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.]

Using God's Greatest Gifts (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was shared during worship yesterday.]

Using God's Greatest Gifts

Matthew 5:13-20
An accomplished musician offered to teach a young man how to play the piano...for free. The young man was excited to learn.

For the first few sessions, the young man excitedly came to the lessons prepared and he did learn.

But then, something happened. The young man still wanted to receive the free gift he was receiving and still wanted to play like his mentor. But he didn’t want to practice. He liked the idea of being able to tell people that he was a musician. But he clearly wasn’t being one or becoming one.

Finally, his teacher said, “You’re not using this gift.” and he dropped the young man’s lessons.

What do we do with the free gifts that come to us in this life?

I’m not talking about the “free gifts” we receive from businesses trying to get us spend our money on their products. I’m talking about precious gifts given to us with love.

Of all the precious gifts that might come to us in this life, none is more spectacular than God’s gift of His Son, Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for our sin, the perfect bridge between a righteous God and you and me, who are born into a state of unrighteousness, of sin, of separation from God that can only lead to death. Jesus enacts and proves the powerful love of God for each one of us. In Romans 5:8, we read: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

And Jesus refers to the magnitude of this gift when He tells Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  [John 3:16]

All who repent and believe in Jesus Christ have a great gift. It cost Jesus a death of great suffering on the cross to secure it for us. As a friend of mine once told me, "Whenever I think of what Jesus did for me on the cross, I wonder why I sin." She values this incredible gift!

The question for all who confess Jesus as their God and King each day then is this:

What will we do with this gift?

Our first lesson from today reminds us of how ancient Israel was given great gifts like a relationship with God, a land of their own, and the promise of life with God for all who believed. But Israel seemed to think that God’s gift was their entitlement.

They turned their relationship with God into a business transaction. They thought that if they worshiped right, prayed right, sacrificed right, God would owe them what they wanted.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God told Israel: “...on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers...You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high...Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer [what we would today call immigrants or refugees] with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn…”

James delivers the same message to Christians in the New Testament when he succinctly writes, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” [James 2:17]

Are we using the gift of new life God grants to all who believe in Jesus, as intended?

Or are we forgetting the gift, living without the power of God in our lives, ignoring the needs of others?

This brings us to Jesus’ words for us in today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 5:13-20. Jesus’ words here continue His time of teaching disciples, believers like you and me, that we began to look at last week. So, please look at our lesson. Verse 13: “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.”

In first century Judea, salt not only seasoned food, it was also widely used as a preservative.

Jesus’ disciples are people who change the flavor of this world. They’re not caught up in dog-eat-dog. They know they belong to the God Who has conquered sin, death, and darkness of this world and so, they pour themselves out in love for God, love for neighbor, and in sharing Christ with others.

Jesus’ disciples also preserve the message of the Gospel for the world to know. Someone has said that the Christian Church is always just one generation from extinction. Unless we pass the good news of Jesus onto our families, friends, co-workers, classmates, and disbelieving world, that good news might not be available to others.

They won’t know that God can save them from sin and death.

They won’t know that God can give their lives meaning and purpose.

They won’t know the freedom God gives to us to fight injustice, feed the hungry, and make disciples.

When salt loses its saltiness, it’s useless. When disciples no longer live out their faith, their faith is useless and they erect a wall between themselves and God.

Verse 14-16: “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.”

When I was in the fifth and sixth grades, it was common for boys and girls who liked each other to say that they were "going steady." Going steady then basically meant that they held hands when they walked home from school and when their parents dropped them off at places like the movies or Fun Night. In the sixth grade, I couldn't figure out why any girl wouldn't go steady with me, because I was a charmer. Eventually, I asked a girl to go steady with me. She said yes. Then, I thought better of it. The girl wasn’t popular and I was afraid that people would make fun of me if they knew that I was seeing her. So I asked her if we could keep the whole thing our little secret. Not good.

Here’s the deal: When Jesus Christ is your God and Savior and King, you don’t ask Him to let you keep the whole thing your little secret.

When we push Jesus into the closet of our lives, we can’t fulfill our purpose in life of bringing His light to others.

