February 6, 2011
You Are The Light of The World!?! - Matthew 5:13-20
Pastor: Luke Maybry
Download“Do not judge a book by its cover.” How many times have we heard this? And yet, if it’s so true, then why don’t publishers just leave the cover blank? How many books have you seen with blank covers? As much as we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, we do it all the time. How can we not? It’s not even always bad, either. If you dropped me in the middle of Africa, all those native Africans could tell, just by looking at me, that I am not from there, that I am of European descent. They also might could tell, just by looking at me, that I’m an American. If I opened my mouth, they could tell that I am a Southern American. While none of that determines the content of my character, they could just look and see that, as they say on Sanford and Son, I’m a white dude. That much at least is obvious, just by looking at me.
According to Jesus, our faith is just as obvious. According to Jesus here, you should be able to look at a Christian and – without asking a single thing about that person or without having a single conversation with that person – say to yourself, “that there is a Christian.” You should be able to look at a Christian community and tell, right off, that it’s a Christian community. “You are,” Jesus said, “The Light Of The World.” How do you possibly miss that? We see light, right? It’s blatantly obvious. If somebody turns a light on in a dark room, you immediately see it. It does not require interviews or reading diaries or hacking computers or looking at checking accounts. “You Are,” Jesus is saying to us, “The Light Of The World.” He did not say that we will be the light of the world one day, if we keep working hard enough. He did not say that we ought to strive to be the light of the world. He did not say that we used to be the light of the world back in the good old days. “You Are The Light Of The World” right now. You are. All of you are. Whether you’re old, young, a member at Central Steele Creek, a visitor, a male, a female, pretty, not-so-pretty anymore, whether you attend a weekly Bible study, pray and read Scripture daily, or whether you’re a “Chreaster” type person, which is a compound word that alludes to somebody who shows up to Church only on Christmas and Easter… It does not matter. If you claim in the least to be a Christian, and therefore necessarily (whether you like it or not) a member of the Body of Christ, the Church, then “You Are The Light Of The World.” Isn’t that amazing?
Now this may ruffle our Presbyterian feathers, but the distinctive trait that Christians have, the trait that’s so blatantly obvious, is our works. It’s what we do. It’s how we behave. It’s our actions. It’s what we do when nobody is looking. It’s also what we do when everybody is looking. In any case, it’s what we do. Protestants say that it’s all about faith and not works. Or it’s about God’s works and not our works. But here, Jesus really stresses our work, our actions, and our behavior. It may be preceded by God’s work, but it’s still our work that Jesus is talking about. Our work is the blinding flash of the obvious. You can’t miss it. “You don’t put a lamp under a bushel,” Jesus said. You put the light out in the open so people can see it. And besides, have you ever even tried to hide a light? When I was in the army, I would turn my flashlight on at night in the field (which was strictly forbidden) and I got caught every time. It’s obvious. You can’t hide it. That’s how obvious we should be, Jesus tells us. So, “let our light shine before others so that they may see our good works and give glory to God.” It involves sight on their part, and works on our part. All “they” do is to see us, and all we do is to work in a way that leaves no question about whom we serve.
For much of the Church’s history recent history, we have been known for what do not do, much of which makes perfect sense. We do not, for example, have sex outside of marriage. By and large, that’s true. Of course there are notable exceptions to that (Jim Baker???), but the exception proves the rule. We don’t do drugs. We don’t cheat people out of things. We don’t cheat on our taxes. We don’t lie. All of those “thou shalt nots” are good. And of course we have a few “thou shat nots” that don’t make any sense. “We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy like the hippies out in San Francisco do,” as Merle Haggard would say. I have no idea where we get that from, especially since we typically portray Jesus himself with long, shaggy hair. Nonetheless, many of our prohibitions are valid.
