Jesus Is In the House

                                                               Epiphany 7A 2014

Leviticus 191-2,9-18; Ps 119:33-40; 1 Cor. 3:10-11,16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

Father Adam Trambley

February 23, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

In seminary, to show that we were both cool and devoted to God, we had this thing where somebody would yell out, “Who’s in the house?” and everybody would yell back, “Jesus is in the house.”  So let’s just try that – I say “Who’s in the house?” and you all respond “Jesus is in the house.”  Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house. Good.

This morning’s readings bring us the next section in the Sermon on the Mount, a portion of the Law of Moses from Leviticus, a stanza of psalm 119 praising God for his instructions, and an appeal from Paul to the Corinthians to be what God has called them to be.  I want to highlight some of the instructions we heard today before focusing on the importance of what Paul is saying about the local church.

To start with, I hope we don’t have to spend too much time explaining why it is wrong to put things in front of blind people so that they trip and fall, or why we shouldn’t make fun of deaf people behind their backs when they can’t hear us.  I hate to think about what was going on in ancient Israel that God felt a need to include those commandments.

Leviticus also instructs farmers not harvest all of their fields, but to leave some of the harvest for the poor and needy to gather.  God is reminding us that even the things we think of as ours, and even what we have worked hard to obtain, still belong to him.  More than that, he allows the poor and needy to redeem some of his claims.  If we don’t leave some margin in our work for others, we are probably being selfish with God’s gifts to us.  That margin of generosity will be different in our lives than for ancient farmers, but the concept is important.

Another important concept here is that holding back wages to pay someone later is equivalent to stealing.  If people need their money, once they have done the work they are entitled to it.  No one should have to go get a payday loan for money they have already earned.  We also hear not to profit by the blood of your neighbor.  At a basic level this means don’t lie about them in court to get their stuff.  At a more general level, especially in today’s economy, we should try to be aware of the ways that our own buying choices might contribute to the misfortune of others.   

Many of the items in Leviticus are familiar to us: don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t treat people differently whether they are rich or poor, don’t hate people, don’t take revenge on people or bear grudges against people, and love your neighbor as yourself.    

The verses from today’s psalm give us words to thank God for how good his instructions are to us.  They remind us both how much we need God’s help to stay focused on his way of life and how much better that way is for us than the alternatives.  One line of this psalm, however, always hits me: Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless.  We have so much that passes for entertainment, or even on some level news, that is worthless or worse.  Television and on-line programming are both excellent at keeping us hooked so that our eyes stay glued to the screen.  Yet we waste so much time on worthless things that we wouldn’t even miss if the power went out for a day.  How many relationships are underdeveloped, how much useful work is undone, how much art and beauty and music remains unexpressed, how much rest is left unslept because our eyes zone in on something worthless and we can’t break away?  This line is important for us to pray: Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless.

In the Sermon on the Mount today, Jesus gives us some very difficult instructions that all flow from the instruction to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors.  Fundamentally, we are instructed to change our hearts from loving only those people who we believe are worthy of our love to loving everyone as God our Father loves everyone.  This love is not easy or natural for us, but we are still called to love like God.  Moreover, Jesus does actually mean all of the specific instructions he gives which are the practical consequences of a heart overflowing with love for everyone.  We really are not supposed to retaliate when we are injured.  If people want our stuff, including our time or our labor, we can actually give it to them, and even offer them more, and trust that God will take care of what we need.  Part of the secret to living this way is knowing that because we are children of God we are actually stronger and richer and more capable than those in the world, so we can do with less or bear more burdens or suffer indignities or even be crucified without losing the most important thing, which is the love of God in Jesus Christ that has been poured out on us.  We can strive, then, to be perfect like our heavenly Father.  Part of God’s perfection is being able to love everyone, even at the greatest of costs, and we strive to love like him.

Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house.

All of these different instructions are meant to help us create a community that lives according to the values of the Kingdom of God.  Paul has an important reminder for such a community.  He says: Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?...For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple. 

The first important thing to note about what Paul is saying is that his words are directed to the local church.  He is not saying to Christians as individuals that they are God’s temple.  He is telling the people gathered into the local church in Corinth that together they are God’s temple where the Holy Spirit dwells. 

