God's People Are Engaged

God’s People Are Engaged
Matthew 5:13-20; Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Northern California is delighted to be getting significant rain fall this weekend, and snow in the higher elevations. Sure that makes the skiers happy, but it also makes the natural resource agencies and water agencies happy as well. Much of California has been experiencing prolonged drought. And the reservoirs are drying up. In other parts of the country, underground aquifers are being tapped out and wells are having to be drilled deeper. In our region people are concerned about the chemical spill into the water source for a major part of the population of West Virginia. Other folks are concerned about what fracking will do to ground water supplies.

When three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered with water, it seems ironic that we have problems with water supplies. Of course the problem is that the bulk of the water that covers the planet is salt water. We will occasionally gargle with salt water for a sore throat. And nearly every IV drip in the hospital is a saline solution (also currently in shortened supply). We can’t drink salt water. After dips in the ocean we rinse the salt brine off of our bodies. So other than specialized uses, all that water is of no use.

Technology is advancing to make it easier to make fresh water out of salt water. A few years ago Singapore opened a desalination plant that can produce 36 million gallons of fresh water a day, a tenth of their need. That much water may help Singapore’s 5.4 million people, but would only be a drop in the bucket for California’s population that is more than seven times Singapore’s.

While salt can be removed from water, adding or removing salt from other things is not so easy. Who of us hasn’t had some food that was too salty? I suspect that there are not very many anchovy lovers here. A grain or two of salt can open a great flavor, a whole lot of salt will ruin a bowl of food. Since none of you ever met my mother, you needn’t take offense at one of her pet peeves, if it applies to you. My mother was a good cook who carefully seasoned food, but she was always upset by people who grabbed the salt shaker and applied it liberally before ever tasting the food presented.

There is a fine line between too little and too much salt.

We are used to pure salt. I once bought a box of store brand of salt and when I got home I was told that the only acceptable brand was Morton’s with the girl and the umbrella. We can’t imagine salt not being salty. Yet not everyone has access to pure salt. This was probably the case with people of Jesus’ time and place. When sodium chloride is found mixed with impurities, particularly in humid weather, the salt will leach out leaving behind the impurities. Then the stuff that was supposed to be salt won’t be salty. And there is no way of getting the saltiness back. The impure stuff has to be thrown away and replaced.

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth....You are the light of the world.” It is important to note that these are not imperatives: “Be salt!” “Be light!” They are indicatives, affirmations: “You (plural) are salt!” “You (plural) are light!” Jesus doesn’t ask us to be something we are not. He asks us to be what we are. His words are a warning against failing to be what we are.

If we are salt, how do we lose our taste? When the purity of our faith is adulterated, the pure “salt” may slowly slip away leaving us with a “tasteless” faith which may be impossible to restore to its pure form.

In a chemical desalination process, the sodium chloride molecules are induced to attach themselves to certain other compounds and leave the water behind. The same thing happens to some of Christ’s people. Ideas and attitudes are constantly floating around believers which can cause Christians to attach to other ideologies and saviors. That’s not to say that the world or culture is universally evil and that we should run for the hills or dig a subterranean bomb shelter. We do have to keep alert and distinguish foolishness from wisdom, and worldly acclaimed wisdom from God’s truth.

Another desalination process is osmosis. The salt water is run through a series of membranes and filters that strip off the salt molecules. Christians can lose their saltiness in a similar way. We linger too long at the water cooler. The idle talk, the off-color jokes, and a subtle shift in attitudes will grab our saltiness. We tango with idolatry in what we think are innocuous ways until one day we find that we have lost our Christ-salt and have become tasteless.

The traditional way of desalting water is to distill it. The water is brought to a boil and comes off as steam which is captured and allowed to cool. Since water and salt become gaseous at different temperatures, the salt stays behind. Christians as just as human as everyone else. When pressure mounts in our lives there has to be a release. We hit a boiling point and flip out. When confronted with brokenness we react with brokenness, and before we know it, rather than being the people of God’s world — people who flavor, challenge and preserve godly values and present a godly presence — we are just like everyone else in the people’s world.

If you remember that I said earlier that Jesus said, “You (plural) are the salt of the earth, ...the light of the world.” That’s ‘Y’all’ if you are of southern heritage. That means that we together are salt. So while each one of might think of ourselves as a grain of salt with little impact, together, as the church, we are a box of salt. That’s important. We need to work together to watch each other’s back, to guide each other when we are being attracted away from Christ, when we are being filtered away from Christ, when we are being distilled from Christ. Together we can maintain and protect our common saltiness for the glory of Christ and the sake of the world which God loved so much in him.

Thomas Long in his commentary on Matthew  titles the section on salt and light, “What Good Is the Church?” He begins his answer with: “The church that lives according to the vision expressed in the Beatitudes is a colony of the kingdom of heaven placed in the midst of an alien culture.” He concludes, “The point is that the church, like salt, has one purpose — to live the kingdom life in the world. Whenever the church loses sight of that mission and becomes something else — a social club or a theological debating society, for example — it becomes as worthless as salt would be if it weren’t salty.” (1)

The church — God’s people — are engaged in the world. Steven McKinley wrote, “This is how the Christian life is lived … in community. Sinful community? Yes. Imperfect community? You bet. But still lived in community, and I will not apologize for being part of that community, nor for inviting, encouraging, and urging others to be part of it.”(2) That’s the salt and light effect, flavoring and challenging the world.

God’s people have been doing this for centuries. Church people established religious colleges and created social service agencies, like the Welfare House and the Outreach Council. God’s people engage the world through ministering in prisons, nursing homes and hospitals. God’s people go to where the natural and human-made disasters happen and they stay after the first responders leave. God’s people were often the ones to spearhead the creation of shelters for orphans, battered women, runaway youth, and homeless veterans. It is a battered, bloody, and bedraggled world to which Christ came as savior, and Christians engage with it.

When Jesus calls his hearers — me, you, the church — to greater righteousness, that involves our “insides” matching our “outsides”. That’s the point of the rest of this chapter when Jesus reinterprets the law. If we are called to follow Jesus, who came to fulfill all righteousness, then we, too, need to seek to “fulfill all righteousness” or as Jesus will say later in the Sermon: “Desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (6:33 CEB).

If “righteousness” is defined as “doing what God requires,” then the “greater righteousness” might be fulfilling the Law rather than just obeying the Law. Obedience to the Law only requires an understanding of the legal codes. Fulfillment of the Law requires a relationship with the Law-giver, in order to know God’s intentions through the Law and what actions are right for each situation.

God’s people, in relationship with Christ, engage the world to flavor, challenge, and preserve so that God’s Law, God’s rule may be fulfilled.

Thanks be to God.

(1) Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Westminster Bible Companion) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), pp. 51-52.
(2) Quoted by Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” Matthew 5:13-20, February 9, 2014.