St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church   
Sunday February 27, 2011 8 Epiphany
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Text: Matthew 6: 24- 34
Theme: You Gotta Serve Somebody


When I was in college I had a good friend named Earl Todd Twist. He was a tall, tough, smart boy from Montana.  He had a very ordered mind and was quite thoughtful. One day in the midst of a Bible study Earl Todd Twist made this observation. “You know it seems that in our world people love things and exploit people in order to get things, when really its supposed to be the other way round, we are called to love people and exploit things to serve that purpose.” It is probably one of the best and shortest sermons I’ve ever heard. I’ve never forgotten it. I should probably stop right now. But I’m not as smart as Earl Todd Twist. And besides preachers get paid by the word.

In essence I believe that this is what Jesus is saying in our Gospel reading from the Sermon on the Mount today. “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matt. 6:24)

The word for wealth that many Bible’s still use is mammon which is the Aramaic word meaning “money” or “possessions.” In itself it is a neutral word. There was no pagan God called Mammon but using the word in this passage is rather like our cultural idiom of saying you cannot be devoted to God and to the “The Almighty Dollar.” In this passage Jesus is confronting our deep human tendency to allow our thirst for possessions to control us, to set our hearts on them in subtle but destructive ways.  

In the Veggie Tales cartoon series there is an episode which features a store called StuffMart. You’ve probably been to a StuffMart. In one episode three salesmen try to work their retail magic on a newcomer to their neighborhood and they sing a little song for her that has these lyrics.

Salesmen: We represent the Stuff Mart
Salesman #2: An enormous land of goodies
Salesman #1: Would you mind if we stepped in, please?
Salesmen: And as associates of the Stuff Mart
Salesman #1: It looks like you could use some stuff!....

Salesman #1: If you need a rubber hose
Salesman #2 and #3: We got those!
Salesman #1: A rhododendron tree
Salesman #2 and #3: We got three!
Salesman #1: A wrap-around deck
Salesman #2 and #3: Gotta check!
But if you need a window scraper
And a gross of toilet paper
Or a rachet set and pliers
And surround sound amplifiers
And a solar turkey chopper
Or a padded gopher bopper
Flannel shirts for looking grungy
And some rope for goin' bunji
Bunji! Bunji! Bunji-wun-gee-fun-gee!
Here we go, bunji! Come on!
Salesman #1: What we've mentioned are only just some
Salesman #2: Of the wonderful things yet to come
Salesman #1: These pictures you keep are so ... nice
Salesman #3: But you really should take our advice
Salesman #1: Happiness waits at the Stuff Mart!
Salesmen: All you need is lots ... more ... stuff!
Salesman #2 and #3: You really, really ought to!
Madame: How could I afford not to?
Salesman #1: Happiness waits at the Stuff Mart!
Salesmen: All you need is lots ... more ... stuff!

It is a clever and dead-on satire pointing out American’s incredible appetite for stuff. Our materialistic culture ought to be well aware of the incredible power of money and possessions on our lives, but acquisitiveness has become so much a part of the air we breathe that we seem to lack the critical distance to really see the story of our possessions. Isn’t it interesting how our quest for material possessions has a way of starting out as a means to enrich our lives but eventually they end up taking on a life of their own, becoming a kind of beast to be fed, a little less than a god. Too easily our possessions become not our helpful servant but our demanding master.

Oh, yes we all know the right answer to the contest between God and mammon. We faithfully say that we have chosen to serve God, not mammon, but too often in our daily life it is mammon that sets our priorities and determines our choices.  We would like to show more generosity toward the less fortunate but we cannot because there are so many things we need from the StuffMart …..  We truly intend to be more charitable in the future but for right now there are just too many things we need to buy ourselves.

You know the dilemmas yourself. Many families work multiple jobs to make ends meet, especially in this time of recession, giving up time with their children because there is so much they want to get for them, so many opportunities they want to provide.  We all know people who struggle to pay off consumer debt while they drive a new car and have closets full of great clothes and shoes we wish we had.  We all know people, they may in fact be us, who are literally working themselves to death, abandoning their families and marriages to give themselves to work often with what seem the best intentions and sanctioned by our achievement sick society. The other day a student asked me to hold her cell phone while she played with her friends. She handed me her new iphone and I realized that I was having phone envy with an 8 year old. Since when does an 8 year old need a new iphone?  StuffMart….

