The Rev. Maggie Silton
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
Durham, NC
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany,
Year
A
February 5, 2017
Matthew 5:
13-20
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
When
my children were preschoolers in the 1980s building children’s self-esteem was
considered very important. If you
too had a preschooler at that time, or if you were a preschooler yourself, you
might remember this. TV
shows such as Sesame Street and Mister
Rogers Neighborhood were geared to
nurturing self-esteem. The message
to children was, in the words of Fred Rogers’ song, “You Are Special.” The preschool that my children attended
designated a week for each child in the class to be Student of the Week. The school sent home a piece of poster
board, and the parent was supposed to fill it with pictures of the child and
his or her family. I still
remember my first encounter with this assignment. It was a good thing my daughter was happy about it, because
I was less than enthusiastic about pulling pictures out of an album that had
taken me many hours to put together. Remember, this was before the age of
digital photos. I suppose if I’d
been a super mom I’d have planned better and had extra pictures made just for
that purpose. No such luck. Still, when we’d finished mounting her
pictures, Kate was thrilled with the result. She toddled off to school with her poster, and at the end of
her week, she brought home her poster and her Student of the Week construction
paper crown. Life went on. We repeated the exercise a year
later. I have no idea how much
this activity made her feel good about herself. What I didn’t think about then, but what I invite you to
think about today, is the question of where our self-worth really comes from.
As Christians, we
have a somewhat different take on self-worth than the secular world. We understand our self-worth to come
from God—we are God’s children, and we are made in God’s image. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need
reminding from time to time, as we see Jesus do in today’s lesson from
Matthew’s gospel. This reminder isn’t given to make us feel good about
ourselves. We’re reminded so that
we can be who God created us to be.
Jesus first says
to the crowd, “You are the salt of the earth.” We need to talk about what he meant by “salt of the earth”
for a moment. The way we
understand this phrase is not the way Jesus understood it. When we say that someone is the salt of
the earth, we usually mean to say that they are real, down to earth, unpretentious
people. It is definitely a
compliment. But Jesus meant to say
much more than that. Salt had a
different meaning for Jesus than it has for us. Today we think of salt as a very common and easily available
substance. Salt is the stuff in
the shaker on our tables at home and in restaurants. Salt may have a negative connotation for us if our doctor
has told us we must avoid it.
That’s what salt is for us in our time. But in the ancient world, salt was one of the most valuable
substances there was. It was even
used as currency; salt was that valuable.
Salt made it possible to preserve food, which in turn made it possible
for people to progress from a hand to mouth existence to a more settled
life. It’s not too big a stretch
to say that salt made civilization possible. So when Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth,” he told
the people that they were of very great value indeed.
Jesus didn’t stop
there. He went on to say, “You are
the light of the world.” Now to
say that someone is the light of the world is unmistakably a very high
compliment indeed. If we say we
love someone very much, we might very well say that he or she is the light of
our life. I think most of us can
name at least one person who is the light of our life. If we’ve been lucky we know we’re the
light in someone’s life too. Take
a moment to feel how powerful that idea is. It affects us in our very souls.
Now let’s go in a theological direction
and take a quick look at what light is in the Bible. In the very beginning of the creation story in Genesis,
God’s first act is to say, “Let there be light.” Light is God’s presence in the world. When Jesus says to us, “You are the light
of the world,” he tells us that we too are God’s presence in the world. Just take a second or two to think
about that. Those words hold
amazing weight and power. Those
words hold responsibility as well.
Jesus makes it
very clear that that we need to do something
with this incredible worth God has invested in us. It isn’t enough just to sit there and be pleased with
ourselves. It isn’t even enough to huddle into our little family or circle of
friends or even our church community and be pleased with each other. We can’t hide this light under the
bushel basket; we can’t let our God-given saltiness go to waste. Jesus tells us we need to keep that
salt salty. Jesus tells us to let
our light shine.
Jesus words sound
fairly simple in the saying but for us they might not be so simple in the
living. For one thing, we might
not feel like we are, deep down, either the salt of the earth or the light of
the world. Maybe we haven’t been
treated like we are people of value.
Maybe our early experiences in our families, in our schools, and in our
churches didn’t leave us feeling like we are the people of value who Jesus says
we are. I have a story to share
about someone I knew who discovered her saltiness and her light, and who worked
hard to bring out those qualities in others.
I first met Donna
Bradley—this is her real name—at the IFC Community Kitchen in Chapel Hill,
where I still serve as a volunteer chaplain, and where Donna served until her
too-early death last year. Donna
had come into IFC years earlier as a client at the Women’s Shelter. At that point Donna was pretty broken,
alcohol dependent, and though she mightn’t have used these same words, had no
sense that she was the salt of the earth or the light of the world. IFC’s services and a recovery program
helped Donna get clean and sober and recover her sense of worth as a human
being. By the time I met Donna she
was the manager of the Community Kitchen and responsible along with her staff
and volunteers for providing meals for 120 or so people served at the kitchen
every day.
As the kitchen’s
volunteer chaplain I quickly observed that Donna did much more than plan, cook,
and serve meals. Donna had a
reputation for toughness with everyone; with those who knew her well, she had a
reputation for tough love. It
didn’t take long to see that by insisting that the shelter clients who were
assigned chores actually did them, she helped them live up to their
potential. She insisted that those
who ate in the Community Kitchen’s dining room treat each other with respect. Donna also insisted that people treat
themselves with respect as well. I
watched her give many a pep talk to shelter and kitchen clients going out on
job interviews. I watched her
share her own experience with getting sober and convince her listener that if
she could do it, so could they.
Donna helped to restore a belief in self-worth to many folks who didn’t
believe they were worth anything at all.
Without doing it consciously, Donna let people know that they had the
qualities of salt and light that Jesus talked about in our reading from
Matthew’s gospel. Without doing it
consciously Donna helped people let their light shine in the world.
I
realize that in the world’s eyes, the people who eat free lunches in community
kitchens don’t appear to hold the qualities of light or salt. Those of us who enjoy much greater
privilege might have a hard time seeing the light of the world or the salt of
the earth in the poorest members of our society; we may even have a hard time
seeing those qualities in ourselves.
But if we glance back to last week’s gospel reading from earlier in the
same chapter, we will see that these are indeed the very people Jesus is
talking about. Didn’t he say,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit?”
Didn’t he say, “Blessed are the meek?” Didn’t he also say, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness?”
My prayer for us
today is that we might live into our God-given salt and light. I pray that we might value this great
gift that comes to us from God through Jesus. So instead of hoarding that salt
in the cupboard, sprinkle it around and let it bring out the flavor of those
around us. Instead of hiding that
light under a basket, let it shine and help find the light in others. Let us be that city on a hill, a place where
our light shines and a safe place where the light of all of us, especially the
least among us, may shine too.
Amen.
