Sunday, February 20, 2011

Perfection

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18 ; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23 ; Matthew 5:38-48
February 20, 2011

Sincere people of all faiths engage their scriptures, their sacred stories, their tradition, and their concept of transcendence in order to best discern how to live their lives. And, I would boldly contend, pretty much every faith tradition contains elements that place very difficult demands on adherents who take their religion seriously. Yet people seek to live out their faith, no matter how difficult at times, because they believe such a life is what’s best for them, for humanity, and for creation. And when we look at the major world religions, it isn’t hard to see that, whether Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist, when someone is living from the best of their teachings, amazing things happen.

Now, I don’t know all faith traditions intimately, but here’s my suspicion: it’s not just that every religion has difficult teachings, but I suspect the really hard parts of our faiths are often what, when lived out, are the most transformative…for individuals, humanity, and creation. Compassion for all living creatures, adherence to demanding religious practices, nonviolence in every way…these are at the heart of the various religions, and they are extremely challenging to live out, yet they have proven time and time again to bring life, goodness, peace, and beauty to the world.

Today we have one of our hard ones. In fact we’ve seen over the past few weeks that the entire Sermon on the Mount in Matthew contains many hard teachings. Most of us have chosen Christianity as our path – for many, varied reasons – and so we look to our scriptures for guidance on how to live, even when we know some of what is in there is extremely difficult and challenging. Today we get that classic Christian teaching that is surely one of the hardest: Love your enemies. Of course, the roots of this startling teaching go all the way back to the God of Israel – the God we encounter in the Hebrew Bible.

One of the most fundamental lines in Scripture is part of today’s reading from Leviticus. “Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them: Be holy, for I, Yahweh, your God am holy.” And this sentiment is reiterated in Matthew – be perfect, as your Creator God is perfect.” Both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures teach the same basic lesson: followers of God are expected to imitate God.

Scholars pretty well agree that the best way to translate the original Hebrew for holy is “other.” Part of what it means to say God is holy is that God is our alternative, our “other”, to the powers that be in our world – powers that act not from Grace and Righteousness, but from selfishness and greed. And just as God stands in contrast to how much of the world operates, so we too are to stand in contrast to the world at times.

The writer of Leviticus gives examples of the otherness Yahweh expects of us. “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart ….take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus continues the list: “Offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other as well... Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go for two miles. Love your enemies.”

“Love your enemies:” arguably Jesus’ toughest saying. It’s simple but far from simplistic. “Love your enemies.” Whatever did he mean by that? On its face it seems to be a contradiction in terms. Aren’t our enemies those people that we hate? Obviously, this is not an easy command to get our heads around. Figuring out what this commandment means is fraught with danger and opportunities for misinterpretations that lead to horrific consequences. Turn the other check, for example, has been used as a justification for expecting women to endure domestic violence. Yet there is much at stake: transformation is at stake. If we can learn what this means, we can seek to live it and thus bring transformation to the world.

Let’s start by noticing what Jesus did not say. He did not say, “Do not have any enemies.” If we are going to stand for anything, let alone the Christian faith, we are going to have opponents, those who disagree with us. Of course not everyone we disagree with is our enemy. For instance, many of my holidays are filled with disagreements with people, and I don’t call them enemies, I call them family.

To have an enemy is to escalate opposition. While loving our opponents is still reachable, loving our enemies is harder. There is more at stake. In fact, sometimes it seems everything is at stake, including personal and global security. Usually our enemies are not merely people we oppose, not even those we merely hate, but those hate because we fear them. And fear twists things. It is hard to look at what we fear, and hard to love what we can’t face. Still Jesus says to do it.

And to explain how to do it, Jesus draws on his own Jewish faith. Rabbi Jesus is doing a midrash on the torah text from the law code in Leviticus, a passage he returns to again and again, which he says contains the summation of the law in the golden rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But in this midrash he also takes the verse prior, which directs God’s people to refrain from revenge, and does the algebra to bring the two verses together into one concept: “No revenge” plus “love your neighbor,” means love your enemy. It is classical rabbinical teaching.

But, the world often uses different moral math. Harvard psychologist, David Gilbert has looked at mechanisms of revenge, retaliation and retribution. And, as he points out, these are all words that start with the prefix “re-” which means to do it again. In other words, the second punch is legally and morally different than the first punch. “He hit me first,” provides an acceptable rationale for retaliation. So the first equation in the moral math of revenge and retaliation is that “two wrongs make a right.”