We also plunge our own lives into darkness, snuffing out the flame of Christ’s grace that comes to those who believe.

Jesus says in Matthew 10:32-33: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”

Do you own your relationship with Jesus before the world?

Do people know that the good you do in your daily life comes from Jesus Christ alone?

You and I were saved from sin and death so we could be free to live in the brightness of God’s grace, with Christ’s love at the center of everything. It's not a thing to be concealed, but shared!

In Matthew 5:17-20, the balance of our Gospel lesson, Jesus warns us not to forget God’s moral law. The moral law is summarized in the ten commandments. Jesus further distilled them in the great commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength sums of the first through third commandments; love your neighbor as you love yourself summarizes commandments four through ten.

Jesus came into our world not to abolish the moral law, but to fulfill it perfectly, so that a sinless Savior could take the death punishment He didn’t deserve on behalf of sinners, like you and me, who do deserve it. All who live a lifestyle of sustained repentance and belief in Jesus have the victory over death that He won on the cross.*

Some people see God’s forgiving grace as license to do whatever they want to do, to ignore God’s will for human beings as embodied in God’s moral law. Wrong!

That’s why Jesus says in verse 19: “...anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

A disciple would never presume to say things like: “Because I’ve been saved by grace, I can steal, I can take God’s name in vain, I can slander others, I can commit adultery.”

God’s grace isn’t permission to ignore the will of God.

God’s grace is the freedom to daily call out to God for help in the name of Jesus to seek to live a life lived in the power of God.

Christians see grace as their emancipation proclamation; in Christ, God sets us free to pursue being our best selves, our God selves. That’s what Christians seek to be with the gifts of grace--forgiveness, new and everlasting life with God--that come to us through faith in Jesus.

In the last verse of our lesson, Jesus says: “...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The Pharisees of first century Judea, of course, were known as a straight-laced, judgmental bunch.

The Pharisees boiled down their faith to a contract with God: If I do good things, God is bound to recognize my righteousness.

But the Bible testifies that none of us has or can attain righteousness on the strength of our own good works.

You know, there are times when I do something good, that follows God's will, and I think to myself, ever so subtly, "I really am a good person." Even the good things I do in response to God's grace then, aren't free of the taint of my sin.

This what the prophet Isaiah was confessing when he said “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” [Isaiah 64:6]

And Paul reminds us in Romans 3: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.” [Romans 3:10-11]

But thank God, God seeks us! 

God wants us.

He wants us with Him for eternity.

He loves us passionately.

And to everyone who daily surrenders to God’s grace, available in Christ, God gives what we can’t earn, manufacture, or pretend our way into having. God gives us His righteousness, a right relationship with Him, with others, with ourselves.

God covers us in the pure, perfect righteousness of Jesus that infinitely surpasses any righteousness that can be found or faked in this world.

The righteousness of Jesus given to those who believe is the greatest gift of all. 

Use it well, disciples!

• Trust in Jesus. 
• Then let Him use you to be salt and light, upholders of His law, bearers of His righteousness. 

That’s the best way for us to tell God, “Thank You,” for all His gifts. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the message shared during both worship services earlier today.]

*It's important to remember that repentance isn't simply sorrow for one's sin. It's a sorrow that leads one to turn to Christ for forgiveness, for the granting of grace that covers our sins, and for the power of the Holy Spirit to lead new lives filled with peace with God.

Salt, Light, and Post-Revolutionary Living

[This was the sermon prepared for worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday, February 9.]

Matthew 5:13-20
Three years ago, we all watched the news with amazement at the beginning of what came to be called The Arab Spring. Peoples long oppressed by dictatorial regimes in places like Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria began to stand up, seeking freedom.

Today, Egypt is an uproar after its popularly elected president was ousted by the military and Syria is immersed in civil war. As happens in the wake of all revolutions, including the one that birthed the United States, a kind of chaos is unleashed. And people are forced to answer questions like, “What now?” “How do we go forward?” 

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, taken from the opening verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, was a place where Jesus laid down an absolutely revolutionary kind of life, one that puts the world’s standard operating procedures on their heads.

In it, Jesus said things like: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed when we are persecuted for His Name’s sake.

Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t laying down God’s law in the Beatitudes, but describing a way of life that seeps into the minds, hearts, and wills of those who cultivate daily closeness to Jesus Christ.

Even if we have questions about all that though, because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, because of His resurrection, and because of the new life we know He offers to all who repent and believe in Him, we hear the Beatitudes and we want to sign up for the Kingdom of heaven.

In our heart of hearts, we want to live the lifestyle of the Beatitudes!

But after Jesus, through His death and resurrection, works His revolution of transforming us from the enemies of God we were when we were born into the friends of God we become when we are born from above, we have the same kinds of questions that always arise after revolutions: What now? How do we go forward? Jesus starts to answer those questions in today’s lesson. Please look at today’s Gospel lesson.

As we read the opening verses of the lesson, you’ll have to keep the Beatitudes in mind. In verses 13 and 14, Jesus is saying, “You blessed ones are the salt of the earth. You blessed ones are the light of the world.” With that in mind, look at verse 13, please: “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 by men.”

Most of us love salt, even though some of us have learned to limit our intake of it. Salt enhances the flavor of food. But salt is also a great preservative. Those who walk with Jesus preserve what is true and godly. Without moralizing or judging, true followers of Jesus remind us all of God’s will, God’s love, and God’s ability to express His power through weak people surrendered to Him. As Christians turn back to Jesus each day, they become salt of the earth.

Look at what Jesus says in the next three verses: “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 men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

Epiphany, you know, is the season of light and throughout these weeks after Christmas, we’ve repeatedly read Bible lessons in which light has been mentioned. 

In the Old Testament lessons, we’re told how God called the people of Israel into being to be a light to the nations, showing the world the one true God of the universe, preparing for the arrival of the Messiah. 

Jesus comes and we’re told in the New Testament that He is the light of the world. 

In today's lesson, Jesus is saying that those who follow Him—you and me—are to give light to the world. His fellow Jews would have found Jesus’ imagery unmistakably clear. The temple in Jerusalem was built on a high mount. From it, God’s people exalted God before the world. It shone forth the power of God’s light for all to see.

Now, we Gentile Christians who, the New Testament says, have been grafted into the people of God by the grace given in Jesus and our faith in Him, are to lift Jesus up before all the world. 

Faith in Jesus Christ is not a private matter. 

Faith in Jesus is a very public thing. 

Jesus commands us to be lights in this darkened world; we’re to let everyone know about the new life that only comes through Jesus. I like the way lyrics written by Steve Taylor for the band, the Newsboys, put it a number of years ago: 
Shine! 
Make ‘em wonder what you got. 
Make ‘em wish that they were not on the outside looking bored.

Though the entrance fee into the Kingdom of God is free (this is what the Bible calls justification), living the Christian life (this is what the Bible calls sanctification) is also free, a gift from God. But it can be awfully hard to take hold of that gift. 

That’s because as we seek to live the Christian life, we constantly face the temptation to blend in with the rest of the world, bland and tasteless, dim and lifeless.

But if we submit to daily repentance and renewal, which is how Lutherans describe the process of sanctification--being made holy or set apart for God--and we let Jesus Christ show us our sins to forgive them and then empower us to live like salt and light, you know that following Christ is never boring.

We may find ourselves doing crazy things that may cause people of the world--even our friends and relatives--to shake their heads. 

Things like feeding the hungry through Saint Vincent de Paul, going on mission trips to the Navajo Reservation, Haiti, and Memphis, spending hours on Upward Sports, washing toilets or picking up trash so that the church building is hospitable for visitors who enter this place all week long, taking time to pray for others and listening to their hurts, forgiving others who have hurt us, seeking God’s direction in our decision making, and, maybe most outrageous of all, obeying God’s commands even when every fiber of our minds and bodies and wills scream that they want to do something different! 

“Don’t keep your relationship with Me hidden,” Jesus is saying today. “Let it inform everything about the way you live. Live your faith out loud! Don’t be afraid to let others see you trusting in Me and so growing in that trust that you live a life others consider outrageous, but I call blessed!”