The second important thing to note is that the local church in Corinth had serious problems.  They had different factions based on different apostles who had come through and taught them.  They had divisions along class lines.  They didn’t always have the highest standards of morality.  And they had some people that seemed much more concerned about the earthly wisdom of the day than the gospel of Jesus.  In fact these problems were so serious that we have a Christian leader sending them a letter of instruction a generation after Saint Paul dealing with the same basic issues. 

Yet in the midst of all their issues, which by the way we still have in our churches today, Paul says that their congregation is where God resides in Corinth.  He is reminding them how important their community is.  Corinth was a pagan city with numerous temples to any number of pagan gods and all manner of other unchristian behavior.  The Corinthians could go anywhere for all manner of philosophy, religious festivals, fertility rites, magic charms, spiritualized self-help and or to make offerings to idols in return for luck, warding off evil spirits or cursing enemies.  But anyone who was looking for the living God had to come to the Corinthian church.  Anyone looking for resurrection in the midst of death, anyone looking for strength to love others to the foolish heights of Jesus, anyone who was convinced that a personal God loved all his children enough to bring salvation and healing through his Son, anyone, in short, looking for God’s temple where his Holy Spirit dwells, was only going to find that temple where the church met.  That temple in Corinth – the local church -- was vitally important.

Do you know, brothers and sisters, that we are God’s temple and that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in us?  Do you know how vitally important that temple is?  The world around us desperately needs this holy Temple of God.  Only in God’s temple are they going to find what they need.  And the need is great.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find people living according to the commandments we’ve been hearing these past few weeks, either the basic community laws from the Old Testament or the self-sacrificial love of the Sermon on the Mount.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the light and salt needed to overcome the world’s darkness and dreariness.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the good news that God loves them so much that Jesus Christ has come into the world to forgive their sins and allow them to live a new life of purpose and meaning in him.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and be able to become a living member of the Body of Christ.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the hope of the resurrection breaking forth into a world still bound by the chains of death and despair, and once again this week our community desperately needs to know resurrection.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God. 

So we live like the Temple of God, doing our best to keep the commandments and to be perfectly loving as our heavenly Father is perfect.  As we try to live as that holy Temple, we trust we will get whatever we need.  Providing a Temple for himself in the midst of our area is so important to God that everything is put out our disposal, whether the world or life or death or the present or the future, and that pretty much covers everything.  We belong to Christ, through whom all things were created, and he wants to dwell in our midst so he can love us and bring healing and salvation to everyone in this region through our life as his church. He is our foundation, he will protect us in our struggles, and he will provide us whatever we need if we are willing to accept it.     

Brothers and sisters do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?  Or to put it another way: Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house… Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house… Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house.

Of Anger, Adultery, Oaths, and Idiots -- Matthew 5:21-37

                                                               Epiphany 6A 2014

Ecclesiasticus15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Cor 3:1-9; Matt 5:21-37

Father Adam Trambley

February 16, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

In today’s gospel, Jesus is continuing his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.  He is drawing on the Old Testament, but doing something different with it.  In the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, God gave commandments, statutes and ordinance of how to live in a community of God’s people.  Some of the instructions were based on a recognition that life is messed up, that nobody’s perfect, and that we need a reasonable rule of law to keep society working.  Jesus is not providing guidelines for good government, however.  Jesus is laying out the principles for the eternal Kingdom of God. 

These ethics of the Kingdom that Jesus lays out, prepare us for eternal life in two ways.  First, living into Jesus’ instructions turns us into the kind of people that can be eternal citizens of the Kingdom of God.  Nobody wants to spend eternity with somebody walking around calling people names, staring, and ending every conversation by offering a pinky promise.  Second, only by living out Jesus commandments will we become people who could actually be happy living in an eternal community.  Unless we want to feel that we are trapped in heaven with a bunch of idiots, prostitutes, and liars, we have to stop seeing people that way, and begin to look upon people as the glorious, beloved creatures of God that we all are.  Trust me -- people who we avoid as unbelievably annoying today aren’t going to get less annoying when we get to spend eternity with them unless one of two things happens.  Either we leave the heavenly courts and go down to another floor because we’d rather be in hell than deal with them – and, if we’re honest, we’ve all felt that way about somebody sometime – or we learn to see them in a different light.  The Sermon on the Mount instructs us how to live like citizens of the Kingdom of God now, so that we can manage it when we experience it fully.