The second equation is that retaliation must be proportional to be moral. Not only do we factor in, “She hit me first,” but “she hit me harder,” when we try to calculate whether or not retaliatory action is moral. We don’t need fancy law codes to figure this out, every small child instinctively knows this. But what if our instincts are dangerously flawed, which is what Gilbert’s neuro-psychological experiments indicate. What his data overwhelmingly concludes is that our sensory perceptions are skewed so that we cannot trust ourselves to be able to count the offenses against us correctly.

Through experiments, he showed that we generally only perceive the aggressive actions of others, not our own. So we see their punches, but the one’s we throw barely register. And we can only observe our own thoughts, not those of others, so our reasons for punching register loud and clear, but theirs do not. Similarly, we only register our own pain, not that of others. In experiments where volunteers were asked to tap each other with the exact force with which they were tapped, they could not do it, try their level best. They would always escalate the force because their perceptions were skewed. Dr. Gilbert concludes, “Research teaches us that our reasons and pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pain of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our (retaliatory) actions are a justifiable response.”

Examples of how this plays our are not hard to come by; from the backseat of any car headed on a family vacation, to just about any global conflict, come cries of, “He hit me first, she hit me harder.” Consider this: it’s hard to think of any partisan in the Middle East who has claimed to do anything but play defense according to their version of reality while, of course, training and stockpiling munitions for the day when revenge becomes inevitable.

The bottom line is that human beings, left to their own devices, are not wired to do the moral math that makes retaliation a successful strategy for justice. But we are not left to our own devices. Our scriptures call us to live out of that part of ourselves created in God’s image so we can transcend the moral math that only leads to never-ending cycles of violence and hate. For transformation to occur – if we are to break these entrenched cycles between enemies – we are to practice a faith that leads us to a different kind of moral equation based on who God is, not what the world often teaches. We are called to be holy – perfect. It’s hard, but that’s what brings transformation in our faith tradition.

Jesus words have always struck the realists among us as naive if taken at face value. Paul says it appears as foolishness to others. “If someone hits you on the cheek, let them hit you on the other cheek as well.” What about national defense? “Give to everyone who begs from you: and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again...If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?” Not only a bad pun, but a recipe for economic collapse. “Do not judge and you will not be judged...” Now he’s doing away with the justice system. No, we realists shake our heads, he must be speaking metaphorically. Or we say, he is speaking spiritually, about heaven, this is the way the pie in the sky will be sliced and served, this is not a strategy for here and now.

But suppose Jesus meant it? Suppose Jesus didn’t need to wait for a Harvard psychologist to tell him that tit for tat retaliation doesn’t work. Suppose he really means that we are to love our enemies. And I believe he meant it. I also believe Jesus’ spirituality was always tethered to this world, and so is something to which we can connect in real and practical ways.

Throughout my journey as a Christian, attempting to live what Jesus taught, I have found myself arguing with these verses. After all, I am a realist. I have found myself wrestling with these verses like Jacob wrestling with some muscular, yet spiritual angel, hoping that I might force a blessing out of them. And I think I have, but like Jacob, it is not without a cost.

What I have decided is that I am not spiritually and morally advanced enough yet to fully grasp these verses. The consequences I can envision of following this teaching can seem to me at times as potentially as destructive as the consequences of not following them. But, I can begin to grasp them. I’m not a master, but a novice in the art and discipline of peacemaking. I’m not perfect. I’m not holy like God is holy. But I have chosen to trust that our Christians scriptures will, if lived out, bring about the world Jesus sought and the world for which we yearn. And I can get on board with the idea that as I seek to follow the path I have chosen, I am being perfected…the Holy Spirit is working in me to bring out, more and more, the image of God.

I can take the first baby steps towards love of enemy. I can, for example, set a bottom line. I may not be able to love the terrorists, but I can say that I will oppose torturing those who have been accused of terrorism. I may not know fully what Jesus meant by love your enemies, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean short-shackle, sexually humiliate, subject them to sensory deprivation, simulate drowning them or threaten their families.

