The Wilderness of Good and Evil: A Sermon for 1A Lent

 Temptation is a fun topic for a sermon, and we always get the opportunity to preach on it at the start of Lent because we always begin the season with the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness... he does succumb... be like Jesus. This year... I was aware of this story being paired with the Second Creation story by the J-writer in Genesis. For the first time, I saw a clear intersection with the two pericopes. 

See what you think.

Texts for this sermon: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matt 4:1-11

+++

Prayer: Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation, in you have I trusted all the day long. Amen.—Ps. 25:3-4

 

The words of that prayer are from Psalm 25.

I carried these words with me every day as part of a discipline I picked up for Lent a while back.

And they seem like good ones to think about as we join Jesus in the wilderness.

That’s right: welcome to the wilderness.

A place where there are no landmarks.

We have no compass, so we don’t know which way is north.

It’s dusty and dry…just as dry as the mouth of a famished Jesus…fasting for forty days and forty nights.

He is far away from all the things he’s known.

The wilderness is that place where…like Jesus… we feel our most alone… and at our lowest point.

This dry land is fertile ground for the Tempter to enter the picture.

It’s in the wilderness where Satan… which is the Hebrew for “the adversary”… can find those weak spots… those vulnerable parts… to lure Jesus into turning from God… with false choices and empty promises.

In Sunday School… at least in my experience of Sunday School… Satan gets presented as an actual figure… that red guy with a pitchfork, tail and horns.

That’s the sort of imagery that works great for a Halloween costume.

Perhaps it makes it easier for us to understand evil if we give it a physical persona.

 

But the Satan who tempts Jesus… the same adversary who whispers in our ears when we are in the wilderness of our lives…is not an actual being.

That evil rises out of the human heart… a heart that knows both good and evil.

Just look again at the story of Adam and Eve.

And bear in mind… this is a story. I honestly don’t think there’s anywhere in recorded history an example of a talking snake.

But what makes the story so real and so true is not whether it’s historically accurate. It’s what it reveals about us…the human race…that makes it true.

God’s beautiful creation… the Adamah or “human” which God scooped up out of the dust and gave breath to… made a critical choice while in the lushness of paradise.

The man and the woman had plenty of food.

They weren’t in the wilderness.

They weren’t in want of anything really.

God expects them to enjoy the Garden… except stay away from that one tree in the middle.

And…we all know what happens.

Just as Satan tempts Jesus with all kinds of irresistible offers in the wilderness…the voice of temptation…the snake…convinces them to eat of the forbidden fruit.

And the human heart has known Good and Evil ever since.

Just one of the many lessons learned in that second creation story from Genesis.

So that’s the real part of the Adam and Eve story. It’s an allegory to explain the inclinations of the human heart.

We can do good… and we can do evil.

And Jesus… fresh out of the waters of the Jordan… still with the vision of the Spirit descending as a dove upon him and hearing that he is God’s beloved Son… now finds himself out in the wilderness… parched… famished… low blood sugar.

And his fully human heart is vulnerable to that human inclination to stray into the evil.

The adversary has been conjured up to test him… bait him… do anything it can to separate him from God.

But rather than turn from God… Jesus dips into that other part of his human heart… the part that is good.

The portion so good and remembering that he is a beloved of God.

He refutes the Tempter with words pulled from the Book of Deuteronomy.

And that’s one of the big lessons from the Temptation story and why I think the Church always puts it at the start of Lent.

What Jesus is demonstrating to us is that even in our weakest and most vulnerable moments… the strength to overcome is not merely our own, but the power of God coming to our aid and shouldering that burden with us.

By turning to the words of Torah…our human Jesus leans into his faith.

Going back to the Scriptures… Jesus is able to summon the strength… the courage… and the bravery to withstand any effort to pull him away from the Source of Light and Love.

Jesus demonstrates that even the one born without sin must still contend with temptation.

Because temptation is that prevalent.

What a powerful lesson we can take with us on our own journeys.

We have resources to help us.

