In Christ, You ARE Salt and Light

[This message was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 5:13-20

The God we know in Jesus Christ speaks a powerful Word. 

When God spoke over ancient chaos, saying things like, “Let there be light,” “Let the land produce vegetation” and “living creatures” on land and in the sea, He brought all the physical worlds we have ever seen or will ever see into being. 

When God speaks over the waters of Holy Baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He declares us part of His new creation, His children. 

At Jesus’ transfiguration, the Father said to Peter, James, and John--and us--”This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” (Matthew 17:5) 

The Father says this because His Word has power and when we listen to it, it transforms us. "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ." (Romans 10:17)

That’s why God tells us in Isaiah: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

In Matthew 5:13-16, the first four verses of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus, the Word of God, God the Son, makes two powerful declarative statements. He tells us, “You are salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world.” 

In making these declarations, Jesus is not saying that we should be salt and light, or we have to be salt and light, or we need to become salt and light. 

If, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit-powered Word given to us in the Scriptures and in Baptism and Communion, we can say, “We believe in God the Father...We believe in God the Son...We believe in God the Holy Spirit,” we are salt and light. 

Even on those days when our faith seems weak. 

Even on those days when we wonder where God is and whether He cares. 

Even on those days when we're not "feeling it."

God’s Word always accomplishes what God desires, always achieves the purpose for which He sends it. And His Word says that disciples are salt and light.

But what does it mean to be salt and light?

Take a look at verse 13. Jesus says, “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.”

From ancient times, the Jewish rabbis have associated salt with wisdom. True wisdom, you know, always comes from God (Proverbs 2:6). And, Paul says that even the foolishness of God (if God could be foolish) is wiser than the smart-alecky cynicism that passes for wisdom in our world (1 Corinthians 1:25). The ultimate wisdom that God reveals to a human race bent on “being like God” sounds foolish--insane--to the world. This wisdom says that life, everlasting life, as we are meant to live it begins with a cross and only culminates in a resurrection of those who have trusted in Jesus. 

As Paul puts it elsewhere: “...the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) 

Jesus says that you and I--He uses the plural form of you, roughly equivalent to "y'all," meaning all baptized believers--are the wisdom of God for a world gone foolish, born foolish, from sin and death. 

We are the salt of the earth, God’s ultimate wisdom staring the world in the face. Jesus has spoken His saving Word to us. His Holy Spirit has empowered us to believe the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Him. We are the salt of the earth.

But what if salt loses its saltiness? We know that sodium chloride can’t lose its salty quality. Salt only loses its salty influence if it becomes diluted. 

Our saltiness as disciples is diminished when we allow it to be diluted in us. 

When Christians say things like, “The Bible is good, but I don’t think God knew as much back then as we do now,” they’re trading in God’s wisdom for human wisdom, trading in Jesus for the world. 

When we hear Christians utter blasphemies like, “I think Jesus is a Republican” or “I think Jesus is a Democrat,” their saltiness is diluted and they’re at risk, as Jesus says, “no longer [being] good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” Whenever we try to add our finite, imperfect, short-sighted “wisdom” (some people call it common sense), for God’s wisdom, we lose our saltiness. 

We become faithless. 

We dilute the power of God’s wisdom over our lives and the power of our witness for Jesus to others in our world. 

In fact, where Jesus says in our translation, “loses it saltiness,” the word it translates in the Greek in which Matthew wrote--μωρανθῇ, from which we get the word moron--literally means become foolish. 

We lose our saltiness when we foolishly dilute the truth of the Gospel and of the Word of the Bible. 

We avoid becoming foolish by remaining in close daily contact with the God Who has brought us to faith in Jesus and has declared us His own. 

But listen: Jesus makes us salt of the earth so that we have life with God that never ends through faith in Jesus, for sure. But He also makes us salt of the earth so that we can season the whole world with the truth of the Gospel, the ultimate wisdom of God.

Jesus carries this theme on in His next declarative Word for believers. Verse 14: “You are the light of the world. A town built 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 Father in heaven.”

Wait a minute, we might think, isn’t Jesus supposed to be the “light of the world”? Yes, Jesus is “the true light that gives light to everyone” (John 1:9). 

