Kurt Nelson
2/10/19
Rooke Chapel Congregation
We spent our first two weeks together,
with the Gospel of John.
The first systemic attempt,
to author the meaning
of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection.
A story meant to help us feel what abundant life might look like,
and help us notice, as we discussed last week,
where that abundance,
that grace – might call us out into the world,
to get to work
and sometimes to get into trouble.
for the next three weeks
(maybe 4.
I don’t know yet.
I’m still figuring a lot of things out here.
And we don’t know each other that well yet.)
I’d like us to look together at the sermon on the mount.
Which is the most sustained, significant,
teaching from Jesus,
(rather than about Jesus)
that we have.
If you’re curious about its compilation,
or history,
or about comparative study between various version
I’d be delighted to talk about a bible study time,
but for worship,
I think we’ll focus more on its substance,
dig in, and muck around a little.
Because it is world changing stuff,
and life changing stuff,
even as the words have become blunted for many of us,
from overuse.
And we’re starting today,
a little bit in the middle of the sermon.
Because it’s here,
here that Jesus takes up the implicit, essential question:
Who are we?
And we should first note,
that in the first century biblical sense,
the “who are they” who were listening to these sermons,
were the masses and the close disciples,
and neither of those groups,
were shiny.
These were not the buttoned up,
good, hard-working, wage earning types.
The masses are poor and sick and hungry and oppressed.
the outcasts and the tax collectors and the prostitutes,
and just plain old tired people looking for any spark of hope,
in the midst of a hard land, a hard government, and a hard history.
And the disciples – were fishermen and laborers.
Not the people you would necessarily tap as the future leaders of the world.
Not the sort who would boast the right resume,
to get into – say – a highly selective college in Lewisburg PA.
And to them – the dull mass of humanity –
and to us,
says Jesus,
who are you?
You are salt and you are light.
They wouldn’t have known it all those years ago,
but for me – salt is synonymous with winter.
After snow, ice and mud,
winter’s 4th greatest scourge.
It’s on my shoes, my pants, my car, my car mats,
my floor, my office.
When I see Gwen,
in the morning,
our beloved custodian, sexton, sound tech,
and keeper of memory,
and I say, “Gwen, how are you this morning?”
Her answer is invariably tied,
to the amount of salt that was in the chapel that morning when she arrived.
Because she loves this place,
and cares for it,
and it’s too darn salty around here,
through no fault of Gwen’s.
Frankly, we’re not entirely sure what Jesus meant when he said,
salt can lose its saltiness.
It’s honestly a pretty weird thing to say.
There’s some suggestion that salt extracted from the Dead Sea
would have been sufficiently impure as to degrade over time.
Others suggest that this was , perhaps a reference,
to dishonest salt salesmen who mixed salt with sand,
thus rendering it useless.
Still others make a complicated allusion,
to the practice of using salt to extend the life of fuel for a cooking fire
(which was dung.)
All of those are historically plausible,
but really weird.
We do know that
Salt was (as they said in our previous home):
wicked important.
It was used as payment from time to time
(hence the phrase, “worth his salt.”)
Nutritionally essential.
Used for preserving,
and healing.
Wildly, deeply, important.
“You are the salt of the earth.”
The previous
and most famous section
of this sermon,
you might remember,
Is framed,
“Blessed are…”
“Blessed are the poor…” Blessed are the merciful.
But it shifts here.
To this simple, bold, straightforward indicative.
You.
You my friends.
Are salt.
You don’t have to become salt,
you don’t have to strive to be the best salt you can be.
You simply are.
And what does salt do?
Well, it raises our blood pressure,
and hardens our arteries,
because we have too much of it.
But it melts our road ice,
and gums up our boots.
It flavors our meals,
and preserves our foods.
And in the right amount,
it’s essential to keeping our body functioning.
So… salt does lots.
But what salt doesn’t do
is lose its saltiness.
Indeed, there are few chemical compounds more stable
than sodium chloride.
They fit together like an elemental hand and glove.
It’s not really possible for salt to lose its saltiness.
And maybe that’s the point.
