SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT

Genesis 12:1-4

Psalm 121

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

John 3:1-17

Prayer of the Day: O God, our leader and guide, in the waters of baptism you bring us to new birth to live as your children. Strengthen our faith in your promises, that by your Spirit we may lift up your life to all the world through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sunday’s lessons from Genesis and Romans lift up Abraham as a person of strong faith. The psalm describes in a beautiful, lyrical way what such faith looks like. By contrast, the gospel lesson features Nicodemus-hardly someone that comes to mind when examples of faith are under discussion. We meet Nicodemus three times in John’s gospel. In our gospel lesson, we find him creeping silently through the night to question Jesus under the cover of darkness. John does not tell us specifically why Nicodemus came at night, but we can safely conjecture that he did not want to be publicly associated with Jesus. We know that there were some influential religious leaders who believed in Jesus but were fearful of expressing their faith in him. Evidently, Nicodemus was among them. John 12:42.

Nicodemus comes across as something of a dufus who cannot seem to follow Jesus’ line of thinking. But in all fairness, I have some difficulty with that myself. Jesus declares that no one can see the reign of God unless they are “born anew.” Nicodemus asks, quite reasonably, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Birth is a traumatic experience. One minute you are in a warm, dark, quiet and safe environment where all your needs are met without any effort on your part. The next you are thrust into realm of novel and unintelligible noise, harsh lights, cold air and new experiences of touch and smell. You have no conceptual tools or prior experience to make sense of everything that is happening to you. It is probably a good thing we cannot remember the experience of birth. If we did, we would probably be spending the rest of our lives in trauma therapy.

In order to be “born anew” or “born from above,” you need to unlearn everything you have ever learned. You must be stripped of all the assumptions, all of the biases, all of the family, religious and national loyalties into which you have been encultured and left psychically and spiritually naked. What, short of a traumatic brain injury, could put you into such a state? Yet according to Jesus, that is what must happen before we can comprehend God’s reign. Rebirth is hard to imagine. A new born infant or even a small child comes into the world without knowing what is possible, what is impossible, what is good or what is evil. For them, the world is all raw, unmediated sensation. Accordingly, they are radically open to learning and learn is what they do! Most of the critical learning we do occurs between infancy and early childhood. The older we get, the less open we are to learning. What we have already learned and believed becomes more deeply ingrained as we age. The older we get, the harder it is to let go of deeply held convictions and beliefs. The longer we have committed blood, sweat, time and effort supporting our religious institutions, our political parties and our familial communities, the harder it is question these loyalties, much less abandon them. Nicodemus was right to wonder how an adult can begin to view the world with the eyes of a child, unclouded by years of learning and experience.

Something like birth from above is what was required of Abraham when God called him to leave his home, his kindred and his tribe and follow God’s leading to some land somewhere he had never seen. His new life would consist of living as a homeless nomad and an alien in an unfamiliar land filled with hidden dangers. Yet this land, God tells the childness and aged Abraham, will one day belong to his descendants. Abraham would have been more than justified in asking, as did Nicodemus, “how can these things be?” John 3:9.

Sarah, Abraham and their descendants are models of faith. Notwithstanding what we moderns might view as their moral failures and shortcomings, they staked their lives on a promise. All the conditions that confronted them weighed against the fulfilment of the promise. As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews points out, their faith was based “on things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1. Our nomadic spiritual ancestors’ conviction that the land of Cannan belonged to them was at odds with the hard geopolitical realities of the bronze age. Yet they lived in expectation of its fulfilment as though it were a sure thing.

As professor Stanley Hauerwas has observed, the life disciples of Jesus live makes no practical common sense apart from belief in Jesus’ resurrection. By raising from the dead the man whose life was lived in accord with the impractical, ineffective and hopelessly altruistic precepts of the Sermon on the Mount ending his crucifixion and the dispersion of his followers, God declares that the future belongs to the poor, the meek, the pure in heart, the merciful, the peacemakers and especially those who are most hated, despised and persecuted. The Resurrection places the proud, the wealthy, the war mongers, wall builders, the culture warriors and ethnic cleansers on the wrong side of history. So, because God raised Jesus from death, we continue to pick up the garbage on our streets even though our efforts are dwarfed by the tons of industrial waste dumped all over our planet by commercial interests whose only value is financial gain. We continue advocating for transgender children, racial justice and humane immigration policies even when our political allies plead with us to downplay such matters and focus instead on “kitchen table issues.” We make peace through seeking reconciliation, forgiveness and restorative justice in a world convinced that peace can only be made through the threat, and failing that, the use of military might. None of this makes sense unless you believe that God raised Jesus from death and that therefore the future belongs to the just, gentle and peaceful reign of God.