I’m not sure if it has ever happened to you but once in a while I look around at all the stuff in my house or garage or office and think, “Where did all this stuff come from? Do I really need all this stuff?” I’m amazed at times that just 6 years after losing almost everything in Hurricane Katrina that once again I am surrounded by things.  The truth is that it is not just empty nesters or retirees that need to think about simplifying or downsizing. We all are steeping in a culture of acquisition, of more is better, upsized meals, Costco-sized living. You know there is something wrong when Grande means medium and we have to invent some new word for large, Vente? And what does it mean that the word ginormous has become standard English.

Into our super-sized lives, Jesus strides with his first-century wisdom that seems so contemporary.  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in an steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

What does it mean to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven? Instead of assessing our worth and that of others in terms of acquired treasures, cars, houses, art, which makes one so vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life, Jesus’ followers are instructed to look for invulnerable treasures, to build up treasures that cannot be taken away. What are these treasures? My guess is that you know these treasures, you’ve tasted them many times. They are the simple treasures of kindness for its own sake, kindness performed in myriad ways, everyday kindness that can make all the difference in someone else’s life but more importantly in yours. They are acts of friendship when you realize that the person in front of you is really needing someone to talk with and listen. The challenging effort it sometimes takes to be a true friend. The treasure is the real difference between being a friend and wanting to have friends. It is the treasure that no one can take away from you of realizing that the gifts and resources you have are gifts from God and you can use them to care for people, you can hold them loosely enough to be used in ways that bring glory to God.

Storing up treasures in heaven seems to mean beginning to see the world like God sees it. Oh, I realize that is tricky business but it is the business that our spiritual health depends upon. Valuing people over things. Valuing building relationships over building status. Valuing the welfare of the many over the wealth of a few. Investing ourselves in the care and development of children and youth instead of thinking that they are too much trouble or we’ve done our time. Daring to take a conversation into the depth of the spiritual when we are so tempted to remain aloof and shallow talking about the weather or the news of the day. Becoming people to who talk about things that matter to people on the inside, about what moves them in a God-ward direction. Sitting quietly to listen to God’s still small voice instead of running around desperately trying to fill our emptiness. Seeking treasure in heaven is a way of opening yourself up to the movement of God’s Spirit in a way that no amount of purchasing power could ever accomplish. It is in the end a way of finding the freedom that exists in God, for in serving God is perfect freedom.

Bob Dylan said it well in his song, “Gotta serve somebody.”
You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
        But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Bob Dylan’s music, Jesus’ words, Matthew’s Gospel all point to a spiritual truth. Our lives are lived in service to what we believe is most important. In fact, what we choose to serve becomes the shape of our spiritual life: the way we order our loves, the way we deploy our resources for good or ill, the way we invest ourselves in people, our 401K’s, our children’s future, our community’s long-term health.  

Sermons rarely give you all the answers you need. But hopefully they invite you into living the questions upon which your life truly depends. These words of Jesus really do call us into a time of reflection and prayer. I want to call you into a time of prayerful consideration about how you are spending your life, what are you investing your life in? Is it something you would call treasure in heaven that thief or rest or moth or a crashed hard drive or a fall in the market can’t take away? Have you by your life and love and compassion and care and money helped someone on their path toward knowing and loving God?

What do you possess that you just couldn’t live without? How has your life slipped off the edge, lost focus and become serving mammon instead of serving God? How have you invested your life in a way that really says that people are more important than things? How have you used things to value people to help them become more human, more fully alive, more open to God? What is a your money for? Is it a gift from God to be used for the kingdom? Or is it your own private possession that is beginning to possess you?

We know what is important. I’m not for a minute going to tell you that I think that this is an easy spiritual task, very few spiritual tasks actually are easy.  The point is that this is the way that leads to life. This is the way that will fill your whole body with light. This is the path that leads to true freedom, to the everlasting life that Jesus is always talking about and is so deeply attractive.

