So Shine

Propers: The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, A.D. 2020 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

Remarkable words, given the audience. For indeed, Christ is not speaking here to senators or equestrians, to Caesars or kings, but to the crowd, the rabble, the common people—which is to say, to the poor. And since when have the poor been much of anything?

2000 years ago, salt was worth its weight in gold, often literally. In an age before refrigeration, before artificial preservatives, salt was the only way to keep food from spoiling, to transport flesh or fish over any sort of distance. The story goes that Roman legions were often paid in salt, which became the root of our word salary. In a world where everything rots, salt was the promise of life.

As for light, well, today we simply flick a switch and summon as much illumination as one could want. But back then light was expensive, not to mention dangerous. Tallow, olive oil, beeswax if you’re wealthy—these were the only ways to find your way in the dark. And we all know how long the nights can stretch come winter. Salt and light, in Jesus’ day, were expensive, valuable, and indispensable. They were the very things of life itself. And that, Jesus says, is what you are for the world.

Yet what’s curious about all this is that He then goes on to ask, What good is salt that has lost its saltiness? What good is a light hidden away beneath a bushel basket? And this is bizarre to say the least. For indeed, salt cannot lose its saltiness. Salt is salty by definition, else it wouldn’t be salt. And if you throw salt out and trample it underfoot, all that does is salt the earth—like the Romans at Carthage.

As for hiding a lamp beneath a bushel basket, well, we are talking about an open flame under all-too-flammable material. Far from blocking the light, you’d likely burn your house down. And so the fullness of Jesus’ teaching evades simple moralism. Because that’s how we usually hear this passage taught, right? “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Therefore be good.” Because if you aren’t good, then what good are you?

This take fits in nicely with American boosterism, those relentlessly peppy advertisements of self-improvement and self-definition that keep our economy grinding on year after year—over the bones of so many deaths of despair. Because we are told, aren’t we, that we are exceptional Americans? That we can do anything, be anything, so long as we buy the right stuff, make the right choice, choose the right path. Every day in every way, things are getting better and better—why, just look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

It’s the encouragement of Satan: “You’re almost there, baby! Just a little farther, just a little better, and you’ll finally be enough.” And that’s where the devil really shows his teeth. Because our entire economy—which is all that’s left of society these days—is predicated on you never reaching the finish line: on you never doing enough, never having enough, never being enough.

As soon as it seems like you are, the goalposts get moved, so that you have to do more, get more, be more. Thus the rich get richer, and the poor get Xanax. In Christianity the lingo for this is works-righteousness, or even ladder theology. It’s the idea that you have to climb your way back up into Heaven—pull yourself up by the bootstraps—because your worth is predicated on what you do or what you believe or what you own.

And we are driven up that ladder by the poking of little pitchforks held by devils who constantly hiss, “You’re doing great! You’re almost there! Just a little farther! Just a little higher!—You’re almost worth being loved.” That’s why Satan means Accuser. They asked John Rockefeller at the height of his wealth and power, “How much is enough?” And he said the same thing that we’re all taught to say: “Just a little bit more.”

But Jesus flips this whole satanic system on its head—which is to say, He turns a capsized world right side up. “You are the salt of the earth,” He tells the commoner. “You are the light of the world,” He says to the poor. You didn’t earn that. You don’t have to prove that. This is simply what you are, who you are, in Christ Jesus. Try to deny that—throw out the salt, cover over the lamp—and that identity will just burn on through whatever you’ve put in its way.

You can’t undo what God has made you. Your identity is set; your value and your worth are set; and they are not dependent on what you do or what you earn or what you buy. They are dependent upon the love and the promise of God in Christ Jesus. And God does not break promises.

But wait, you might protest. Jesus doesn’t stop there. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” He proclaims. “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven.” And again, there’s an odd little quirk here, a stinger that makes us blink. Because what does that mean, least in the Kingdom of Heaven? It reminds me of the old med school joke: What do you call a physician who graduates last in his class? Doctor.

“For I tell you,” Jesus goes on, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Hoo, and here’s one that would make his audience start to sweat bullets. Because if you and I have any familiarity with scribes and Pharisees, from Sunday School or Bible Study, it’s probably in the context of using them as foils against Jesus. Jesus is the real deal, while these other guys are just hypocrites and posers.

But that’s not how the crowd would’ve heard this. Pharisees in Jesus’ day were the crème de la crème. They went the extra mile. They wore their faith on their sleeves. Pharisees took religion seriously, took righteousness seriously, and tried to make others take it seriously as well. As for the scribes, well, these were the educated scholars, the clerics, the lawyers. They had their bona fides, their MDivs and their PhDs. Any mother would be proud to have her son grow up to be a scribe.

And Jesus tells regular people—common people, poor people—that if your righteousness doesn’t exceed that of the hoity-toities, you’ll never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Now there’s a cold splash of water, wake you right up. And here I thought we were salt and light.

But of course, what is the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees? Is it education? Is it piety? Is it religious scrupulousness over every jot and tittle of the Law, every aspect of dietary and ritual observance? Is Jesus just taking the accusations of the devil, the drive of works-righteousness, and amping it up to the next level, squaring the demands of the Law? “Moses told you to be good, but boy oh boy, I’m telling you to be super-special-mega good!”

Of course not. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

You are the salt of the earth, period. You are the light of the world, full stop. The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees is not earned but gifted. It is the promise of God’s grace, the promise that you are enough, you’ve done enough, and God loves you no matter what—loves you so desperately and so unshakably that He will suffer all the horrors that we could devise, the lash and thorns and cross and spear, plunging down to hell, rising up to Heaven, all to bring us home in Him. All to save a world, and a humanity, that still insist that we must save ourselves.

But you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world; you know better. The righteousness that you already possess, by grace, infinitely exceeds that of all the scribes and Pharisees, all the marketers and executives, all the pastors, all the bishops, and all the prosperity preachers on TV with their awful rictus grins. The Kingdom of Heaven is already yours, won for you once and for all from the Cross. And there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it.

All that is left to us is to so shine our light before others that they see our good works and give glory to our Father in Heaven. Because of course, He is their Father too.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.