First Reading: I Corinthians 2: 1-16 (portions) (TNIV, ©2005)
And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age,… No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”But we have the mind of Christ.
Matthew 5:13-16 (Today’s New International Version, ©2005)
“You are the salt of the earth. But 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 underfoot. “You are the light of the world. 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, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your God in heaven.
God, sometimes you call us to understand things that are hard for us to understand and we struggle, but we know that we struggle with your help, with the guidance of your Holy Spirit. Keep us true to the path you have laid out for our journeys. Remind us that we are your people and the sheep of your pasture. Amen
There are times when God calls us to deeper places—those deeper places that, when understanding comes, transform our lives. Salt and light—two everyday substances—that we take for granted, rarely thinking about what our lives would look like without them—these are the simple, and oh so profound, items so central to our journey on this day. We may struggle to understand what Jesus means, feeling a tug-of-war in our heads—straining against the truth that threatens to shake up our fairly predictable worlds. And here comes Paul, eloquent in his simplicity—telling us that he is neither wise nor persuasive but speaks only in the power of God’s Spirit and calling us to do the same. Before I start to lose some of you, let me tell you what I think that this means in our everyday, central Florida lives.
As much as we preacher types are tempted to come up with complex and impressive theories regarding intricate theological constructs, we don’t get much support for that in these passages. Jesus says You and He means “we”—the folks he is talking to—are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. I want to tell you a story: Once after hearing a sermon on this very topic by one of the powerful preachers of the day, a simple farmer came up to the speaker and said, “I think I know what Jesus meant.” The preacher tolerantly listened to this hard-working man who said: “Last week I got my flashlight and went into our basement where we store the potatoes all winter. The potatoes are in the very darkest corner of the basement so they don’t sprout and start to grow. I went over to the potatoes and could not believe what I saw. There on one side was a small section of potatoes that had started to sprout. I looked around, wondering where the light had come from as it is pitch black in the basement. I discovered that my wife had hung a brightly polished copper kettle at just the right angle to reflect a small ray of light from the only window in the basement. She kept it so brightly polished that it reflected the rays of the sun onto the potatoes.” So, the farmer said to the preacher, "When I saw that, I thought, I may not be a preacher or a teacher with ability to win large numbers of people to Christ, and I may not have all the education in the world; but at least I can be a copper kettle catching the rays of the Son (spelled s-o-n) and reflect His light to someone in a dark corner."
Jesus calls us to be a light to the world. Paul calls us to let the light into our very selves—to have the mind of Christ. During Advent this year, I rediscovered the word “ponder”. It’s not a word that I used to use much; I doubt that many of you did either. But I have begun to ponder things—it’s a simple word for meditate upon, I guess, but I prefer the concept of pondering. And so, this week, I have pondered a lot about what it means to be salt and light and to have the mind of Christ. God gives us the very gift that we need—access to the mind of Christ—that enables us to be the salt and light to the world. This is an important distinction that we must make—it is not that we have access to the mind of Christ so that we can sit on a high hill and pretend to be God. No, it is for a far more important reason. We have the mind of Christ so that we can think and act and be like Christ. The question “What would Jesus do?” can lead us astray if we have not taken hold of the truth that having the mind of Christ means that we have the ability to think and, therefore, act like Jesus. “What would Jesus do?” implies that we have to guess, to make a stab at discovering the answer to the question. Having the mind of Christ, living in the presence of God, takes us to a place of being the salt and light that God calls us to be. You are the salt of the earth—you are the light of the world. Let me illustrate my point in a sports analogy: Years ago, Don Sutton was the pitcher for the LA Dodgers, and he hadn’t won a game in 8 weeks. The press was saying “dump him”. The future looked bleak, and Sutton was despondent. Before a critical game, the Dodgers manager, Walter Alston asked to speak with him privately. Sutton braced himself for what was coming.
"Don," said Alston, "I know how the past couple of months have been for you. Everyone's wondering whether we can make it to the play-offs . . . You know there's a lot of pressure . . . I've had to make a decision." Sutton closed his eyes, mentally preparing to sit out the next crucial games. Then Alston continued. "If the Dodgers are going to win this year," he said, looking Sutton in the eye, "they're going to win with Don Sutton pitching. Come what may, you're staying in the starting job. That's all I wanted to say."
It took Sutton two more weeks to completely turn around his losing streak, but he started right then and there. He pitched his best balls ever and in the National League pennant drive, he won 13 games out of 14.
Walter Alston could have tried all kinds of methods to motivate Sutton—guilt, fear, shame, but he chose the higher way—motivation through encouragement and belief in another. Is this not what Jesus is doing in our passage? Is this not what Paul is doing as well? Jesus says to his followers, "You are the light of the world. . . ." Can you get a picture of that scene in your mind? Here was a ragtag group of famers and fisherfolk, tax collectors, women of ill repute, and losers of all form. They lived in a remote, poverty-stricken village in a little known part of the world. Up steps Jesus and proclaims: "You are the light of the world."
And here comes Paul, stating that the folks in Corinth, have not received the spirit of the world, but rather the Spirit of God—that they—and we—have access to the mind of Christ, to understand all that God has for us to understand as we hang like brightly polished copper kettles shining light into the darkest corners of our world.
How do we take these proclamations of faith in us into our very selves? How do we let go of all that dims our light and dilutes our salt and step into this place of power—this constant presence of God, and so consistent in us, that Paul says we literally have the mind of Christ? We have heard the quote from Marianne Williamson that I utilized as today’s centering mediation so often that we may fail to hear its truth. Perhaps we have heard it anew this day. Williamson also says: “As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. [We are] not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be. “
Take a moment to consider what God has done in us. We are the salt of the earth; we are the light of the world – because of God’s work in us. We are full of the power to envision a new world—not just a new political or social order, but a new world in and for ourselves. With the in-breaking of God’s reign of justice, we can choose this day to reflect the light so freely and wondrously given. And when we choose, two things will happen, we will move more freely into the warm loving embrace of a God who loves us so much that we are invited to share the same thoughts, the same mind. And, others will see the light in and through us and find new ways to love themselves, their God, and their world.
Where ever you are this day, I invite you to take in the light reflected around you and shine, shine, shine. Amen and amen.
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