You gotta serve somebody, that’s for sure, but who or what you choose to serve makes all the difference. For in serving Christ is perfect freedom.

A few weeks back, I was introduced to a Lady who was active in her Church.  Within a few minutes, the woman informed me that she was an attorney, who graduated from Harvard, lived in High Desert and was a devout, traditional Roman Catholic.  I did not know how to respond.

Throughout our conversation, she alluded to her identity. Intentionally or unintentionally, she defined herself.  I wished her the best and moved on.  Later, as I reflected on her words, I could not decide if she was attempting to impress me, promote her image or if it was her way of social interaction.

Yet somehow I knew that her insistence on emphasizing her identity spoke to something deeper.  She was telling me not who she was, but what she believed others were not.  I wondered, if I did not go to the same Ivy League school, did I meet her intelligence criteria?  If I did not live in the same neighborhood – would I fit into her social class?  If I did not believe in the same theological doctrine – could we share the Eucharist?

The answer is no. The sadness is that we are breathing the same air, living in the same community, sharing the similar journey.  Yet she had built this set of walls that separated us.  And she had placed me within one set of walls and placed her within a different set of walls.  And walls are dangerous.

Closed walls inhibit fresh air and this leads to oxygen deprivation.    You do not think clearly, you act strangely, your judgment becomes cloudy.  If you close yourself behind walls, nothing new comes into your life.  In our Gospel Jesus speaks of the dangers of closing yourself to others.  

He is not only speaking of forgiveness, he is speaking of inclusion. He is telling us to love, asking us to accept, to break barriers and create openings in our lives.   He wants his light, our light to penetrate all those dark recesses of our hearts.  

Most of us have the natural tendency to spend time with those we know, those that we are most comfortable with.   We share with people from our same social class, race, country or Church; and while this is o.k., if we never move beyond that circle, we unknowingly inhibit our Christian outlook.  

We become comfortable and comfort limits our vision.  We begin to see others through the same lens, our world becomes one-dimensional.  And throughout the Gospels, Jesus tells us his Father’s kingdom is multi-dimensional.  Move beyond our comfort zone and reach out to those who we normally do not let in, those we do not know, and those that are different from us.  If we love only those who love us, how do we show Christ’s love?   

I have a Christian family member who constantly uses the phrase “I am an American” or “love it or leave it.”  I also notice how easy it is for him to categorize people as Muslims, Homos or Illegal’s.    No understanding that many of God’s children live beyond his walls or the walls of America.   The barriers he creates, makes it simple for him to see people as objects, different, easy to categorize, easy to discount, easy to ignore.   

We are Christians and it is hard to imagine God placing a wall between divine love and humanity.  God is constantly welcoming, inviting us into the divine presence.  No secret knock, no special requirements for entry into his Kingdom.  Only openness and a willingness to love God and love one another.  

In this journey, most of us stumble into the Lord’s presence. Much like the story when one the most famous European orchestras played an outdoor concert.  Elegantly dressed, world class musicians take their places.  They precisely tune their fine instruments.  The conductor strides confidently toward the podium; raises his baton, lowers it and then Beethoven’s Third Symphony.  

The music is majestic, the notes join together to create beauty.  Suddenly, a brown curious dog prances on stage toward the Orchestra.  The mutt moves between the violins and the cellos, tail wagging in beat with the music.  The dog weaves in and out as he looks at the musicians, the musicians in turn look at him, and they look at each other, as they attempt to continue with the next measure.  

The dog stops in front of the Cello, and then continues roaming, listening and wagging.  Finally, the music stops because the musicians and audience are laughing.  The dog stops at the conductor’s feet, looks up and pants.   A world class orchestra brought to a stop by a wayward dog.  The conductor lowers his baton.  There is quiet as the conductor turns; everyone is anticipating his fury.   