The first item Jesus addresses in today’s reading is murder.  Certainly unlawfully killing people is wrong.  Jesus says that just as wrong are the anger and scorn arising in the heart that are the internal states equivalent to the outward act of murder.  Attacking people with words, or even with glares and attitude, can be hurtful.  At the same time, all of those actions demonstrate an attitude of the heart which says we are somehow entitled to judge people.  We decide, based on whatever criteria are in our best interests at the moment, that we are better than other people.  We divide humanity into two groups – ourselves, and maybe a few people like us, and the vast multitude of fools, idiots, morons, goober-brains, doofusses, incompetents, slow drivers, frustrating coworkers, and, of course, people too stupid to figure out how to use a cash register correctly when we are in a hurry.  The more we write people off as somehow beneath us, the less we are able to love them, and the more we allow our own frustrations and resentments to overcome our peace and joy.  Psalm 1 says “Happy are they who have not…sat in the seats of the scornful” for a reason. When we look upon people with scorn, we trade the fruits of the Holy Spirit for the barrenness of our own selfishness, and we have placed ourselves outside the community of the Kingdom of God.

Just to be clear, Jesus is talking here about a certain kind of anger.  Anger in the face of injustice is a virtue that provides motivation to correct wrongs and protect the weak.  Virtuous anger is always directed toward the creation of a just order, however, and not towards revenge or retribution against individuals, and is never about me getting my way, however right I know that I am.

From murder, Jesus moves onto sex.  From Old Testament times, and almost every other time, people accepted that committing adultery was wrong.  Jesus goes beyond that, however, to say that looking at people with thoughts of committing adultery is pretty much the same.  When we stop looking at people as God’s beloved children and instead look at them as means to our own pleasure, we’re not ready for membership in the Kingdom of God.  Our sexuality is designed to draw us closer in love to other people and to bind together a marriage.  Leering glances, dwelling on sexual thoughts, and the entire industry devoted to pornography drive wedges between marriages and twist the focus of our sexual energies inward onto ourselves instead of outward in love and service of others.  Here we aren’t just talking about a thought or feeling that leaps through the mind.  Jesus’ discussion is more about whether we choose to dwell on and even act on lustful feelings, or if we strive to see people and treat people with the love that God has for them.

Jesus uses an exaggerated example to show how essential he sees this purity of heart.  “If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.”  Church teaching is pretty clear that we aren’t supposed to take this passage literally – and having met no Christians recently with a self-inflicted eye-patch, even the most Bible-thumping of preachers can see Jesus’ metaphorical intent.  But Jesus does want us to see how far we are supposed to go, even when it is difficult, to do the right thing, even when the right thing is in our hearts and minds, and even when we could hide those sins pretty effectively from others, at least for a time, if we tried.  (Of course, hiding our sins, even private ones, instead of confessing them does cause us problems and makes us put up barriers between ourselves and others.)

Then Jesus talks about divorce, and he compares divorce to adultery.  We need to note what Jesus is saying here.  He is saying that divorce causes the same kind of damage that adultery does.  Divorces destroy families and relationships, cause significant pain and suffering to those involved and to those around them, and can result in the same social and economic difficulties, especially for unmarried women in Jesus’ day, as adultery does.  But Jesus is not trying to set up some sort of rule here, or making church laws about when people can get divorced or remarried.  He is saying that if you are married, you are supposed to do whatever you need to do to stay married.  Certainly marriage is hard.  Certainly marriage requires sacrifice.  Certainly marriage is meant to be until death do us part. 

But Jesus is also not saying that marriages never die.  He recognizes that sometimes something has happened that ends a marriage, and he gives the example of unchastity.  This provision isn’t meant to be a legal requirement that people have to prove in order to get a divorce.  Instead, Jesus is acknowledging the painful reality that sometimes a divorce doesn’t destroy a marriage, but merely recognizes what has already happened.  While not meant as an easy excuse not to fight for a marriage, and many marriages are worth fighting for even when there has been infidelity, these verses are also not meant to add to the pain or burden of divorced people, or to keep them from redemptive second marriages.  God is against divorce because of the pain and harm it causes, and most divorced people understand how horrible divorce can be.  Once a marriage has died, God wants to bring healing, redemption and growth, not further punishment, to those involved.