If we keep our faith in Christ a personal thing, doesn’t Jesus have every right to think that we’re ashamed of Him? 

And friends, Jesus warns us against being ashamed of Him. In Matthew 10:32-33, He says: “"Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.” 

Our call is to turn to Jesus again each day so that we can say with the apostle Paul, who writes in Romans 1:16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” The more you can subscribe to that statement, the greater your sanctification, the saltier you become, the more of God’s light you exude!

In what Jesus has said so far, we see that we are blessed—saved by the undeserved, unearned grace of God—in order to be blessings to others.

But the blessing of this amazing grace does not bring an end to the commands— laws—of God given in the Old Testament. Read what Jesus says next, starting at verse 17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” 



So, what law is Jesus talking about?



We know that the Old Testament contains dietary laws that God rescinded in the New Testament. 



We know that ritual laws revolving around sacrifices are no longer needed because Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, once and for all. 



We know that the Old Testament civil laws--those governing people’s everyday interactions like those passed today by our township trustees, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures, and the US Congress--no longer apply because God’s people no longer live in theocracies.


 Surely Jesus isn’t telling us we have to keep all those laws. No, He isn’t. 

Jesus here is referring to the moral laws in the Ten Commandments. These laws are inviolable for all time. 



Want to know the will of God for your wallet, your mouth, your sex life, your soul?



It’s all there in the Ten Commandments and they haven’t changed in 3500 years. 

Jesus says they won’t change until heaven and earth pass away. 

They remain as protective fences meant to steer us always toward life at its best.

But you and I know that we can’t successfully obey these laws. The law can’t save us from sin and death. Only Jesus can do that. 

So why does Jesus still say the law is important? Lutheran Christians have considered this question and said that there are three purposes that the Law still has.

First, the law acts as a curb on the sinful impulses of all people, even before they know Jesus Christ.

Second, the law drives us to Jesus for grace and forgiveness. When we’re honest, we acknowledge that while we understand God’s commands, we don’t keep them. Our inborn sin prevents us from keeping them. Desperate, we turn to Jesus, seeking the same mercy He showed to the repentant thief who hung on a cross next to Jesus and to whom Jesus promised, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.”

For the followers of Jesus, there is a third use of the Law. It’s a guide for us. Having been freed by grace from sin and death, the Ten

Commandments become a road map for us. God told the prophet Jeremiah to tell His people centuries ago: “stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies…[to] walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” God was telling the people to remember His commands for them and so be led back to Him when they wandered. 

When the realization that we can’t keep God’s law and our helplessness drives us to Jesus for forgiveness and new life, the law leads us to the place where life is found, where rightness with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves is found.

Now, look at the last verse of our lesson. Jesus says, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”


This passage used to trouble me a lot! The Pharisees were scrupulous in keeping God’s law, or at least their version of it. The Pharisees were righteous in their own eyes, but not in God’s. They thought that they were great people who had conquered their own sin. But, in their arrogance, they completely lacked the love for God and neighbor that the Law commands. So, what, I wondered, did Jesus mean by seeming to tell all His followers to try to out-righteous the spiritual snobs He called hypocrites and whitewashed tombs?

Then I realized something: We will be more righteous than the Pharisees—we are more righteous than the Pharisees—when we are humble enough to let the shed blood of Jesus cover our sins and wash us clean. 

We will be righteous, meaning completely right with God, when we rely completely on the God we know in Jesus Christ, and not our own wisdom, not our own pretended goodness. 



For years, I did my taxes using the TurboTax computer program. And every year, I made the same mistake. I’d be working on some part of my return and figure that I knew something the program didn’t. I input data where I thought it should go and totally messed things up. If I could get back all the hours I’ve spent on the unnecessary, grief-inducing side roads I’ve created for myself, rather than simply following the prompts the program gives, I probably could have done something productive with my life.


God’s moral law is still important, impossible though it is to keep perfectly. 

It contains prompts from God, pointing us not only to the right way to live, but also to the One Who wants to lead us into His Kingdom. 



Scripture is clear: Unless we let the law lead us each day to Jesus, it will condemn us. Our hearts won’t lead us to Jesus. Nor are our intellects. Nor our good works.