He looks at the dog, looks at the audience and shrugs his shoulders.  He steps off the podium and scratches the dogs’ ears, a tail starts to wag.  The maestro speaks to the dog and the dog seems to understand.  They visit for a moment, the mutt sits at the feet of the conductor, the conductor returns and the music begins once again.  Life moves forward beautifully.*

Each one us are like that stray, and God is leading this divine symphony.  In our journey, we walk onto God’s stage; and none of us want to be kicked off.  We want to sit at the feet of God and listen to the song.  If God had put up walls, we would never be able to walk among the music.  Jesus is asking us to do the same with one another.

When Jesus left Nazareth, he did not take friends; he invited others into his presence.  He had no barriers or preconceived ideas of who these strangers were, only that they were welcome.  Come, follow me, and let me show you the openness of my father’s love.  Everyone is invited into our lives and God’s stage.  We break down the walls that separate us.  We do not look at that maid as a simple worker, she becomes my sister.  

We do not look at the Muslim as a foreigner, we look at him as a brother who seeks the same peace and happiness, we do not look at those who are ill as a burden, and we take them in as part of our family.  Just as we are invited to remain guests on God’s glorious stage, we must invite others onto the same stage, into our lives.  It is there that we feel the goodness of humanity.

We do not change the world by going out and moving millions, all we have to do is reach out  to the person next to us in love.  It is from the length of an arm that we change the world.  Jean Vanier wrote the following:  The openness to and respect for other implies a belief in our common humanity, in the beauty of other cultures, and in God’s love for each person.  We are one human race.  

We human beings are all fundamentally the same.  We are all people with vulnerable hearts, yearning to love and to be loved and valued.  This openness, which brings together people who are different, is inspired by love, a love that sees the value in others, through and in their differences and the difficulties they might have.

A love that is humble, vulnerable and welcoming.  Peace comes as we approach others humbly, disarmed from a place of truth, not from a place of superiority.  Not from a place with walls.  What good is it if we only love those who love us, if we only care about those who care about us?

Open your heart; break down those barriers.  Let’s sit together, on God’s glorious stage, strays of different colors and backgrounds, listen and prance around to the music of our mutual lives and mutual loves.  When we dance together, when we sing together, when we sit at the maestro feet as one, we know love, and in doing so, we know Christ.  


*Thanks to Max Lucado for the use of this story that is in his book:  “When God Whispers Your Name.”

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday February 13, 2011 Epiphany 6
Text: Matthew 5: (17-20) 21- 37
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Theme: Living Torah


“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  

Matthew’s gospel places these powerful words in the mouth of Jesus. They remind us that Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi. He was a teacher of his time and spoke to spiritual issues important to his people.

Jesus taught with a peculiar kind of authority, which not only gained him notoriety but also fueled belief in his divine nature.  When Jesus taught on Torah, Jewish scripture, he taught as one who sounded more like God to his listeners than the kind of teaching they were used to hearing from God’s authorized sources like the scribes and the Pharisees and rascally preachers like myself. The truth is that Jesus’ approach to the Torah was fresh in ways that made people take notice. It was at times strong and traditional “not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law” and often innovative and surprising, “you have heard it said, but I say to you.” Jesus rarely let people off the hook from the demands of the law. It was no message of Free Love, Hooka bars and Galileean Hip Hop. Rather at times Jesus surprised people by intensifying the law, deepening the prohibition against murder to include anger and the one against adultery to include lust. Jesus thrived on raising the bar of what it meant to be righteous.  His teaching served to deepen the relational field in which all of the law or Torah was to be understood.

In debating Torah, Rabbi’s rarely used the phrase, “but I say to you.” They were more likely to quote one of their favorite Rabbi’s in building an argument. But Jesus had a deep confidence in his ability to interpret Torah. He spoke from his heart, and often, it seemed like the heart of God. It made some stir with loyalty and decide to follow him, it left others in disbelief and puzzlement, and to be frank it infuriated the religious elites of the day who ultimately excluded him from the synagogue and colluded in his arrest and execution.

