A Wild, Wondrous Journey

“Temptation in the Desert” by Briton Rivière (1840-1920)

Matthew 4:1-11

First Sunday in Lent/ 9^th March 2014

An audio recording of the sermon may be found here.

Temptation seems to fill the air during Lent; Lent seems to be organized around it.  The lectionary for this first Sunday in Lent begins with Jesus tempted by the devil in the wilderness. It casts its shadow over these forty days.  Temptation is the enemy that requires our vigilance and diligence, especially if you felt called to give up something for Lent: chocolate, alcohol, television, Facebook.  Can you free yourself from the Tempter’s power?  Can you make it all the way to Holy Week? 

            There’s no way around it.  Temptation is all over this text.  Three times the devil tries to unnerve Jesus and obstruct him from his mission.  After forty days Jesus is famished, exhausted, weak, tired, thirsty, hungry.  And then the Tempter arrives.

            This really is a remarkable text. It’s easy to be drawn into it, dropped down into this dramatic setting, this place of struggle and anguish. This is a vivid story made for cinema or television. 

            It’s also a problematic text in that it’s easy to come away with all kinds of views regarding the devil and temptation, some of which are not helpful.  I’ve met Christians who live in a perpetual state of fear and anxiety that they might not be strong enough to sustain a full court press from the Tempter.  They think the devil is under every stone, around every corner, just waiting for an opportune time to tempt and attack, deceive and destroy Christians. There’s a kind of paranoia that sets in as they wait for the devil to trick them. They’re always on guard.  This is not a healthy way to live, neither is it a joyful way to live.

            The temptation is real in this story—and it’s serious.  These are not trivial amusements trying to lull Jesus away from his work.  He’s being tempted by desire, materialism, tempted by power, tempted by influence and glory, tempted by religion. He’s being tempted with an alternative narrative for his life, “If you are the Son of God….” If…  Does Jesus know that he’s the Son of God?  Is this what he’s really wrestling with in the wilderness?  And if he consents, if he claims this identity, accepts this power, what then?  How does one then live with such an identity, how does one make use of such power?

            That’s really what’s at stake here.  Yes, it’s about temptation.  But it’s about more than temptation.  To focus on temptation is a moralistic reading of this text.  It’s more than simply a warning: watch out, the devil will tempt us, don’t give into temptation.  This would be a surface reading of the text.

            We know there’s more to it than this because of one word.  It’s one word that’s often overlooked in the hearing of this story.  And that one word is: Spirit (Matthew 4:1).

            After Jesus’ baptism the Spirit of God sends Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted.  His temptation is ordered, directed, not by the devil, as it were, but by the Spirit of God.  The devil is not doing anything here beyond the purview of God’s providence. The Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. And if the Spirit is God’s Spirit and if God’s Spirit is love, then we have to conclude that it’s for the sake of love, the Spirit’s love for Jesus that he’s sent deep into the wilderness of Judea.  Then we could say that it’s love that sends him into this space.  This might sound odd and strange and not very loving. But it’s for the sake of God’s love for him and, I would argue, God’s love for us that he’s sent into the wilderness. Why?  Because there were things Jesus needed to discover about himself that could only be discovered in the wilderness.  There were things he needed to struggle with that could only be experienced there in the wilderness. There were things he could only discover in the struggle, in the fight, in the wrestling. 

            There are things we can only discover about ourselves when we, too, have been thrown into the wilderness.  There are things that we only begin to really, honestly, struggle with when we are thrown into wild, unfamiliar places.  There are things we discover about ourselves and our neighbors, the world, even God, when we are in the fight, when we’re struggling to survive, when we’re lost in the search for meaning, when we're wrestling with our demons, putting them in their place, and then coming out on the other side of it all with the angels of God waiting on us and tending to us (Matthew 4: 11).

            I don’t know why it has to be this way.  But it is.  I don’t know why the world is ordered this way. But it is. This seems like a risky, even precarious way for God to order human life.  Why can’t we just discover these things without the struggle and the fight and the wrestling?  I don’t know. 

            But there are at least two things I do know.   First, what I do know and what this text seems to suggest is that a wilderness is required—an unfamiliar territory of some kind.  It could be a geographic place, a life-situation or experience, or, psychologically, the vast terrains of the human heart.  We can stay home, remain forever in the familiar, but then we’ll miss out on discovering what the soul truly hungers for.

