Preserve & Illuminate

'Jesus said, “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.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 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. 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.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 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. 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. 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

When I was growing up, my mother would sing to me and my dog as we nodded off to sleep. She kept this practice going until I was roughly 10 years old. One of the songs she would sing most often, sitting in the little rocking chair that now sits in our home, was This Little Light of Mine. I can still hear her particular cadence and the way she sang it, and to this day it feels like everyone else is singing it wrong if they don’t hit the notes and pitch that she did! It’s a sweet little song that has stuck with me, and I loved that we’re sang it as our closing hymn this past Sunday

This Little Light of Mine is a song whose words are lifted straight from our Gospel text this week, this section of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus admonishes the people listening to him to be “salt of the earth and the light of the world.” It’s such a well-known piece of the Gospel that the line “let your light shine before others” is imprinted on the back of our parish's t-shirts, and I’ve very often used it at the bidding of the offertory in our worship services. There are, though, a couple of things that Jesus says regarding salt and light that don’t really make sense, but by digging into them we get a clearer understanding of Jesus’ message to that crowd on that mount, and to all of us now.

Jesus first wonders what would happen if salt lost its taste. Well, that’s a good question, Jesus, because it’s not scientifically possible. Salt cannot lose its taste; it cannot lose its saltiness. He then points out that no one allows a light to lose its shine by putting it under a bushel basket – and there’s that adorable moment in This Little Light of Mine when we go “Hide it under a bushel? NO!! I’m gonna let it shine!” It’s an usual image because nobody would even think of putting a candle or oil lamp under a bushel basket because it would just set the bushel on fire! Maybe some folks in the crowd were left scratching their heads at these two somewhat ridiculous illustrations, but this is Jesus at his best, using hyperbole and absurd examples to get his point across. 

And that point is this: that salt and light cannot lose their properties, they cannot not be what God made them to be and do what God made them to do without devolving into something else. If salt lost its taste, it’s not salt anymore. If a light were snuffed out, it’s not light anymore. And YOU, Jesus says to the crowd, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. You folks that I’ve just told are blessed of God – you hungry, meek, merciful, reviled peacemakers – you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and like salt and light, you cannot not be what God made you to be or do what God made you to do. 

What God made them to be – and made us to be – is disciples of Jesus. What God made them to do – ad made us to do – are the actions of Jesus. And so, like that crowd that so eagerly listened to Jesus, if we are to be his disciples, then we must, like Jesus himself, season the world with love – like salt – and illuminate the world with grace – like light. When we cease to do these things, we cease to be disciples of Jesus. Like salt that has lost its saltiness or light that has lost its shine, we would devolve into something else. Call it what you want, but you can’t call it Christian. This is the lesson of the salt and the light. 

There is one significant element of being salt and light, of being disciples of Jesus, and that is being in right relationship with God and with one another. This is the reason Jesus follows up the metaphor of salt and light with a quick lesson on the Law. Many have looked at Jesus and seen a person – seen a rabbi, an authority figure – who disobeys the Law. He doesn’t follow kosher, doesn’t wash his hands, doesn’t obey the Sabbath, interacts with women, heals foreigners, and he’ll eventually be publicly executed, which, according to the Law, accounts him as accursed. But Jesus makes clear that he has not come to abolish or trample on the Law at all, but instead he has come to fulfill it. How? By his very person, his very presence, his very example of how to live in right relationship with God and others. This is again where salt and light work as a teaching tool for Jesus because salt is a preservative, and those who were so zealous for preserving the Law had forgotten how to be in relationship with others, they had put the Law above people and forgotten the important lesson that the Law was made for people, not the other way around, and while they wanted to preserve the Law’s letter, Jesus was more interested in preserving its spirit. For Jesus is the very light of the world that had come to illuminate the Law, and he calls them – and us – to remember that when life becomes more about obeying the rules than it does about people and their sorts and conditions, then we have sinned – that is, we have missed the mark, the literal meaning of the Greek word amartia, which is the archery term that our Scriptures translate as sin. 

How we live in relationship with God is reflected in how we live in relationship with others. How we love others is reflected in how we love God. This is what being salt and light – both preserving and illuminating – are all about, and Jesus will circle back to this point near the end of the Sermon on the Mount when he reminds them in Matthew 7, verse 12 that the whole Law is summarized in the commandments to love God and love neighbor – what we call the Golden Rule. If it sounds like a big responsibility, well, it kinda is. How do we keep up being salt and light and loving others and God all the time, when we ourselves get tossed and turned by the raging storms of life?

Fortunately, we can remember that it really isn’t up to us, so long as we can let go and let Jesus do his thing. That's what grace is all about, after all. Jesus tells us to let our light shine, but have you noticed that there is only one person in the Gospel who ever literally shines? That’s Jesus when he’s up on Mount Tabor and is visited by Moses and Elijah and the voice of God says, “This is my Son, listen to him!” That moment is the Transfiguration, and we’ll hear about it once again on the Sunday before Lent begins. Jesus is the only one who has ever truly shone with the divine light, so it’s not up to us to be “on” all the time or try our damndest to be the best possible Jesus follower there ever was, to be the tastiest salt and brightest light, we just let him do the work through us. Our light can only shine in the context of Jesus, when we allow him to shine through us, when we let go of our own egos and our own need for control and let Jesus take over. It’s kenosis, the Greek word Paul uses for emptying oneself, or what my spiritual director calls “spiritual surrender,” and it is the key to fully integrating our lives into that of Jesus.

We can preserve the gifts of the past while illuminating a new way forward, and we can be in right relationship with God and each other, and we can do all these things because it's Jesus who is doing it all in us and through us. Honestly, we cannot help but be both a preservative and a beacon for the future because, like Jesus points out, salt can’t lose its taste and light can’t lose its shine without no longer being salt or light. We Christians can’t stop loving God and others, we can’t stop doing the work of Jesus to create Beloved Community that looks more and more like the Kingdom of God, and we can’t stop putting people above institutions and powers and principalities without no longer being Christians ourselves. So be the salt and season this world with love. And let your light, the Christ light that is in you, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.