Salt and Light
A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 9, 2020 by the Very Reverend Tyler Doherty.
I was thinking again this week of old, wizened Simeon in the temple—cradling and being cradled by the one in the cradle—the child Jesus who comes into the world as the full and final manifestation of the light of God’s love for all people without exception. In particular, I was remembering those lines from the Nunc Dimittis—“You have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised, a light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” Simeon has been freed from something (what the Letter to the Hebrews calls the fear of the power of death, rigid adherence to the law), but he has also been freed for something, hasn’t he?
Freedom from and freedom for. Freedom from all those things that hinder the light and life of Christ from living itself in and through us, and freedom to be salt and light for everyone everywhere. Freedom from darkness, the illusion of self-sufficiency, having our desires and appetites at the center of everything, and freedom for serving others in the spirit of sacrificial love.
Think about the last time you went to a party where you didn’t know too many people. What’s the first thing people ask you? “What do you do for a living?” or “Where do you live?” or “What college did you attend?” If you live in Utah it’s, “How many children do you have?” So much of how our identity is constructed in those types of situations is driven by what we do. And we can get duped into thinking that we are what we do, what we produce, where we’ve managed to find an apartment or buy a house. So the question arises--Are we human doings or human beings?
Now imagine if you ran into Jesus at one of his cocktail parties, like the one he invited himself to at Zaccheaus’ house after he climbed down from the tree. Do you think he’d want to know your resume? Where you attended high school? How much money you earn at your job? Probably not! He’d likely ask, “What are you looking for?” “What is the deepest desire of your heart?” “When you connect with that Holy Longing that pulses and quivers under your surface of your life, what does it yearn for?”
I’ve been reading Harry Potter with my daughter Madeleine, and at one point in the first book Harry discovers a room with a magical mirror in it—the Mirror of Ersid. When Harry looks in the mirror he sees his entire family there round about him. And when he brings his friend Ron to look in the mirror he sees himself as Head Boy of Hogwarts. Harry is entranced by what he sees and goes back again for a third time. He’s surprised by Dumbledore who reveals to him the true purpose of the mirror—it shows you not your face but your truest desire. For orphan Harry it reveals Harry’s desire for family. For youngest sibling Ron, who lives in hand-me-down clothes and rides broomsticks his older brothers have grown out of, the mirror shows him his desire to be seen as equal to his older brothers. Dumbledore warns Harry that many people have wasted their entire lives staring into the mirror. It can become a trap. Dreams are nice, but getting trapped dreaming for what we can never have doesn’t bring happiness.
Jesus’s face is a mirror too. Jesus’ face shows us who we are called to be, it manifests our true identity beyond our country of origin, our bank account, our family, our job. When we look into the mirror of Jesus’ face what do we see? Salt and Light. Salt and light according to Jesus is who we really are. Salt brings flavor to food. Light enlightens dark places. And Jesus is telling us that the life of discipleship is meant to bring human flourishing our lives and in the lives of the community of which we are a part.
William Temple used to say that the church is the only organization that exists for those who are not it members. He reminds the Church that it doesn’t exist as a self-enclosed institution bent on perpetrating itself and its structures. The Church according to Temple is about mission to those outside its walls, not just about maintenance. When Jesus says we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, he’s reminding us of the true purpose of our lives. We are to be that flavor-enhancing, life-giving salt in the world. Our encounters with others are meant to draw out their innate goodness, their God-given gifts. We are called to go to those dark places as the light of Christ’s transfiguring love to illuminate, name, and repair what is broken, what falls short of God’s intended purposes for the creation God calls good.
William Temple is just Isaiah in mid-twentieth century, Anglican garb. Isaiah accuses the Israelites of forgetting the true purpose of fasting. The Israelites have fallen into the old trap of going through the motions, of ticking the boxes, of doing what is right in the eyes of the law, but without any subsequent transformation of heart. They fast and they oppress their workers. They fast but they quarrel and fight.
The true purpose of fasting, Isaiah reminds us, is not just to fulfill some abstract command, but for that practice to open our eyes to those who have been rendered invisible in our midst, whose voices have been silenced, whose dignity has been discounted or denied. The true purpose of fasting, or any spiritual practice is to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. The purpose of fasting is to then take that food you haven’t eaten and share it with the hungry. The purpose of living simply is to then take that extra money and use it to clothe the naked and house the homeless. The purpose of fasting, or any spiritual practice, is to open the door to healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation of broken relationships. “Hiding yourself from your own kin,” points to the dichotomy receiving Eucharist on Sunday and not having spoken to a friend or relative since that argument at Thanksgiving five years ago.
Isaiah is reminding Israel and us that freedom from is just the beginning. Freedom for the other, going into the world as salt and light, as rebuilders of the ruins, repairers of the breach, restorers of the streets is what it means to live into the full scope of calling. That’s why Jesus says that not one letter, not one stroke of a letter of the Torah (not one jot or tittle as the King James has it) will be changed. The law is meant to send us out as salt and light, as the love we see manifest in the life of Jesus as healing, reconciling, boundary-crossing love. Instead, as is so often the case, the law has become an end in itself. The law is worshipped for its own sake, rather than as a means, and set of practices that allow the love of God to make it home in us that we might become tents of meeting for others, places where God happens for others.
What might it look like to be Salt and Light?
Maybe it’s sitting down and having a conversation with someone you disagree with politically and trying to see and listen for the person behind the political stance.
Maybe it’s listening to someone’s story and discerning with them how you as salt might draw out the unique flavor that person brings to the banquet of divine love.
Maybe it’s looking at how we use our time, talent, and treasure and seeing if there is a way that we might serve the poor, the needy, the homeless.
Maybe it’s making a phone call to someone we’ve not spoken with as a result of argument or disagreement.
Maybe it’s about illuminating, naming courageously, and working to transfigure a life-diminishing social problem in your community. Child poverty. The school-prison pipeline. The two income trap. The lack of access to affordable health care.
Maybe it’s about making our life about the self-giving love we see revealed in the person of Jesus who pours himself out for others rather than about accumulating, acquiring, and storing up.
Maybe it’s about looking closely at the dark and savorless places in our own hearts and asking for the light and salt of God’s love to hold and heal them that we can become more effective means of grace to those we meet.
Maybe it’s about recommitting ourselves to daily prayer, coming to know this person of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels, weekly worship so that we might be salted, so that we might be enlightened to be that salt and light for others.
The Israelites fulfilled all the requirements, but their fulfillment of requirements didn’t overflow into loving service to others. That’s one problem. That’s one trap. But another problem is thinking we can just run around as self-proclaimed salt and light without ever having come into contact with Salt and Light as manifest in the person of Jesus in the first place. That’s perhaps the problem we face in twenty-first century, post-Christian society. Without being Salted and Enlightened the Salt and Light we carry into the world is often just our idea of Salt and Light, how we think things should be, our will, rather than God’s will.
When we look in the mirror of Jesus’s face and see our true identity as Salt and Light it’s really a call to center our lives on Him. To open ourselves to his Salt and Light. Not just for an hour and a half on Sundays, but always and everywhere. It’s a call to life-long and life-wide discipleship. It’s a call to be Salt and Light in the traffic jam on Tuesday morning and during a call to sick friend on Thursday evening. Looking into the mirror of Jesus’ face we see who we are is not our job, your bank account, our family lineage or bloodline, how many degrees or titles we have accumulated. We are God’s beloved. We are Salt. We are Light. Be salted. Be lit. Then go and be that Salt and Light in the world.