            The hard truth is that “Great issues affecting [humankind] always have to be decided in the wilderness.” These are the words of Alfred Delp (1907-1945), written in Tegel Prison, Berlin, Epiphany 1945, where Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was also a prisoner for a time.  Delp was a Jesuit priest, theologian, philosopher, who was part of an assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).  “Great issues affecting [humankind] always have to be decided in the wilderness; in uninterrupted isolation and unbroken silence. They hold a meaning and blessing these great, silent, empty spaces that bring [one] face to face with reality.”[1]  These are extraordinary words written in the wilderness of a prison cell.

            The second thing is this.  What I do know and what this text seems to suggest is that, like Jesus, we need to be pushed up against our limits, our limitations must be exposed.  It’s not unlike what an athlete in training experiences.  Places such as deserts and wildernesses are good at doing this for us—places known for their silence, their emptiness, places untamed, places that don’t care about us, don’t care whether or not we survive, that are completely indifferent to our wants and needs.  Life situations can bring us to our limits. When we come up against our mortality—the ever ashen-quality of our lives—that we are dust, this is also a limiting thought.  Now all of this can be depressing, I know. That’s what you’re probably thinking.  This doesn’t have to be, but it often is.  These are not essentially happy thoughts.  But don’t blame me.  And yet it’s part of the Christian message. It’s not the best evangelism method tool.  Churches don’t generally grow with this kind of message.  You don’t find it on church signs:  Join us at 10:30 a.m. and discover your limitations! Refreshments will be served.

            And, yet, this is the difficult, demanding, heart-breaking, achingly beautiful and gracious message of the gospel: there is liberation and release when we discover our limits.  This is what T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was getting at in his poem “Little Gidding,” one of the poems in Four Quartets.  Little Gidding is a small village in England, with an old Anglican Church and cemetery, which Eliot visited in 1936. In this poem he’s talking about the poet’s use of language as a metaphor for the Christian life.

           

            Every phrase and every sentence

            is an end and a beginning,

            Every poem is an epitaph – epitaph, as on a gravestone. 

            Any action is a step to the block, to the fire,

            down the sea’s throat

            Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. 

The illegible stone is an old tombstone, with the name worn away by the elements, by time.  That is where we start. That is where the Christian life begins, that’s where the journey begins.  Eliot is drawing here upon the wisdom of the English mystic Julian of Norwich (1342-c.1413) who said, “In my end is my beginning.”

            The Spirit sends Jesus out into the wilderness to discover his limitations, to bring him up against his limits, in order for him to discover who he is and what he’s capable of accomplishing.  And he discovers this in the struggle with the Tempter.  The Tempter doesn’t have horns, a red suit, and a pitchfork.  The devil, diabolos, in the Greek, means “one who throws things about.”  Dia, meaning through, around; bolos, meaning to throw.  The diabolos stirs things up, tries to confuse us, muddies the waters, and distorts reality.  He’s pushes Jesus.  Tries to disorient him, confuse him, distort his reality, maybe even speak to his weaknesses and doubts and his fears.  And each time, Jesus pushes back, reaffirms what’s true, and stays grounded.  In the face of these distractions, Jesus remains focused and committed to God’s vision for his life, with each “attack” he reaffirms who he is and who he isn’t, he comes to terms with his identity and his calling, all of it forged in the heat of the desert under the protective eyes of the Spirit.  And all of this was necessary in order to equip him for what was to come, to enable him to claim his identity, so that he could be faithful to the burden of the call placed upon his life.  He then drew upon this experience throughout his ministry, especially in a garden, in the middle of the night, sweating blood, wrestling again with the purpose and meaning of his life (Luke 22:44).

            The psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) said, “Man needs difficulties, they are necessary for health.”[2]  Writing to clergy in 1932, Jung said, “…every psychic advance arises from the suffering of the soul….”[3]  This is not a glorification of suffering; neither is he saying that God causes suffering.  But what Jung is trying to get at here, and I think he’s right and worth our consideration, is that through our struggles, our desire to suffer through what we’re confronted with, to undergo and struggle and resist and fight everything that is thrown at us and tries to confuse us and muddy the waters, even as Jesus did, we will discover something that we need to know.  And not only what we need to know, as if this were merely an intellectual game, but something more, something will be gained in our hearts, in our lives as Christians, an advance made, progress, development, growth in the Christian life, personal transformation, which has the potential to transform the world.   And that’s the good news here.