There have been people throughout history who have been morally advanced – who have, in my opinion, fashioned a holy life – in all faith traditions. People like Gandhi, MLK Jr., Albert Einstein, the Dali Lama, Mother Teresa – the names come easily to our heads. These people did not shy away from the most difficult teachings of their faith tradition, and we can all see what a difference it made for the world. It’s easy to get discouraged by comparing our lives to theirs, not to mention comparing our lives to Jesus. But instead, by looking at their lives, we can recognize the value of teachings like “love your enemies,” and be motivated to pursue a holy life, no matter how odd or foolish it appears to others, or even seems to us at times.

We are not perfect – and I don’t think Matthew meant that we are to be perfect in the sense that we never make mistakes, never have a bad thought, or do the wrong thing. We can strive to be holy – to live by different values than those of retaliation, revenge, and retribution. We have chosen the Christian path, and that path sometimes demands a lot from us. But we are made in God’s image – in the image of the God who we see embodied in the person of Jesus – Jesus who forgave his enemies for torturing him to death; Jesus who knew that retaliation is an endless cycle, a spiral downward into hell, and so on the cross, he said “no” once and for all. The possibility for us to do the same lives in each of us simply because of who God is and because we are made in God’s image. We are made to be holy – to be perfect as our creator God is perfect. Amen.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

The Law of Relationship

Matthew 5:21-42
February 13, 2011

In the strange world of church calendars, with Lent starting so late this year, we get to hear more of Jesus’ sermon on the mount than we usually do. It’s been 9, maybe 12, years since this passage today has been in the lectionary. Because of this, I think, most of us really only remember the beginning of this chapters-long sermon: blessed are the poor, the meek, the peacemakers and so on. After all, we do get to hear that part with fair regularity in the church. And for the most part, the beginning of the sermon feels uplifting – it’s a vision of those who are down trodden in the present receiving something so much better when the world Jesus envisioned is realized. When you read on, however, the sermon gets more and more challenging.

Last week we were told Jesus said that not only should we obey all 613 commandments of the Torah, but we should do even more…obey the prophets who call us to a life of service to the poor and outcast. Pretty demanding. Next week, just to give you something to look forward to, we get to hear that we should love our enemies and, my personal favorite, that we are to be perfect just as God is perfect. And then there’s today. Jesus continues to demand more than most of us can deliver. He takes some of the laws from the Torah and basically soups them up.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.”
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

It’s the 10 commandments…only harder.

As someone in our bible study pointed out, it feels like we should actually get some Christian kudos for having feelings of anger, attraction, and hatred but not acting on them. Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t seem inclined that way. He seems to hold us to a standard that is basically unattainable, not to mention unimaginable – plucking out our eyes and cutting off limbs when we mess up?! Like the snow-plow-produced mound at the bottom of my driveway, I wish these passages would magically disappear.

As a pastor, it doesn’t make sense to me to preach to this congregation that you need to beat yourselves up for your feelings of anger, for example, because from what I see, you all do pretty well on the outward action thing. Not a lot of murdering going on here. So, I’m left wondering if this passage is best left out of the lectionary altogether. It can’t really be helpful to us in the life of faith, can it?

As I read and re-read this passage this week, I remembered that the author of the gospel of Matthew was writing to very specific people living 5 – 6 decades after Jesus’ death. In other words, the author wasn’t writing to us. There is no doubt that this is an important sermon Matthew shares with his readers. But this sermon can only have meaning for us if we first remind ourselves to whom Matthew was originally directing these words. In some ways the audience is very much like us, but in other ways they are radically different. And so, what the author says – the words he chooses and examples he uses – in order to make his point are words and examples that might actually cause us to miss the point today because of those significant differences between then and now.

In Matthew’s day, people were owned. Slaves and women were property – and so they were treated as such. It was objectification in the extreme. Now, to be sure, the Israelites, through their 613 commandments, were called to a different way of treating slaves and women. Much of the Torah law is meant to address injustices exactly like those committed against slaves and women. But following the letter of the law did not go far enough for Jesus because it wasn’t ultimately working for those who were most vulnerable. The way people were following these laws did not seem to address the way people viewed slaves and women. It did not affect attitudes, and so slaves and women were still not ultimately treated as human beings.

