be ones who stand for justice—even if no one else will. You are the salt of the earth—you are called to preserve what is right and holy and just. Being a preservative in society is part of our heritage. The very last letter John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote, less than a week before he died, was to William Wilberforce, who was at the time engaged in a great battle in the British Parliament. Wilberforce had devoted his life to ending the British slave trade, and Wesley wrote to encourage him in that task: “If God be for you, who can be against you?…O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it” (February 24, 1791). With his last breath, Wesley wanted to be salt, preserving his society against the corruption of sin. Today, there are many issues, great and seemingly small, that challenge the follower of Jesus. There are bioethical issues, end of life issues, marriage and family issues, hunger issues, and slavery issues. Just this last week, 100 teenagers (the youngest of which was 13) were rescued in 70 cities across our own nation (including Chicago) from the sex slave trade. It was a huge FBI sting operation that captured 159 pimps. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. It’s estimated that 240,000 children are “at risk” in our country alone. Friends, we’re called to be salt in the face of horrendous evil and sin.

Salt is also a flavoring. Christianity should add flavor to life. The Christian faith should be bring joy to life. And yet, the common perception of the person of faith is solemn, sad, mournful. Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote in his journal of an unusual occurrence in his life: “I have been to Church today, and am not depressed” (Barclay 121). Now, I’m not saying we have to walk around with a smile on our face all the time. There are things that happen, even to Christians, that are difficult, hard, even depressing. We live in the real world. We live in a sin-soaked world. We aren’t always happy. There are things that take place that we don’t understand, and I hope no one ever goes away from this place saying that the folks at Portage First don’t know how to deal with real life, tough questions, and difficult circumstances. But joy is deeper than happiness, stronger than circumstances. Even in the midst of a difficult season of life, there is joy, a deep down assurance that God is good, even when life is not. We must bring that joy of the Lord to our world. Salty Christians provide flavor for life.

And salt represents purity, which is a reminder that God’s people are called to live differently. Not apart from the world; different from the world. James wrote that Christians should keep themselves “from being polluted by the world” (1:27). In other words: do we live just like the rest of the world or do we live differently, in ways God calls us to live? Some people, particularly in earlier generations, interpreted that idea as “stay away from bars, dance halls, etc.” I don’t think that externals ever define purity, because, as I said a couple of weeks ago, that too easily turns into legalism. The question is more about purity of heart. Do we seek to live in a way that honors God? Do we seek to live out our faith each and every moment of the day in what we say, what we do, the ways we treat each other? Salty Christians seek to live pure lives, and you, Jesus says, are the salt of the earth.

He also says, in this passage, that you are the light of the world. Now, that’s significant because Jesus is telling us to be what he himself said he is. In John, Jesus says, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (9:5). Notice that: “While I am in the world.” Here, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says we are the light—once he is no longer present physically in this world, who is going to shine the light of the good news of Jesus? You and me! That’s what he says. In Jesus’ world, the homes in Galilee in particular weren’t very large. Maybe they had only one or two windows in the front of the home. And there were no street lights. No public utilities. So when it got dark, it got really dark. Remember how dark it gets when you lose power at night? Picture that in a tiny house with only one opening. The lamps that were used to light their houses weren’t very big, either—just small, circular bowls with a wick, fueled by inferior olive oil. What little light they had was very important to a Galilean family (Barclay 123).

So there are a couple of things about light that we want to notice. First of all, a little bit of light goes a long way. My favorite service every year is our Christmas Candlelight, and especially near the end of the service when we light the candles. Now, we don’t get it completely dark in here, but it’s dark enough to begin to notice how even one candle pushes back a little bit of the darkness. And then another candle, and then another, and pretty soon, as we start to sing “Silent Night,” the darkness is pushed back. Then we hear that familiar word from John: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). I love that, because it reminds me of the power of one little light, my little light. We almost ought to break out singing, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!” A little light goes a long way. And secondly, light is not secretive. Light shines. Light is meant to be seen. So Jesus says we are the light: we’re meant to shine, to allow our faith to be seen, and to use the light we have to make a difference, to push back the darkness in our world. You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.