We have the stories of biblical ancestors… we have the psalms… even the hymn tunes… we have those touchstones to turn to at the moments in our lives when we need to be reminded  of the goodness of God that’s within our heart.

When we feel jealous of a friend’s good fortune… we can remember God’s warning to Cain… to not let his jealousy warp his relationship to his brother Abel.

If only Cain had listened.

When we avert our eyes from the homeless or think that the problems that plague those living on the streets are not our problems…Matthew Chapter 25 reminds us that we have an obligation to care for those who are in need.

Temptation… the evil inclinations of the human heart… has no face… no tail… no horns.  It shows up in seemingly benign ways: through racist jokes. Snide comments. And trash talking of our loved ones when they aren’t around.

What Lent provides us is the chance to become more aware of these tendencies to slip into sinful behavior and go back toward God.

Thanks be to God for the words passed down to us… to the songs we can sing to our souls… and to Jesus who continuously teaches and shows us the way to strengthen the goodness in our hearts.

In the name of God… F/S/HS.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

 

A lot has been happening in my world which I will post about at a later time. For now, let's just stick to the transition into the Season of Lent. Too often, I have found that people (especially clergy) make this a season that is just dismal. After taking some time to read through Matthew's perennial Gospel lesson again, I think I figured out why everyone dreads this season so much.

It's not all the busyness that comes with it. Or that Holy Week and Easter put all those in the church, especially clergy, to the test of their physical limits. 

It's the change.

Text: Matthew 6: 1-616-21

+++

As we’ve been approaching this Ash Wednesday… and the start of the Holy Season of Lent… I’ve been pondering about this time… this season of “penitence and fasting.”

“Penitence and fasting” doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.

It’s almost like the Debbie Downer of our Liturgical Calendar.

Our joyful proclamations of the “A” word disappear from the worship service.

The bright shiny silver paten and the chalices are replaced by wooden ones.

And the sweet oil of the baptismal chrism becomes the burnt palms of ash on our foreheads.

It’s as if the church really wants this day and this season to be one lengthy time of depression, drudgery, and dreariness.

But that’s not what Lent is about.

In fact… if we pay close attention to our Gospel lesson from Matthew… Jesus seems to be ribbing the dour and serious religiosity of the self-proclaimed penitent fasters from fun.

Believe it or not… our beloved one is a funny guy.

Our Gospel reading from Matthew comes from a portion of the Sermon on the Mount.

Yes…even in a sermon… humor is OK.

It’s especially OK here… because he’s just finished telling his disciples…and us… that we are to love our enemies…and refrain from resentment and anger.

This instruction is tough for most people to hear… especially a people under the thumb of bullies and tyrants.

Jesus’ counter-cultural logic is not easy to absorb… even if it is ultimately the path to right relationship with God.

So… perhaps to lift some of that heavy load… Jesus pokes fun at those who take their practices of religion too seriously.

To rephrase his language a little bit… he’s saying to his ragamuffin followers…

“You see those guys giving lots of money to this cause and that charity and wanting a plaque with their name on it to show how much they’ve given? Yeahhh….they got their reward!”

“Oh, and this group over here with their bullhorns screaming at everyone to Repent or Die as if they’re the holier than thou?

Uh-huh, they’ve got their reward!”

“And doncha see how that person is fasting?

I mean look at how they’ve got such a dismal face and they’re telling you how they haven’t eaten all day!

I mean, they’re so pathetic… even than the way your cat looks at you from their food bowl.

Good for them! They’ve got they’re reward!”

The reward all of them have earned is attention… and the spotlight on them.

They’re getting noticed! Whoo-hoo! Good for them!

But what happens when the bulb in the spotlight burns out?

Suddenly that reward starts to crumble and fall apart… because it was tied to something fleeting… a show of piety that no longer gains the applause.

They haven’t really changed. At all.

And that’s what Lent is about: it’s about a period of change.

The word itself means “Spring” as in the season of blooming flowers and trees. We know it here as the “Yellow Season” when everything is coated in pollen!