To speak of Jesus as the light of the world is to speak of the God of  blazing perfection, Who gives illumination and direction to those who follow Him, Who burns away the sin and impurities that can mar our relationships with God and others. 

This Light, Jesus, is living in us, guiding us, making us new, warming us in the glow of God’s tender love for us. 

In the Light of Jesus, His Word, whether we consider it together as we are now or in our own daily quiet times we God, “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 

Jesus tells us today that we need to keep the fires of His light stoked within us by remaining connected to Him and His Church.

At the end of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says something that would be disturbing if He hadn’t already declared us to be His salt and light. 

“For I tell you,” He says, “that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  

As Christ's Word enables you to believe in Him, your righteousness does exceed that of the Pharisees and all the other fussy, self-righteous, chest-thumping, judgmental, holier than thou religionists you can name. 

Why? 

Because Jesus has declared you to be His salt of the earth and His light in the world. 

And because, in daily repentance and renewal, in regular worship with God’s people, and regular attention to His Word, You turn again and again back to the One true God we know in Jesus Christ lives in you. 

The tastelessness of sin and death are gone. 

So are their darkness or their ability to make us be afraid or to worry. 

You can say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

That’s what it means to be salt of the earth and the light of the world. 

This is the powerful Word Jesus speaks to you today  and you can believe it. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Who's Blessed?

[This message was shared this morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I found the "pump" for it was primed by a sermon once preached by the late Swedish pastor and novelist, Bo Giertz. The book containing that sermon can be found here.]

Matthew 2:13-23
One of the blessings of the Psalms, the Old Testament songbook, is that God gives us permission to say things to Him that we might think, in our misguided religious piety, we couldn’t possibly say to God. God gives us permission to be honest with Him. That includes the times when we don’t understand what He’s up to.

In Psalm 10, for example, we’re given permission to pray in this way:

Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises...His ways are always prosperous; your laws are rejected by him; he sneers at all his enemies. He says to himself, ‘Nothing will ever shake me.’ He swears, ‘No one will ever do me harm.’ His mouth is full of lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue.” (Psalm 10:1-3, 5-7)

In our gospel lesson for today, Matthew 2:13-23, Joseph, the man chosen by God to be Jesus’ earthly father, would have had every reason to pray this psalm. 

Why was the baby Savior of the world, Jesus, the subject of a manhunt while Herod shed innocent blood to keep hold of his power and wealth? 

And why was it that Mary and Joseph, who welcomed God in the world on the first Christmas, had to leave their native land for fear of Herod, who sat comfortably in his palaces? 

Later, why did the holy family have to go back to Nazareth rather than to Bethlehem, their ancestral village, for fear of Herod’s son and what He might do to the baby?

It’s possible though that Joseph didn’t ask God any of these questions. 

Or, if he did, maybe he later dismissed them as those of a man who, like you and me, didn’t always see the whole picture. 

You see, I suspect that Joseph had an entirely different understanding of what it means to be blessed by God than most people have.

What do you think that it means to be blessed? 

If you were to ask the average person, including me some days, what it means to be blessed by God, we might say things like: having good health, having a loving family, having enough to eat, being spared bad experiences, getting to do the things we want to do. 

Now, all of these things are pleasant. 

And, as James says in the New Testament, all good and perfect gifts come from God. 

And only a sick person would want ill-health, a rancorous family, hunger, and so on. 

But, as Psalm 10 indicates, there are people who have all of these things and more and never think of themselves as blessed (or at least, never blessed enough) and never think of God. 

Herod, the king when Jesus was born, just as an example, had everything. But he always wanted more. And he lived in constant suspicious fear that someone was going to take away what he had. Despite all his supposed “blessings,” Herod was paranoid for fear of losing everything. 

Was Herod blessed? 

Was Joseph? 

Are you?

Our gospel lesson recounts three incidents that happened after wise men from the East visited the baby Jesus at Bethlehem. 

Incident #1

The first happened immediately after the visitors left. Joseph is visited by an angel of the Lord in a dream. “‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’” (Matthew 2:13) Just as God once led His people out of slavery in Egypt, so now the Savior would come out of Egypt so that He could lead all who follow Him out of slavery to sin and death. But the time wasn’t right yet for God’s plan to unfold. That’s why the family had to flee.

