February 5, 2023
Epiphany 5
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Matthew 5:13-20
A pastor I know said that he had kept track of the exact number of sermons he had preached, and on the morning of his five hundredth sermon he said to his wife, “This is my five hundredth sermon. Think about that – you’ve heard me preach five hundred times.” And she just said, “No I haven’t.”
So here’s a little today-in-history. Six years ago today, on the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, on February 5th, 2017, I stepped up here for my very first time as your pastor and preached my very first sermon as your pastor. Six times fifty-two, take off a few a year for vacation and study leave, add a few a year for funerals and weddings and mid-week things like Ash Wednesday and Christmas Eve, and that’s something like three hundred sermons I’ve preached from here.
I looked back through the files and found that sermon the other day. I read through it and I couldn’t help but think that we all seemed so much younger back then. I can sense and I can remember a kind of excited nervous energy as the words took shape on paper, and I’m pretty sure I felt it in the room that morning while I spoke and you listened – I’m pretty sure you did, at least that first time. We all sounded so much younger then.
And so much has happened since then. Black Lives Matter and Me Too, grave sites discovered, downtown Ottawa occupied and bus shelters all over Winnipeg occupied by people with so few other options. Right here we’ve had dying and being born, people come and go, people come and stay, we’ve cared for each other and had conflict with each other. We’ve had two years apart in a three year pandemic that changed so much and kind of messed with us so much.
And we’ve laughed together, had fun together, prayed and sung and eaten together.
Over those six years Jesus has gathered us together often, sat us down on the side of a mountain with the whole community of saints, looked us in the eye and said, like he said to his disciples, “You people are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”
Salt and light.
This is salt: I was spending some time with a friend on Wednesday, a friend who’s not really connected to any kind of church but who has some history with church. He’s in a difficult place these days, because at the time we were together one of his closest friends was dying. He’s lost a number of good friends over the past few years and he’s really about the same age as me and I’ve hardly lost anyone. He asked me what my sermon is about today, and my first thought was, “I don’t know, it’s Wednesday,” but then I said that there’s this thing where Jesus calls people the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Then my friend said, “Salt of the earth. Sounds like friendship.”
He didn’t say much more. But maybe for someone who’s said goodbye one too many times, “Salt of the earth” means “Something that will preserve me and keep me going.” Or maybe for someone like that friend that day, “Salt of the earth” means “Someone who will bring out the flavours in the soup of my day-to-day life because some of the flavour is gone.”
You are the salt of the earth. Maybe sometimes a big part of our life is preserving the ones who are hurting or broken. Or maybe sometimes a big part of our life is seasoning what we’ve got; bringing our the good flavours that are already here. Maybe sometimes a big part of our life is just something like friendship.
You are the light of the world.
This is light: When our oldest son was about two he had his first episode of croup, and that night we woke up awhile before dawn to hear him across the hall wheezing and gasping and trying so hard to breathe. We had no idea what to do; this hadn’t happened before, and somehow in all the wisdom that gets passed on by parents and grandparents and friends with kids of their own and church people in that small town in Saskatchewan no one had told us about croup. We were half an hour from a hospital and we were scared and didn’t know what to do and we sat with him on our laps as he worked so hard to breathe and was so afraid and I hope he didn’t sense how afraid we were. His breaths started to come a little easier after awhile, and then the light of day started to appear, and when the sun finally started coming up we could see again, and we knew the world and everybody around us would be waking up soon, and then it seemed like things might be OK.
You are the light of the world. Being light can mean all kinds of things, but maybe sometimes it just means staying with one another, or staying with those who are afraid, and just being there, and sometimes just being awake with someone can be like a bit of light dawning on them and easing the fear for awhile.
Of course, salt and light can mean so much more. Jesus calls us salt for the world, that brings out the flavor of the things that it touches, helps preserve the life of our food, the life of the things that sustain life. Salt might raise blood pressure and stir up discomfort or even anger when the truth is told. Salt draws attention to all the good flavour of the people and places and things in the world around us.
Jesus calls us light for the world; Light that shines in dark places and frightened places and places where love and life have been hidden away and need to be revealed again. Light that makes us see what is wrong around us and among us and sheds light on how we can change and how the world can change. Light that reveals our neighbour and our community and the world as gifts that are given and that make our own lives richer.
In this reading today, after Jesus calls his disciples and calls us salt and light, he switches gears a bit and talks about the law and the prophets. He gets away from earthy familiar things like salt and light and gets to the important religion and theology stuff, right? It sounds kind of intense: Don’t think that I’ve come to abolish the law and the prophets; I’ve come to fulfill them.”
When he talks about the law and the prophets it’s kind of shorthand for the whole religious tradition he is a part of and all that it teaches about God and what it means to be God’s people. And when Jesus talks about fulfilling that teaching and that tradition he’s not talking about making sure everyone follows the rules. He’s just talking about salt and light. It’s the salt and light of a teaching that says that the most important thing is that we love God and that we love our neighbour. It’s the salt and light of a people who believe they are called – we are too – to be a blessing to the world, to be a light for all the people. It’s the salt and the light of a God who cares about the weakest. It’s the salt and the light of a God who imagines all the weapons being turned into tools for making food. It’s like Jesus is seasoning his own religious tradition and he will bring out all that is so life-giving and so justice-seeking and so peace-building and so healing about it.
It’s like Jesus is seasoning us, and he will bring out all that is so life-giving and justice-seeking and peace-building and healing about us.
As we get to know Jesus better we will see that “fulfilling the law and the prophets” will mean welcoming those who are called outsiders, and healing the sick. It will mean challenging the religious authorities – the pastors and teachers and scholars – when they’ve gone so far off track and need to be brought back. And as Jesus fulfils every last letter of the law and the prophets he will tell stories and live a life that says that he identifies most with those who are seen as the weakest. We will see that fulfilling the law and the prophets will mean dying; it will also mean living again.
All of that is salt and light for the world. And Jesus comes right to the point today and makes it all pretty simple: You are salt. You are light.
For six years we have been salt and light for each other, and we have sought to be salt and light together for the world. Jesus will continue to call us together, here on the mountainside or here on the prairie with the whole communion of saints – there are more of us here than it seems – and he will look us in the eye, maybe with serious intent, maybe even with a grin, and he’ll say, “You are salt. You are light.”
We are salt and light together, and that’s an easy gift to bear, because the one who is salt and light for all lives among us wherever we go.
AMEN.