            And there’s one more sign of good news here. The number 40.  It might be the Bible’s way of saying “a very long time,” but it’s never empty time, it’s never unending.  It’s actually a time of cultivation and growth, a time of preparation for what comes next.  Every experience of 40—whether days or years—in scripture, whether it’s Israel wandering for forty years in the wilderness of Sinai or Jesus in the wilderness of Judea—yields something new.  Here we can see an advance, something gained from the experience.  Jesus comes bursting out of this experience overflowing with spiritual energy, teeming with vitality, engaged, active, ready to take on the world, ready to preach the good news of God’s Kingdom with passion, with strength, with compassion, with love.[4]                    

            Altogether, Jesus shows us: this is what is means to be human, women and men in relationship with God.  Jesus’ way is our way, our way through Lent and beyond.  His way is our way; our way is his way.  This is the wild, wondrous journey we’ve been invited to share. So may we too pray, boldly, courageously:  Come, Holy Spirit, come. 

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[1] Alfred Delp, “Epiphany 1945: the Law of the Wilderness.” http://pedrokolbe.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/epiphany-1945-the-law-of-the-wilderness/.

[2] C. G. Jung, “The Transcendent Function,” in Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 8, par. 143 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). Jung adds, “What concerns us…is only an excessive amount of them.”

[3] C. G. Jung, “Psychotherapists or the Clergy,” Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 11, par. 497 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Jung wrote, “…all creativeness in the realm of the spirit as well as every psychic advance of man arises from the suffering of the soul, and the cause of the suffering is spiritual stagnation, or psychic sterility.”

[4] Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith: and Other Cotton Patch Sermons (Wipf & Stock, 2013), 9ff.

Partially Blinded by the Truth

The Transfiguration by Cornelius Monsma

Matthew 17: 1-8

Transfiguration of the Lord/ 2^nd March 2014 

Sacrament of Holy Communion

There are moments when it all comes into focus, moments when things become perfectly clear, moments of searing insight and brilliance that change everything. “I once was blind,” the old hymn goes, “but now I see.”  I see—and nothing, no one will ever again look the same. There was a time when we thought we knew who Jesus was, thought we had him figured out, thought we knew what it meant to believe in him, to follow him, but everything changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye. 

There are times when we are drawn to a holy place, a holy mountain, a holy moment when we’re given a revelation, an apocalypse, meaning an opening, and we’re allowed to see who Jesus really is.  Seeing him transfigured transfigures our eyes and thoughts, our ears and our hearts.  The core of his being shines through the radiance of his face and he becomes dazzling, like a flame, with the intensity of pure, white, blinding light.  In the midst of the cloud overshadowing him a voice is heard: “This is my Son, my Beloved; with him I am well pleased: listen to him!” (Matthew 9:5).  It’s a voice that throws every disciple to the ground, overcome by fear.  Yet, Jesus approaches, touches us—in our fear—and says to us, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Three imperatives. One from God: “Listen to him,” meaning the Son. And then from the Son, these two encouraging, compassionate commands: “Get up,” followed by “Do not be afraid.”

But why were they afraid? Wouldn’t you be? I would. The natural response to the glory of God’s presence is fear. You can call it “holy awe” if it makes you feel better, but that’s merely a veiled attempt to tame and domesticate the experience.  It’s probably more like ego-shock, a seismic shock to our sensibilities, an awareness of someone completely Other, an overwhelming Other before whose presence we know we have no right to stand—and so we fall.  Down.  Down on our knees and we cover our faces before the presence of the Holy.

When the Holy One moves in our lives it can be a fearful thing (which is why it’s so often resisted, because our egos know the truth). But we can’t run forever.  Why is it fearful?   In part, because our egos thrive on fear.  Encountering God, having an experience of the Holy is fearful because it inevitably costs us something, namely the ego’s control over reality and the direction of our lives. Get mixed up with this God and you’ll soon discover that there’s more going on in the world and within you and me than meets the eye.  It’s because we can’t see it, won’t see it, that our sight is always in need of transfiguration. And the ego is fearful because God might actually show me things about myself or the world or life or about Godself and God’s vision for our lives that we really don’t want to see, because once we see there’s no way for us to “unsee” it—without betraying ourselves.  Once seen, I’m responsible for it. 

