Salt and Light - Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany

The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 5^th, Year of Our + Lord, 2023
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, SD
Salt and Light in the World – Matthew 5:13-20, 1^st  Corinthians 2:1-5

   Salt, and light.  Jesus says you, His disciples, you Christians, are the salt of
the earth, and you are the light of the world.  And the world needs you.  The world needs your saltiness and your light, for God has not revealed another way that the world can be saved from His righteous judgement, the destruction and casting out, about which He has been warning us, since Genesis.  The world needs our salt.  It needs our light.  But how precisely are we to understand being salt and light?  

   Our Gospel picks up today right where we left off last Sunday.  Last week we heard Jesus give His famous Beatitudes, those strange statements of blessing that begin the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus begins discussing blessedness a bit abstractly: “blessed are they…” Blessed are they who are poor in spirit, the meek, the pure in heart, you remember, right?  But at the end, just before today’s Gospel, Jesus gets pointed and personal:  “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

   Jesus’ very pointed “you” continues today.  Speaking to the disciples, and by extension to us who have been called into the same discipleship, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.”  The thing that makes disciples of Jesus salty is Jesus, His person and His work.  That is to say, the Good News that God in Christ Jesus has taken away the sin of the world, and gives to believers forgiveness and new life.  Trusting in this remarkable promise is what makes you a disciple of Jesus, and it is also what makes you valuable and useful in God’s plan.  Without this Gospel saltiness, you are of no lasting value, certainly no eternal value, neither to yourself, nor to the world. 

   Let me explain with some grammar.  I know you love it when I get all grammatical, and there is an interesting thing to note in this verse. 

A bit more literal translation is this:  You (that is, you disciples of Jesus Christ) you are the salt of the earth.  But if salt becomes tasteless, how will it be be salted? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.   

   How will it be salted?  Heard more literally, the question arises: what does the “it” refer to?  Does the “it” that needs to be salted refer to the disciples, who have lost their saltiness, or to the world?  Is Jesus asking “how can Christians who lose the Gospel be restored?” Or is He asking “how can the world be saved, made salty, if Christians lose the Gospel?”  Grammatically, the “it” could refer to the “salt,” that is, the saltiness of the disciples, or it could refer to the world, which needs to be salted to live. 

   Which is it?  Well, the Holy Spirit, working through the grammar of St. Matthew, doesn’t specify.  But that doesn’t matter so much, because both are true.  Christians who lose faith in the Gospel are no longer truly Christians, no longer disciples. And without Christians, the world has no chance to be salted, that is, to be saved.  Because God chooses to distribute His saving salt through His disciples, through His people, through His Church.  Christians who reject the Gospel, as well as those people of the world who have never believed it, are in the same predicament.  They are equally worthy of being thrown out and trampled under foot.  For without the Gospel of Jesus, without the salty Good News of His forgiving sacrifice, we are all still lost in our sin, and without hope. 

   It is the same with the light.  You Christians are the light of the world, but of course not because you generate your own saving light.  No, you are the light of the world because Christ, who is the true and foundational Light of the World, shines within you.  The first good work of the Christian and of the Church is to shine the light of Christ, that is to believe, repeat, proclaim and give praise and thanks to God for the Light of Life that shines from the Cross of Jesus.  Now, there are many more good works to come.  The commandments of God still have their place in the life of Christians, as we will see when we continue through the Sermon on the Mount next week, and hear Jesus sharpen the Law.  Jesus will equate murder with angry words.  He will say lustful thoughts are equally sinful  as physical acts of adultery.  Loving enemies, giving to the needy, fasting, trusting not in money, all these specific works to which all Christians are called, these are coming. 

   But first, you need salt within you, you need to let your light shine.  And these both connect to hearing and believing and confessing and celebrating the Good News of Christ crucified.  The Word of the Cross, despite how foolish and weak it appears to the world, and our own flesh, the Cross is revealed by the Holy Spirit to be the power and wisdom of God. 

   This is the Light that you have seen, that shines within you by faith, the Light which the world needs to see. 

   Imagine yourself lost in the dark.  It’s cold too, maybe really cold, too cold to stop moving, because if you do you could freeze to death.  You stumble along, maybe through deep snow, which penetrates your boots and starts to freeze your toes.  But you’re lost in the darkness; you don’t which way to go.  Your desperation mounts.  You long to see a light.  And why?  Because the light comes from a source, and that source is a sign of refuge.  Starlight at the top of a ridge that leads you out of the deep and deadly valley into which you’ve wandered.  A street lamp that leads you back into town.  A house in the woods, with a fireplace and a roof and warmth for your body.  If you are blessed to see such a light, your heart leaps, and your step quickens, you hurry forward, hoping to live.   

   God throughout the Bible testifies that such is the state of every person who does not have the light of Christ within them.  Now, to be sure, most people do not think they are lost in darkness.  Lucifer, the false light who seeks to lead souls away from Christ, he shines many artificial lights, to fool people into rejecting and ignoring the True Light.  And the True Light is hard to believe, shining as it does out of suffering and persecution and submission to evil that is the Cross. 

   So the world goes on, chasing false lights, like shiny gold and silver, or brightly increasing bank accounts.  Like the glimmer of worldly popularity, or the fantastical lights of escape that come from consuming, from consuming too much good food, or consuming chemicals, or taking in flickering images that distract our minds and hearts from our true darkness.  If you doubt that this darkness is real, go research the atrocities that are being committed by Russian soldiers today in Ukraine, or that have been committed by so many soldiers in every war.  In these horrors you will see the blackened truth that even the pursuit of darkness can become a guiding light for fallen men. 

   And so shining the Light of Christ comes at a cost.  Until a sinner lost in the darkness recognizes that darkness for what it is, he or she can only squint and cry out against the Light of Christ.  Unbelievers in Christ still believe.  They believe in something else, some other light is their god.  And if you tell me that the thing I believe in as god is actually nothing, and worse, it’s a tool of Satan and worthy to be trampled underfoot, well, I am likely become defensive and angry. 

   And so Christ and His Christians often suffer rejection and sometimes persecution, because the Light of Christ is exclusive.  Christ the Son of God outshines and destroys every false light.  And so we children of the Light will be made poor in spirit from time to time, as the world takes its anger at God out on us. 

   No matter.  Difficulties and even suffering for the sake of the Gospel will come.  But Christ will bring us through.  We continue to shine our light, we continue to hear, pray, confess, receive and rejoice in the Word of the Cross, first and foremost because it is our light and our life.  And, we can be sure of this: Even as the Holy Spirit keeps us in the Light, He is also drawing others to that same Light.  Here again we see that our other works, our righteous efforts in the world, our keeping of the commandments, our loving our neighbors and our enemies, these, although imperfect, are also part of the plan of attraction to the Light, the plan of salvation, that God has designed.   

   Now, as disciples of Jesus, our eyes will not stay focused on the things that
we do, or better to say, on the things that God does through us.  No, our eyes are always drawn back to the Light, the Light of the power and wisdom of the Cross, in which we see our Savior, and the unspeakable joy and beauty of our future.  For the Spirit is preparing for us to live in the Light of Christ, today, and tomorrow, and forever and ever, Amen.