Light of the World
Fifth Sunday Scripture Readings
Once upon a time, people came up with the theory of the “anonymous Christian.” These were people who didn’t self-identify as Christian but lived by Christian principles of unconditional love for God and for neighbor. Does the “anonymous Christian” actually exist? That’s not for me to say. Suffice it to say that there are people in this world whose strength of spirituality and unselfish and unbounded love of others is notable and remarkable. And the world reacts to them. Jesus is both reminding and warning his disciples of this fact in today’s gospel passage. The warning reminds us that no true Christian—no genuine disciple—leaves the world untouched by his presence. “A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.” A genuine disciple sticks out like a sore thumb. And to be clear, the reaction of the world of wealth, power, and prestige to the lived Christian message is never ambivalent. It’s always negative, and this arises from the very nature of that world.
How does the world of wealth, power, and prestige treat those who live the Christian message? It stands against them, ridicules them, and attempts to disparage them at every turn. Consider Dr. Martin Luther King and, indeed, every prophet of caring, human dignity, and respect that has arisen in our own day. The reaction to them and their message has always been the same: impugn their motives, point out their human failings, use the law and violence to suppress their followers, and, when all else fails, eliminate them. Like it or not, as soon as we embrace our mission as followers of Jesus, the Messiah, we set out in their footsteps, and the world of wealth, power, and prestige, once it gets a whiff of us, will treat us in the same way. They have to. They couldn’t live comfortably with themselves if they didn’t. Their lives of selfish self-interest would be unsustainable unless they could convince themselves and those like them that the way of the gospel was not only foolish and wrong, it was dangerous.
Jesus calls his followers “the salt of the earth.” That phrase has become hackneyed. It’s come to mean “good” people. But, for Jesus and his listeners, it meant something quite different. In Jesus’s time, salt was an essential element of life that served two purposes. Like today, it was a condiment. It not only enhanced the flavor of food, but it also often made unpalatable food edible. In a sense, it helped to make life livable. But more than that, salt was their only preservative in those ages before refrigeration. So, the people whom Jesus called the “salt of the earth” were those whose love and caring and wholesale reliance on God both made life livable for others and also preserved the fundamental integrity of human life, even for those whom the rich and powerful saw as undeserving. You, then, are the salt of the earth.
And, he said, “You are the light of the world.” In the creation story from the Book of Genesis, God’s very first act of creation was to say, “Let there be light.” Before God could get busy with the work of creation, he had to turn the light on. It’s the light that allows the world to see what it’s doing. No wonder the forces of wealth, power, and prestige want to extinguish the light. It’s not just because they don’t want to be seen clearly doing the hateful, selfish things they do to preserve their treasure, their authority, and their standing in the world that cares about such things, but they especially don’t want to see themselves as the weak, empty, pitiful, and despicable creatures they’re afraid that they’ve become. Those who stand as a light of the world and shine the glare of cold, unredacted reality on them and their actions threaten to make their worst fears a reality. We are the light of the world simply because, standing in the power of God’s love, we have nothing to fear. It’s our fearlessness that causes the world of wealth, power, and prestige to rage.
What results from our discipleship? How does the world of the spirit, the world of goodness and truth, respond to the salt of the earth and the light of the world? “Just so,” Jesus says, “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” How does that follow? Why should your good deeds cause others to draw closer to God with praise and thanksgiving? There are two reasons. First, your unselfish love for others becomes a reflection in their eyes of the love and care God has for them. They can at last say that they see in your love that God hasn’t abandoned them. They feel your love and recognize it as God’s. And secondly, they see your loving care shining out to them in the darkness and cold of an uncaring world, and they see that God is the source of the light they see in you. They see your love and understand God’s love just a bit better. If you can love them despite everything, surely God must love them even so much more.
As always, there’s a flip side to this coin. If the experience of unconditional love causes people to “glorify” God, why do you think that God in general, and Christianity in particular, has become so despised by so many? And, don’t kid yourself, in so many circles, the name “Christian” has become an insult. Isn’t it because, far from salt becoming insipid or the light being hid, the behavior of those who claim Christian discipleship has turned to the promotion of wealth, power, and prestige? Far from enhancing and preserving, these people have taken to subverting and corroding. Far from providing a beacon of hope in a world of fear, they become condemning harbingers of doom. “If this is the Christ, I want no part in them,” people say. “If this is your God, I’m better off without!”
Jesus was right. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world… For good or ill. Every Scripture we read, and every liturgy we celebrate, is a reminder—a wake-up call—that, as Christians, we stick out in the world like sore thumbs. How the world reacts to us and to God will be a direct consequence of how closely we’re willing to follow the Christ and how fully and bravely we’re willing to live the gospel we profess.
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