Epiphany 5, 02/05/2017

Sermon on Matthew 5:13-20, by Hubert Beck

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, 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 who is in heaven.

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. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

FINISHED BUT NOT COMPLETED

Who is “the salt of the earth”?

Who is “the light of the world”?

Above all, it is Jesus who is the true and only “salt of the earth.”

Above all, it is Jesus who is “the light of the world.”

On the basis of that we can understand why he would say, “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.” If anyone has ever understood, accepted and / or lived out the Law and the Prophets as they were intended to be lived out, it most assuredly was Jesus who “fulfilled them.”. Through and because of him we, ourselves, understand and accept the will of God as it is revealed in those writings – and devote our lives to living them out after the fashion that he lived them out. There is a problem in this, however!

The Dilemma We Face Upon Initial Reading

When we read the words before and after those in our text we find ourselves quite perplexed, for they urge and are, in fact, adamant in their insistence that those who hear or read those words must KEEP them as they are intended to be kept or accept the consequences. “I say to you . . . [that] unless your righteousness be of the sort laid out before the eyes and ears of those hearing or reading these words you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Those words convict the readers in the harshest of terms should they fail to keep them as they are set forth by Jesus, for he said, “Unless all this is kept as it should be kept, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” – and that is the precise cause of our perplexity, for we know very well that we have not kept them, and even more troublesome, we cannot keep them as perfectly as all that.

Who, then, can hear them without trembling fearfully if / when one fails to keep them?

Jesus is the Key to the Entire Sermon on the Mount

Only Jesus, the one who spoke these words, could keep them as they were meant to be kept. That, perhaps, should alert us to the fact that, when all is said and done, they are first and above all essentially about him who spoke them, for he who spoke them also fulfilled them. He, himself, said that he did not come to abolish those words that he spoke, but he came to fulfill them.

So one must look at these words a second time, asking things like this:

Who has ever been as “poor in spirit” as Jesus. Or who has ever mourned the miserable state of affairs that mark our world more than him who died in order to alleviate the misery burdening the human existence? Who has ever been more meek than the one who spoke of the blessedness of those who submit themselves whole-heartedly to the Father’s will or who has ever hungered and thirsted for a covering of righteousness over the gloom and wretchedness hovering over and covering the wickedness that is so evident wherever one goes in the world? Who has ever been so “pure in heart” as the one who spoke these words? Who has been a peacemaker like Jesus? Who has ever been more persecuted for his goodness than the one who spoke those Beatitudes?

Or, looking ahead, who has exemplified more perfectly the way of life spoken of in the verses following our text than the speaker? His analyses of human existence is laid bare in his words concerning anger, lust, marital breakdowns, loosely used words, the dynamism involved in retaliatory actions are absolutely remarkable. He was equally clear that the human will to present ourselves as beyond reproach is always a disguised will . . . one, in fact, that merely hides hypocrisy in the shadows of every life. His words are penetrating, profoundly exposing thoughts and feelings beyond our human ability to comprehend or face up to that which he sees lying in every human heart. He offers a realistic vision of what our impoverished lives look like when we stand barren before the heavenly Father.

Yes, we find all these things and more in the words that follow, for we have not even mentioned the way our anxieties and worries overwhelm us in our failure to trust our heavenly Father when, in our shallow prayer life, we mouth our needs and wants with so little faith that God really and truly does care for us and is willing to hear and heal us. It is all there when we read this so-called “Sermon on the Mount” and we wonder who can take it seriously – or even more gravely how anyone dares to take it seriously – in light of its severity or who can live up to its demanding precepts. At such a time we can see, hear, and understand in the deepest part of our being the father’s desperate cry,“I believe. Help my unbelief,” when he sought help for his troubled son. (Mark 9:24)

Jesus did not speak the words of this Sermon on the Mount, however, as though they were cold directives of a distant authority whose expectations were of one insisting that his hearers must live above and beyond any realistic human capability. They were, to be sure, “the words of life,” as we might put it. But the life that lay within them was a life deeply embedded in the heart of God – not a life filled with rewards and recompense to people of extraordinary internal strength. They were words making the high standards of God clear, but they were also words designed to draw their hearers up into the life that was intended by God from the earliest moments of creation – making clear to the hearers the standards that lay intensely rooted in the very heart of the God to whom they looked for life and hope.

“For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” So spoke Jesus to his disciples, those to whom the words were first addressed. (5:1,2) That is precisely why we, the people of God, take them so very, very seriously.