That is quite different from our reality today. It’s true that all of us can slip into objectifying others for all sorts of reasons. But, it’s just not comparable. We don’t own people. In addition, our list of “laws” is different. Our laws aren’t exactly written down, but most of us know them – be kind and compassionate, welcome people who come through our doors, go to church, give generously to those in need, eat casseroles on the 3rd Sunday. Our context, our understanding of what it means to be religious, is just not the same as those to whom Jesus was speaking and Matthew was writing 2000 years ago.

So, we have to look behind the specifics in this passage to get at the intention. The larger point of Jesus’ life, Matthew believes, is that following the law is not about legalism. In fact, legalistically following the law the law wasn’t doing what it was meant to do. Matthew is writing to those in the church who follow the letter of the law, but still have unjust and unreconciled relationships of some kind; he is wanting them to see these relationships must change. He tells them, through Jesus’ sermon, when the law is followed “correctly”, when it is the spirit – not the letter – of the law the drives actions, relationships will be just and will be reconciled.

This is why, in Jesus’ first reworking of the commandments – the one about how to bring your offering to God – he makes it clear that, even though it would comply with the law, you can’t go through the religious exercise of bringing your offering without first reconciling with your brother or sister. This is why you can’t just divorce your wife because you want to – because she is not, for example, producing sons for you – even though the law says you can. That is treating her like property. Jesus is pointing past the insufficient letter of the law to the spirit – and the spirit is all about relationships, and right relationship comes from the heart – not the law.

In refocusing the laws to center on relationship, we see that Jesus actually wants more for us; not necessarily more from us. He wants us to regard others as God regards others and therefore to treat them accordingly. In the same way, Jesus wants for us to be regarded by others as God regards us. Jesus is calling us to look beyond the law and see its goal and end: the life, welfare, and health of all humanity. In this way Jesus’ hope for us a life in God's kingdom as constituted not by obeying laws but rather by holding the welfare of our neighbors close to our hearts while trusting that they are doing the same for us.

As I said earlier, we are not struggling with the same issues as the church folks in the 1st century. They needed to reconcile relationships by ending the unjust practice of seeing some people as property. But that leaves the question: What is the equivalent for us? What are our issues to which this passage speaks? I think the breech of right relationship is not as much about oppressing those we know as it is about keeping a distance from those we don’t know.

We are less likely to be in relationships that objectify as we are to avoid relationships with those unlike us – wit those most vulnerable to life’s whims. We can appear to keep our religious laws without ever seeing or spending time with people who suffer from poverty or violence. We can keep our distance from people who live in our own town but do not frequent the same places…do not run in the same circles. We can give money to help the poor – something we know we are called to do as people who follow Jesus – but never actually meet anyone who goes to Mica. In other words, we can follow the religious laws without living in relationship with our all of our brothers and sisters with whom we are not reconciled.

I don’t think this breech in relationships – this distance we keep between us and the most vulnerable in our community – exists for nefarious reasons. I don’t think we are bad people with malicious intent. I think things like busyness, and family and work demands prevent us from forging and nurturing relationships with those still not served by our religious laws.

Maybe if Jesus were here today, one of his commandments to us would go something like this: “You have heard it said, honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. But I say to you, honor the Sabbath by turning away from the busyness, and the demands, and toward people from whom you feel distant.” It’s not just about Sunday – not just about the religious practice. In some ways Sunday is the starting point – as Jesus says, the law can be good – we should still practice the Sabbath in the way we already are by going to worship – Sabbath is the moment when we stop and take a deep breath of the spirit of God, cease our “normal” work, and refocus. But it’s so much more than that. If we stop there, we may have fulfilled the letter of the law – but we’re missing the spirit. We need to remember those who aren’t able to rest – to have Sabbath – and find ways to give them rest. Sabbath should include giving Sabbath to others.

The problem is, if we can’t see people, if we can’t see what their lives look like and feel what their lives feel like, our practice of Sabbath will forever remain unconnected to their need for Sabbath. If we stay distant, if we avoid the suffering of others because we don’t have the time, the energy, or the inclination, we aren’t likely to sense how much our brothers and sisters need rest.

You have heard it said, “honor the Sabbath and keep it holy,” but I say to you, “if even one of your brothers or sisters is tired and run down, you have not kept the Sabbath holy as your creator God intended.”