Jesus was a Jew and he loved the Torah. For Jews then and now, the Torah is the way of life, granted by God within a covenant of pure grace. Torah for the Jews is the incarnation of God’s love for human kind.  And it is, for those who have experienced it at a depth, a beautiful and profound invitation to become holy as God is holy. The way of Torah is understood as a gift that leads to life, the paradigm for all of life. Torah was the center of identity and practice for all of Jewish life and therefore led to lively discussion. The Sadduces, The Pharisees, the Essenes, the Zealots and other Jewish sects including the Jesus movement, disagreed profoundly and loudly at times about how various passages should be interpreted and applied but all agreed on thing, the importance and centrality of Torah, a living word through which God still spoke to his people.

Truth be told, what Jesus had to say about the Torah was innovative and edgy going beyond and around the established Torah of God at times. Jesus said disturbingly new things about enemies, the importance of families, Sabbath observance, wealth, judgment, and radical inclusion that quite frankly set his interpretation of Torah apart. In the end the Jewish synagogues were faced with a difficult choice: stay with the Torah, the word of God given through Moses or trust that God was indeed speaking a new word through Jesus.  We know how this difficult choice was made and the two sister faiths of Judaism and Christianity that were created. The majority of Jews stayed with the Torah of Moses while the followers of Jesus went on to bring the good news of God to the Gentiles in messianic form.

Now both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians had to understand what was required of them to be faithful to God in a changed context. Did Jews need to be baptized? Did Gentiles need to observe Torah? What were the minimum requirements and how did this Jewish Christianity work for the thousands of Gentiles entering the faith?

In an interesting way the New Testament writings are all attempting to answer these questions. How does this new way work? In Matthew’s answer to that question, he emphasizes a peculiarly Jewish aspect by having Jesus say that he has come not to abolish Torah but to fulfill it. Matthew strengthens his argument by pointing to Jesus’ insistence upon the practice of righteousness. “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew’s gospel has a strongly Jewish tone. For one thing, the gospel writer believed that Jesus never really intended to break with Judaism. Matthew saw Jesus’ life and ministry as consistent with the way of Torah, and as a renewal of it. Far from abandoning the Torah, Jesus was encouraging his followers to become the most righteous Jews the world had ever seen.

I realize that righteousness is a real churchy word. Many of us may not be sure of what it means. Basically righteousness means goodness.  It is good conduct, but also compassion, generosity, and justice.  In short, righteousness is being right with God, as the psalmist says walking in God’s ways.

I love how Frederick Buechner’s definition of righteousness gets at the concept:

You haven’t got it right!” says the exasperated piano teacher.  Junior is holding his hands the way he’s been told.  His fingering is unexceptionable.  He has memorized the piece perfectly.  He has hit all the proper notes with deadly accuracy.  But his heart’s not in it, only his fingers.  What he’s playing is a sort of music but nothing that will start voices singing or feet tapping.  He has succeeded in boring everybody to death, including himself.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.”  (Matthew 5:20)  The scribes and Pharisees were playing it by the book.  They didn’t slip up on a single do or don’t.  But they were getting it all wrong.  Righteousness is getting it all right.  If you play it the way it’s supposed to be played, there shouldn’t be a still foot in the house. (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC)


In Matthew’s gospel Jesus invites his followers into the toe-tapping music of righteousness. It is not that Jesus’ followers must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees quantitatively. The difference really is meant to be qualitatively. Our obedience is to be in the Spirit of Torah as revealed in the person of Jesus. No amount of scrupulosity in following of rules will get it, you must have your heart and soul in it to get it right. To make beautiful music with God and to get the toes of people around you interested and tapping, must have your heart and soul in it. Soulless technique no matter how perfect will never do.

Like other Jewish teachers of his time, Jesus applied the interpretive principle of “light and heavy” to the biblical commands. For Jesus the weightier matters of the law were justice, mercy and faith. When obeying a light law got in the way of obeying a heavy law, then the light law needed to yield to the heavy so that God’ will might be fulfilled. For example which was heavier, ritual cleanliness or open table fellowship? For Jesus it was, open table fellowship hands down. Which was heavier, Sabbath observance or healing? Healing of course. Which was heavier avoiding the unclean or welcoming the strange? Welcoming the stranger.

