Matthew 5, 13—16 1st November 2009.
It’s All Saints Day, and we are All Saints. Once I was at a
church not a million miles from here, sitting in a pew, on the
day of that church’s special saint’s day, when the vicar took us
all by surprise and said, Put your hand up if you’re a saint.
After a moment’s hesitation I cautiously put my hand in the air.
Nobody else moved a muscle. Anyone with a vivid
imagination—like mine---could almost hear hisses behind me. I
was getting looks that said, Who does he think he is, Francis of
Assissi?
After the service the vicar came up and said that privately, he
agreed with me. In the Bible, he said, there is no difference
between “saints” and the term used in more modern
translations, “the Lord’s people”. Moreover the Bible
encourages us to trust, with certain reservations, that we do
come under that heading, we are promised that we are accepted
by God. So if we are serious disciples, it’s not presumptious to
say so.
Being one of the Lord’s people, or saints (those embarked on a
process of gradual sanctification) means we must take the
teachings of Jesus seriously. We only have time to-night for one
example. In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says to his disciples, “you
are the salt of the earth”. It’s not meant to be a compliment; it
did not then mean, as it might now,
“you really are the type of person to brighten up my birthday
party with your wit and charm”. No, it’s an instruction.
Jesus knew about the preservative power of salt. In the days
before fridges, keeping meat fresh was a real challenge, and salt
was the answer. A jar of salt would do no good at all, though, if
it was kept on a high kitchen shelf, well away from the food. It
was meant to be MIXED IN. Jesus wanted his disciples to mix
with other people in the world, and not withdraw into a
Christian ghetto all the time.
How can anybody be a preservative? Sometimes we notice how
the arrival of one new individual in a small community, such as
an open plan office at work, an army unit or a church cell
group, changes the behaviour of the whole group. Not by
ordering people about, but by how they live.
To many of us, mixing with other people can be a problem. It’s
the unspoken snag about Monday mornings. There is always
something wrong with the people we share an office with, have
you noticed?
In the late sixties I shared an office with two Maoist lecturers; it
was a time when revolution was in the air. These guys wanted to
shoot everyone with an American visa stamp on their passport,
and that included me. Although one of them later changed his
mind. He expressed a preference for grenades.
Some jobs do not offer many opportunities to mingle; long-
distance truck drivers, home-workers, night-watchmen, and in
the olden days, lighthouse keepers.
Retired people too can escape. We can spend all our time in
pleasant congenial company. Or watch Sky Sports. Or we may
have so many church commitments that there isn’t time to be
salt in the world outside.
Jesus says something even more curious, in verse 13, “if the salt
loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer
good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by
men”. What does he mean? How can salt possibly lose its taste?
I’m a chemist, I know the chemical structure of salt and I know
real salt always tastes the same.
The explanation was that salt in Jesus’ time was not pure.
Mining technology of a sort did exist ---Joseph of Arimathea is
thought to have been a mining engineer – but the Hebrews got
their salt by simply leading sea water into great pits, and then
letting all the water evaporate in the hot sun, until only the salt
was left.
It could be light blue, dark blue, or pink, depending on the
trace impurities you sometimes get in sea water, and on the
amount of sand.
The salt might be mixed with other cheaper minerals to make it
look as if you were getting more for your money.
Cocaine dealers do the same sort of thing today; some of their
additives can give you cancer. I’m going to keep clear of it.
In the nineteenth century pepper used to be adulterated with
ground glass, right here in England, to increase profits. The
glass was no good for sensitive stomachs.
So the problem in Jesus’ day was that if a large pile of impure
salt was left out for a few days and got wet, it would still look
OK, but the active ingredient, the salt, would have been washed
out, because it dissolves easily in water. So the stuff became
useless as a preservative, and the food would go bad.
Suppose we were trying to keep our food fresh while crossing
the Atlantic in the 18th century in a small ship, we would surely
agree with what Jesus said. If we bought a dodgy barrel of salt
in a foreign port---I’m assuming that only foreigners are
dishonest, of course---we’d notice and say, chuck it overboard.
Jesus goes on in verse 14: “You are the light of the world”.
We sometimes call Jesus himself the Light of the World,
especially after seeing Holman Hunt’s famous painting of that
name, but he turns it round to say, You too can be the light of
the world.
Light shows us what is happening in dark places. That’s why
we have a Freedom of Information Act. Light makes it possible
for honest people to function in society, and it discourages
wrongdoing. There are countries where it is very difficult to
flourish as an honest citizen. No-one really knows what is
happening.
Verse 14 continues, “A city on a hill cannot be hidden; neither
do people light a lamp, and put it under a bowl. Instead they
put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
“In the same way”, Jesus continues, “let your light shine before
men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father
in heaven”.
Isn’t there something rather odd about this? Because in
Matthew six, Jesus says the opposite; verse five:
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love
to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners, to
be seen by men.
“I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But
when you pray, go into your room, close your door and pray to
your Father who is unseen”.