Seeds that had been underground and, in the dark, begin to come out of the ground and into the light.

The days start to get progressively longer.

We can put away our jackets and pull out our sandals.  

Spring means change is in the air.

And perhaps that’s why Lent can feel like such a daunting season.

Change means things won’t always be the way they were before.

Change means we can’t predict what’s going to happen next.

Change means we can’t be comfortable doing things in our lives like we’ve always done them.

Change means we become different than we were before.

The late science fiction writer Octavia Butler called change “the ongoing reality of the universe, an inescapable truth and the basic clay of our lives.” She says that “in order to live constructive lives, we must learn to shape change when we can, and yield to it when we must.”

We can’t stop change from happening.

But we can let it form us… and grow us… and teach us.

Lent can serve as a time…where we push aside the barriers we’ve placed between us and God…and allow the Holy One to come closer to us and walk with us through this time of change.

God is already present.

God is just waiting for us to step through the door to begin the changes we need to make during this season.

This is the start of putting aside those behaviors… and thought-patterns and habits that keep us trapped in our old selves.

Our old… smaller… ego-centric selves… which find ways to sabotage our relationship to God… and keep us from seeing the Christ in ourselves as well as other people.

Tonight is the time to do that spring clean-up and to change.

If change makes us anxious… sit with that anxiety… breathe into it and know that in every breath… God is there.

Inhale the love… exhale the anxiety.

If change makes us afraid… sit with the fear. Even Jesus was anxious in the Garden of Gethsemane knowing that there were authorities of Rome out searching for him and to do him harm.

Again…

Inhale the love… exhale the anxiety.

Change is an inescapable truth…and it can lead us to greater growth… more empowerment… and a chance to live more fully into tomorrow.

We need change.

Just one night of watching the evening news can show us that there is a lot in this world that needs to change.

And it has to start with us.

The greater the change in us… the more we might change this world into God’s dream rather than God’s perpetual nightmare.

May God lead us through these next forty days and grant us our reward of a deeper…and truer relationship with God.

In the name of God… F/S/HS.

In and Out of the Clouds: A Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany

 

I have never been to the Holy Land. And, knowing my congregation, I could hazard a guess that most of them have never been to the Holy Land either. 

A number of my friends from seminary have gone. They've posted photos and commented on the amazing experiences that they've had. 

And I admit: I'm jealous. 

So as I went through the readings for the Last Sunday After the Epiphany, the Sunday where we always have the story of Jesus' transfiguation on the mountain, I had to spend some time trying to imagine what that must have been like to witness this? What must it have been like to be "in a cloud." 

That's how I arrived at a ride in an airplane. See if this works for you.

Texts: Ex.24:12-18; Ps. 2; 2Peter 1:16-21; Matt 17:1-9

+++

I want to start this morning by giving us an image.

Close your eyes if you want to for this.

I’m pretty sure we’ve all flown in an airplane.

We know that experience of the plane taxiing and taking off and climbing up into the sky… bumping along as it makes it way through the clouds and finally reaching that “cruising altitude.”

On a clear day… we can look down and see the geometric patterns of cities and country sides… homes and buildings dotting the landscape.

On cloudy days…we see only…the clouds.

The pilot has taken us up above these inducers of turbulence…and now we are in this realm of brightness…as the previously hidden sun shines its light above the clouds.

We travel along…maybe reading…or sleeping… or playing a game or music through earbuds.

And eventually we come down again…through the clouds…bumping and jostling the plane… until we touch down on ground again.

In a different place… ready for whatever is our next adventure.

I want us to hang on to that idea and experience of what it is to go up into the clouds… and then come back down.

I’m guessing that this is a modern-day equivalent to what it must have been like for those who were climbing the mountains in ancient Palestine.

In our reading from Exodus… we hear about Moses and Joshua going up the mountain and Moses entering into the cloud.

There in the clouds is a devouring fire.

Devouring fire might make us think of the destructive wildfires happening out west in places such as California.

Or perhaps this fire is the sun….shining brightly above the clouds.