And of course this is what Matthew meant by writing that Jesus did not come to abolish the law and prophets but to fulfill them. Jesus fulfilled the law and prophets not by slavishly doing everything written on the page or trying to follow every little rule just right. Jesus brought Torah to life. The way he lived pointed to God and his living made people realize that he was God’s beloved. Jesus did not just recite Torah or interpret Torah. He was Torah. He fulfilled Torah in his personhood before God. In his words and deeds he was the incarnation of Torah, the living justice and mercy and love of God in the flesh.  And what is more he promised those who followed him that they too could and would fulfill Torah.  (Taylor, Seeds of Heaven)

Perhaps you are sitting in this Christian church thinking “Is this priest crazy?Are you are really challenging us to be living Torah just as Jesus was.”  Well, yes! There is a crazy lie in our bulletin each and every week. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it. We list our readings separately as Old Testament and New Testament. For nearly 2,000 years we’ve separated out our scriptures Old and New as if one had really replaced the other or one is obsolete and the other new and improved. I once had a seminary professor who insisted in class, and this was quite difficult, that we refer to these parts of the sacred scriptures as the Older and the Newer Testaments to help us see that they are in fact of a piece, they are intimately connected. The newer testament is rooted in the gracious gift of the Torah, or older testament. We would never have the newer testament without the older testament. For Jesus our teacher and savior this was simply the truth. His life was a living out of the only scripture he had available and that was the Torah, which many came to understand as pointing to him as the living example of Torah itself.

Jesus by his life and example taught his followers that there would be time when fulfillment of Torah would move people dangerously beyond the Torah on the page. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “There would be times when the deepest possible obedience to God would look like disobedience to the keepers of the traditions of the elders, and that no amount of arguing would settle the dispute about which commands were weighty and which were light.” We in the Episcopal Church can certainly understand this idea as we struggle for the full inclusion of women and our GLBT brothers and sisters in the church and in our society over the past decades. We have been arguing over which is heavy and which is light for years.

When we live Torah off-the-page, the Torah revealed by the Spirit of Christ speaking within us, it is often the source of our deepest conflicts in the church. Jesus’ way of looking deep within Torah for its life-giving source has at times been the fuel for conflict as Christians continue to try to live faithfully in a world that is so changed and changing. It is never easy or comfortable to challenge the traditions of the elders, to questions the established institution, or to insist that there is a more excellent way if only we could see the numinous depth of Torah.  However, that is what we are sometimes called to do. We are not to abolish the way but to deepen the way, to fulfill it by living Torah, by living compassion, living justice, and living love in the midst of a culture that has lost its sense of values, lost its moral strength. It is the living Torah of Jesus that continues to animate each of us who call ourselves Christians because we have decided to follow the dangerous and life-giving way of living Torah ourselves.

When I think of the many difficult decisions going on in our country and state legislatures across the country, I am reminded of our need for living Torah. The biblical prophets, the Torah prophets make clear that a nation’s righteousness is ultimately determined not by its GNP or military might, or our military budgets, -- but by how it treats its most vulnerable people. Jesus says our love for him will be demonstrated by how we treat the “least of these.” There is a deep need for the living Torah of Jesus today.

Despite our separation from our Jewish brothers and sisters long ago in the faith, we do share something very powerful in common, our call to deep righteousness. In the best of both of our traditions righteousness has never been a matter of slavishly following the rules, but rather of honoring relationships with family as well as immigrants or strangers, enemies as well as allies, insiders as well as outsiders.  The Torah of Moses and the torah of Jesus both agree on these key things. When we serve our neighbors – gay, straight, documented, undocumented, educated, or everyday, hearing or deaf, rich or poor, when we love them as ourselves we are fulfilling the law and the prophets, we are living the gospel of Christ, and we like Jesus are living Torah. Amen

I wish to acknowledge my deep debt to the writing of Barabar Brown Taylor on the subject of the torah of Jesus in her sermon “Exceeding Righteousness” in her book The Seeds of Heaven which I have quoted from and been inspired by. I am also grateful for Frederick Beuchner’s help in understanding the concept of righteousness in his book Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. The concept of quantitative vs qualitative righteousness is from the commentary writing of Douglas R.A. Hare. in the Interpretations series commentary by Westminster/ John Knox  Richard B. Hays.

