Salt and light
Highlands Presbyterian church
February 9, 2012
Matthew 5:13-20
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste,
how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is
thrown out and trampled under foot. “You are the light of the world. A city
built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the
bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In
the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your
good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
Cathy read this morning from the book of Isaiah. When Isaiah
says, “Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to
the house of Jacob their sins,” the prophet is saying “pour salt into their
wounds.”
Today,
when we say a person is “the salt of the earth,” we generally mean they are
unpretentious, uncomplicated, devoted, loyal, earnest, honest, and humble.
That
is not how Jesus uses the word. Think about the meaning of salt…meaning derived
from its use. Salt is not particularly useful in itself. Its value comes in its
application on other things. In ancient times salt was applied to fish and
meats to preserve them in the days before refrigeration. In wartime, Romans
applied salt to a soldier’s wounds to help avoid infections.
The phrase “salt in the wound” comes from the days when
salt was rubbed into wounds as an antiseptic. When England
was establishing its navy, most sailors were forced into
service. While at sea, punishment was often lashes with a cat’o'nine tails.
These whippings would almost always break the skin, and salt was rubbed into
the wound to prevent infection. Salt in a wound was painful but necessary.
Isaiah
speaks of pouring salt into the wounds of injustice. Jesus warns that the salt
won’t do its job if it loses its flavor. Isaiah and Jesus shared both concerns.
Listen
to Isaiah. He uses fasting as an example of salt that has lost its power. “Why do we fast, but you do not see,” Isaiah asks. “You
serve your own interest on your fast day, and then you go out and oppress your
workers. You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked
fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.
“Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 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?”
When Jesus walked into the Temple and overturned the tables, he
was pouring salt into the wounds of Israelite injustices. He was calling
attention to the unholy alliance between Temple leaders and the Roman
oppressors…an alliance used by Rome to keep the people from pouring salt into
those wounds…and Jesus said, “I will do it for my people.”
Let me give you an example “ripped from today’s headlines” as
they say on television. It
was two years ago this month on Feb. 21, 2012, that a group of five
eccentrically dressed young women hurriedly set up microphones and loudspeakers
in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior and launched into what they would
later call a "punk prayer."
They
pierced the sacred air of the church with their fists and with their sharp
denunciations of both priestly finery and worshippers' cringing servility. As a result, the punk rock group who call themselves
“Pussy Riot” has spent as much time in the news as in a Russian penal colony
these last few years for pouring salt into the wounds of Russian injustice.
On the Stephen Colbert show this week, two of the young women
appeared having been released from a gulag in time for the Olympics. When Colbert
asked why Putin had them imprisoned, they explained, “Because we sang a cute
song in church.”
The lyrics of that cute song were filled with salt.
Virgin birth-giver of God,
drive away Putin!
Drive away Putin, drive
away Putin!
The Church praises rotten leaders
The march of the cross consists of black limousines
Patriarch Kirill believes in Putin
Would be better if he believed in God!
You see until Pussy Riot performed their cute song in the church
that day, most Russians didn’t know that the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox
Church was a former KGB agent who, as leader of Russin Christians, palled
around with Putin wearing a 40,000 dollar Rolex watch and riding in limousines
to ostentatious parties while his flock suffered. Putin uses the church to
silence the people. The leader of Russian Christians just as some of the
leaders of the Temple in Jesus’ time, preaches to the people about their
responsibility to support the government.
Because of these courageous young women, the world now knows the
truth. They are what Jesus called the “salt of the earth.” They took to hearty the call of Isaiah to “Shout
out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people
their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.”
Jesus
talks about all of his followers being “the salt of the earth” but he also
speaks about the need for us to be “the light of the world.” It’s not enough to
pour salt on the earth’s wounds. We are also called to cast the light of Christ
on them.
Light
overcomes the darkness in which injustice thrives. Isaiah talked about some of
those injustices that he witnessed 800 years before Jesus gave the Sermon on
the Mount. He talked about oppressed workers, hungry children, the homeless,
violence.
Isaiah said it was not empty religious practices but rather the
loosing of the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoke, it’s not
simply spraying and fasting but freeing the oppressed, sharing your bread with
the hungry, bring the homeless poor into your house; and covering the naked.
It is no coincidence that Jesus…800 years later…would use the
same metaphors used by Isaiah. Salt and Light. As critical as was salt to
survival in those days, so it was with light. In our contemporary lives, it is impossible
to imagine a world without light.
But
when it was nightfall in the ancient world, it was darker than we can imagine: in
the darkness, Isaiah said, "we grope like the blind along a wall, groping
like those who have no eyes.”
Jesus
and Isaiah use the term light not simply as the means to allow others to see
whatever they wish…but as the means by which we are to create the light
required for the world to see its own wounds.
Together
Isaiah and Jesus are raising concerns about a wounded culture that is groping
in the darkness. The antidote, they say is salt and light. They call on us to
heal the wounds. In the light we can all see those wounds.
Turn
on the bright lights of Christ and we see them all. Loneliness, illness,
addiction, the challenges of being young or old, the wounds of those sent to
fight our wars who then have to fight for what they need to repair the damage,
the refugees of an economic system designed to leave people in the shadows,
those families who can’t diaper or feed their children without the charity of
people like you, who sip the coffee you donate at a morning table in the
homeless shelter before walking out into a cold winter day.
These
are the wounds of life in the richest country in the world and there are those
who would like the lights turned off or at least down…which is why Isaiah is
there to remind us all that the light shall break
forth like the dawn, and when the light shines on the wounds of the world, healing
shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the
Lord shall be your rear guard.
And the Psalmist says those who “rise in the darkness as a light
for the upright are gracious, merciful, and righteous. They have distributed
freely, they have given to the poor; their righteousness endures forever; their
horn is exalted in honor.
But there’s still that matter of the salt. Exposing the wounds
of a culture does little unless someone heals those wounds. Jesus says those
who hear him and follow his words are the salt of the earth. We are called to
pour salt into those wounds.
Yeah…that salt hurts and the world doesn’t like the cure but
unless we pour salt into those wounds, they will continue to fester, to infect,
and do even greater harm. But there should be no salt without light. Light
comes before the salt so that the world can see the wounds…but light also comes
after the salt so that the world can see the healing and know how the healing
came about.
Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they
may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
The same light that allowed the world to see its own wounds will
also enable others
to witness the acts of justice that are performed by the followers of Jesus. AMEN
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