And it’s fearful because this God might then actually ask something of me, to do something with this new knowledge, this revelation; God might ask me to do something that’s simply too big for me to do, to become someone I know I’m not (or not yet), to go where I would rather not go, that doesn't appear safe, called to embark on a journey that I prefer not to take.[1] To encounter the Living God, to face the Holy One, to stand before God’s light, to have such an experience means fundamentally, ultimately, that you will be changed—you just will.  You will be different.  You just will.  You don’t have any choice in the matter. If we don’t, whether suddenly or gradually, then it’s probably safe to say we haven’t encountered God.  My old friend Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855) said, “Once you wise up, you can’t dummy down.” For after encountering the presence of God in the face of Jesus Christ how can you go back to normal? What is normal after that?

Yet, Normalcy, Safety, Security, these are the gods, the idols worshiped in our age, even in the Church.  Normalcy, safety, and security have little to do with being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

On the Sunday before the beginning of Lent, this text speaks to what it does mean to be a disciple, to be a student in the school of Jesus.  Fear is never the ultimate reality for the disciple; we are called to live beyond fear—and that’s difficult. To follow inevitably involves a cost. Therefore, it requires courage—courage to see, to look at, to acknowledge the radiance of God in the face of Jesus Christ—to not deny it—and then live from that moment with all its life-changing implications. 

In Marilynne Robinson’s brilliant novel, Gilead, we find the story of the Reverend John Ames, who, approaching the end of his life, writes to his young son about what it means to live a life in relation to the Holy, what it means to experience God.  John writes, “…the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?”[2]

Courage. In 1922, J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), of Peter Pan-fame, gave a speech to the students of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. As Rector of the University he spoke a word of encouragement to a generation of youth shattered and disillusioned by the Great War. “Courage is the thing,” he said. “All goes if courage goes.”[3]

But, where do we find such courage? How do we get the courage to get up, step out, live without fear and see the light of God’s presence shining in the face of Christ and then to live our lives boldly, courageously, from that light, as changed people, with lives given up all for the glory of God?  For, this is really what the depth of our souls long for more than anything else.  The ego is fearful. It wants normalcy, security, safety. But there’s more to you and me than our egos.  The soul, the human spirit wants life and love and adventure and service!

Do we have the courage to listen to him, to be disciples, to go where he leads? If we’re honest, the answer is the same for you and me: no. On our own we don’t. If we have to trust our inner resources to try to dredge up courage, then courage becomes a kind of works righteousness, whereby we seek to earn our salvation, acting as if God had nothing to do with it all, relying only on ourselves—and, relying on only ourselves, that’s a horrifying, terrifying way to live a life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the midst of their fear and terror and inadequacy, Jesus went over to his disciples down on the ground, he touched them and said: Get up. Get up. Get up. Don’t be afraid.

Get up and follow, free from binding fear, because the Lord of love has touched you and assures you that you can. Get up and follow, unconstrained by anxiety because his grace summons us to do so. The one who commands us also equips us with the courage, he encourages us to follow. Get up and do not be afraid because it’s the Lord who tells us so—and he can be trusted.

It’s the same Lord who invites us to come to his table.

The Last Supper by Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852 – 1929)

My former professor at Princeton Seminary, mentor and dear friend, James Loder (1931-2001), once said, “Perhaps only those who have once been partially blinded by the Truth—whether suddenly or gradually—come to the breath-taking realization that the One who sits at table and breaks bread and drinks wine with us is the One through whom and for whom all ten billion light years of creation, including our own come-lately, here-and-now existence, have their being.”[4]  

So, set your fear aside.  Share the bread of grace, drink the cup of his courage, which, together, allow us to listen to him and then frees us to follow and go wherever he wants to send us.

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[1] Here, I reflect the thought C. G. Jung (1875-1961) who insisted that an experience of the Holy or numinosum, or to use Jung’s term, the Self, “is always a defeat for the ego.” C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works, 14 par. 778. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).

[2] Marilynne Robinson, Gilead:A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2004), 245. Emphasis added.

[3] J. M. Barrie, Courage. The Rectorial Address delivered at St. Andrew’s University, May 3, 1922. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 40.

