A Sunday Reflection on the lectionary readings for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.
Jesus says we are to be salt and light in this world. This is one of those statements of Jesus were we have a collision of our understanding that Jesus often spoke in metaphors (we can’t literally be salt or light) and our tendency to take things literally. Salt can’t lose it’s flavor, it can’t cease to be salt. It is the character of salt to be salty. Salt on it’s own isn’t good for much but when it is added to food in the right amount it enhances the flavor of other foods. Salt is also used as a preservative and even as a cleanser.
Often Jesus’ admonition about salt losing it’s taste is taken as a warning that we are not to lose our faith, and yes it is that but it goes so much deeper than that. It is a metaphor about who and Whose we are. We are God’s beloved. We are made to live interdependent with each other and this can be a challenging for our twenty first century western world brains. We are raised to be autonomous individuals, pulling our selves up, making our own way, marching to the beat of our own drum. We’ve forgotten that we are salt made to flavor the world with God’s love.
We’ve forgotten that the light that is in us, the image of God that is in us, isn’t to light our own path but to be a light for others on the Way of Jesus. Imagine standing in a large cathedral holding just a single match. There would be light, yes. Imagine, however, if we used that match to light the candles that the hundreds of people around us are holding. We’d fill the whole place with light. I was in a cathedral not long ago, lighting a candle and praying. Someone walked up to the candle station next to me, dropped some coins in the box, picked up a candle, and whispered ‘how do we light it?” I said with any of the other lit candles. She hesitated and said that didn’t feel right, it felt like she was stealing their light. I showed her that even if she lights hers with another, it doesn’t diminish the power of the other light, it still glows just as bright. She watched as the flame caught hers and how big the flame became together. “You’re right!” she whispered excitedly, “I’ve never thought of it like that. We need each other’s light to shine.” We smiled at each other, said our silent prayers, and each continued on our pilgrim journey.
We need each other’s light to shine fully. This ‘need each other’ life that God has prepared for those who love God is the life we are made for. It isn’t something we earn by doing all the right religious things. It isn’t something we make ourselves worthy of by proving how good we are. It isn’t something we are entitled to. It is the life we are given because God is Love.
To be fully who God makes us to be means we live interconnected with each other and with God. Salt is only purposeful when it is concert with other things. Light grows stronger the more we share it. Love increases the more we offer it to others. Mercy, Justice, and Peace blossom and grow only as we work toward them together and with God.
When we work only to build up our own kingdom, we soon find we are a kingdom of one. And what good is that? Even though the cultures and societies of our faith stories lived more communally that we find acceptable today, many people still had the tendency to seek their own glory rather than God’s. It’s what comes with the gift of freewill. When we use our freewill to choose to follow anything or anyone but God, we are held captive by our own tendencies to think we know better than God who we really are, who we are made to be. We are bound to constantly have to prove ourselves, to earn what we define as good, or to fight for what we feel entitled. This is what God’s love saves us from.
And God’s love saves us for this life, here and now, everlasting into a time and place beyond our understanding. When we come to know that we are God’s beloved and nothing can undo that, we are better able to see the image of God in all people. We are better equipped to work toward the justice and peace of God’s Kingdom where there is no first or last, only God’s beloved people walking together, following Jesus in the Way.
I see so many people in our country twisting God’s Way into a way of hate and anger and oppression in order to justify their own hate and anger and willingness to let others suffer so they can have all they want and more. It’s heart breaking. But the only person I can ensure doesn’t do this is me. And the only person you can ensure doesn’t do this is you. Pointing fingers and constantly speaking of the evil of others doesn’t solve anything. But we also can’t ignore what’s happening in our world.
I can speak out against it but I can’t change anyone’s heart. Only God can do that. If I speak out against our country’s leadership by calling them names, belittling them, or dehumanizing them, I’m no better than they are. There is a way to call out wrong and harmful behavior without falling into the bondage of hate ourselves. But we must call it out. We must recognize it for what it is or else we are held captive by our silence and need for comfort. That’s why Jesus said blessed are the Peace Makers not the peacekeepers.
I am outraged at the way our government treats people. I may not be in the demographic category of those being targeted by our government, but when a government begins to target groups they define as evil, eventually, they will get around to the demographic groups we are in. We can’t fool ourselves into thinking that we will always be safe in a country that allows certain people groups to be targeted. Our government is trying to hold us all captive by fear of the other and if we let it continue eventually everyone but those in power will be the other. In God’s Kingdom we are to see the image of God in each other. We can’t follow Jesus and have it both ways.
Jesus never commands us to change the world, only to live as he shows us in flesh and blood how to live – by loving God and our neighbor as ourselves. This is the life God made us for and desires for us, to be who and Whose God made us all to be.
Keep lovin’ louder than the hate, Y’all.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 