The law is not an end in and of itself. The law is meant to form us into people who will live in reconciled and right relationships with one another. Our practice of religion should not just ban us from certain actions, but it should make us less likely to harbor attitudes and feelings that lead to suffering for others. I tell you, Jesus said, the law is not just about avoiding doing the wrong thing, it is about becoming more loving and more aware people. It is about seeing everyone as God sees them. You can’t legislate that. Rules alone will not make our relationships holy and right.

Look at Jesus’ life. His understanding of following the law included healing someone who was suffering on the Sabbath, even though the letter of the law said that was wrong. The spirit is focused on relationships – on healing, reconciling, restoring people. The law helps us, but it is not enough. It takes a heart centered on the God of compassion in order for us to live the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is, in the end, the only law that can lead us in our relationships with all of our brothers and sisters. Amen.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

This Little Light of Mine

Matthew 5:
February 6, 2011


One of the songs we often sing in Sunday school is, “This Little Light of Mine.” You surely know it. It is a classic kids Sunday school song. It’s SO simple, repetitive in tune and lyrics, so it’s perfect for kids. But, I have a confession: I like it too. Even though it’s simple and repetitive, I think the tune is catchy. But most of all I’m a big fan of the lyrics. I want us to encourage our children to let their lights shine in this world. I want them to not let the world blow it out, or to hide it under a bushel. When I hear them singing this song, I imagine them as strong people in the world, willing to live lives that challenge the status quo, living their values out loud with the courage to sometimes stand alone in that. I want them to be people who are a light of hope for others – especially those who need it most. I really want their light to shine.

I don’t know what was in Harry Dixon Loe’s mind when he wrote the lyrics, but I think part of the intent of the song is for the kids to think, “even though my light is small – because I’m a small person – I can already let it shine.” “Little” light, means – I’m pretty sure – the light of little people. Even if this wasn’t Loes’ intent, that’s how we hear it now. But with that diminutive word, “little”, and the fact that it’s so ingrained in our heads that it’s a children’s song, I worry that we believe this is only advice for children. In this passage, Jesus tells the disciples they are the light of the world. This is a very adult message. Letting our lights shine is as serious as it gets…it’s all about discipleship.

And according to our reading this morning, letting your light shine means you follow the law – every part of the law down to the jots and tittles. Right? That’s what it says – that’s what Jesus says. Keep the commandments – all of them. He says it right after telling the disciples to let their light shine. In fact, he says, following every commandment – all of the Torah – makes you righteous.

Righteousness is kind of a scary word: sometimes it carries with it negative connotations of someone thinking they are “holier than thou”, thinking they are right and others are wrong. It conjures up images of someone condemning others for not being moral, not living up to a standard. We might think being righteous is the same as being devout in an overly religious way. Many of us also might feel that we fall short of being righteous – it is a standard we don’t, maybe can’t, meet. Think about it: when we describe the things we value about one another in this church, the words we use are compassionate, kind, generous, servant. We don’t really call each other, or see one another as, righteous.

Yet Jesus calls us to be righteous. When that word is used in the bible, what does it mean? Does it mean holier than thou, devout, moralistic, legalist? Well, it depends on who’s saying it.

When the Pharisees said people should be righteous, they meant you were to follow all the rules – all the 613 commandments in the Torah. Righteousness, they believed, had everything to do with obeying the Torah. Further, they believed it couldn’t be more clear what the laws are. Basically there was a list. If you did everything on the list, you were righteous, if you didn’t you were, well, unrighteous. Follow the law; that’s what it means to be a good person, what God wants.

But is that what Jesus meant when he said we should be righteous? In this passage he’s trying to contrast something for the disciples. And it’s not a contrast between good people and bad people. Jesus knows the Pharisees are trying. So why isn’t what they are doing – following all the commandments and requiring others to do that same – exactly what Jesus expects when he says anyone who breaks even one of the commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven?

At first glance, it appears Jesus agrees with the Pharisees. “I have come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.” The law is good, he says. Follow it and you will be righteous. Yet he thinks the Pharisees have it wrong, somehow. He challenges them – he tells his disciples that they need to be more righteous than the Pharisees. That they need to follow every commandment.

