Salt, Light, and Living Faith

A Sermon preached on Epiphany V 8 February at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

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

I find the beginning of the reading from Isaiah a bit surprising. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the words “Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” (Isaiah 58:1) I am expecting good news, and not a condemnation! But that’s what we get, “Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.” The funny thing is, I think the people that Isaiah is speaking to would have been surprised as well. After all, day after day they seek God and delight to know God’s ways, they fast and humble themselves, surely that’s enough? Well, no, because, it seems, too much of what they do is just pious empty ritual devoid of the practice of justice, righteousness and loving kindness. They are looking for God in the wrong place, and they are not following God’s ways. And so Isaiah, on God’s behalf, first calls out what they are doing wrong and then gives them a blueprint for right worship, for holistic worship that is not restricted to the temple. He defines how society should be organized and managed, and that is one definition of “politics”!

Can, should churches be political is a recurring question. It came up again for example last year when Julia Klöckner, the then newly elected Bundestagspräsidentin, i.e. the speaker of the German parliament (which unlike the speaker of the House of Representatives is supposed to be a neutral, non-partisan role) criticised churches for speaking out about current political issues. They were acting like NGOs, she said, and instead, they should focus more on teaching the content of faith and providing meaning. In the State of Sachsen-Anhalt, the far-right party AfD, much admired by Elon Musk and JD Vance, has now threatened to defund the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches should the AfD wins the upcoming election, which is sadly not impossible. The “church tax churches,” as they call them, are too “woke,” too political (and have dared to speak out against them and their policies)! Instead, they want to fund those few “free churches” that support their worldview. It does rather remind me of the “German Church” the Nazis created and their sadly successful attempt to keep the churches out of the public sphere. Thankfully the majority churches have learned from history and are speaking out now, loudly and clearly, and hopefully before it is too late.

Isaiah was an independent prophet, like most of the Old Testament prophets he was very consciously not part of the Temple hierarchy, that tended to support the people in power, and so he could not be defunded. But I am sure he came in for a lot of criticism and indeed threats to life and limb for his very political statements. Not only does he criticize society and its leaders for their current behavior, he also sets out an alternative program, one that fully integrates faith, worship and ethics: “Is not this the fast that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”  (Isaiah 58:6-7) These acts of liberation, of care for the poor and needy, of comfort, of integrity and of respect for the dignity of every human being, resemble what God did for Israel during the Exodus. God liberated them from slavery, God provided food and water, God was present by day and by night. That resemblance is not an accident. It’s all about God. God is a model for our behavior. Our faith is rooted in, flows from, and reflects divine love.

Today’s Gospel passage, like last week’s beatitudes, is from the Sermon on the Mount. It is also political! Just like Isaiah, Jesus is preaching about right praxis, about how to live out our faith in the public sphere. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,” he says. And that includes all the commandments about caring for the stranger, the widow and the orphan that we find in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as well as all the teaching of all the prophets such as Isaiah’s passionate call for right and righteous worship. The references to salt, light and the city on the hill are a reminder that God called Israel to bring true flavor to the world, drawing out and intensifying the good as salt does, to be a light to the nations, pointing them to God and drawing them to God’s love, and that Jerusalem, the city on mount Zion was supposed to be a beacon of good. But Israel had fallen short. Their salt had lost its flavor. Salt was rare and valuable. The word salary comes from Latin salarium ("salt money"), originally referring to money Roman soldiers received to buy salt, a vital commodity for food preservation. And salt's historical value is still visible in the term "worth his salt." It was so valuable that less scrupulous traders would sometimes cut it—mixing it with other substances to increase profit. The salt still looked like salt. It was still sold as salt. But it had lost its saltiness.

When Jesus speaks of salt losing its flavor, he is speaking of dilution and corruption.[1] The religious and political leadership were diluting and corrupting God’s message, restricting it the private sphere, manufacturing differences and divisions that God had never intended, excluding some people from God’s love based on their origin, gender or profession. In the same way they were hiding the light, instead of spreading it – also out of fear for the consequences. Think of what the high priest Caiaphas said about Jesus to his council: “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” (John 11:50)

Jesus teaches that faith is never private, never just internal, never hidden: “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.” It is always about God; it always points to who God is. Our job as Christians and churches is not only to explain what it means to be faithful Christians in the society of our day, but also to call out what is wrong and if necessary to put ourselves between the oppressor and the oppressed. This is how I understand Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of New Hampshire, who at a vigil following the killing of Renée Good, after recalling clergy members who had risked their lives to protect others, most famously seminarian Jonathan Daniels, who was shot and killed in Alabama while he was shielding a young Black civil rights activist in 1965. Hirschfeld then said: “I have told the clergy of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness, and I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

Those are extreme measures, and we don’t need them here – yet. But the message of Isaiah and of Jesus is the need for faith and action, for the integrity and consistency of what we hear and say and do on Sunday, with how we speak and act and advocate on every other day. Some years ago, we formulated four visions for our church, and # 4 is:

With God’s help, we act as a beacon of hope, embracing the stranger with openness, kindness, and acceptance and bearing witness to our faith by our lives and actions.