What we know is that Moses is invited into this space… and the experience of this transcendence brings him out as a changed man.

In our Gospel… it’s Jesus, Peter, James, and John going up the high mountain…encountering Moses and Elijah and Jesus starts shining like the sun.

Again… a cloud enshrouds them and we hear the voice:

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

Climbing mountains.

Fire and bright light.

Clouds.

All of these are the imagery and metaphor for being swept up into the presence and power of an encounter with the Holy One.

These revelations… like when a plane is moving through the bumpiness of the clouds and into that smooth glide above them… these “mountain top moments”…represent times of revelation and change…taking us from where we were to where we are going.

Moses and Jesus both are transfigured in their appearance.

It wasn’t in our reading this morning…but part of the story of Moses is that every time he has one of these mountain-top encounters… his face shines so brightly that he has to cover it with a veil so as not to scare people.

Jesus also undergoes a change…standing there with Moses and Elijah…the symbols of the Law and the Prophets.

What is revealed is that Jesus is one with the Law and the Prophets.

This is the future that had been promised to God’s people.

The interesting part of both of these stories is that these moments are not done in isolation… away from others.

There are witnesses.

Joshua… was there with Moses.

Peter, James, and John saw what happened with Jesus.

These transcendent moments are not just for the individual; they are communal…and shared.

What must have it been like to witness such a sight?

We get an idea of it from our Epistle lesson out the Second Letter of Peter.

Now… I hate to burst anyone’s bubble… but biblical scholarship throughout the centuries has been able to determine that this Second Letter wasn’t written by the apostle Peter himself… but rather a teacher from the “School of Peter.”

The second century was a time where varying schools of philosophy were belittling the early Christian communities… and encouraging an ethic of “Live like there’s no tomorrow!”… a direct contrast to the Christian hope…and living for a better tomorrow.

Nonetheless… its purpose then and now… is to give guidance and assurance to Christians in the face of those who say, “Where is your God?”

 

So…that’s where this Second Letter of Peter is coming from.

The writer defends the idea that the words we have in Scripture are words passed down to us from our ancestors who had these mountain top moments.

 Having borne witness to this event has both tested and sustained them in ways that something of human origin simply could not.

For Peter, James, and John… it was hearing of that prophetic pronouncement from the cloud:

“This is my Son, my Beloved, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’

Such a powerful and prophetic pronouncement… spoken in this high place in the cloud… obviously left an impression on Peter.

And yet… coming from the mountain… we also know that he still lost his way.

He would still deny knowing Jesus when the chips were down.

He would still cry and regret that he let his fears overcome him and make him deny his teacher and friend.

And Jesus would still forgive him… and predict that he would have to grow up into a man who could stand in the face of oppressive systems and speak truth to power.

Because that’s what it means to be the Rock of the Church.

So while this letter may not have been written by the apostle himself… it still contains a line that stands out as an important message for the Christians of then and now:

“You will do well to be attentive to this lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts.”  

This lamp… these words of declaring the beloved of God… these words which serve to fortify us in our faith…is what we can carry with us into those dark places that we encounter in our lives.

It is through our attentiveness in those moments where we come in contact with the Holy… that we receive what we need to let God shine through us to others.

At the same time… Peter is a great role model to remind us that we are not sinless.

We will mess up.

And when we do… there is grace.

There is forgiveness.

There is always the opportunity to make things better.

We have an aid… the Scriptures… which tell our story.

We can turn to those words… those stories… as a reminder that we are never doing this life alone.

We can see how others have encountered hardships and faced systems designed to frustrate and instill fear… and yet we are reminded to listen to Jesus and hear what he said to his disciples on that mountain:

“Do not be afraid.”  

God was with them then… and will be there for us, too.

All of this seems like such a fitting climax to this time we’ve been in after the  Epiphany…a period of teaching and learning what it means to be his disciple.

Like a plane coming in for a landing… we are moving from this season and this dazzling moment with Jesus on the mountain top… back down through the clouds to the ground into season of Lent…where there is still much work to be done on ourselves and in the community around us.   

