Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12) • Psalm 112:1-9 (10) • 1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16) • Matthew 5:13-20
OK, so I have a message for whomever it is out there who was looking ahead last week to today’s Gospel lesson and heard Jesus’ words, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” and said to themselves…”Hmm…I know how I can show my righteousness exceeds even the highest of all possible standards. I can pray continually, night and day, without ceasing...at morning, and at night, for God to do something miraculous…to intervene in the world in a way that would show that I could truly say, ‘Yes, Lord, I have entered the kingdom of heaven...’” And so whomever this person is, who then decided to make this continual prayer request be for…snow!...I have one simple thing to ask…something that was also put on a sign outside a church in Dallas this week: “Whoever is praying for snow, please stop!”
As much snow as we’ve received in just a short span of time this week, it can seem as though this blizzard has left us with so much snow, that the white stuff will be around with us for quite some time—and it will be. But eventually it will melt, and will fade away. But with this storm we all come away from it with a story to tell. And hopefully one of our stories about this week is about an act of kindness, or neighborliness, like one of the many such stories that this storm created this week. There was the welcoming of friends and fellow students into homes, glad to gather during a rare snow day. There’s the story of apartment-dwellers on Lake Shore Drive, going out to give food, drink and blankets to those stranded in the snow drifts. There’s the story of a hospital nurse who could not get to her shift because her garage was snowed in, and who posted on Facebook that she needed to get to the hospital to “save lives”. Within minutes a “friend” she barely knew pulled up to her house, and said, “this is what friends are for.” There’s the story of dozens of people showing up with a shovel at a PADS homeless shelter in Downers Grove so that overnight guests could get in and be protected from the cold. And hundreds and hundreds more such stories were embodied this week, all in the midst of this brutal and historic event.
So many of these stories showed the power of kindness. But where did all this amazing kindness come from? Did it come from an obligation that they felt—that they “had” to be nice? Did it come from a desire to resist letting this storm control us? Or did it come from a place of pride—a sense that we want to say, “Look at what I did, and how great my kindness for others is!” The trouble with all these sources of kindness is that they all begin and end in us.
But what if…it wasn’t us who was showering the world with compassion this week…what if these stories of love were all the means by which God blessed the world…through us. The source it turns out of these stories is not us…as much as we may want to take the credit…the source that brings together an interweaving web of relationships and people together for the blessing, redeeming and healing of the world…is God. God gives us this power to influence the world for the sake of God’s mission, influence that goes beyond what we can possibly imagine.
But what is it about this power that God gives us to be instruments of God’s purpose for the world? Isn’t our own power just as good? Why do we need God’s? What makes God’s power so unique, so much more sustaining, so much more life-giving…is that the power that God illuminates in us, and the power that God flavors our lives with…will never die. We will die. Our good works, purely in and of themselves, no matter how many of them there are to count, will die. But because God is the one who sets our hearts on fire, because God is the one who sustains our faith, hope and love…the gift of the power of the Holy Spirit will live in us forever. Even when our lives seem powerless and without influence—a feeling shared by many in Egypt right now, who sense a lack of influence in their political process—God’s promise declares that Jesus will season and light us with the power of the Holy Spirit that blesses the whole world no matter what.
Jesus makes this our identity. This is who we are: recipients of that gift. And Jesus declares us instruments of God’s blessing by the names he declares us from his Sermon on the Mount: “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.” (Mt. 5:13, 14) Dear brothers and sisters, Jesus declares there is nothing at all we have to do to earn those distinguished identities of God’s salt of the earth and God’s light of the world. Jesus actually sounds quite sarcastic in how absurd it is to try and be more salty, or to be a brighter light than what he makes us. Salt cannot lose its taste, if it did it would not be called salt…and as anyone who has acolyted here knows well, if lamp has a basket put over it, or if a candle is snuffed out…it has no more flame, and no longer does what its purpose is—it no longer gives light! All we can be is what Jesus declares us. We are his salt, preserving, flavoring, seasoning the earth with God’s gracious goodness. We are his light, illuminating the flame of Jesus’ justifying forgiveness of us that never can die.
The gift of being God’s salt and light for the world comes in Jesus’ Word that declares us such, and it’s a gift whose source for us as Christians is our baptism, which we gave thanks for to begin today’s service. Just as when those waters dripped over us and created ripples in the font, so we United Lutherans—Jesus’ salt and light—cannot help but forever drip those waters off of our bodies with our lives, rippling out with a reach in the world that is wider and deeper and fuller than we will ever know. And no matter how un-flavorful, or dimly lit we may think our lives have become, we can always come back to the source of our sustaining identity, the baptismal well of Jesus’ blessing, a well that never runs dry, and a well with enough water to cover not just us but the whole world.
At our baptisms we hear a verse spoken from today’s text: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (5:16) That light that shines in that baptismal candle, and that saltiness, both given to us by Jesus in baptism, are does not just light our individual personal candle, or shake up our own personal salt shaker...these gifts that give the power of eternal life are gifts Jesus shares with the whole world.
Vincent Van Gogh, the famous Dutch painter once said, “One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.” The warmth of Jesus’ light, and the flavor of his saltiness…is something God invites us to share not for our sake, and not to sit alone with, but to give Glory to God with all the universe. God invites all to gather around the hearth that is Jesus’ life, given for the sake of the world; to gather around Jesus’ life, given so that he may put to death on the cross all the powers that try to keep at bay the flame and salt of God’s gracious goodness; to gather around Jesus’ life, given for us as the source of what gives our lives salty flavor and flaming light, no matter how much we may want that source to be ourselves; to gather around Jesus’ life, given so that no matter how much the world may challenge it…he can create stories with our lives like the stories of kindness that God created this week. God will tell such stories through us that gather us around the hearth of Jesus’ blessing, stories that will light up the world…stories that will give glory to God in heaven. Amen.
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