I don’t think Jesus thought the entire Torah law should be thrown out…that religious people shouldn’t try to follow the law. Jesus wasn’t anti-religion. He was Jewish to the core. He wasn’t trying to start a new religion or to throw Judaism out. He wanted people to be Jewish – very Jewish. He wanted people to be who Yahweh – the God of Israel – wanted them to be.

I think when Jesus says the Pharisees aren’t getting it, he was saying that the Pharisees were missing some very important laws from their list, as well as misunderstanding the laws they were already following. Jesus doesn’t just say he has come to fulfill the law, he says, “I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets.” Jesus adds the prophets to the law – which is no small addition. The prophets are not a part of the Torah, yet they were clearly a part of the sacred, authoritative texts for Jesus. And one of the things the prophets were always doing was interpreting the law for the people. They were correcting them when they wandered from the Torah – and their corrections always centered on how the least of society were being treated.

In another passage from our lectionary today that I didn’t have David read, the prophet Isaiah is reinterpreting the laws about fasting for people. It seems like they are following the laws of the Torah when it came to fasting. They are doing every on the list. But they were missing something…an important part of God’s law and so they were practicing fasting in the wrong way. Here is a portion of that passage. God is speaking to the people who are fasting, the people who believed they were following the law:

“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. 4Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 6Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless and poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

Sure, God says, fast, but it’s only true fasting – it’s only obeying the laws of Torah – if it leads to caring for the poor, the oppressed, the homeless. Righteousness to Jesus means justice – it means the justice of which the prophets spoke.

If this is the case, what does it mean for us today – to follow the law, to be righteous? Look around, justice is not always the order of the day. The world could use our light. Our righteousness. So many people believe they are being religious, following the rules, doing what Christians are supposed to do. But are we completely missing the boat?

We need to constantly reinterpret our laws – our scriptures – in such a way that following them leads to justice. We already are always interpreting our scriptures, just like the prophets, just like the Pharisees, just like Jesus. But we have to apply a test – the test of the prophets who called for justice. But, if our interpretations don’t pass the test of righteousness as Jesus saw it, then they are wrong.

Our lights shine not when we are holier than thou or follow all the rules of the church and the letter of the law in the bible. Our lights shine when what we do – here in worship in our daily Christian practices lead to justice.

Jesus is Jewish – he is not breaking from his religion when he reinterprets the Torah anymore than we cease to be Christians when we reinterpret the bible today. The goal is to always be evaluating whether our understanding of the law, of the gospel, of Paul’s instructions to the church lead to oppression or to life for the least and the marginalized.

The difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was not between old and new covenant, or between law and law-lessness. It certainly wasn’t between Jewish and non-Jewish. It was a difference of interpretation of their scriptures. When interpreted rightly – righteously – interpretation should lead to freedom, release, hope, healing. The same should be true of our interpretations of the bible and our understandings of Jesus’ life. Being light to the world, being salt of the earth, is about interpreting our scriptures in such a way that the practice of religion leads to righteousness…justice.

Now, I suspect many of us feel more sympathy with the children’s song than we like to admit. Even if we understand that letting our light shine means seeking justice for others and the world, we feel like our lights are little. We feel like we don’t shine bright enough to make a difference. We don’t trust that our light is needed. $10 here and a gas voucher there doesn’t seem to make a difference: is this really what Jesus had in mind? That doesn’t sound like a lot of light in a fairly dark world.

But remember, Jesus was talking to the disciples – not just one person. And when Matthew included this in his gospel, he wants his readers to understand that Jesus is talking to them…as a church. Matthew is concerned with the church…with what the church is in this world. Is it can be a city on the hill shining brightly with God’s light, or it can be an oppressive religion that leaves people poor and dying. He’s not really concerned with individuals except as they contribute to the whole.

When we, in whatever small way we can, let our lights shine as Jesus understood it, our light is seen by others. But what Matthew is getting at is much, much bigger than that. He’s talking about religion – the whole church – all disciples being righteous. When we join together as a church to fulfill the law and the prophets, our light shines brightly. It shines as a beacon of justice and hope to people living in poverty in this city, for example. We become, in Matthew’s words, the city of God. When we are the city of God, emanating light to the world, people will flock to us for help, compassion, and justice. And we will know we are fulfilling the law and the prophets.

Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.” May that be so for us. May we shine forth with justice and hope for people living in darkness. May our little lights join together and become the light of God, in this time and in this place. Amen.