The final topic of today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount deals with oaths and vows.  Jesus’ instruction is simply to avoid them, for two reasons.  The first reason is that we don’t really have control over the future, so when we swear by things we are making promises to God that we can’t necessarily keep.  In Jesus’ day, people came up with things that sounded important to swear by, but left them some wiggle room.  Instead of swearing by God, they might swear by heaven or by Jerusalem or by the hair on their chinny chin chins. (OK, scripture says “by your head” but same difference.)  Jesus assures us that all creation has some relationship to God, so don’t invoke him when we can’t guarantee what will happen.  The second reason not to swear is that swearing erodes our integrity.  Everything we say should be true, whether we swear or not.  If we say “yes” we should mean “yes”, and say “no” if we mean “no.”  If we are only trustworthy when we cross our hearts and offer to die and let someone stick a needle in our eye if we lie, we’re in trouble already.  Or, as Shakespeare has Juliet say: If thou shalt say aye, then I will take thy word, yet if thou swearest, thou mayest prove false.

Of course, sometimes in court we may need to swear to tell the truth, or to take an oath of office for a position of public service.  These acts are, again, the imperfect legal requirements of a broken world, and we do them when necessary.  But we should never be in a position that our character would make someone believe they need to require that of us.

So if Jesus wants us to change our hearts in these rather difficult ways, how do we do it?  Truly living into the Sermon on the Mount is the work of a lifetime, but these three steps can help.

First, we have to decide we actually want to live like citizens of the Kingdom.  We could just get by in life.  Our culture is certainly awash with insults and swearing and sexual imagery.  We have to decide that being decent people isn’t enough – we want to do the hard work to be saints.  We want to be the people that bring God’s light into the world.  We want to be citizens of the Kingdom of God that is arriving today.  If we don’t make an internal commitment to living a godly life, we will never be able to do the work to transform our hearts and create new habits.

Second, we need to pray.  On the one hand some kind of prayer that lets us sit in God’s quiet presence each day will invite the Holy Spirit in.  The Holy Spirit will then work at easing our anger and turning our desires toward God.  On the other hand, prayer in the moment for other people will help us do what we need to do when we face temptation and difficulty.  If we are feeling angry or annoyed with someone, a prayer for them is better than an insult.  If we find our eyes lingering where they need not be, praying for that person is a good way to remember that they are a child of God.  If we find ourselves about to slip up with our tongue, a quick silent prayer like “Thy word be done,” can be most helpful.

Then third, we can confess when we mess up.  No matter how hard we try, we will sometimes fail, and God’s grace and forgiveness are always available.  If we ask someone to be an accountability partner for us, we can help keep ourselves from going too far of the rails, as well as getting back on them quickly when need be.  If you are interested, please talk with Deacon Randy or me about finding accountability partners.  Knowing that someone else is with us in the struggle, and we are going to tell them when we find ourselves falling, often provides the support necessary to do what God wants us to do when we get weak.  Christianity is not a religion that can be lived alone.  We need to trust each other not only with our strengths and gifts, but also with our weaknesses and failings.  God gave us each other because we need each other.

Jesus has a better way of life for us than the least common denominator of decency.  Jesus wants us to be part of a loving, life-giving, eternal community in the Kingdom of God.  Let us make the decision to live into it, while praying and supporting one another until we reach it.        

The Fast God Chooses -- Being Salt and Light

                                                               Epiphany 5A 2014

Isaiah 58:1-12; Ps112:1-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-12; Matt 5:13-20

Father Adam Trambley

February 9, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

In Isaiah this morning, the people of God have some issues.

They feel like they are living up to their side of the bargain to be God’s people and God is not being the God they believe he should be.

They fast, and God seems to forget them.

They don burlap blouses, and God does not do the deeds they decided he should do.

They humble themselves with heads down and ashes adorning their foreheads, and God is away somewhere ignoring all their appeals.