Salt and Light Revisited in Light of All This

Let us face all this openly and squarely as we now return to these words of Jesus, “You are the salt of the earth . . . you are the light of the world.” Jesus spoke of things that only HE could rightly fill out, but he made it equally plain that they were things to be expected of the disciples to whom he addressed these words. One cannot escape the constant emphasis of “you” and “your” in these words. (The Greek makes them very emphatic!) “YOU are the salt . . . YOU are the light . . . I say to YOU. . . I tell YOU, unless YOUR righteousness exceeds . . . YOU will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

While listening to these words and exhortations very carefully, however, one must also listen with equal closeness to the similarly significant and important words constantly serving as a backdrop to the rest of this sermon – not to speak of the rest of his ministry, “I have not come to abolish [the Law and the Prophets] but to fulfill them. For truly,, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” With those words we are compelled to remember once again the realization voiced only a short time ago that only the speaker – and he alone in the midst of all other humans – was able to, and in fact, DID keep those words. They are words that gained their inner meaning from the speaker himself! His purpose in being made flesh was exactly to “fulfill these words,” to “accomplish all that was necessary for human hope and salvation.”

Although they are words assembled into one “sermon” here, the same words are scattered about and placed in other settings in Mark and Luke’s Gospel narratives, so they are instructive words that Jesus used regularly at other times and settings. They appear here in a concentrated form before he had seriously begun his ministry, and yet they are words that were “filled out,” so to speak, throughout the entirety of his ministry. As John says, Jesus was “the Word made flesh,” and it is equally true that the words of our text – and of the entire sermon – became flesh in everything that Jesus said and did.

Remembering that, we begin to catch the way that the words of “fulfillment” as Jesus carried these words out are then interlaced with the “you” when he commissioned us in these words to continue carrying them out! Neither the words in the Beatitudes preceding these words nor the words in the chapters immediately following these words are addressed to the world as the world. They are addressed to the disciples, but they were so powerful and so commanding that by the time they were finished we read that “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” (7:28, 29)

We Have Here, Then, Words Finished – But Not Completed

Once again we hear the words that, in a sense, shake us mightily, as we are told “You are the salt of the earth . . . You are the light of the world.” We are told in turn to validate our “saltiness” by truly being a “salt” lest we “no longer be good for anything.” We are cautioned to be a light lighting all around rather than “hiding our light under a basket.” How can we, poor mortals that we are with flesh as weak as we know it to be, do that in such a way that “our good works are seen giving glory to our Father who is in heaven”? Does the Father – or his Son speaking for him here – really expect us to do that, to be like that, to bear the burden of being what we are really not and then acting like we are something else? Has God not made a mistake in telling us that we are to be something that we can never live up to being?

No, God has not made a mistake.

No, God does not expect you to do what your weak and mortal flesh is unable to do.

No, he does not ask you to be anything that you are not.

But he does ask you to be the one who he has made you to be!

You are, in and of yourselves, not able to “salt the earth” or to “give light to all around you.” On that score, you are right! But you are not simply people “in and of yourselves.” You are people whom God has made. You are his children by creation, on the one hand, but even more importantly, if that is possible, you are people whom he has ransomed, redeemed, saved, born anew – or however you want to speak of your status before God in Christ.

That, however, is the key to everything! “In Christ!” He it is, as he put it in the text, who has “fulfilled the Law and the Prophets and who accomplished them” in our stead and has, for the sake of putting the “old Adam” in us to death in order that a “new Adam” might arise in the waters of our baptism, brought us through his death into the life that lives only in him. It is his body and blood in the bread and wine you will shortly receive that will be the invigorating energy in your life as you go out into the world, representing him whose life is celebrated, renewed, rehabilitated in each of us here in the community of your brothers and sisters whose life is the life of Christ just as yours is his life also!

We asked at the beginning of this sermon, “Who is the salt of the earth? Who is the light of the world?” We were all in agreement, were we not, that it is Christ who is the salt of the earth and light of the world. Our confession of faith was then made public in the creed as “believing in God, Father, + Son and Holy Spirit.” To “believe” in the one who has “fulfilled all the Law and Prophets” for us and in our stead – who has therefore “accomplished all that was necessary for our salvation” – is to receive him as OUR Salt and Light.

But it is also to “salt the earth” and “light up the world” in all that WE do as his children, salted and lightened ourselves, that we go forth from here as his “salt” and “light.” With him governing our lives with his grace and favor we can – and do – flavor the world wherever we go and lighten the darkness with the light that we carry into the world groping about in the darkness that envelops it. For it is not really OUR light that shines nor is it OUR salt that flavors the world. It is the salt and light of our Lord Jesus, working its way out into the world through our presence wherever we find ourselves.

So do not even try to shine all on your own. Do not sprinkle salt as though you were, yourselves, the salt.

But carry Christ wherever you go, whatever you do. He will be flavoring and refreshing wherever you go so long as you present yourselves to all around you as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven whose deeds will shine like the sun in the heavenly halls. For they are the deeds of the Christ who has done them long ago, finishing the work of redemption and salvation on the cross and through his resurrection, but who now hands them on to you and me as the work of God still to be completed!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev., Retired Hubert Beck
Austin, TX
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