May we take what we’ve gleaned in Epiphany into the next phase of the journey.…knowing that we have the stories of our ancestors to help give us the strength to meet the challenges of our times.

Do not be afraid.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

Time to Teach Us Well: A Sermon for 6A Epiphany

 I have been seeing a lot of really bad behavior lately. 

The heckling during the State of the Union address last Tuesday was over-the-top. We have already had some one yell, "You lie!" at President Barack Obama, a sign of disrespect that only further underscored racial tensions since the person yelling was a white man and the Obama is black. 

At least that Representative faced consequences from the chamber for being out of line.

That won't happen to the likes of Marjorie Taylor-Green or Matt Gaetz. 

Times in Congress have changed drastically.

The Republicans have hamstrung Speaker Kevin McCarthy by making him agree that any one member of Congress can call for McCarthy's removal as Speaker. McCarthy entered into that devilish deal in exchange for the votes of the Chaos Caucus so he could win the Speakership. This after 14 rounds of polling the Chamber over the course of a week. 

I am not exaggerating by calling them the Chaos Caucus. At one point... Gaetz voted for disgraced former President Donald Trump for House Speaker. 

Chaos and caustically Caucasian.

The growing White Christian Nationalism in America is a threat to everything that I believe the Gospel represents. And it is turning us into an increasingly angry mob. I don't like it. 

And so I am doing as I was told to do in seminary. One of my roles as a priest is to teach. And this sermon is all about teaching. 

Thanks be to God I have Moses, Paul, and Jesus to help!

Texts: Deut. 30:15-20; Ps.119:1-8; 1Cor.3:1-9; Matt 5:21-37

+++

The other day in the office… we were discussing the recent death of the singer David Crosby. Similar to the Beatles… or Elvis… or Jimi Hendrix… the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash with or without Neil Young… conjures up memories for a couple generations of people.

Their songs have endured the test of time.

One in particular that still gets played is “Teach Your Children.”

Crosby and Stills sang the harmony on that tune, but it was really Graham Nash’s song.

It enjoyed moderate success when it was released in 1970…and one could say it has enjoyed greater achievement since then.

I mean, it’s still in the rotation on Classic Rock stations more than fifty years later.

Nash once told a reporter that he wrote the song after seeing a photograph of a child playing with a toy grenade in Central Park.

This was at a time of the Vietnam War…and Nash was a pacifist.

The photo gave him pause and made him ask,

What are we teaching our children?

After this week’s State of the Union address… where we had elected leaders screaming and heckling during what is normally a staid and dry speech from the president… I think it again begs that question:

What are we teaching our children?

The scriptures this morning are all about teaching.

Moses, Paul and Jesus. Each with words to teach us… guide us toward how to live and move and have our being.

We move from the choices placed before us in Deuteronomy to Paul’s continued correction of the Corinthians… and finally Jesus’ unpacking of the basic tenets of the Torah… the law…in his Sermon on the Mount.

In the Deuteronomy reading…Moses is giving his last testament of God’s will for the people of Israel.

He’s about to die…and the people are preparing to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land.

He’s warning them there are two choices to make in this world: stick with the God and remain in covenantal relationship or reject God and toss out that covenant.

One path leads to life and prosperity.

The other leads to death and misery.

He poses this to the collective.

The choice is collectively theirs.

It’s collectively ours as well.

We’re not talking about life and death as in whether you continue to wake up each morning and breathe.

This is about accepting that we are loved by God…unconditionally.

And by having that love so firmly rooted in our hearts… returning that loving-kindness to the others and to all of creation.

This is the path that Moses says will lead to life and prosperity.

The other choice… to seek and pursue relationship to smaller…lower case “G” gods.

There are lots of those… the things of life that give us temporary satisfaction.

A nice car.

The newest iPhone.

A better wardrobe.

All those things are great…and can give us joy. But they are still just things. And the joy is temporary and fleeting.

The car will break down.

