Tag Archive for: Salt

Epiphany 6A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Sometimes announcing, “the gospel of the Lord” feels like it should be followed by a question mark. I know Christians have hurled these words of Jesus like rocks to bruise, shame, and torment one another.  I know Christians quote verses like these to paint a picture of God as a rule-obsessed tyrant, waiting to zap us if we make a mistake. Will you protect me, Lord, if I am pious? Will you comfort me if I am good? Will you reward me with a long-lived life if I say extra-long prayers?

We know, intellectually, something’s not right about this. It’s wrong to use religion as a weapon to afflict others or our self. We know God is not a tyrant.  We know in our head God does not withhold special favors as a reward for personal piety.  “But most of us have a God-related misconception or two lurking in our hearts, and even if we try to get rid of them, they cling” (Debi Thomas, But I Say To You, Journey with Jesus, 2/09/20).

So, where’s the good news in today’s gospel?  Jesus said, ‘You have heard it said of old, do not murder…but I say to you if you are angry will be liable for judgment…and liable to the hell of fire’ (vs. 21-22).  “You have heard it said, do not commit adultery, but I say to you anyone who has looked at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (vs. 27, 28).

For help we step back and remember where today’s reading comes from. It’s an excerpt from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5-7 which includes the beatitudes we read two weeks ago (blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers), instructs us to love our enemies as ourselves, and to pray the Lord’s prayer. Those who first heard Jesus preach would have rightly understood.  Jesus was not threatening them with God’s wrath but calling forth a new community.  A blessed community.  A beloved community.  A community to incarnate divine love in a world hungry for hope and healing.

Another thing we must remember, or learn if we don’t already know, is what Jesus is saying about hell, and what he is not. Our bible (NRSV) uses the word ‘hell’ 13 times in the entire New Testament, and 12 of them translate the Greek word “Gehenna,” a valley south of Jerusalem some say was a smoldering landfill at the time of Jesus, a place of human-made fires of burning refuse. Jesus was not talking about a place of eternal punishment God sends people after they die. But rather, he is pointing to the place, mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah, also known as the Valley of Slaughter because it was once the site of child sacrifice. People listening to Jesus would have known he was talking about a place associated with the highest form of idolatry against Yahweh. (Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary). The idea of hell which we have today confronts us with a type of violence wrapped in religious clothing which Jesus came to unveil as human violence, and not God’s violence. “It must be forgiven, let go of, if Christianity is to be faithful to Jesus.”

Now we begin to see the good news. We hear Jesus’ invitation to become part of a new humanity, to break the pernicious cycle of violence, and to step out from the hell of our own making. The path to renewal lays behind the door to deeper reflection, radical honesty, and self-examination.  Jesus commands raise the bar. “I tell you,” Jesus says, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

To become children of a new humanity we must be willing to open the door to what is hidden inside our hearts and minds. We must be honest with ourselves and others about the swelter of internal dynamics going on there: anger, derision, slander, false generosity, litigiousness, arrogance, lust, temptation, alienation, sexual immorality, and weaponized religious speech. This is the terrain Jesus and the Holy Spirit work within us to transform our hearts and minds little by little, and sometimes, all at once. Do not be afraid and be of good courage. “Everyone has done something wrong; everyone has broken the law; everyone has chosen poorly. You are still the light of the world. You are still blessed” (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 2/12/23).

A pastor wrote about a young mother she knew who was severely abused as a child. She and her children lived in daily chaos. She was getting help but a pattern kept appearing. Just when her life began to “stabilize,” she created a situation that caused her to be thrown into chaos again.  It was almost as if chaos was her place of comfort, control, power, and security. It was where she found her identity.  (Rev. Jolene Bergstrom Carlson, Executive Director/President Ministry Mentors, 2/07/17)

“A trauma therapist would say: ‘What is not repaired is repeated.’ What revival means biblically is not simply that there is a burst of success after a fallow period that comes from people doing the same things they were doing before. Revival shakes everything that we thought before was solid. And God does something completely new. These moments come when there is a kind of desperation to seek it. And a willingness to shift in whatever way God seems best.” (Dr. Russell Moore, Editor-In-Chief of Christianity Today.)