So how does our friend Nicodemus fit into all of this? As we have noted, he is one of the religious leaders who believed Jesus but was unwilling to associate with him publicly. John the Evangelist has harsh words for such under cover believers. He chides them for loving human praise more than the praise of God. John 12:43. Still, it is worth noting that when the religious authorities were hell bent on arresting Jesus, it was Nicodemus who spoke up and insisted that no such action should be taken without first hearing what Jesus had to say. John 7:45-52. Following Jesus’ crucifixion, his disciples all deserted him and left his body to be pecked at by crows and eaten by dogs at the foot of the cross. But Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, another under cover disciple, sought permission to take down the body of Jesus and give him a proper burial. John 19:38-42. It seems that despite his initial skepticism, Nicodemus may have been born anew. It appears that perhaps he did catch a glimpse of God’s reign. Did it lead him finally to a life of discipleship? John the Evangelist leaves us to wonder about that.

Here is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that speaks to “a love that in the spirit dwells that panteth after things unseen.” It is to that spirit Jesus appeals when he says to Nicodemus, ^“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘Youmust be born from above.’The windblows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:6-8.

Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself)

Source: Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 3, edited by William H. Gilman & Alfred R. Ferguson (c. The Bellknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1964) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803,^[15] to Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister. at age fourteen, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty. He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher. Emerson served as Class Poet and, as such, presented an original poem on Harvard’s Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821. In the early 1820s, Emerson was a teacher at the School for Young Ladies. He next spent two years living in a cabin in the Canterbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he wrote and studied nature.

In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek a warmer climate. He first went to Charleston, South Carolina, but found the weather was still too cold. He then went farther south to St. Augustine, Florida. There Emerson had his first encounter with slavery. At one point, he attended a meeting of the Bible Society while a slave auction was taking place in the yard outside. He wrote, “One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with ‘Going, gentlemen, going!'” Emerson was staunchly opposed to slavery. In the years leading up to the Civil War he gave a number of lectures on the subject. He  welcomed John Brown to his home during Brown’s visits to Concord and voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, whom he later met in person. Starting in 1867, Emerson’s health began to decline. He wrote much less and started experiencing memory problems. Still, he continued to travel widely and lecture in Europe and the United States. He died from complications of pneumonia in 1892. You can read more about Ralph Waldo Emerson and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4:1-11

Prayer of the Day: Lord God, our strength, the struggle between good and evil rages within and around us, and the devil and all the forces that defy you tempt us with empty promises. Keep us steadfast in your word, and when we fall, raise us again and restore us through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity
    and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”  Psalm 32:1-2.

Our prayer for this first Sunday in Lent rings true with a particular clarity these days. The “struggle between good and evil rages within and around us” and we are tempted with a slew of “empty promises” at every turn. The Lenten challenge is to turn away from the allure of such promises, reject the claims the evil one would assert over our lives and lament our complicity in society’s systemic injustice. But is that really all there is to it? Is repentance only a matter of lamenting sin, turning away from evil and receiving forgiveness for past wrongs? I don’t think so. Over many years of leading my congregations through the season of Lent, the Three Days and celebration of the Resurrection, I have become convinced that we have not gotten repentance completely right.

