Sermon - 5th Sunday After Epiphany (2/9/2020)
Is. 58:1-9a; Ps. 112; 1 Cor. 2:1-12; Mt. 5:13-20
At the seminary I attended, most of the students and faculty went out to different congregations on Sunday mornings, so our big weekly community Eucharist was always on Friday evenings. When I saw that I had been assigned to do the first reading on the Friday after Ash Wednesday, I checked the lectionary we were using at the time and discovered that the appointed reading for the first Friday of Lent was from Isaiah chapter 58, the same first reading that we had this morning. And I got very excited. I put a lot of thought into how to read the passage most effectively. And I got up in a church full of seminarians very serious about having just started Lent, and I really got into the passage. “Day after day they seek me, as if they are a nation that practices righteousness. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is this not the fasting that I seek: to loose the bonds of injustice, to share your bread with the hungry? Then you will call, and the Lord will answer.” I was en fuego.
A few days later I had a meeting with my spiritual director, who as usual started by asking, “So, what’s happening?” And I said, you know, I did the Isaiah 58 reading in church the other day. He said, yes, I remember, you really got into it. And I said, yes, I really had fun doing that reading, I really enjoyed it. And I think that’s a problem, and I’m not sure I know why.
On the one hand, it wasn’t a mystery why I especially resonated with this passage. I often say that I went into the seminary because it was the only socially acceptable answer I could imagine to the question, So why don’t you have a girlfriend yet? But if that’s all there was to it, I don’t think I would have stayed very long. I stayed because I found myself deeply passionate about the way that churches – across denominations – seem to miss the point so badly. We have this amazing message about how to live and to be in community with one another that the world, especially now, desperately needs. And yet we always seem to be putting our light under a bushel, to coin a phrase, so worried about preserving our institutions and keeping up appearances when people really need to hear that God loves them and that there’s a better and more meaningful and more just way to live. And here’s a text in which the Scripture itself is saying that God isn’t fooled by our empty rituals, that God isn’t impressed with our displays of false piety, that God would much rather that we treat the poor with justice and set the oppressed free. Of course this is a passage that I would like. I still do.
At the time, though, I was worried about how judgmental it all sounded. “Shout out, do not hold back! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.” I never wanted to be one of those pastors – you know, the ones who tell people what big sinners they are. But today I see that’s not the problem with this text. God in this passage can be rather direct, but God is not angry. God is not ready to punish the people because they don’t feed the poor or welcome the homeless into their houses. Instead, God is frustrated because God is so passionate about this people God loves, and yet the people don’t seem to realize it. They think God wants them to mope around in sackcloth and ashes and treat themselves badly while they continue to treat one another badly. They don’t realize that this doesn’t appease God, and that God doesn’t even want to be appeased – God wants to love, and God wants the people to experience the joy that comes from being as loving as God is. Sharing with those who are in need, comforting those who are mourn, lifting up the meek and lowly – this is what God does, and what God enjoys and desires to do. And God is not angry that the people don’t love the way God does. It’s more that God is heartbroken that the people haven’t yet learned how joyful it is to love the way God does.
So that’s not what I was reacting to in processing my experience of reading this text. I don’t think I had the words then to really understand what I was feeling, but Lutheran theology has given it to me. It’s that this text is what Lutherans call “law”: If you fast and keep the ritual while you oppress your workers and engage in violence against others, then God will not hear your prayer. But if you let the oppressed go free and share your bread with the hungry, then your light shall break forth like the dawn, then God will answer your prayers. If, then. If you do this, then God will do that. That’s what Lutheran theology calls “law.”
Law is not bad or wrong in itself. As Jesus himself says in today’s gospel reading, he does not come to abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfill them. The problem with the law is that we’re never good enough at it. The law by itself is never good news, because we are never as good at loving as God is. To be good news, this passage needs to be fulfilled by someone who actually can fulfill it – namely, Jesus. And the good news is that Jesus is now drawing to himself a community of people that are experiencing God’s love and are being given the grace – the gift – of learning to love a little bit in the way that God does. Not if you love like God, then God will love you. No, God already loves you and accepts you, and if you take that seriously, if you really believe and trust that God loves and accepts you, then you will find yourself actually loving your neighbor too.
Which is why it’s so important to notice in today’s gospel reading that Jesus says: You are the salt of the earth. Not, You should be the salt of the earth. Not if you would just be the salt of the earth, then things will really be great. Jesus says, You are the light of the world. Not, you should be the light of the world. Not, if you do good works, you will be the light of the world. No, you are, right now, the light of the world.
And who are the amazing people who are the salt of the earth and the light of the world? To whom does Jesus give this great honor and compliment? To the people of superior righteousness, who share their bread with the needy and who open their homes to the homeless? To people who clearly have their act together and who are completely ready for the awesome task and responsibility of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world?
No, that’s not who Jesus addresses in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus addresses his disciples, the community of retired fishermen and miscellaneous nobodies who have followed him, as the crowds came to Jesus, full – as Matthew says – of “all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, people who fought with demons, people who were paralyzed” (Mt. 4:24). Seeing these crowds, Matthew says, Jesus went up the mountain and began to teach with the Beatitudes, which we read last week: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the peacemakers and the persecuted and those who hunger and thirst for justice. They are blessed, already. Jesus does not say, If you would only be a little meeker, or poorer, or more sorrowful, then you would be blessed. He says to people who are sick and in pain, who struggle with demons, who are hunger and thirst for justice – you are blessed, the kingdom of heaven belongs to you.
And today’s gospel passage follows immediately after the Beatitudes, and is addressed to those same people: You are the salt of the earth. You are what gives life flavor, you are what preserves as world that would otherwise decay and rot. Because the love of God is manifest in you. You are the light of the world. You are what lets people see the goodness of God all around them. Not because you are trying very hard to salt the earth and enlighten the world. But because God’s love is visible in you, because people can taste the very presence of God in you. If you are sick and in pain, if you are meek, if you mourn, if you work for peace, if you hunger and thirst for justice, if you are rejected and despised, then God’s love will be even more visible and transformative in you. And God’s love is what people need more than anything – so don’t hold back, let it flow through you, and people will see your light and give glory to God.
When I was 23, I thought it would be the most awesome thing to tell people that if they would only love the way God does, then God would do amazing things in their lives. What I have come to learn is that to hear that I really ought to love the way God does is exhausting. I’m not God, I’m lucky if can I make it through the day in one piece, I have neither the time nor the energy to love like God does. I do not need one more thing on my “to-do” list that I know I can never get done.
So instead, let me share some news that its actually good: God’s love is already for you, you are already blessed. Don’t wait for the conditions to be fulfilled; all the conditions that need fulfilling have already been fulfilled on your behalf. So don’t try to be the salt of the earth or the light of the world. Just know that you already are. The light of God is already shining through you. And then, for the love of God, take that seriously. Don’t hide the light. There are people who need it.