Often this means we must not be afraid, run away from, or too quickly try to fix and wipe away, conflict.  We must draw upon Jesus to give us the courage and patience to learn. We take comfort knowing Jesus walks with us as we take the necessary time and energy to be reconciled to one another and at peace within ourselves. “…conflict in and of itself is not a problem. The electricity of tension, and of naturally-occurring difference, make conflict essential and generative in our closest relationships. Conflict is a force in learning, growth, and advance of every kind” (Krista Tippet, The Pause, The On Being Project, 2/11/23). What might happen if, rather than rushing to solve every conflict we instead chose to hone our skills at being present to conflict in a way that is life-giving? (Tippet)

Jesus takes us beneath the surface of things to give birth to a new humanity, to establish true harmony among us in the Beloved Community, and to restore integrity that redeems our faith. Continuing the observance of Black History Month, we end today with Howard Thurman, distinguished theologian, pastor, social activist, and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King.  Thurman wrote, “By some amazing but vastly creative spiritual insight the slave undertook the redemption of a religion that the master had profaned in his midst” (Howard Thurman, Deep River).

“It was clear to Howard Thurman, as he helped to lead the Civil Rights Movement, that a fundamental element to achieving their goals was to work for the redemption of the Christian religion. In books like Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman sought an interpretation of Jesus and his message that makes central the healing of human divisions, and so also the salvation of a Christian religion that has been profaned by an intertwining with white supremacist racism” (Nuechterlein).  Fifty years later this task of redeeming the Christian religion from racism has become nothing but more clear and focused and urgent. To get there we will need to draw upon Jesus for the courage and patience for radical honesty and self-examination.

Our own Richard Anderson prepares a weekly email of prayers and reflections intended for silent prayer before worship. It now goes out to 60 or 70 people.  This week Richard shared a prayer, written by Howard Thurman.

O Lord,

Open unto me, light for my darkness

Open unto me, courage for my fear

Open unto me, hope for my despair

Open unto me, peace for my turmoil

Open unto me, joy for my sorrow

Open unto me, strength for my weakness

Open unto me, wisdom for my confusion

Open unto me, forgiveness for my sins

Open unto me, tenderness for my toughness

Open unto me, love for my hates

Open unto me, Thy Self for myself

Lord, Lord, open unto me!

Amen.

Epiphany 5A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?  You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:13-14). Salt and light are your superpower. They are reflections within you of God’s ever-present grace.

Living in times of plenty, we take salt and light for granted. In the ancient world, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history. Roman soldiers got paid in salt—hence our English word, salary. Around ten thousand years ago, dogs were first domesticated using salt; people would leave salt outside their homes to entice the animals. (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus, Salty, 02/02/20)  And, of course, less than 150 years ago, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, made light nearly ubiquitous.

The first lesson to draw from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a benediction upon the whole world. There is no border, no boundary, no line separating nations, no longitude, nor latitude that divides all living things from the blessings bestowed by God. As in highest heaven so it is also on earth. We are siblings in Christ—children of salt and light.

Imagine how Jesus’s first followers might have understood being called salt and light. “You,” he told them all. “You are the salt of the earth.”” You are the light of the world. You, the poor, the mournful, the meek, the persecuted. The hungry, the sick, the crippled, the frightened.  The outcast, the misfit, the disreputable, and the demon possessed. (Debie Thomas) We are salt and light. The salt and light in you can never be stolen from you, beaten out of you, or spoiled even by your own misdeeds. You are imbued with the distinctive capacity to elicit goodness, to grow in generosity and wisdom which leads to personal and global transformation. (Debie Thomas)

The first lesson we draw out today is a benediction.  The second is an answer to the question, who are my siblings in Christ?  How will I know them if not by outward identifiers such as religion, ethnicity, culture, gender, or color? The answer? Taste and see. You are salty when you share your bread with the hungry. You are light when you bring the homeless poor into your house. You become salt which makes life delicious when you see the naked and cover them. Your light shines in the world when you do not hide yourself from your own kin. “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly…” says the prophet, Isaiah (Isaiah 58:8a). Taste and see.  Your siblings are salt and light.