The iPhone will be obsolete in a few days.

And clothes wear out.   

While some states have reduced this passage to a motto on a license plate based on a political ideology… this “Choose Life” teaching of Moses is about something far more important.

This is about sticking close to the Source of Love… and loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul.

When we do that… when we align our lives along that path… love becomes an ethic for action in the world.

Because we have chosen life… we reach out to the person in need.

Because we have chosen life…we seek to make this a more fair and just society.

Because we have chosen life… we listen to each other’s stories… and we talk through our differences with each other with respect for each other.

Do we hear Jesus in this?

Some have said that Jesus is replacing this very basic tenet—choose life or choose death—with what he’s saying in his Sermon on the Mount.

I think that misinterpretation comes because of the way Jesus is phrasing things… “You have heard x-y-z, but I am telling you a-b-c.”

He’s not replacing anything or telling us to forget all those lessons we learned from our Jewish heritage.

No, what Jesus is doing is telling the disciples…and us… to take what we already know… and go deeper with it.

It’s not enough to say that murder is bad. Of course it is!

But in what ways do we kill each other in less lethal ways every day?

What words do we use with one another that are making for little deaths?

If we were to bring this lesson from Jesus into something closer to the 21^st Century… we might say:

“You have heard it said, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’ But I say to you, anyone who calls their neighbor a derogatory name or makes false accusations against them leaves a more lasting wound than a broken bone.”

How we treat one another and talk to one another is that important.

The Franciscan friar and mystic Richard Rohr talks about how he spent time in Albuquerque serving as a prison chaplain.

Rohr says that if there was one thing he saw as a common denominator in all the inmates he counseled, it was that none of them ever heard the words Jesus heard at his baptism:

“You are my beloved with whom I am well-pleased.”

That lack of love…spoken and intentional… can do so much to mess up a person’s life.

And yet so many people…not just prisoners… but just people… have never heard that from a parent or grandparent or any person with some level of authority in their life.

In turn… so many people grow up without that grounding in love… which leads to hurt… and hurting others. 

Graham Nash and his bandmates were encouraging parents and children to know they are loved… and yet we see evidence in our politics and in our institutions…that we never seemed to have learned that song… no matter how many times we’ve heard it.

In this Gospel… Jesus is takes the “choose life” message of Deuteronomy and embellishes it. “Choosing life” means seeing the greater picture: that we are all beloved creatures of God.

 We ought to treat each other in the same way.

Live into that love as the center point of our being…give encouragement to one another and… as Paul says… allow God then to give the growth.

Imagine how different everything in the world would be then?!

I encourage all of us to give that some thought. As we pass the peace with each other this morning…remember that each of us is a beloved child of God…and treat everybody right.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

"Salt and Light": A Sermon for 5A Epiphany

I was having a conumdrum with this sermon. 

I really wanted to get into the Isaiah reading, but I kept getting pulled back to the start of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. And like working away at a crossword puzzle, I finally found the way that his metaphors of "salt" and "light" also fit with Isaiah's rebuke of those who make a show of their faith, but don't allow that faith to actually change who they are and how they live and move and having their being in the world. 

See what you think. 

Texts: Is.58:1-12; Ps. 112:1-9;1Cor. 2:1-16; Matt 5:13-20

+++

It is a well-established fact that our church is the one that knows how to cook.

Seriously… St. Barnabas has gained a reputation in the diocese for the food we serve. Appetizers… main courses… desserts… from deviled eggs to chocolate cake and all the food groups in-between… people do not leave our church hungry.

With so many resident “foodies” here in the congregation… my guess is that at least a few of you are familiar with the Food Network.

At home… our TV is usually tuned into either Guy’s Grocery Games or some version of Chopped.

Cooking shows have graduated from the old days of a single chef such as Julia Child teaching recipes on PBS.

Now we’ve multiple camera angles… and a thumping soundtrack… as four chefs… and a panel of judges talk through their cooking strategy as if it were zone defense.

My wife enjoys seeing what skilled cooks can do with some odd ball ingredients.