[4] James E. Loder, The Transforming Moment (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1990).  For further reading on Loder’s theological vision, see Kenneth E. Kovacs, The Relational Theology of JamesE. Loder:  Encounter and Conviction (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

Being Salt & Light

Matthew 5:13-20

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

9^th February 2014

Salt and light.  So ordinary.  So simple.  So basic.  Life is impossible without them.  Too little of each and we die.  Too much and we die.  The balance has to be just right.  Salt and light. These commonplace, ubiquitous elements of everyday life become elemental in Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God here in the Sermon on Mount (Matthew 5-7).

            Last week we looked at the opening verses of Jesus’ sermon, known as the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, blessed are the merciful and the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers, and blessed are you when you’re persecuted for the sake of justice, for then you’ll know the joys of the kingdom (see Matthew 5:1-12).  When we are serving the ends of the kingdom, that it may be “on earth as it is in heaven,” (Matthew 6:10), we discover what it means to be blessed. 

            And last week I stressed a point that’s essential for hearing Jesus here on salt and light.  It might come as a surprise to many that being a Christian has little to do with acting or trying to be good.  The Christian life is more than an ethic; it’s more than an ideal that we strive after.  It has little to do with our desire or even capacity to be good.  It was the wise theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) who made this clear when he said, “Action in accord with Christ does not originate in some ethical principal, but in the very person of Jesus Christ.”[1]  In other words, to be Christian means that we are following in the steps of a person who gives us a particular vision of what it means to be human, who shows us what it means to be children of God, what it means to be alive in the kingdom of God.  Following Jesus, aligning our vision with his, walking in his steps, his steps in ours, will lead us to behave in ways that the rest of society might consider the opposite of good, as strange, even odd.  It was Bonhoeffer’s commitment to God’s kingdom that led him to reject the false Christianity practiced by Nazi Germany, which eventually led him to his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, a role that cost Bonhoeffer his life. 

            To be clear, following Jesus will yield an ethic, a particular way of being in the world, but we don’t start there, we start with him.  In fact, for the Christian there is no ethic void of him; to have an ethic apart from Christ means we’re not following him. Trying to live Christ’s ethic without him will break us every time. The Sermon on the Mount and all its demands are designed to make us depend on God and one another.

            Salt: sodium chloride.  A mineral essential for life.  Homer (c. 8^th century BC) referred to it as “divine salt.”  Salt, rock salt, was certainly a godsend this past week as we contended with that crippling ice storm.  In many religions salt is holy.  It was required in the sacrifice rituals found in the Hebrew Scriptures (See Exodus 30:35 and Ezekiel 16:4.). Salt has been associated with water in the Christian experience.  In the Roman Catholic Church, salt mixed with water might be the origin of Holy Water.  Holy Water, with salt, is used in the consecration of churches.  In baptism, in some rites, salt is placed on an infant’s tongue.

            Divine salt is a preserving agent, the preserver of life.  In Jesus’ time, salt was very valuable because of its preserving qualities.  The Romans had salt works throughout their empire.  Salt roads, Via Salaria, were built to convey this precious commodity from production sites to markets.  The Roman legions were given money to purchase salt, from which we get our word “salary.”  Salt preserves.  Salt adds flavor—actually it enhances the flavor, draws it out.  Too much salt can overwhelm flavor, just the right amount allows our taste buds to explode with ecstasy.

            Light: electromagnetic radiation, visible and invisible, highly illusive yet constant, both particle and wave, essential for human life, for the life of the planet. It, too, is considered holy in many religions. God was described in our opening hymn as “light inaccessible hid from our eyes.”[2]  It’s a metaphor of wisdom, knowledge, and learning.  The psalmist said, “For with you [O God] is the fountain of life and in your light we see light” (Psalm 36:9).  Jesus himself said, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

            I can remember first learning the African-American spiritual, “This Little Light of Mine.”  It was in kindergarten at the First Presbyterian Church of North Arlington, NJ.  “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”  I remember learning the stanza, “Hide it under a bushel.” And the response? “NO!...I’m gonna let it shine.”  Then we came up with more stanzas, suggesting different ways we could hide the light. I remember one was, “Put it in my pocket.  NO!  I’m gonna let it shine.” 