So how do we explain this apparent contradiction? Is Jesus just
making life impossible for us with his conflicting commands?
The difference is surely the motive. The hypocrites pray on the
street corners, we are told, TO BE SEEN BY MEN.
The good Christian does what he does SO THAT OTHERS
WILL BENEFIT AND PRAISE THEIR FATHER IN
HEAVEN.
It’s a tricky balancing act. The Pharisees thought sincerely that
they were being good witnesses by praying in a public place;
they were setting an example to the coarser elements in society;
and remember modern church groups including some of us
march through the streets of Worcester at Easter. Motive is
what matters.
Think now about the street lights in Worcester. Most of the
city’s streets have adequate lighting, in fact there is enough to
cause amateur astronomers difficulty with light pollution.
Whereas in Hallow where I live, you can’t go out at night and
walk in the street in winter without a torch, or you will trip
over a kerb stone and need hip surgery.
What if all the street lights in Worcester were to be unplugged,
taken away and grouped together around the Cathedral
roundabout? The Cathedral roundabout would certainly be
very spectacular.
Honest citizens would visit without fear. Crime would move
away. But the Deansway would be dark, because there would be
no lights at all; a good hunting-ground for muggers lying in
wait for our Evensong congregation to emerge at six one winter
night. The car parks would be dodgy at night.
Foregate Street would be full of pickpockets. People would trip
over stray dogs in Farrier Street, and the good citizens of Shrub
Hill would see a rise in auto-crime.
Yet that’s very like the situation churches are in. We need both
to mix and to communicate.
The Bible says we SHOULD meet together regularly, but it’s a
matter of getting the balance right.
“Being salt in the world” means spending time and energy on
tiresome people who in most cases do not even acknowledge
God. “She’ll never join our church, so why bother?” The
answer is, Jesus told us to.
People can become very hardened as a result of life’s
experiences, unless their hearts are softened by love.
I am not one of life’s most sensitive people, yet even I can see
that the way we live in the 21st-century brings a lot of pain, and
does not encourage love and commitment. If people have never
experienced love, they won’t have much idea how to give it.
They won’t find it easy to picture a loving heavenly father
either. We can see the damage all around us.
The other day I went to a club meeting in a pub; I arrived late,
and had to sit with people I didn’t know. The woman who sat
next to me was aged about 40, and visibly distressed.
She ordered a soup and a roll, and a salad. She never took a
single mouthful of food in the entire two hours. It was all left
untouched.
Why? She said her husband had just walked out for good, last
Thursday. He had lost his job, after they’d had 15 years of
blissfully happy marriage.
He became depressed because there were no more jobs
available in the area in the recession.
So he had taken to drink, and a few other things, and one day
he said he was going to leave. He summoned the two children
and told them he was off.
Then he left, and telephoned his wife the next day to reassure
her that he had dealt with the children very skilfully; it had all
gone very well, he said, and there would be no more problems,
no tears.
The woman then said, “You know I spent the whole of last night
trying to stem the flow of my 11-year old daughter’s sobbing,
that terrible high-pitched inconsolable type of sobbing, that
comes with grief.
“She has lost the only person capable of convincing her that in a
man’s eyes, she was not ugly;” and she continued, “I expect I
shall lose another night’s sleep in the same way tonight”.
We can shrug our shoulders and say, It’s no big deal. It’s the
way people live nowadays. It’s so common that people will
confide in a complete stranger.
Yet how will that daughter grow up? How will she react if she
comes to church one day and hears us sing, “Great is thy
faithfulness, O God my Father”? Will she associate fathers with
faithfulness?
As you say, it’s nothing unusual. Millions grow up damaged by
their experiences, and they don’t even realise it. I guess Jesus
wants us to try a bit of damage limitation.
Most of Jesus’ ministry did not consist of preaching, it was
simply conversation. One to one. We can all do it. We’re told
four out of ten people in England are determined never to enter
a church except in a box. So preachers can’t reach them, but we
can! If we do nothing more than learn a bit about what makes
people tick, it’s something. It will help us to understand our
fellows. If we can share their worry over something, or their
loneliness, that’s better. If we can persuade them that faith isn’t
just for zombies, better still.
They may never come to OUR church; their crisis and change
of direction may happen five years later, if at all, maybe when
they have left Worcester, and then something comes out of the
blue and shakes them up.
Maybe somebody did some damage limitation for us one day,
long ago, when we were briefly vulnerable, and we never even
noticed it at the time. But without that free and unsolicited and
unnoticed care, we might have grown up very different people.
I’ll end with the words written long ago by the well known
hymn writer Frances Ridley Havergal, the daughter of the vicar
of St Nicholas, Worcester, a church now joined with us here at
All Saints:--
It’s verse 3 of Lord speak to me, that I may speak.
“O strengthen me, that while I stand,
Firm on the rock, and strong in thee,
I may stretch out a loving hand
To wrestlers with the troubled sea”.
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