If our faith is not rooted in and flowing from and reflecting divine love, it is not the faith Jesus taught and we are not the salt and light that he calls us to be.

Amen.

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[1] With thanks to Rev. Dr. Andrew Thayer for this insight on salt’s meaning in his weekly lectionary reflection

The Lamb of God

A Sermon preached on Epiphany II 18 January 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) We use the phrase “Lamb of God” in our worship almost every week, in the Agnus Dei that we and/or the choir sing right after the Fraction. But it is a rather strange way to introduce someone, so what might John mean when he refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God?

Some years ago, a friend of mine was at seminary in the US. Her Field Education placement, so her practical training, was in a progressive parish and one of their specialties was to use “real bread” (rather than wafers) at communion. They had no special recipe, instead people were simply invited to bring what they wanted. So, one day around Easter she found herself at the Altar confronted by a loaf of sweet brioche bread, with raisins, in the form of an Easter Lamb! That is taking the phrase Lamb of God far too literally!

The first thing that perhaps the first disciples, and certainly early Christians would have thought of when they heard the phrase Lamb of God, would have been the Passover Lamb of Exodus chapter 12. This was a lamb without blemish that was slaughtered at twilight on the day of the Exodus. The blood marked the doorposts and the lintel of the houses of the Israelites and later that same night the lambs were eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs as food for the journey. The Passover Lamb stands therefore for salvation and protection: “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:13) And the lamb stands for liberation from oppression and tyranny: the sacrifice was the beginning of Israel’s flight from Egypt and long journey to the promised land.

What the first disciples did not know, but the early Christians did, was that in John’s chronology Jesus is put to death just as the lambs are being slaughtered for Passover. That makes the connection even stronger. In the Old Testament all sorts of animals were sacrificed, not just lambs. But they always had to unblemished and spotless. This too is something connects the Lamb of God and Jesus who is one “who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin,” he was morally pure so that his sacrifice had the power to redeem us from sin. Proclaiming Jesus as the Lamb of God is to identify him as the one who will fulfil the prophecies and sacrificial rituals of the Old Testament.

A second connection would be to the Suffering Servant of the Prophet Isaiah, a figure that Christians see as foreshadowing Jesus. In Isaiah chapter 53:7 the servant is described explicitly as “oppressed, and … 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.” The prophecies describe the servant as one who would bear the iniquities of others and bring about reconciliation with God. This would fit well with Jesus’s mission and help explain his Passion. Today’s reading from Isaiah is also about the suffering servant, even if the suffering is only indirectly referenced in the verse “But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain,    I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” (Isaiah 49:4) What is clear from this readings however is the role of the servant not only in saving and restoring Israel, but as “a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (49:6) That is another layer of meaning that connects this figure with Jesus.

And finally, we have the triumphant or victorious Lamb, an image and idea that will only become clear to the first disciples after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Mostly depicted as standing with a banner with a cross on it, this lamb represents the risen Christ triumphant over death. It is the official symbol of the Moravian Church, with the words “Our Lamb has conquered. Let is follow him” around it. We encounter this Lamb in the Book of Revelation: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!’ (Rev. 5:12) And “the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (7:17)

Christ, the Lamb of God, is therefore both suffering and triumphant, he is both sacrifice and high priest, both servant and leader, both lamb and shepherd. The lamb’s sacrificial death conquers sin and death, offering salvation to humanity. I think it is very important to note that in John’s Gospel the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, not the sins (plural), or our sins. (The Fraction Anthem unfortunately wrongly uses the plural form). The redemption is not about individual sins but the world’s sinful condition, the original sin of separation from God. The sin that lives on in our desire for power and wealth at the cost of others. The sin that lives on in the distortion and rejection of the image of God in all other human beings. Paul does not use the term “lamb of God” in his letters, but he too describes Christ’s role in annulling the original sin in his concept of the new and old Adam. In Romans 5:18 he writes, “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.”  And in 1 Corinthians 15:22, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”

Calling someone a lamb may seem a strange way of introducing them, but it is a fitting symbol for our Lord whose victory comes through sacrifice and service. This is not to deny the power of God in Christ; we rely on it! But it is a gentle power, a power that expresses itself in love and reconciliation, and in a simple but compelling invitation: “Come and see.”  And so we pray:

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: grant us peace. Amen.