Incident #2

In verse 16, we’re told that Herod realized that he had been “outwitted” by the wise men who had been told by God that Herod wanted to kill this new king. Actually, outwitted doesn’t accurately convey what the word Matthew used when he composed his gospel. My study of Scripture and of history convince me that the most dangerous people to wield earthly power are those who are both shrewd and stupid. Herod fell into this category. The word Matthew uses to describe Herod’s reaction, enepaichthe, means that Herod felt mocked and humiliated. Thug kings don’t like being embarrassed. That’s why Herod murdered the baby boys in Bethlehem. We may rightly wonder why God allowed the death of those babies. But we need to also remember that in allowing Jesus to live and offer His sinless life on the cross, God made it possible for the whole world--including this fallen world’s innocent victims--to have life that never ends with God, a blessing this world can never give.

Incident #3

In verse 19, after learning from an angel of the Lord that Herod is dead, Joseph takes the Child and His mother back to Bethlehem. But while on the way, He learns--again from God--that Herod’s son is king over that portion of Herod’s old territory and that it’s best to go to the place where he and Mary had been living before Jesus’ birth, back to Nazareth.

Joseph’s life, not to mention Mary’s life had been disrupted by God’s plans and the schemes of an evil ruler. Hearing the Word of God, Joseph was called to leave his means of making a livelihood behind. He was chased and terrorized, forced to settle in a foreign country that offered him and his family refuge and asylum. 

But each time the Word of God came to Joseph, God created the faith within him enabling him to respond faithfully. He didn’t abandon the baby and His mother in Nazareth, Bethlehem, or Egypt. 

You see, faith comes from hearing God’s Word (Romans 10:17). 

The Holy Spirit authors God’s Word and then the Holy Spirit creates faith through that Word in those who are good soil, that is, in those who are receptive to the planting of God’s Word within them. 

Joseph heard the Word of God and Joseph trusted in God. 

Joseph heard God’s Word of promise and by the power of that Word, Joseph believed.

That’s what God’s Word does in us. The believers in God hears the promise of Isaiah 30:21: “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” And they learn that Jesus is that Way. “This is my Son...” the voice of God would cry out to the apostles Peter, James, and John, at the Mount of Transfiguration, “...Listen to him!" (Matthew 17:5) Jesus is the Word. The Word Who gives us the faith in Him Who is our peace.

That’s why even in the midst of being torn from all that was familiar to him, in the midst of being chased and terrorized, Joseph was blessed. 

And that’s why even in the midst of all that bedevils, tempts, and tests us in this life, all who hear the Word of God about Jesus and trust in Him as Lord are blessed. 

You are blessed as you hear God tell you, “This is the way; walk in it.”

I mentioned earlier that the Psalms encourage us to say things to God we might not otherwise say. They also remind us of God’s promises to those who follow Christ rather than the world. 

Psalm 73 contains such a reminder:

You guide me with your counsel [that is, with Your Word], and afterward you will take me into glory. (Psalm 73:24). 

Friends: Jesus, the Word made flesh, guides those who turn to Him through His Word in this life. He guides us to trust that God so loved the world--and so loves us--that He gave His one and only Son so that all who believe in Him have life with God forever.

God blesses us in life by being with us even when the evil people of the world seem to have it all. 

And those who trust in Christ will, after all the dead and dying rewards of this world have disappeared forever, live with God in glory. 

Be like Joseph: Hear God’s Word. In the hearing of God’s Word, He will create faith in Christ within you. And, by God's grace through faith in Christ, you will live eternally in the glory of God. This is the blessed life. Amen 


[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

God Says, "Come to the Party!"

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 22:1-14
Christians--especially I think, we Lutheran Christians--cherish the grace of God.

And we should cherish it!

Grace is God’s charitable regard for you and me and every human being. In fact, in the original Greek in which the New Testament portion of the Bible was written, the word we translate as grace is charitas, which we’ve carried over into English as charity.

This tells a lot about grace. Like charity, you can’t earn God's grace. It can be given. It can be received. It can be rejected. It can be wasted. But grace, like charity, cannot be earned.

