For Sunday
Epiphany 5A
Collect
Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
Salt and saltiness, light and lamp, the Law and least. Remember that these words come immediately after the Beatitudes to begin the Sermon on the Mount, which we read last week. That collection of blessings which highlight a sensitive disposition to one’s neighbors, of growing sense of responsibility to them, and the need to sometimes stand up to protect them from abuse, to receive abuse ourselves. This colors how we ought to read these words. About conviction and call, about participation in the kin-dom here. And not wasting what has been given to us. Like we have been entrusted with the keys to the Kin-dom and maybe we ought to take that seriously.
I am very conscious of how often we are tempted (or encouraged) to read the gospel in this segmented fashion and turn these teachings into universalisms about all people throughout time, the order of things in a general, predictable world. This approach might lead us to binary conclusions about types of people — the ones we declare are good or bad — as a permanent, descriptive state, rather than a narrative one, full of action and consequence. Context has a way of peeling away this false binary, though, which is essential for a passage like this one, which might compel us to consider in absolute terms rather than relative. Terms that are relative to the persecutors of the meek children of God are those going to war against their own people.
Jesus speaks to being salt and light in tasteless and dark times. That this is our responsibility as children of God — to serve and love and share the grace of God — because there are others who are defying this work and teaching others to be selfish, to hate, and to condemn. And Jesus says that this is the bar his followers must clear. It is a ridiculously low bar, folks. We can do it. As long as make the heart of Christ the heart of our work, we’re going to clear it. But those are the terms. And it means there are a bunch of people claiming to do the Lord’s work who aren’t clearing the bar. And most of those people are the ones making it harder for those who are.