A member of the worshiping community of which I am a part during the vacation season here on the Outer Cape recently summarized a sermon he heard in which the preacher declared, concerning the oppressive measures of our government against so many vulnerable groups, “I am not part of the so-called resistance. I am not resisting anything. I am struggling to follow Jesus and live into the reign of God he proclaims. They are the resistance.” I heard similar sentiments expressed by a member of one of our churches in Minneapolis involved with providing food assistance to persons afraid to leave home for fear of ICE violence. Disciples of Jesus practice the life of God’s coming reign in the face of resistance from a world unprepared to accept it. To be sure, such an existence takes the form of the cross, but its end is resurrection and a new creation. Thus, repentance is not merely or even chiefly a matter of sorrow for sin and turning away from evil. It is turning toward the imminent reign of God. Rejection of the devil and all his empty promises is not a precondition, but the consequence of this joyful turning.

What happens when we view the temptations Jesus faced in this light? The good news here is that God can be trusted to provide for our most basic human needs-and has so provided. Contrary to what the false apostles of scarcity keep telling us, this earth is capable of feeding, sheltering and caring for all people, notwithstanding the violence we have inflicted upon it. I recall a lecture I once attended led by a leader of my church’s global hunger ministry during which a woman posed the following question: “If God loves us so much, how come there are so many of these hungry people you keep talking about?” Without missing a beat, the speaker replied, “Many theologians and philosophers have struggled with that question and written thousands of books on the subject. But I think part of the solution to the problem is resting right there in your purse.” As the disciples learned when faced with a hungry crowd of five thousand, a little bit goes a long way when placed into the hands of Jesus, who calls us to trust God’s generosity as we practice our own.

The good news is that suffering, loss and even pain need not be feared. The devil would have Jesus believe that the reign of God will come without sacrifice. If you trust God, God will “rapture you away from the great tribulation.” “Your faith plants the seeds and God sends the harvest of prosperity,” “all things work out for good for those who trust God.” Quoting Psalm 91, the devil assures Jesus that he can safely throw himself down from the roof of the temple because,

 “God will command his angels concerning you,’
    and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”  

But there is more to this Psalm than the devil is letting on. The author of the psalm is quite possibly a soldier who has known the dangers of combat. Or perhaps he or she is the survivor of a plague. Whoever they may be, they have seen death up close and personal. They know that God “will be with them in trouble.” Psalm 91:15. That is quite different from promising that there will be no trouble for those who trust in God. To the contrary, Jesus knows that his trust in his Heavenly Father will subject him to opposition, suffering and death. But suffering and death, real though they surely are, do not have the last word. For that reason, they have, as Saint Paul says, “lost their sting.” I Corinthians 15:54-55.

The good news is that God’s reign comes without violence, force or coercion of any kind. Jesus has no need for “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” Matthew 4:8. He knows that such glory and power are illusionary. As the prophet Isaiah points out, the nations “are like a drop from a bucket.” Isaiah 40:15. As went Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece, so goes Rome, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union and, perhaps soon, the United States of America. Contrary to what much of American Christianity believes, God does not need the United States, democracy or the constitution to implement or prop up God’s reign. Jesus knows that empires have only time to “strut and fret” their “hour upon the stage” and then be “heard no more.” MacBeth, Act 5, Scene 5. God has all eternity with which to work. God’s reign will come with or without our efforts. The only question is, will we accept Jesus’ invitation to participate in that joyous occurrence or throw our lives away in futile resistance?

In sum, I believe repentance to be a joyful opportunity. It is grounded not in angry reaction to the evil around us, but in a thankful response to Jesus’ invitation to live under God’s just and gentle reign. Joyful repentance is on full display in the words of Wendell Berry:

“So, my friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love somebody who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

The flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.”

Repentance is not mere resistance, but an affirmative response to the better live Jesus invites us to share with him. We don’t have to repent. We get to repent.

To be clear, repentance does involve sorrow for the time we have wasted in bitterness, envy, selfishness and greed. There is genuine and proper regret for the harm we have done to others and the wounds we have inflicted on our planet. But the good news of the gospel is that our past need not determine our future. What we have done cannot be undone, but it can be worked into a narrative of redemption. Again, as Wendell Berry urges,

“As soon as the generals and politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go…”

Let this Lenten season be one in which our sober acknowledgement of brokenness nevertheless glows with a measure of Easter joy.

Here is the full poem of Wendell Berry cited above.