Over the years I have developed required reading for myself every season—a sort of personal lectionary.  In Advent I turn to the poetry of Tagore, Pentecost it’s Annie Dillard’s “Polar Expedition.”  Now half way through Epiphany I reread WH Auden’s Christmas Oratorio which speaks to this exact time: the season between happy Christmas and the coming solemnity of Lent.  Listen:

In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God’s Will will be done[i]
            
Our lessons today are lessons “for the time being.”  Two weeks ago we heard the story of the call of Peter, Andrew, James and John to discipleship.  Last week we heard the words of the Beatitudes, our marching orders for the Body of Christ.  Today we receive further insight into what it is to live God-ward in the mean time between Christmas and Easter.  
            Salt and light, says Jesus.  That’s what we ARE.   Salt was precious, especially in the ancient world when it was so hard to come by.  That’s easy to forget in this day when salt is usually the cheapest thing in the grocery store.  Only the wealthiest people had access to salt in the ancient world.  It was not pure, and could go stale, especially if it was polluted with impurities, but it would still interact with whatever it encountered as salt.    Maybe what Jesus meant was that salt losing its flavor is so absurd it would be like us losing who we are.  Can we be that lost?  It’s possible, but we are never lost to God.!   And clearly Jesus had no clue that in a North American winter, salt underfoot on an icy sidewalk is wonderful!
            Continuing his sermon begun last week Jesus addresses the people: “You are the salt of the earth!”  That “you” is plural.  It is not private, individual seasoning—you are salt, I am cumin and he is oregano; it is addressed to the whole community:  salt as flavoring for our common life, salt as preservative of cherished traditions, salt as precious and not to be taken for granted.  But I’m struggling with the “earth” part.  I remember our son’s 8th grade science project when he put salt water on beans planted in the earth—and everything died.  Salt on the earth poisons everything.    When the ancients vanquished their enemies, they sometimes sowed salt into the fields of the people they had just conquered, rendering them useless.   If one thinks of the ways we are destroying our planet, it is arguable we really have been like “salt to the earth.”  Now rolling back environmental protections only adds to our—well, “saltiness,” at least as far as the earth is concerned.  I wish Jesus had said “You are the compost of the earth,” or “You are the salt of the world.” We must not be as salt to the earth.  But salt in our communities, preserving what needs preserving and spicy with vibrancy, creativity, birthers of God’s Kingdom in our midst —ah, there’s our life for the meantime!
            “You are the light of the world.”  This is also Jesus’ description of himself.  “I am the light of the world,” he says in John’s Gospel. “Whoever believes in me will never walk in darkness.”  Mary Oliver has a poem called “The Buddha’s Last Instruction” which begins
“Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died....
An old man, he lay down between two sala trees, and he might have said anything,
Knowing it was his final hour....
No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills,
Like a million flowers on fire—clearly I’m not needed,
Yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.”[ii]
             Like salt?  Light, that mysterious substance which is both particle and wave gives light to our earth and joy to our souls.  Those of you who have lived in sunless places during dark months know how vital it is for our life.  We use light and darkness in our language to describe the inner state of our being, whether we have joy or despair.  In the early nineties I endured three and a half years of terrifying inner darkness, a severe depression which I did not think I would survive.   Jesus’ words here seemed a terrible mockery.  There was no light in me.  And I was light to no one.  Some of you know what that is.  Some of you may be there now.  I say to you, hang on.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.  I swear it.
            Years later, I began to hear stories back from people about how I had helped them through Hospice, or how I had said something that had carried them through a darkness of their own while I was in that terrible place of inner darkness myself.  I marveled at such stories.  The Buddha is wrong.  We cannot make of ourselves a light.  We can only reflect the light of the One who is the light of the world, even when we ourselves cannot see it.  It is an extraordinary miracle of God’s economy; that in Christ, we can give others a hope, a value, a preciousness which we may not feel ourselves to possess.      