But if we let God’s moral law point us to our desperate need of the grace of Jesus whenever our lives go off course, we will be right with God, in sync with His purposes for our lives. 



We will be the salt of the earth who preserve what is godly and good. 



We will be the light of the world who show others the way to Jesus.



We will be graced. 



We will be blessed. 



The Kingdom of heaven will be ours. Amen

We've Had the Revolution...Now What?

[This was prepared to be shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 5:13-20
This past week, we have witnessed a kind of revolution happening in Egypt. It looks as though this revolution will result in the end of a long period of iron fisted rule. But assuming that the pro-democracy demonstrators there are successful, there will be questions the people of Egypt will be asking of themselves soon. They’re questions like, “What now?” “How do we go forward?” People who go through revolutions always wrestle with questions like these in their aftermath.*

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, taken from the opening verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, was a place where Jesus laid down an absolutely revolutionary life, one that puts the world’s standard operating procedures on their heads.

In it, Jesus described people as blessed the world might see us unfortunate, at best. Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t just laying down God’s law in the Beatitudes, but also describing a way of life that seeps into the minds, hearts, and wills of those who cultivate daily closeness to Jesus Christ. Even if we have questions about all that though, because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, because of His resurrection, and because of the new life we know He offers to all who repent and believe in Him, we hear the Beatitudes and we want to sign up for the Kingdom of heaven.

But after Jesus, through His death and resurrection, works this revolution of transforming us from the enemies of God we were when we were born into the friends of God we become when we are born from above, we have questions: What now? How do we go forward? Jesus starts to answer those questions in today’s lesson. Please take out your Celebrate bulletin inserts and look at today’s Gospel lesson.

Now, as you read the opening verses of the lesson, you’ll have to keep the Beatitudes in mind. In verses 13 and 14, Jesus is saying, “You blessed ones are the salt of the earth. You blessed ones are the light of the world.”

With that in mind, read verse 13 along with me silently, please: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Most of us love salt. It enhances the flavor of food. But salt is also a great preservative. Those who walk with Jesus preserve what is true and godly. Without moralizing or judging, true followers of Jesus remind us all of God’s will, God’s love, and God’s ability to express His power through weak people surrendered to Him.

Ernest Gordon was a young Scotsman studying Philosophy and History when World War II broke out. He joined the military and was captured by the Japanese in the summer of 1942. He and his fellow prisoners were given rations of one lump of rice each day. They were tortured daily and were worked incessantly, under blazing sun and torrential rain. The brutalization included savagery and thievery among the prisoners themselves, who stole food from other prisoners too weak to defend themselves. Gordon, suffering from multiple diseases, was sent to a holding hut, one where all those certain to die went. One prisoner though, dared to do something that no prisoner had previously done. He cared for weaker prisoners. He took Gordon under his wing, giving him massages, encouraging words, and the occasional smuggled banana. Improbably, Gordon survived and through his benefactor something else happened. Though he had never been interested in God, Gordon came to follow Jesus Christ. He would later say, “'Faith thrives when there is no hope but God.” Folks, the man who cared for Gordon, a Christian, was salt of the earth. He preserved the kingdom way of life. In a place of horrors, he preserved the life of love and compassion and righteousness Jesus sets us free to live. That’s the kind of life we’re called and commanded to live too.

Read verse 14, please: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Over the past several weeks, several of our lessons have featured variations of the phrase, "light of the world." In the Old Testament, we’re told how God called the people of Israel into being to be a light to the nations, showing the world the one true God of the universe, preparing for the arrival of the Messiah. Jesus comes and we’re told in the New Testament that He is the light of the world. In today's lesson, Jesus is saying that those who follow Him—you and me—are to give light to the world. His fellow Jews would have found Jesus’ imagery unmistakably clear. The temple in Jerusalem was built on a high mount. From it, God’s people exalted God before the world.

Now, we Gentile Christians who, the New Testament says, have been grafted into the people of God by the grace given in Jesus and our faith in Him, are to lift Jesus up before all the world. Faith in Jesus Christ is a public thing. Jesus commands us to be lights in this darkened world; we’re to let everyone know about the new life that only comes through Jesus.