But “We Are The Light Of The World,” so it can’t just be what we do not do. How can people tell that you’re a Christian without you specifically telling them that? What do you think we can do as a Church that is polar opposite of the rest of the world, that will make our identity as Christians blatantly obvious? One of the things that Jesus mentions later is how we resolve our disagreements. Never did Jesus say that it was wrong for this City on a Hill to have disagreements in it, but it’s how that city resolves those disagreements that makes it unique. Goodness knows that we live a very polarized world. There’s rich and poor, black and white, immigrants and citizens, republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives. We as Christians are not immune to these divisions. We never have been. In fact, some of our finest moments have involved how we resolved disagreements. Just imagine if could teach the rest of the country a thing or two about civility. Do you think Washington, DC is really going to do that? Should we as the Church not be the subject matter expert on how we treat one another, even if we disagree with one another? If we can get by with loving our enemies, who want to kill us, then we can probably learn to get along with a democrat.
And it doesn’t just involve “churchy” matters, either. My youngest child, Jack, has been sick this week with congestion. I took him to the doctor on Tuesday she prescribed some medicine for him. So I went to the pharmacist, who filled the prescription. As she gave it to me and rang me up, she had this shocked look on her face. “This one’s expensive,” she said. The pharmaceutical had the sole patent on that particular drug, and we needed it, so they charged us a lot of money. “Oh well,” I thought, “if good medicine was cheap, everybody would be getting it.”
Isn’t there something badly wrong with that statement? As much as the Bible talks about caring for those who have less, should we not concern ourselves in some form or fashion for the millions of people in this country alone who do not have health care? I don’t know where that puts us on the current health care debate, but it sure puts us somewhere besides the sidelines. 1/3 of students in Mecklenburg County will drop out of high school. That’s astonishing. The third grade end of year test, I hear, is a gateway test, meaning that for whatever reason, it’s pivotal for a child. A lot of children who fail that test never really catch up. In fact, some states can predict their need for prisons in ten years based off passage rate of the 3rd grade end-of-grade test. That’s just sick. Something like 90% of the wealth generated in the last ten years went to 1% of the population. How is that not going to create problems? Egypt, Anybody?
All of those are touchy subjects. If you want to avoid divisions and disagreements, then it’s probably best to leave them alone. If we are the light of the world, and if we are a city on a hill, then we cannot leave them alone. This particular passage uses three metaphors: light, city, and salt. We are The Light Of The World. That’s obvious. We are also a city, where we live together. It’s not a personal faith. It’s a public faith, so it deals with everything that the public deals with. We’re in this deal together. It’s public. Personal and private faith, at least according to Jesus here, is not the Christian faith. The Christian faith is a city. And, by the way, we’re salt. If salt isn’t salty, then whatever it is, it’s not salt. This is who we are. It’s not who we’re supposed to be. It’s who we already are. It’s who God has made us to be. We Are The Light Of The World. We Are A City On A Hill.
We do a lot as a Church. In fact, in some ways, we may be a little overloaded. I worry about some of you. I worry about me, too, to be honest with you. You’re up here all the time. You get up, go to work, work all day, go home, pick your kids up, come to Church, and then back home, do homework, maybe – if you’re lucky – get a little down time, and then go to bed, wake up at dark:30 and do it all over again. When the weekend rolls around, you come to Church and I tell you to do more. We’re actually a lot like the Pharisees, and that’s a compliment. Jesus said here that nobody was more righteous than they were. Nobody either knew the Bible or lived it more than they did. They were up here all the time, too, so to speak. But somehow they missed a blinding flash of the obvious. Somehow as city, they had blown it. Their salt had lost its saltiness. As impossible as this seems, they managed somehow to cover up their light. Never in a million years would they have intended to do that, but they did. I wonder sometimes if we do the same thing, and if so, then how. I really don’t know the answer to that, but it keeps me up at night sometimes. At the end of the day, I really want God to say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servants.” At least according to this passage, it’s obvious how to do that. Maybe it’s right at our back door. Whatever it is, I hope that we can figure out how God is calling us to spend our energies and resources and lives. Because whatever it is that we are, or whatever we do or don’t do, We Are The Light Of The World, man. We’re a city on a hill. We’re salty salt. We are, even if it kills us, disciples.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