I’m moved to think,
perhaps,
that Jesus is being funny here,
because the very next bit is patently absurd.
we’ve become accustomed to the picture of the lamp under a bushel.
Just pause to think about it for a moment,
and wonder,
what would happen if we lit a lamp,
and put it under a basket?
The best case scenario is that we’d still be in the dark.
But if we’re talking about an open flame,
and a wicker basket of sorts.
More likely,
we’re going to start a huge fire.
You
you my friends,
are light.
The light of the world.
And you cannot be contained.
(even if you want to be.)
And you are salt.
The salt of the earth.
And I suspect you know,
that you cannot lose your saltiness.
Powerful images,
if a little old.
And so, says Jesus,
be who you are.
Salt and light.
Blessed,
and sent forth to be a blessing.
Nice, right?
Done and dusted.
Easy peasy.
There wasn’t reallyy anything else of note in our text today,
was there?
Oh….wait.
There’s the law bit to contend with isn’t there.
Hmmm…Tougher.
Often,
it would seem,
Jesus words bolster,
and then admonish.
Uplift, and then challenge.
And this is no exception.
You are the salt of the earth.
Oh by the way,
Not one letter will pass away from the law,
until all is accomplished.
A strange thing to say,
from a guy about to subvert a good portion of the moral code.
In the coming few lines.
Not to mention someone who was seemingly pretty regularly
flaunting Sabbath laws (Mark 2),
and more-or-less did away with longstanding food restrictions
for his community of followers (Mark 7).
You are the light of the world,
And by the way,
unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Tough one.
(close reading also reveals that even the breakers of commandments,
and bad teachers are still in the kingdom of heaven.
They’re just the least.
Which seems better than never entering,
which is what happens to those whose righteousness doesn’t exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.)
So what do we imagine is going on here?
For one, we can rightly surmise,
that Matthew’s community is wading into some pretty profound conflicts,
And both Jesus and Matthew,
want their followers to know
that there is continuity between the law,
the prophets,
and Jesus himself.
Though it is a tough continuity to suss out from time to time,
he says, “all that stuff,
all those stories,
they still matter.”
God is telling one long story,
and Moses and Jesus and Matthew and us,
we’re all a part of it.
And more importantly,
I think,
this idea hinges on the word, “righteousness”
and what it might mean to
“exceed the scribes and Pharisees in righteousness”
The greek work is – dikaiosuné –
is rightly translated with roughly equal weight,
in English bibles
as righteousness and as justice.
Dikaiosune doesn’t just mean personal behavior,
and it doesn’t just mean,
collective behavior,
it means that the world and we are right.
aligned with truth and justice and love.
So, we might ask:
What was wrong with the Scribes and Pharisees,
that we and the unwashed masses are meant to surpass?
What are they lacking?
And if we answer,
“they weren’t strict enough in their interpretation of the law.”
We’ve got our heads stuck in the sand.
If we answer,
“they didn’t love Jesus.”
We’re probably missing the point,
for us here today.
But if we answer,
they saw God’s law as a source of duty,
rather than an act of love?
we might be on to something.
If we answer,
because they were too concerned with the divine ledger,
and not concerned enough with justice,
with the conditions of those they were meant to serve.
We might be onto something else.
And indeed,
there is continuity there,
especially with the Hebrew prophets.
No doubt this is a hard and harsh thing for Jesus to say.
You see those pious guys over there?
You have to be even better than them.
But it seems to me,
he’s not asking for better piety.
Or better rule following.
But better love.
The wall that we so often see,
as the divine law,
separating us from God and from one another,
says Jesus,
isn’t God’s wall.
It’s ours,
and it’s a projection.
So…
be salt.
Because, guess what?
You’re salt.
And no matter how you try,
you can’t lose your saltiness.
Be light,
because guess what,
you’re light.
And if you try to hide it,
you’ll probably burn the house down.
And these facts,
says Jesus,
are not your duty.
They are gifts,
which call us up into righteousness.
Which make us yearn for justice.
So.
We say again:
You are loved.
be who you are.
Salt and light.
Blessed,
and sent forth to be a blessing.
Nice, right?
Done and done.
Let the people say, Amen.