They have done the ascetic work to earn a pious penny to put into the heavenly vending machine and receive the reward they want, and to which they should be entitled, but the tray at the bottom where they reach in their hand is appallingly empty.

The high and lofty one who inhabits eternity and whose name is Holy has some serious reservations about what is being reckoned as righteous religious rites.

He prompts his prophet to hold nothing back,

But rather to rouse the people with a resounding trumpet-like voice

So that they know the shaky surface on which they stand.

Why is the living God livid?

First, the fasts are self-focused, not intended for doing God’s will.

“Look,” the prophet chides, “you serve your own interest on your fast day.”

Instead of taking the opportunity to set aside the daily cares to cleanse the heart, mind and soul so serve God more completely;

Instead of devoting the time, talent and treasure usually used for meals for prayer and worship;

Instead of emptying ourselves of our distractions to hear God’s voice,

Instead of these good disciplines, the fast day became another time to make things more fully about those undertaking the fasts.

Isaiah says, “You oppress all your workers…and fast only to quarrel and fight and to strike with a clenched fist.” 

God apparently doesn’t appreciate it when fasters take out their weakness and shorter temper on others:

“What, I’m fasting, so I’m weak.  You’ll all just have to work extra hard to make up for it.  Don’t complain about the extra load – I’m doing it for God.” Or

“Hey, I’m fasting, so my blood sugar is low.  Obviously I’m not in a good mood, so do what I say or you’ll get a knuckle sandwich.” 

Or just the constant long, depressing faces, with the bowed heads and sackcloth and ashes that all shout out, I’m so miserable and obviously so much holier than you.

Now, for good or ill, in contemporary times we probably don’t fast enough to actually need a sermon preached about the potential pitfalls of this practice.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t craft our current customs into contours leading to our own aggrandizement instead of to God’s glory.

Instead of measuring who has a higher heap of ashes on their head,

we play petty power games about positions on committees or in classrooms;

or we outdo one another in whatever deeds count most at the moment;

or we proclaim quickly and loudly the way things must be done so that no one else can make that determination; 

or perhaps we just jostle for position at the serving table to ensure our tureen is tasted by the most people and finished first.

But like the fasting follies of the Israelites, we are taking deeds that should be done for God and turning them toward ourselves.

Beyond their misuse of spiritual disciplines, God has an additional complaint against the ancient Israelites:

While they were distracted by their own agendas, they ignored God’s important work.

God says,

“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?”

Then he goes on to say,

“[S]hare your bread with the hungry,

And bring the homeless poor into your house,

When you see the naked…cover them,

And [do not] hide yourself from your own kin…

Remove the yoke from among you,

The pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil

…offer your food to the hungry

And satisfy the needs of the afflicted.”

These instructions are not too difficult to understand, nor are they unexpected.  But they are worth looking at a little more anyway.

We note right away that a comparatively large number of lines are spent lingering on the need to loose bonds and untie yolks and let the oppressed go free.

In Israel in those days, people in two situations seem to be spoken about here.  Some people were actual slaves, often bought because of bad economic situations when selling oneself or one’s family members seemed the only solution.  Other people were displaced when their land was sold or taken, so they became landless people, often with mounting debts to pay and no job prospects, ending up in city slums or worse. 

God cared about those people then, and he cares about those in similar situations today.

Unfortunately, slavery did not end in the United States or the world when our Civil War ended.  More people are estimated to be enslaved today than at any other time in history.  The Super Bowl is usually one of the largest occasions of human trafficking in the United States, and given the location, we can assume that some people were brought across I-80 just south of us.  Throughout the world, adults and children are enslaved in many different circumstances including forced labor and to become child soldiers.  In some areas of instability, such as Congo, slaves are used in mining, and rival militia groups capture sexual and other slaves as part of their terroristic and military activities.  These activities are highly relevant to us, since much of this activity happens fighting to control mines of rare metal used in electronic products such as smart phones.

