Salt & Light

 ‘You are the salt of the earth … You are the light of the world’.

So says Jesus to his disciples in the first part of today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (5:13-20). It comes after the Beatitudes at the start of the long discourse we call the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. He is surely also speaking to us as his followers today. We too are the salt of the earth and the light of the world! At least we are when we do our best to be what God wants us to be, and when we fail, we are offered forgiveness.

Salt gives savour to our food, and preserves it from going bad. If it loses its taste, if it becomes contaminated, it is useless and must be thrown out. Just like salt, says Jesus, if we are to be good for anything in God’s creation, we must be the good people God has created us to be.

Without light we can’t see what we are doing, nor where we are going, and a lamp which is hidden away is useless. Jesus tells us we must ‘let (our) light shine before others, so that they may see (our) good works and give glory to (our) Father in heaven’.

But what must we do, how must we behave, to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world?

In the second part of the reading, Jesus abruptly changes the subject to talk about Hebrew scripture.

He says, ‘I have come not to abolish but to fulfil (the law and the prophets)’, fixing himself firmly within the ancient traditions of the Jewish people into which he was born. The ‘law and the prophets’ are the major part of the Hebrew scriptures, which we call the Old Testament.

‘Not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished’, he says. ‘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’ – who for all their faults did their best to be righteous, to obey every last letter of the law – ‘you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’.

Does this mean that Jesus teaches us as his disciples that to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must follow precisely every last letter of the Jewish law? Must we follow not just the Ten Commandments but also the smallest rules about purity, such as not eating shellfish or mixing fibres in our clothes? If this were true, we should seriously consider converting to Judaism!

To see what Jesus really means, we need to read the rest of Matthew Chapter 5.

Sometimes I get frustrated that the good compilers of the lectionary miss out the context of what is set to be read. In this case the passage about the law and the prophets does not follow on from the passage about salt and light, but should be read as an introduction to the verses that follow it.

In these following verses Jesus talks about his interpretation of the law, giving several examples that do not abolish or replace but extend the conventional interpretation of the scribes and Pharisees. You can read what he has to say in Matthew Chapter 5 when you get home, but here are a couple of examples:

·         ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”.’ – that’s one of the 10 commandments – ‘But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement’. Jesus extends the commandment against murder to falling out with another person. ‘If you remember that your brother or sister has something against you … be reconciled to your brother or sister’.

·         ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery”.’ - another of the 10 commandments - ‘But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart’. And we should understand that the same applies to a woman looking with lust at a man.

Notice what Jesus is doing here – he is going beyond the precise wording of the commandments to reveal the spirit of God’s law.

He also teaches us that there are circumstances when it is right to break one commandment in order to keep a more important one. Elsewhere (Matthew 32:37-39) Jesus summarises the law and the prophets, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”’. Jesus heals the sick on the Sabbath because it is more important to love your neighbour than to observe the prohibition of work on the Sabbath.

Jesus’s approach to God’s law is nuanced – he is more concerned with what is right and just than in following rules like a robot.

The prophet Isaiah’s approach was the same, as Jesus would have known very well. In today’s 1^st reading (Isaiah 58:1-9a), the prophet chastises the leaders of Israel for mindlessly following the laws about fasting while oppressing the people. God wants a different kind of fasting, he says:

‘Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?’

Following Jesus’s example, our task is surely to look beyond the words written in the Bible to discern the spirit of God’s law and to be guided by that.

This is a harder task than following the letter of God’s word, as we read it in the Bible, which heaven knows the scribes and Pharisees found difficult enough. It will require humility, open minds, and real engagement both with scripture and with other Christians, some of whom see things differently and cling to ancient tradition much as the scribes and Pharisees did.

But this is what we must do, this is how we must behave, if we are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, as Jesus tells us we are.

The Holy Spirit will help us. St Paul in today’s 2^nd reading (1 Corinthians 2:1-12) says to the Corinthians, ‘we have received … the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God’. In this way, growing in maturity as Christians, we will be able to ‘speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory’.

And in St John’s Gospel Jesus himself promises that ‘The Spirit of truth will guide (us) into all truth’ (John 16:13).

I finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word:

Faithful God,

You have appointed us, your witnesses,

to be a light that shines in the world:

let us not hide the bright hope you have given us,

but tell everyone of your love,

revealed in Jesus Christ the Lord,

who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen

The living church

Address given in St Mary's, Nenagh and Killodiernan churches on Sunday 9th June 2019, the Feast of Pentecost

We’re moving into Summer and Spring is already behind us!

We all love the sense of unfolding new life at this time of year. And it is right for us to rejoice in the changing of the seasons. It is the creative power of the Spirit of God at work: as today’s Psalm 104 puts it, “When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.”