It was because of God’s grace that God came into the world in the Person of Jesus Christ and died and rose so that all who believe in Him will not die, but have life with God, now and in eternity. No wonder we sing about God’s “amazing grace.”

But grace is not and never has been everything you and I need to know about God! The Bible teaches that God’s grace is offered to us as a free gift. But we have the freedom to reject it.

In chapter 2 of the New Testament book of Ephesians, there’s a celebration of “the immeasurable riches of [God’s] grace,” expressed as God’s “kindness toward us in Jesus Christ.” Then it says “by grace you have been saved through faith.”

Grace brings God's gift of new life to all with faith in Jesus Christ.

And faith in Jesus Christ entails trusting Him enough to turn from our sins—that is, to repent—and to turn to Him alone for life.

If you’re going to take up God’s grace, you need to be committed day-in and day-out to laying aside your sin and trusting your whole life to Christ.

The grace of God’s forgiveness, acceptance, and new life is a blank check available to everybody. But you can only cash it through repentance and belief in Him.

You can accept God’s invitation to His heavenly party that never ends or you can turn it down.

This is what Jesus is talking about today in the Gospel lesson. Please pull out the Celebrate insert from your bulletin, go to the Gospel lesson, and let’s consider it verse-by-verse.

Once again, Jesus is telling a parable. The word, parabolos, the Greek New Testament word from which we get our word, parable, literally means to throw or roll along side. In His parables, Jesus told stories. But rolling alongside the stories were other stories, of deeper significance.

The first people to hear this parable from Jesus, particularly the religious elites of first century Judea, were like many Christian denominations and leaders today: They had replaced the revealed Word and will of God with their own notions about how God should work.

In this parable, like others that Jesus tells, He describes what the kingdom of God, the reign of God, is like.

Jesus says in verses 1 and 2 that a king, clearly a stand-in for God the Father, decided to throw a party for his son, who was getting married. In the parable, Jesus is the bridegroom and the banquet is the Kingdom of God.

Then in verse 3, Jesus says, the king sent slaves to tell the already-invited guests that the party had begun and that he was waiting for them to join the celebration. Jesus’ first hearers would have understood themselves as being on that invited guest list. They were, after all, the religious leaders of God’s chosen (or invited) people, Israel.

In casting Himself as the bridegroom, Jesus was laying His claim to be the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed king, the Son of God, Who the Old Testament prophets had said God would send into the world to set up His kingdom, overcome the power of sin and death, and bring God’s grace to the nations.

You'll remember that God the Father had already confirmed Who Jesus was. At Jesus’ Baptism in Matthew 3, for example, a voice from heaven said of Jesus, “This is My Son, the beloved…” Later, you'll also recall, when Jesus was transfigured in His appearance, the voice from heaven spoke again, this time saying, "This is My Son, the beloved; with Him I am well pleased; listen to Him."

But the leaders of God’s people wanted nothing to do with Jesus. That would mean signing over their power and influence to God. But they had a good gig going: lording it over other people, having people’s respect, wielding political clout. That’s why the invitees in Jesus’ parable, in verse 3, “would not come” to the marriage banquet. They turned the invitation down just as Jerusalem would turn Jesus down on the night of His trial before His crucifixion.

But the king, like God, was gracious. He wanted these arrogant, selfish people to be part of the banquet for his son. For centuries, God had used His prophets to call people—including people from outside of Israel—to repent and believe in Him.

God has always wanted all people to be part of His everlasting kingdom. But the prophets and messengers God has sent to issue His invitation to people, in Old Testament times and today, have often been ignored and worse.

In verse 4, the king in Jesus’ parable sent out servants who told his invited guests to come to the party. Everything was ready!

Look at verse 5, though. Some of the invited guests, it says, “made light” of the invitation. The phrase, made light of, translates the Biblical Greek word, amaleo, which means to treat with apathy or indifference. These invitees didn’t care about the invitation.

People can be that way toward the invitation of God to follow Jesus today. They feel they don’t need God. “What has God ever done for me?” they ask. “I’m the one who busts my chops to make a living each day.”