We’ve both noticed that one of the common complaints we hear from the judges is that someone’s food lacks enough salt.

They’ll always want the chef to have added “just a little more salt” to a dish.

Salt is a flavor enhancer.

If you put too much salt in… it can overpower the other flavors and ruin the food.

Salt by itself really isn’t much of a thing.

Blended into the cuisine, it becomes integral to the dish.

Just the right amount of salt mixed in with all the flavors can really make a meal pop!

Here in our Gospel… right after the Beatitudes… we hear Jesus telling his disciples that they are that ingredient… that essence… that adds the right spice to their community.

Not by overpowering it… but by being in that dish… that stew of life… they are the salt that brings out all of the other flavors.

The other metaphor Jesus uses in this passage is light: he calls his disciples “a light of the world.”

He encourages them not to hide that light but put it on a lampstand so others might see “their good works and give glory to God in heaven.”

Salt adds spice.

Light brightens the room… and highlights the ones who are the salt shakers putting some spice into the world.

Probably the most important word in both of these metaphorical statements is the verb: “are.”

He says, “You are salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world.”

This is not something they need to work at to become.

This is who they are now.

Blessed as salt and light… to be… right now… those instruments of adding the right spice and giving off enough light that people will taste and see that God is good, merciful, and ready to be in right relationship.

And being in right relationship with God means not living for one’s own self-centered… inward-focused life…but living for and responding to the needs of others.

That’s what the discipleship of Christ looks like.

The disciples before Jesus are those very elements of salt and light needed to fulfill what is in our reading from Isaiah: to be “the repairers of the breach and restorers of streets to live in.”

Isaiah does not hold back in his critique of those who put on a performance of piety through their fasting.

The prophet announces that God has no interest in a fast that doesn’t transform a community…and lead them to respond to the needs of the people.  

It isn’t enough to know all the right gestures…. and say all the right words to the prayers.

If the practice doesn’t raise up a collective concern… if it leads one to leave the temple… and go back to happily ignoring their neighbor who is stuck in the ditch…. then the practice is meaningless.

This is what Jesus means when he talks about those who put their light under a bushel basket… or are like the salt that has no taste.

If all the praying… the reading and hearing of Scripture… and the ritual of fasting doesn’t move one to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God… then it’s empty.

And if this were the Food Network… they’d be chopped.

If this was true in ancient Palestine….it certainly remains true today.

I think this is one of the reasons that so many people have lost interest in the church.

When the church doesn’t respond when someone is in need… when the church remains silent at times of injustice… it perpetuates that idea that the church is a place for the self-centered and self-concerned…not the God-centered House of Spice.

Just like at the time of the writing of Matthew’s Gospel… Jesus is calling cooks into the kitchen to add some salt into the world…and shine some neon light into otherwise dark spaces.

I’m slowly making my way through a book of meditations by Dr. Catherine Meeks of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing.

Meeks uses personal story and theology to work her readers through a process of healing the deep wounds of racism which we all bear.

We may not think we bear them; but no one in this country… or many other western nations… can claim to be immune from the disease of racism.

She’s careful not to give a recipe for the healing.

What she does say is that if we ever want to get to that place where we truly live together… all the races… as beloved community… each one of us needs to do our work on ourselves…and then roll up our sleeves and come into the kitchen to add our salt into the pot.

The really good news is that we are not doing this alone.

God is always with us and whispering…sometimes shouting… into our ears,

“Do not be afraid. I am with you until the end of the age.”

That’s the truth. We are never alone.

When are working through difficulties… and differences… God shows up…giving us grace and helping us to add just the right amount of salt to any situation to enhance the flavor of others and not overpower them.

The work of repairing the breaches in our world and community then becomes like correcting the flavor of a sauce….adding some depth and complexity to the taste… and making it one that can be enjoyed by the whole community.  

We’re invited to make that sauce just a bit spicer…and turn up the lights in the kitchen a little brighter so all can see what’s cooking.

You are salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.