This Sunday is Pentecost – what we used to call Whitsunday. For Christians it ranks alongside Christmas and Easter as one of the great festivals. It celebrates the day when the Holy Spirit filled Jesus’s followers, empowering them to begin the great task of making disciples of all nations. The first Pentecost was the spring-time of the Church, the day when the first green sprouts burst into the light of day, the day the Church was born.

The Lectionary readings are of course all about the Spirit. Let’s have a closer look at them.

In today’s Gospel (John 14:8-17,25-27), Jesus tells his disciples that he will ask the Father to send them the Holy Spirit.

For what we know as the Holy Spirit, the 3^rd person of the Trinity, John uses a Greek word translated as ‘advocate’. On the night he was betrayed Jesus tells the disciples, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth... You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you… The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you’.

These are very important words. Jesus tells his first disciples that through loving him they will know the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, which will stay with them and be in them. And he tells them that the Spirit of truth will teach them, as well as remind them of Jesus’s teaching.

Surely the same applies to his disciples in every age, including ours. Jesus teaches us our faith must be open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit – it must be a living faith, open to development.

In the 2^nd reading (Romans 8:14-17), St Paul tells the Roman church that this Holy Spirit is a spirit of adoption.

‘When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.’

When we pray, when we seek God’s forgiveness, it is the Holy Spirit - the Advocate whom Jesus asked his Father to send to those who love him - the Spirit of truth which abides within us - who reminds us that we are children of God - and so joint inheritors with Christ of all that is good and true and beautiful in God. What a simply stunning thought that is.

In today’s 1^st reading (Acts 2:1-21), Luke describes the events of that very first Pentecost.

7 weeks after Christ’s resurrection, 10 days after his ascension, something happened among his followers. Something that caught the attention of the crowd – citizens of Jerusalem and visitors from all over the Roman Empire, alike. Something that caused the crowd to stop and look and listen. What was it that happened?

The disciples suddenly experienced the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, in them and in their lives, as Jesus had promised them. The OT uses wind and fire as symbols of the presence of God. So it wasAct natural for them to describe their extraordinary experience in terms of a rushing mighty wind and tongues of fire. And they were changed, changed utterly by it.

They began to speak in tongues – this is what first attracts the attention of the crowd – some people even thought they were drunk! Did they really speak in all manner of foreign languages? Or is Luke using this as a device to signify the Gospel message is universal, for every person, from every nation? Or was it just the disciples’ obvious enthusiasm and joy, bubbling forth, that impressed the crowd?

Then Peter comes forward. Peter the simple fisherman from Galilee, who just seven weeks before had been afraid to admit he knew Jesus. Peter as spokesman for the others starts to speak confidently to the crowd, quoting from the prophet Joel; and Peter goes on to declare his faith in the risen Christ, with such eloquence that we are told he convinced 3000 people that day to believe and be baptised. What a change in the man! And Christ’s Church is born.

No doubt in principle we could explain what happened with, say, the science of psychology. But I think it’s enough to use the same words Luke did – ‘All of them - the disciples - were filled with the Holy Spirit’, and they were changed by it. And this sense of receiving and being changed by the Holy Spirit has marked out and empowered Christians in every generation ever since.

Notice that the disciples were all together in one place when they received the Spirit.

It was a gift to the whole community who followed Jesus. I think that if Christians of different traditions were more often gathered together in one place, we would receive more of the Spirit.

I can be a Christian without going to Church, people sometimes say. Well, yes – a taste for singing hymns and listening to sermons is perhaps optional. But nobody can be a Christian alone – for as Christians we are those to whom God has given his Spirit, and the Spirit is a community Spirit. We are not given it for our individual salvation; we are given it to empower us to be the Church, the community of believers, so that we may pass on the good news to others, not necessarily by words but in our lives.

I believe that the Holy Spirit has inspired people since time immemorial. Long before Jesus’s patient sowing of the seed with the disciples, the Spirit was no doubt planting seeds in the minds of the ancient prophets of Israel as they, like us, struggled to understand their relationship with God. And who can say that the Spirit has not also inspired what is good in other religions?

But we are Christians - let us rejoice in Christ’s Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, a living organism, sprouting from the seed Jesus sowed, and constantly growing in new ways.

So to conclude:

As we rejoice in the glorious growth in nature around us, let us also rejoice in the gift of the Holy Spirit which abides in us, and reminds us we are children of God by adoption, and let us also rejoice in the Church as a living, developing organism, inspired and guided by that Holy Spirit.

And let us pray that in this part of Christ’s Church, in the churches of our parish union, in the Church of Ireland, God’s Holy Spirit will guide us to be a living church, changing and developing as God wants us to:

God the Holy Spirit,

come in power and bring new life to the Church;

renew us in love and service,

and enable us to be faithful

to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

(BCP p149)