Salt and light

A Sermon preached on Epiphany V, February 5^th 2017 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

 Isaiah 58:1-9a, 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20

I was away at a clergy retreat for three days last week. One of the exercises our retreat leader, Bishop Gayle Harris of Massachusetts, gave us was to first write down what we thought we did well, what we believed or what others had told us that our strengths were as priests and pastors. Then we broke up into small groups and in these groups had to tell the others what we had written down. Finally, each member of the group, there were three others in total, reflected back in their own words what they heard and from that, what they felt that person’s particular gifts or strengths were. We moved from “I am” statements to “You are/you do” statements and while some were very similar to what we had said, others were not, and I certainly received some genuine new insights. Now I just have to live up to them to all – so I am not telling you what they told me!

John’s Gospel is famous for its “I am” statements that Jesus uses to describe himself, his role, what sort of person we follow, and what sort of behavior we are called to imitate. I am the bread of life. I am the good shepherd. I am the vine. I am the light of the world. Matthew’s Jesus on the other hand, especially in the long teaching passage we call the Sermon on the Mount, instead uses lots of “You” statements, telling his listeners, his followers, telling all Christians very clearly and directly what he expects them to do and to be. “Jesus said, ‘You are the salt of the earth.’ ‘You are the light of the world.’ ‘Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.’” (Matthew 5:13, 14, 16) Jesus says “you are” not you will be, or you might be. So how do we live up to being salt and light? 

We are salt when we help people realize that life is not worth living without God. That life is bland and flavorless, i.e. meaningless without a relationship with the Divine. We are salt when people see God in our lives, in our joy, in our mutual trust, in our faith especially when things are not going so well. If they see no difference, if we seem like everyone else, then our salt has lost its taste and is no longer fit for purpose. 

We are light when we give direction and clarity. We are light when we use our light to bring injustice into the open, when people’s faces light up with joy because of what we have done. This is the light of God that we carry within us and it is not to be hidden. None of these ideas was new when Jesus used them. Israel was always supposed to be a light to the world and Jerusalem a beacon beckoning all nations through its doors. That is what Jesus means when he says, “do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5:17) He has not brought a new God or a brand new law with him. He has come to renew the law. The ethical teaching of the Old Testament is a key component of Jesus’ teaching. We heard the prophet Isaiah say that what God wants is not empty ritual or lip service, but concrete action:  To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. To share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house. To cover the naked. (Isaiah 58:6-7) It is not a coincidence that we will hear almost the same words and phrases from Jesus later in Matthew’s Gospel, in the parable of the sheep and the goats.

When Jesus says, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” (Matthew 5:20) he is not asking us to invent and observe ever stricter rules and laws, as the Pharisees were accused of doing, but simply to make the compassion and the love that is at the core of God’s law part of our lives.  Because it is in doing so that we make God visible and tangible. “So that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (5:16)

A city built on a hill cannot be hid, cannot be made invisible. (5:14) For those he spoke to on that day, on the mountain, it was clear what Jesus was referring to: Jerusalem, a city built on a hill and so visible from far away. This particular image resonated with the founders and leaders of the United States from the very beginning. Even before the first puritan settlers arrived in what is now Massachusetts, while still aboard their ship Arbella, their leader John Winthrop preached a sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" to the future Massachusetts Bay colonists.  "We must always consider", he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us.“ By which he meant, that their new community in New England should set an example of communal charity, affection, and unity to the world. Other American leaders have used the phrase. John F. Kennedy did in 1961 and so did Ronald Reagan in his farewell speech to the nation on January 11, 1989. I will be honest with you, I never thought I would quote Ronald Reagan with appreciation. Anyway, in his speech he said:

“I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.”

That is not the image the USA is currently projecting to the world, nor for that matter is it the image the United Kingdom is projecting, or Poland, or Hungary, or that the would-be leaders of France, the Netherlands and the German AfD party and even some “Christian Democrat” politicians would like their countries to project. I see and hear a rejection of diversity and difference. I see and hear walls being built and doors closed. I see isolation. I see the breaking down of relationships. I see hate, not love.

How do we react? Do not fear. Do not despair. Our faith rests not on human wisdom but on the power of God. As St. Paul tells the Corinthians, if the rulers of that age had understood God’s wisdom, they would not have crucified the Lord. But they didn’t and they still don’t. We do not have to accept what the rulers of our age do and say. On the contrary, if it contradicts what God has revealed to us through the Spirit and in God’s Son, it is our calling as salt and light to continually and persistently proclaim God’s commandments and Jesus’ teaching and to stop the world getting any darker.

Amen    

Lamb of God?