Paul’s meditation on the crucified Christ encourages us to learn from Jesus’ death what it is to be truly human. Truly human persons—grafted into the self-giving death of Christ—live differently in the world, according to “the Spirit that is given by God” (verse 12). The new human person in Christ is relocated in a large extended family embracing the whole neighborhood, including even the entire planet.

Yet another lesson we may take to heart is how to distinguish between good, as opposed to bad, religion. The righteousness of the holy exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees, not by hairsplitting moralism or competition in good works, but through guidance of the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).  We begin to approach the same capacity to act and to give, even as Jesus gave himself for the world. By contrast, any attempts to follow the way of Jesus that promotes violence, exclusion, racial, or national supremacy, and does not love neighbor has lost its saltiness and labors in shadow. Any religion which denies the grace of God reflected among outsiders has strayed from the way. Once our religion can no longer meet the test of its own ideals of love or justice –is not good.  It’s failed.  It’s this bad religion that is driving people to leave the church. Tragically, they flee, not to different congregations, or more enlightened denominations, but out of the church entirely.

 Freedom of conscience. Uncoerced faith. Religious pluralism. These are evidence of good religion which tastes of salt and light. Despite the fact, admittedly, it can only ever be lived and embodied by flawed and broken people, good religion results in human flourishing. By this measure, the institutional decline from the 1950’s we all lament when everyone was in church maybe isn’t all bad. We should be less threatened by ongoing de-centering of Christianity, as in for example, the scheduling of children’s soccer games on Sunday—than by those now working to re-establish their own narrow version of religion through the exercise of political power and by rulings of the supreme court.

The War in Ukraine is but the most dramatic and violent example of this rip current of bad religion trying to bring a nation that wants to move toward democratic pluralism and freedom of conscience and say to them, ‘No. You will be Russian, You will be Russian orthodox. You will speak the Russian language—and by the way, you women will return to your proper subordinate position, and you queer people will fly straight or be eliminated. Likewise, the so-called freedom from indoctrination law playing out in Florida today has outed itself for what it really is—indoctrination. (Homebrewed Christianity, Welcome to the Post-Christian Century: Diana Butler Bass & Bill Leonard in conversation, 2/1/23)

The people of God are salt and light. Good religion does not fail Jesus’ test of loving neighbors and enacting mercy. Taste and see. One of the greatest and most inspirational Christian men of the 20th century was not a Christian, but a Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi. This January 30th marked the 75th anniversary of his death. Jesus disciple, Mahatma Gandhi, tasted of salt and suffering love. Britain’s Salt Act of 1882 prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt. Indian citizens were forced to buy it from their British rulers, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also charged a heavy salt tax. Gandhi identified Britain’s monopoly on salt as a symbolic key to India’s freedom.

Marching 240 miles to the sea, Gandhi inspired tens of thousands of Indians to protest this unjust law with him. Picking up a pinch of salt from beside the sea, Gandhi was arrested. Hundreds more were beaten as they advanced on salt works. 60,000 people were arrested and Britain’s rule over India was in effect ended. On the eve of this freedom campaign, Gandhi said, “Mass civil disobedience will not come if those who have been hitherto the loudest in their cry for liberty have no action in them. If the salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”

Taste and see. You are salt and light.  That is our superpower. United in Christ, God fill us with these good gifts again and again to renew us in body and soul in order to love and serve one another as our Lord Jesus enables us to do.