This isn't a new attitude. But God's Word repeatedly warns us against this arrogance. In Deuteronomy, Moses told the people of Israel: “Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is He Who gives you power to get wealth…”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that:“[God] makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

In another place in the Bible, the apostle Paul, while preaching in Athens, Greece, quoted one of the Greek poets to point out that in God, “we live and move and have our being.”

Everybody needs God, whether they know it or not.

Of course, the invitation we receive from Jesus isn’t for a private party. The Christian doesn’t think in terms of “Jesus and me,” but “Jesus and we.” In Jesus, God invites us to a banquet, an eternal kingdom in which we keep company not only with God, but also with everyone who repents for sin, believes in Jesus, and gladly receives God's pure Word of truth and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

We will need each other to be whole in eternity.

And, as we go through our lives on earth, we need one another as we worship together, seek forgiveness together, and receive grace together. In the New Testament book of Hebrews, we’re told not to neglect meeting together to worship regularly because when we do so, we encourage one another. I bet that one reason many of you are here this morning, is that you need the encouragement that comes from knowing God loves you and that you are not alone in trying to follow Jesus every day!

In verse 6, we’re told that some invited to the banquet went beyond ridiculing the slaves as they turned down their invitations. They seized, mistreated, and killed the slaves.

Verse 7 says that the king was “enraged” by this behavior. He sent soldiers to destroy that city that had chosen to ignore His invitation.

You know, God allows us to turn down the invitation to join Him in the kingdom. And that means God will also let us live eternally with the consequences of our decision. In the Gospel of John, Jesus told Nicodemus, you’ll remember, that if people choose the darkness of life without His grace, they will live with their choice for eternity. God doesn’t want us to make that choice. He wants us to come to the party!

In verses 8 and 9, Jesus says that the king in His parable does a stunning thing. He sends more slaves into the streets to “invite everyone to the wedding banquet.” He wanted to invite everyone, people who had never been invited before! Jesus was saying that through Him, God is now inviting all the riff-raff of the world—all the prostitutes and tax collectors, all the Jews and Gentiles, all the Cardinal fans and Brewer fans, all the Buckeyes and Wolverines and Cornhuskers—everybody is to be invited to be part of His kingdom.

For Jesus’ original hearers, arrogant in their spiritual pride, these words would have been scandalous! Jesus said something similar, though, when He told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

God invites everyone to His kingdom. God wants everyone to experience His grace. Everyone. No exceptions.

Our commission as Christians and church members is to share God’s incredible invitation to His kingdom with everyone so that they can be part of God’s kingdom too. That’s why I can’t wait to get started on some more kindness outreaches after my defibrillator is implanted this week!

But the last part of Jesus’ parable, beginning at verse 11, is written especially for those of us who are part of His Church today.

The king in Jesus’ parable sees a man at the wedding banquet not dressed in a wedding. The king is offended. Now, Jesus isn’t saying that we’ve got to wear our Sunday best to be in His kingdom. He’s telling people not to pretend to be part of God’s kingdom if they haven’t been clothed in His grace, if they haven’t repented for sin and believed only in Him.

The man in Jesus’ parable not clothed in his wedding garb was thrown “into the outer darkness, where there [was] weeping and gnashing of teeth.” A similar horrible fate awaits those who think they deserve to be in God’s kingdom just for showing up, sitting in a church pew, making an offering, or having their name in a church directory. Hell is the fate of all who reject the grace of God in Christ by refusing to turn from their sins and believe in Jesus Christ.

Those dressed in the robes of repentance and faith in Christ have grasped hold of God's grace. They are in the kingdom of God.

Think of it this way: You can only watch your favorite TV show when your TV set is on and tuned to the right channel. You cannot claim God’s grace if you refuse to repent for your favorite sins and if you think you can follow other “saviors” besides Jesus. If anything but Jesus is our Savior, we shut off the flow of God’s grace into our lives. Turn to Jesus though, and grace will spill all over your life, even in the most trying of circumstances!

Please pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 701. Look at James, chapter 4, verse 10. It says:

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

God’s grace offered through Jesus Christ is a free gift. It comes to those humble enough to confess their sin and to surrender themselves to Christ. As the great hymn reminds us, God’s grace is amazing!

Let it soak into every part of your life, let it usher you into God’s kingdom every single day. Repent and believe in Christ and grace will fill your life, now and in eternity. Amen