            In those days I drew a mandala.  It was a simple, woven pattern of threads crossing and intersecting threads, warp and weft.  Only in the drawing, I drew some of the warp threads as broken.  If you’ve ever woven, you know this is a bad thing.  You cannot weave if the warp is broken.  Some of the weft threads were broken also.  And I meant it to be a bad thing—until I started to color it in and I realized—the broken places were where the light could shine through.  The whole meaning of the mandala turned in that moment and I began to understand that it is exactly in our brokenness that the light of Christ gleams and throbs.  We may be lights of the world, as Jesus describes us, but it will be in our brokenness that we are most transparent to the light of Christ shining within us.  Make of yourself then a lamp, to hold the light of Christ.
            The most important gesture done by the priest at the altar is at the fraction—the breaking of the bread, because that is the motion in which we are made whole.  Who can understand it?  Yet I stand before you and swear with everything that I am that it is true.  The bread baked, offered, and blessed, is ripped apart to feed the Body of Christ, which then goes and becomes that reconciling love in the world.  Salt to salt, light to light.  That is the meaning of this part of the dance we do together at this Eucharist.  When we do it today, I will ask you to join me in that motion.  As you do, think of what is most broken in your life, and invite the Light of Christ be manifest in those broken places.  Wherever you are, let your brokenness be your offering.
            One more thing about light:  In these early Sundays after Epiphany, the season of light, we read about calls—Jesus’ calling of various people to be his disciples.  For the last several years as I went through my own vocational coming apart, I become very suspicious of the word “call.”  We use it so fliply.  We say “God called me to do this.”  And it sounds very grandiose and who is going to argue with us?  I have wondered if our understanding of “call” is sometimes a projection of our own intention anyway.  It was a blood-red amaryllis that gave me a new understanding of call, and I invite you to use it in your own discernment about ministry in your life, whatever form that might take.  The image of call I offer you is “heliotropism;” the instinct of many living things, especially plants, to lean into the course of the sun across their paths.  If you’ve ever cared for a bulb like an amaryllis or a lily, you know how you have to keep turning the pot because it will reach so far toward the sun it may well fall over if not turned to reset itself.  Friends, maybe that’s what call is.  Each of us is created with the deep instinct to reach for those things which will give meaning and purpose and joy in our lives.  “Call” may be those deep yearnings which keep us awake at night, which fill us with longing until we can act on our instinct and reach for it.  Those instincts were placed in our hearts by the Creator before we were born, before we were named, before we knew ourselves, and “call” is God’s inviting us to make them manifest in the world.  I love that image.  It takes the urgency out of “getting it right.”  There isn’t one call which is a deep dark secret and we have to figure out the puzzle!  When people in spiritual direction ask me “How do I know God’s will for me?” my pat response is “What gives you joy?”  So as we hear Gospel stories of calls in future weeks, I invite you to reflect on your own.  Where are you called to reach for the light which is already within you, and reflect it to the world around you?  
            Because that is ministry in the meantime.  Some of you are in transition, already left, not quite arrived; some of you are home again but in a new way, some of you struggle with illness, with uncertainty about work or relationships or belonging.  Some of you are stuck, needing to be pried out of comfort and safety and flung headfirst into a little wilderness.  We all need that from time to time.  These are the rhythms of the meantime, “the time being to redeem from insignificance.”  This is precisely the time to be salt and light and to follow a Lord who trusts us—TRUSTS us with Creation itself.  It is one of the mind-blowing truths of the Bible; that God offers us the world and each other and says “Be salt.  Be light—illumine and enliven the world with my joy and love.  Practice the spiritual disciplines of justice, acts of mercy, and joy.”  No 16 point plan, no instructions in 5 languages in tiny print, just “salt, light.  Be who you are with your deep yearnings.”  I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to trust anyone else even to carry a pot of my chili stew from the stove to the table—they might drop it!  But God trusts us bumbling kids with the whole creation.  [Make the gesture for breaking bread.]  Alleluia!


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[i] Auden, WH.  “A Christmas Oratorio” from  For the Time Being.
[ii] Oliver, Mary.  “Last Instruction of the Buddha.”  New and Selected Poems.  Boston: Beacon Press. 1992. Pp. 68-69.
Thanks also to John McNeil, Howard Vandine, and  Wendy and Gary Aichelle for illuminating and arguing with me!