February 6, 2011 (5th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
1. “I can remember when this church was full!”
“I can remember when there were kids all over this place.”
“I sure wish more people came to church—there’s so much empty space.”
These sorts of statements of longing and desire are pretty common at mainline Protestant churches across the United States today. By mainline Protestant, I’m referring to the denominations of the old ruling class in this country: the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Congregationalists, the Lutherans, and to a lesser extent, the Methodists and the Baptists.
As we both know, these denominations have been shedding members over the last few decades. Times have changed, and being a church member just doesn’t have the cache that it used to have in the business and civic world, and so we aren’t as full as we used to be. When we say we want more members, we sometimes mean that we want Protestant Christianity to have the same cultural and political force that it once did.
But, have you ever thought that the Protestant Church today is not that different from the very first church that formed after Jesus’ ascension to heaven? That church was not politically powerful. It had few members. It wondered where it’s place was in a world that often seemed at odds with the church.
When we hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, first recorded by Matthew to guide and comfort a struggling church, maybe we too can hear it as a word of comfort and guidance to us, also a church that is not powerful. How are Christians who are a minority of the culture supposed to live in the world? That is the very same question the first Christians were asking themselves—we might be asking ourselves the same thing.
2. Jesus tells them that they are to be salt and they are to be light. Put aside the modern medical wisdom that says too much salt is bad for you and remember that salt is what makes food taste good. Salt is the principal seasoning. It enhances other flavors. And it preserves food, keeping it from going bad. Preacher John Brokhoff reminds us that, “Without salt our hearts would not beat, blood would not flow, and muscles would not work properly. Before birth a baby develops in a saline solution. Accident victims may receive a salt solution intravenously. In Roman times salt was so precious that it was used, at least in part, to pay workers. The word "salary" comes from the Latin salarium, a word for salt. A person not worth his or her salt is one not worthy of wages.” Another biblical commentator writes that salt “elicits goodness.” I really like that. Christians, who are to be salty people, are to be the kind of people who elicit goodness in the world. We are to bring out the best qualities of the people we meet, and we are to work for goodness in our societies. If something is good, we make it better. If something is bland, we give it flavor. If something is in danger of going bad, we preserve it for use.
3. And Jesus tells us to be light. When saltiness has done all it can, we need to shine light on the dark places. We can’t assume that we will always be able to improve what we find. We may also need to step in shine the light of God on places in this world that need to be illumined. This kind of light can both light up injustice and oppression so that redress can be made, or it can spotlight cases of remarkable mercy and kindness. Our Lord Jesus himself is often understood as light—he is the light in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Likewise, we salty Christians are also to be light, the reflected light of God in a world that needs to see God’s glory.
4. Jesus preaches to his followers, then and now, that they should be salt and light. And Jesus makes specific mention of a group that is not getting this right—he singles out the Pharisees as ones who are not making the cut. Theologian Edwin van Driel points out that the Pharisees’ religious strategy was to withdraw into a religious enclave where they could live out their little formulas of faithfulness without having to interact with the Romans or any other challenging force in their world. As long as they could be left alone to practice their rituals and traditions in peace, they could claim to be holy and righteous before God. For Jesus, however, this was a failed approach to faithfulness. This was like salt that had lost its usefulness, or even worse, it was like a light that had been hidden under a bushel basket. It didn’t illumine anything. In response to this clubbishness, this clannishness, this refusal to interact in faith with the world as salt and light, Jesus preaches his sermon. He calls his followers to leave the confines of their little religious world and be flavor and shining goodness for a world in need.
5. And that brings us to the unavoidable question. Does the world need Christians? Life as we know it cannot exist without salt and light. Are we absolutely necessary in that way? Do we bring something intrinsically essential to the world? We sure do when we carry the flavor and light of Jesus Christ into a hurting and hungry and dark world.
To make it an even harder question: Does the world need First Presbyterian Church? Are we salt and light? I know for a fact that many of you have an important community of friends and loved ones in this church. And for that fact alone, you might find that the world does need this church. But as Archbishop William Temple famously said, “The church is the only organization on earth that exists for those who are not its members.” We are called by Christ to elicit goodness in the world and to shine God’s light. We do this, but there is always the opportunity to bring more light.
6. Older mainline congregations like this, those that can remember the glory days, are often content to recall light that used to shine. We wonder why we have declined, and in our heart of hearts, we may even wonder if we did something wrong to be in the state we are in today. Why are our pews so much emptier than they used to be? Psychologists teach us that it is very difficult to get your confidence back once it has been shaken by setbacks or even insults. We’ve heard so much that our church is shrinking and that it is graying. We have heard that we are irrelevant or washed up. We have heard that we are too set in our ways to meet the world with fresh flavor and bright beams of light. We’ve heard all that so much that we have started to believe it.
Professor David Lose writes, “Psychologists suggest that for every negative message elementary-aged children hear about themselves, they need to hear ten positive ones to restore their sense of self-esteem to where it had been previously.” Lose suspects, and I agree, that adults are not that different from children in this regard. If we hear that we are bad, we need to have it reinforced for us ten times over that no, we are not bad. We are salt and light. We are salt and light. We are salt and light.
7. I once brought a group of youth to a church camp weekend event for Middle School students. They keynote speaker, a young Presbyterian minister, stepped off the stage carrying a microphone. He walked up to a girl and had her stand up. He asked her name. “Stephanie” she said. Then he said, “Stephanie, you are God’s gift to this earth.” He walked to another kid. “What’s your name?” “Josh.” “Josh, you are God’s gift to this earth.” And in this way he approached several others, always saying that each one was God’s gift to this earth. Perhaps it’s not a bad message for us here today. We are God’s gift to this earth. God gave First Presbyterian Church to this earth, and each of you gathered here, to be salt and light. You’ve heard of the person who can light up a room. Let us be the church that can light up the world. Let your light shine! Let it shine now. The world still needs you. Amen.
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