As we think about the power and depth of Jesus’ words of the Sermon on the Mount, I was reading a book that I want to share with you that commented on this very section of Jesus’ words. The ideas that the author talked about sound familiar in today’s world. He wrote:
“We can all analyze [and think], but the vital question we want answered is, ‘what is the ultimate source of trouble? What can be done about it. . .You can turn to the greatest philosophers and thinkers and again and again you will find [that] they never take you beyond analysis. They are very good at laying out the problem and showing various factors which operate. But when you ask them what is ultimately responsible for this, [or what is wrong with this world], and [further] what they propose to do, they just leave you unanswered. Clearly, they have nothing to say.”[1] They have no solution to the problems that we face and that they talk about.
And those comments that I just read for you, which I suspect that you agree with, they were first written in 1959. Things have not changed much in 66 years.
For Jesus’ words in this passage about salt and light and about how you stand before the world are still just as applicable today as they were when Jesus taught them to the crowds who gathered on the hillside to hear from Him.
So, when you read and think on something like this, and when you too could be tempted to think and behave as others do when they considered the Sermon on the Mount do, I wonder if you can stop and think differently? For just thinking along the correct path is half of the equation. You are half right in doing that, but we have a response that is called forth. We must continue our practice of ministry and faith.
The Sermon on the Mount is not just a fancy collection of the teachings of Jesus that we aspire to. For Israel the challenge was, can they remain: Israel. For us, can we remain the Church.
Move 1- who do we exist for?
To hold onto our identity of the Church, Jesus offers us two strong images: salt and light. These two images work together to help illustrate for the hearer how to continue to be who Jesus calls us to be and how Jesus calls us to live.
With that in mind, I wonder who does Jesus say that we exist for?
In the context of Israel, and during the time in which the scriptures were written and canonized, the Hebrew people have lived as part of either the Roman or Babylonian Empires. They were conquered. Their ancestral homes may have been accessible at times, but not always. So, as they sought to Be the Church, and to liv as the people who God called them to be, they wrestled with God’s placement in their lives and their involvement in the daily work of their community.
The prophetic promises that they shared with the following generations were still be taught and preached, and at the same time the divine kinship was upheld.
Life may not have been the way they wanted it to be daily, but God was still with them even if the substance of their day, and how they ordered their steps did not look the way they thought it should look. Again, God was still there. This is something in our days that we might also be familiar with.
These folks learned to work and to live among people that they did not always support; people whose choices they did not always agree with. They learned to, using our words now here at Bethesda to Be the Church, when the practice of the faith of their fathers called them to be different and to take a personal stock in the lives of others.
As they rose each day, the would be confronted a similar struggle that you might face. The question of ministry in a conflicted context.
We exist for the people of this community to guide them back to the Lord and back to a right relationship with Him. Preserving the identity of being “Israel” was not enough in itself. That identity called them to live differently. If they were going to live among these people, these Roman and Babylonian people, and if God placed them in this moment, then they knew that they had work to do in His name.
And so Jesus offered them the calling in Matthew 5 as a way to express this.
We do this through the two primary images that Jesus uses in this text. Salt and Light.
Move 2- the images.
Trying to hold onto their identity and maintain faithfulness to their calling as well, the Hebrews realize that God called to be salt and light even if those terms were not familiar to them in a way that they are to us.
God calls each of us, regardless of our location or situation, to ministries that helps us individually live in this manner. The ideas of ‘salt’ and ‘light’ invite us into a participatory union with Christ. Let’s consider those terms one at a time. . .
Salt. Our first understanding of salt is that it is a seasoning. Adding salt to your food can bring out a richness of flavor. Salt enhances/augments what it touches. Yet salt also prevents decay. For instance, when salt is applied to meat, it preserves it allowing the meat to be cured and to exist long after we might think it could. Meat left alone without salt would rot. But salt preserves it.
Salt is also an antiseptic inhibiting bacterial growth. Salt helps to cleanse the wound identifying the places where infection has taken up residence. And while applying salt to a wound will be quite painful, and I do not want to do that to myself, when cleansing happens in our lives, healing can happen.
When Jesus tells his followers in this sermon that we are to be salt, he is telling them that this is an act, or choice, that we do on an individual level. The church cannot be salt for each other corporately as easily as they can be salt for each other personally. When we think of how we have cared for one another, and served one another, often that is done in a one-on-one way. Salting each other to make sure we help one another stay away from sin and when sin begins to take root, we help them root it out gently.
But then there is a second term. . .
Light—a guide. This one is also familiar to us.
If salt is something that is done by and for the individual, then light is something that is accomplished corporately or communally. This is the image where we come together, often in the context of worship, to Be the Church in service. Here in this church community, we do this through the many facets of corporate ministry that we engage in. Be it evangelism directly or acts of care intentionally (and there are many of those we practice as a church), we are light for this community. And we seek to be light in more places together.
Why are we light, because as we know we live in a world of thick, or consistent, darkness. Everyone has their own definition of darkness. And that darkness is also very personal. Not so much relating to sin in general.
So when our Savior tells us to be the light, the guide, and to make sure that our light is not placed under a basket so that the whole house is able to see the light, he is telling us to make sure that everyone in the community is able to see the light being shown from us out for this place.
Move 3- the house
Israel, and the church who follows Jesus’ message, was called to go forth taking their light out into the world. They were called to carrying their light from the house and into the world being salt and light. This is how they maintained their identity in a world that sought to crush them and marginalize them.
The consistent proclamation of the gospel and the testimony that God’s word was with them and that they were living out their calling faithfully and fully, was their purpose.
Living not to abolish the law, as Jesus said, but to fulfill it—all of it. And in fulfilling the law, in being the Church this way as Salt and Light, the Hebrews, and you and I, maintain our sense of ministry. Just by being the church, just by living as salt and light, in the way that Jesus taught it to us, we are demonstrating the faith that Jesus taught that church to emulate. This becomes evangelism, in a way, without having to even say a word for our actions, our postures, our choices, our very attitudes demonstrate that we have taken the very lessons Jesus in Matthew 5 to heart and are applying them in our daily walk.
Conclusion
In these two images we find such depth and such reach given us to by Jesus. And so as the Savior moves from this topic to the next in the rest of his work and message, he challenges each of us to see our daily context not as a burden but as a place where we can help heal, help testify, and help grow the faith of others.
And as we do this, we maintain again practice Being the Chruch.
DM
[1] Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1971), 141.
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