While seemingly removed from most of us, human trafficking is something the church considers an important issue.  Two years ago, our Diocese passed a resolution at convention calling upon congregations to consider the issues involved and look for ways that we could make a difference.  The opprobrium of the church may no longer push pimps to paranoid precipices, but we can powerfully pray as well as act effectively.  Individually, we need to know what is really going on, which means obtaining news from sources that aren’t just politically pandering or empty entertainment.  International Christian organizations, including Anglican ones, are paying close attention to these issues, and as we connect with them, we can find out ways to support the numerous efforts that are loosing bonds, undoing thongs and breaking yokes in the United States and around the world.  We can also remember how much our electronic gadgets cost, often in ways that go well beyond the two-year contract or extended warranty. (For example, go to  http://www.humantrafficking.org/)

We also frequently find folks in financial straits today.  Just like in ancient Israel, packs of predatory lenders circle those in need, writing loans that can’t be repaid at interest rates that aren’t conscionable with consequences whose injustices scream to high heaven.  Those hard up for a short-term problem like a few months of unemployment or a health crisis can end up in long-term financial straightjackets if backed into a predatory arrangement.  Through the generosity of this parish, we have been able through the alms fund to help a number of people free themselves from otherwise unescapable holes so they can go forward and live regular lives.  This breaking of yokes seems what God wants us to do, and sometimes we accomplish this directly, while other times we may want to lobby regulators to eliminate predatory financial practices.

While we sometimes want to ignore such sticky situations, God speaks against head-in-the-sand stances.

Do “not hide yourself from your own” means that we can’t pretend problems don’t exist just because we’d prefer to lock the doors and life a life without the unpleasantness brought by those around us. 

When people are hungry, we share our bread.

When people are naked, we cover them.

When people are homeless, we bring them into our homes. 

These are the works that God would choose, and we aren’t allowed to avoid them simply by averting our eyes. 

Our divine duties are first and foremost the care of the needy.

We need not worry about the weight of these tasks, because when we work at them,

The Lord says that we shall call and he will answer;

We shall cry for help and he will say, “Here I am.”

Instead of being like the ancient prophet’s people who sought their own good and were not heard on high,

We can concern ourselves with others and know that God is attending to us.

Even beyond our prayers being answered, the Lord makes powerful promises to those providing for the needy:

“Your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly...

the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard…

the Lord will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong…

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to live in.”

Some of these promises we know because we have seen them fulfilled.  

This parish has seen its light shine forth precisely as we have concerned ourselves with meeting people’s basic needs.  St. John’s shines as a force for Christ not when we have performed the prettiest and most pious worship or when our buildings have been most beautiful, but when ECS has given out bags of food to more and more people, or when we started serving lunches to anyone who wanted to come, or when we gathered garments downstairs or at rummage sales and made sure families could afford to clothe themselves.  We could also point to examples of people dedicated to loving those in need who are clearly guided and strengthened by God throughout their lives.  Then, as we create communities committed to caring according to God’s commands, we are repairing breaches and restoring streets to let people live throughout the Shenango valley.  Our efforts transform individual lives and our region as a whole.

Jesus talked about the effects of following his commands this way:

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

Let your light shine before others

That they may see your good works

And give glory to your Father in heaven.

You are the salt of the earth, and so many lives need seasoned.

People are scrimping by with barely enough to survive

            And they need hearty food and warm clothing and safe shelter.

People are stuck with the bland lives of daily drudgery

            And they need art and music and beauty.

People have given up on their dashed hopes and diluted dreams

            And they need friends and family and purpose and meaning

                        As God’s people are made to provide.

You are the salt of the earth.

Graphic credit: http://www.danielim.com/2012/01/27/living-as-a-missional-community/

You are the light of the world, and so many are still in darkness.

People with heads bowed down in bondage;

People lost in a labyrinth of despair, or blinded by anger, hatred, and resentment;

People who have stared at the Pharisees fasting for so long

            That they’ve been conditioned to focus on shadows and falsehoods.

But you shine the light into their lives:

The light of God’s presence.

The light of God’s love specifically for them.

The light of God’s desire to forgive and to save and to heal,

            No matter how deep the darkness has been.

The light of God’s purpose to set them on fire alongside of us

            So that they are put on a lampstand

            To burn brightly to everyone they meet.

You are the light of the world.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

Together, we are city on a hill that cannot be hid,

But will light up our entire valley and beyond

And give glory to our Father in heaven.