A Sermon preached on Epiphany II, January 15^th 2017 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Isaiah 49: 1 – 7, 1 Corinthians 1: 1 – 9, John 1: 29 – 42

“John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) “The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.” (John 1:35-37)

What comes to your mind when you think of lambs? The nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb,” sweet, soft, playful, gamboling creatures, mint sauce? Is that the image of someone you would follow at the drop of a hat? Not really. Of course, that is not what the Jews of Jesus’ day would think of when hearing the words “Lamb of God.” They might have recalled one of the prophet’s Isaiah’s passages about the so-called suffering servant of Israel (53:7), “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” Most likely however, they would have made a connection with the Passover lamb. This was the lamb, as described in the Book of Exodus (12:3-13), that each family was to take, without blemish. It was to be slaughtered and eaten, hurriedly, and its blood was to be smeared onto the doorposts and lintels of the houses of the Jews in Egypt as protection. For as God tells Moses, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”

That is not the same as Mary’s little lamb, but all the same, would you immediately drop everything to follow one who is described as a sacrificial lamb, someone who is identified as a victim? Would you follow a loser? Might you not be in danger too? And yet, the two disciples, one anonymous, the other identified later as Andrew did immediately follow the man described as the Lamb of God. From the very beginning, Christians have made this connection between Jesus and the Passover Lamb. In his 1^st Letter to the Corinthians (5:7) Paul writes: “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.” We sing the Agnus Dei, “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” most Sundays between the Fraction, the Breaking of the Bread and the Distribution of Communion. We too follow the sacrificial Lamb of God, we follow the one who gave his life for the sins of the world, and if we mean it seriously, then we should be willing to follow him all the way. 

This weekend we remember the birthdays of two men who were certainly willing to follow the Lamb of God all the way, two men for whom the term Lamb of God with all its implications was the grounding of their ministry and witness: Martin Niemöller and Martin Luther King. Yesterday was Martin Niemöller’s birthday, he died in 1984, and today Martin Luther King’s, he died in 1968. 

Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He did not start his life as a “lamb,” during WWI he was a naval officer and even later as a pastor between the wars he, like many German protestant clergy, was a conservative nationalist and initially even a supporter of Adolf Hitler. Yet under the influence of the regime’s increasing ant-Semitism, he became one of the founders of the opposition Confessing Church, together with Douglas’ favorite theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Niemöller was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps – as a personal prisoner of the Führer – and only narrowly escaped execution. He always regretted not having done enough to help the victims of the Nazis, and was the author of this statement, that you all know and that has recently made quite a re-appearance in social media:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Niemöller, who by the way in the 1970s and early 1980s worshipped here at St. Augustine’s now and again with this second wife, lived in Wiesbaden after the war. He was President (“bishop”) of the Protestant Church in Hessen and Nassau (EKHN), chair of the National Council of Churches (ACK), and president of the World Council of Churches. He became a vocal anti-war activist and campaigner for nuclear disarmament, which were for him “sins of the world.” As a man who, though he just escaped execution under Hitler, was willing to die for his faith and for others, I think he very consciously followed the Lamb of God. 

More of you will know Martin Luther King, Baptist minister and leader of the Civil Rights Movement in America. His rhetorical claim to fame is of course the 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. It is still well worth reading. In 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance, and like Niemöller, he too later expanded the focus of his ministry to include opposition towards war, as well as poverty in general. Racism, war, and poverty were for him “sins of the world.” As you know, he was not only willing to die for his faith and for others, but was murdered for them.

Both men understood what John meant when he called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Both men are examples and models for their commitment, for their faith, for their active witness, and for all they did to combat some of the sins of the world. When we hear the phrase sin, we often think only of our personal faults and failings, and those are the ones we focus on in our confession during the service. These sins are important too, and God promises us forgiveness for them in and through Jesus. Martin Niemöller acknowledged and asked for forgiveness for his personal guilt in his behavior and attitude between the two world wars.  

But Jesus was also sent to liberate us from the big sins, the communal sins, the sins of the world. The Passover lamb was not a sin offering, not a sacrifice to absolve the Jews in Egypt from any individual transgression. The Passover lamb was part and parcel of their liberation from slavery and oppression and death. When we sing the Agnus Dei, we ask the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, to have mercy on us, and to grant us peace, because war, violence, and all kinds of oppression are the sins of the world.

The two disciples in this morning’s Gospel, Martin Niemöller, Martin Luther King and countless Christians throughout the ages have dropped everything to follow and serve the Lamb of God because that vision of liberation from sin and sins is so compelling. And because we know that Jesus’ death was not the end and that our death is not the end and so we need not fear. The Lamb of God is vindicated; God lifts him up. Isaiah already points to this change of fortune:  “Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, ‘Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.’” (Isaiah 49:7) 

This vindication is God’s promise to all the faithful righteous. I said earlier that Christians have connected Jesus and the Passover Lamb from the very beginning.  In the second century AD Bishop Melito of Sarda wrote a book called Peri Pascha, ‘about the Passover,’ explaining in great depth and detail how the Passion and the Passover are connected. I am going to finish with a passage from the very end of that book. It describes beautifully all that Jesus, the Lamb of God’s promises us, from forgiveness and liberation to glory:

So come all families of people,

Adulterated with sin,

And receive forgiveness of sins.

For I am your freedom.

I am the Passover of salvation,

I am the lamb slaughtered for you,

I am your ransom,

I am your life,

I am your light,

I am your salvation,

I am your resurrection,

I am your King.

I shall raise you up by my right hand,

I will lead you to the heights of heaven,

There shall I show you the everlasting Father.1)

Amen.

 1) Found in Construing the Cross by Frances M. Young