That can be a hard way to live. Many Christians, in fact, are like the young man desperate for a girlfriend who asked an unpopular young woman he didn't much like to go steady. She was elated until he said, “But let’s not tell anyone else about it. It’ll be our little secret.” “Don’t keep your relationship with Me hidden,” Jesus says. “Live it out loud.” If we keep our faith in Christ a personal thing, doesn’t Jesus have every right to think that we’re ashamed of Him?

In what Jesus has said so far, we see that we are blessed—saved by the undeserved, unearned grace of God—in order to be blessings to others. But this amazing grace does not bring an end to the commands— laws—of God given in the Old Testament.

Read what Jesus says next, starting at verse 17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished…”

So, what law is Jesus talking about? We know that the Old Testament contains dietary laws that God rescinded in the New Testament. We know that ritual laws revolving around sacrifices are no longer needed because Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, once and for all.

Jesus here is referring to the moral laws in the Ten Commandments. These laws are inviolable for all time. Want to know the will of God for your wallet, your mouth, your sex life, your soul? It’s all there in the Ten Commandments and they haven’t changed in 3500 years. Jesus says they won’t change until heaven and earth pass away. They remain as protective fences meant to steer us always toward life at its best.

But you and I know that we can’t successfully obey these laws. The law can’t save us from sin and death. Only Jesus can do that. So why does Jesus still say the law is important?

Lutheran Christians have considered this question and said that there are three purposes that the Law still has.

• First, the law acts as a curb on the sinful impulses of all people, even before they know Jesus Christ. 
• Second, the law drives us to Jesus for grace and forgiveness. When we’re honest, we acknowledge that while we understand God’s commands, we don’t keep them. Our inborn sin prevents us from keeping them. Desperate, we turn to Jesus, seeking the same mercy He showed to the repentant thief who hung on a cross next to Jesus and to whom Jesus promised, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.” 
• But for the followers of Jesus, there is a third use of the Law. It’s a guide for us. Having been freed by grace from sin and death, the Ten Commandments become a road map for us. God told the prophet Jeremiah to tell His people centuries ago: “stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies…[to] walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” God was telling the people to remember His commands for them and so be led back to Him. When God’s law drives us to Jesus, it leads us to the place where life is found, where rightness with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves is found.

Now, look at the last verse of our lesson. Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This passage used to trouble me a lot! The Pharisees were righteous in their own eyes, but not in God’s. They thought that they were great people who had conquered their own sin. But, in their arrogance, they completely lacked the love for God and neighbor that the Law commands.

So, what, I wondered, did Jesus mean by seeming to tell all His followers to try to out-righteous the spiritual snobs He called hypocrites and whitewashed tombs?

Then I realized something: We will be more righteous than the Pharisees—we are more righteous than the Pharisees—when we are humble enough to let the shed blood of Jesus cover our sins and wash us clean. We will be righteous, right with God, when we rely completely on the God we know in Jesus Christ, and not our own wisdom, not our own pretended goodness.

For twenty years, I’ve been doing my taxes using the TurboTax computer program. And every year, I make the same mistake. I’ll be working on some part of my return and figure that I know something better than the program. I input data where I think it should go and totally mess things up. If I could get back all the hours I’ve spent on the unnecessary, grief-inducing side roads I’ve created for myself, rather than simply following the prompts the program gives, I probably could have done something productive with my life.

The Law is still important. It contains prompts from God, pointing us not only to the right way to live, but also to the One Who wants to lead us into His Kingdom. Unless we let the law lead us each day to Jesus, it will condemn us. But if we let it drive us back to Jesus whenever our lives go off course, we will be right with God, in sync with His purposes for our lives. We will be the salt of the earth who preserve what is godly and good. We will be the light of the world who show others the way to Jesus. We will be graced. We will be blessed. The Kingdom of heaven will be ours. Amen

*This approach to the sermon, how to live after the revolution, is that taken by N.T. Wright in his commentary on this text, found in Matthew for Everyone. I so liked his approach, finding that it so clarified what Jesus is doing in the sermon, that I couldn't resist using the same approach myself here.