            It’s a fun song, easy tune. Inspired, no doubt, by this text in Matthew.  But it gets something wrong, something fundamental:  The light isn’t mine.  It doesn’t belong to me.  I don’t have it, the light.  The light has me. And the degree to which I live in the light, I share in the light, and I am the light.  That’s maybe too much for a five-year-old to grasp, but that’s what Jesus is saying here to his students.

            You don’t have salt to give.  You are salt. 

            You don’t have light to share.  You are light. 

            When you’re following him, walking in his steps, allowing him to walk in you and you in him, you are salt.  Not just part of you, your entire existence.  When you’re following me, Jesus says, walking in my steps, allowing me to walk in you and you in me, you are light. When we align ourselves with Christ’s vision and the values of God’s kingdom we discover that our lives draw out and enhance the flavors of the world, we season the world and give it life; and we discover that our lives in alignment with God’s vision bring God’s light to dark places, offering hope.  Our capacity to draw out and enhance the flavors of the world is entirely contingent upon our status as disciples, our relationship with Christ.  Our ability to offer hope, illuminating the dark places in the world, is entirely contingent upon our status as disciples, our relationship with Christ.  

            Unless we are grounded in Christ, we can’t be salt.  Unless we’re alive within him, we can’t be light.  Apart from him we, we can’t be salt.  When we’re with him we are.  Apart from him we can’t be light.  When we’re with him, when he’s with us, we are light—naturally.

            It’s, then, in this context that we’re to understand the reference to salt losing its taste.  Technically speaking, this isn’t correct. Salt cannot lose its taste or properties.  But that misses the point.  And the point is this: without a kingdom vision the Church loses its saltiness and it doesn’t have much light to offer either. And when this happens, when a Church loses its vision, forgets why it exists, and what it is—salt and light—when this happens, what, then, are we good for?  Nothing.  Thrown out…trampled under foot, Jesus says (Matthew 5:13). Useless.

            But when we align our sights with Jesus’ vision and the values of the kingdom, when this becomes our work, our life, our joy, our passion, being God’s salt, God’s light—stand back and be amazed by what the Church can do! Then the world will stand back in awe of what the Church can do.  When we live as salt, people will take notice, people will know, they will see it and feel it, they will benefit from the way our life in him is enhancing and drawing out the flavors of the world, in tangible, life-altering ways. They will see us, but hopefully they’ll see more than us, they’ll see the one who has called us into the kingdom.  When we live as light, people will see and know and feel its impact, they will benefit from the way our life is shining—or struggling to shine—in the darkest reaches of the human condition, offering hope.  For, there are dark places that need to know God’s light.  And it’s your responsibility as light to shine there!

            And since we are that light, Jesus says, you can’t hide even if you try. As Bonhoeffer once said, so simply and beautifully, “It is the property of light to shine.”[3] To shine.  It cannot be hid.  We are called to live the light, so that others may see, see our actions as Jesus’ followers in the world, know that we are people of faith, disciples of Christ.  Don’t deny your saltiness; don’t run from this truth: your life is light.  When people see your kindness, when they see the depth of your love, when they see your courage, when they see your compassion and joy, when they see your acts of radical mercy, your struggle for peace, your passion for justice—do they know to whom you belong?  To be salt, to be light means we are visible.  As Bonhoeffer insisted, for the followers of Jesus to flee into invisibility is to deny the call.  “A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.”[4] Perhaps you’re thinking that it doesn’t matter too much if others know this about you, that you’re salt and light, only you need to know it.  But it does matter because when they see what God is doing in you and me and through us in the world then they will give praise—not to us—but to God!

            This is true for all of us.  Not some of us. Not just for ministers or priests. It’s for everyone who bears the name of Christ.  But it might be particularly true for those who are called to leadership in the church—ruling elders, deacons, trustees, who will be ordained and installed this morning.  It’s good to remember that our capacity to be salt and light is always contingent upon our life in Christ, our faithfulness to him. Through shared leadership, the burden and weight of these offices, they, together, help equip all of us in the church to remember who we are. We’re salty saints.  We’re brilliant, shining lights illuminating God’s goodness, reflecting praise and glory back to God.  Salty saints.  Shining lights.  Thanks be to God!

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, cited in Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), 61.

[2] Walter Chalmers Smith’s 1867 hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise,” set to the tune ST. DENIO.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Collier Books, 1963), 132.

[4] Bonhoeffer, 132.