However, sometimes salt can go bad and lights can be put out. Salt can go bad, you say? Mine never does! True, but in ancient Israel, much of the salt came from the Dead Sea, one of the lowest spots on earth, that place where all the water in Israel flows into but doesn’t leave. The Dead Sea is nearly 9 times saltier than the ocean, so salty that nothing can live in it. It’s so thick you cannot sink, which means even people like me can swim in the Dead Sea—if you can get in without falling down! However, while today the minerals from the Dead Sea are used for cosmetics and even fertilizer, in Jesus’ day, the salt that came from this sea was full of impurities and therefore it would sometimes become rancid, unusable (Card 54). When Jesus talks about salt losing its saltiness, that’s the image he has in mind. The people would have remembered the stinky salt they would get from time to time. They knew the truth of his words: “It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (5:13). The same is true for the light; it had a right way and a wrong way to be used. The right way was to put the lamp up on a stand, so that its light would shine throughout the small house. What sort of person would light the lamp, then put it under a bowl and hide it? What good would it be then? It’s like they have light, but don’t want to share it with anyone else, so they hide it. It’s useless then. It won’t light up the house! Jesus’ point, I hope, is clear: the Christian who fails to be salt or light in their culture is not useful, not fulfilling their purpose—we might even go so far as to say they are not truly Christian at all because they’re not being who Jesus said they are to be.

Here’s Jesus’ bottom line: be salt, be light, be someone who is helpful, useful, powerfully transforming in the culture. That’s Jesus’ call to the church. That was Jesus’ call to those people on the hill beside the lake. God had long ago called them to be those who transform the world. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, centuries before Jesus came, the people were called to put aside their own selfish, self-centered ways and become “Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings” (Isaiah 58:12). And yet Israel, with its power politics, factional squabbling and militant revolutions had, in fact, become just like the world it was supposed to transform. And things had not changed all that much from Isaiah’s day to Jesus’ day. If anything, they had gotten worse. The people of God were more like the world than they were like the one they claimed to worship. How in the world could God keep the world from going bad and becoming dark if his people failed to be who he called them to be?

The same question comes down to us today. An inwardly-focused church is one who is becoming more like the world than like Jesus. Are we preserving the world with our acts of restoration and repair? Or are we simply taking care of ourselves? Can the world see the light of Christ shining through us, or do they just see us arguing over issues that are internal? Do they see us as people who are more concerned about our own well-being or the health and salvation of our community? Can we hear Jesus’ call to be salt, to be light, to be repairers and restorers? These are the questions we’re going to explore more in the next few weeks, as we seek ways—concrete ways—that we can live as salt and light to our neighbors who don’t yet know Jesus.

As an act that signifies a commitment to be salt and light, you’re invited to come to receive communion this morning. Communion is an ancient ritual, going back to that last night Jesus spent with his disciples before he was crucified. Often we say that he gave them this act that night so that, even before it happened, they would know what he was doing for them. And that’s true, wonderfully true. He did go to the cross for you and for me. But do you know he didn’t just go to the cross for you and me? He went to the cross for that neighbor across the street who never says anything nice about you. He went to the cross for that person who talks behind your back. He went to the cross for the politician who stands for everything you oppose. He went to the cross for the person whose lifestyle you don’t understand and can’t agree with. He even went to the cross for that person who curses his name each and every day. He went to the cross for every single person on this weary old world, which includes you and me but doesn’t end with you and me. As he hung on the cross between heaven and earth, he looked over the city of Jerusalem, over those who had gathered there at the foot of the cross, over those who had nailed him there and not once did he curse them. He loved them. By his word and deed, he loved them. And he still does. So when we come to the communion table this morning, we remember all of that and more. We celebrate all of that and more. And we commit ourselves to looking out more than we look in. Come to the table and recommit yourself to being salt and light for a world that desperately needs preservation, for a world that needs to have the darkness pushed back. Come to the table to become more like Jesus. Let’s pray.