    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
    vacation with pay. Want more
    of everything ready-made. Be afraid
    to know your neighbors and to die.
    And you will have a window in your head.
    Not even your future will be a mystery
    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
    and shut away in a little drawer.
    When they want you to buy something
    they will call you. When they want you
    to die for profit they will let you know.

    So, friends, every day do something
    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.
    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

    Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.
    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

    Put your faith in the two inches of humus
    that will build under the trees
    every thousand years.
    Listen to carrion – put your ear
    close, and hear the faint chattering
    of the songs that are to come.
    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
    though you have considered all the facts.
    So long as women do not go cheap
    for power, please women more than men.
    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
    a woman satisfied to bear a child?
    Will this disturb the sleep
    of a woman near to giving birth?

    Go with your love to the fields.
    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
    in her lap. Swear allegiance
    to what is nighest your thoughts.
    As soon as the generals and the politicos
    can predict the motions of your mind,
    lose it. Leave it as a sign
    to mark the false trail, the way
    you didn’t go. Be like the fox
    who makes more tracks than necessary,
    some in the wrong direction.
    Practice resurrection.  

Source: The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry, (c. Wendell Berry, 2016; pub. by Penguin Random House, UK). Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, novelist, farmer and environmental activist. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. You can read more about Wendell Berry and sample more of his works at the Poetry Foundation website.

TRANSFIGURATION OF OUR LORD

Exodus 24:12-18

Psalm 2 or

Psalm 99

2 Peter 1:16-21

Matthew 17:1-9

Prayer of the Day: O God, in the transfiguration of your Son you confirmed the mysteries of the faith by the witness of Moses and Elijah, and in the voice from the bright cloud declaring Jesus your beloved Son, you foreshadowed our adoption as your children. Make us heirs with Christ of your glory, and bring us to enjoy its fullness, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Matthew 17:5.

Just when the disciples think they finally have Jesus figured out, they find out they don’t. Just when they think they understand what the reign of God is all about, they discover they have a lot more to learn. They struggle to comprehend Jesus’ parables, they question his judgment when he tells them they are bound for Jerusalem and they do not know what to make of the Transfiguration but are clearly intent on making it last. The succeeding generations of disciples have fared no better. We are still trying to figure out who Jesus is, what he demands of us and how to follow him. Over the centuries, the church has made some disastrous wrong turns, not the least of which was turning Jesus into the mascot of empire, the tool of colonialism and, most recently, the patron saint of American racism, genocide, misogyny and homophobia. The way of discipleship is, as Jesus characterizes it, “narrow” and “hard.” By contrast, the way leading us away from it is “wide and the road is easy.” Matthew 7:13-14. Thus, the divine imperative: “This is my Son, the Beloved…listen to him.”

How do people like us who are two millennia removed from Jesus’ earthly ministry listen to him? Of course, the most direct witnesses we have to Jesus are the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. The Bible, consisting of both documents, is understood in my Lutheran tradition to be the Word of God-but only in a derivative sense. Primarily, the Word of God is the Word made flesh, the incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ. In the not too distant past, we would have said that the Bible is “inerrant and infallible.” The abandonment of these terms in our more recent statements of faith caused quite a stir among folks who felt we were watering down the Bible’s authority. But I think jettisoning these terms was a wise decision. They say both too much and too little. They claim too much because they ascribe everything to the text, suggesting that we disciples of Jesus are a “people of the book.” [1] On the other hand, these two terms say too little because they fail to specify the focus of the Bible’s testimony to the Incarnate Word. In arguing with his opponents, Jesus remarked, “you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf.” John 5:39. I prefer to say that the Bible is a faithful and reliable witness to God’s saving acts toward Israel and God’s redemptive acts for all creation through the obedient life, faithful death and glorious resurrection of Jesus. Disciples of Jesus read and interpret the scriptures through this lens. That is how the Bible enables us to listen to Jesus.  

Still, the fact remains that the Bible has not always functioned as a redemptive text or a faithful witness to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims. Throughout history the Bible has been cited in support of unspeakable hatred, violence and cruelty. In both the United States and South Africa, the accounts of Israel’s conquest of Canaan were cited as a rationale for invading, conquering and dispossessing indigenous peoples. Saint Paul’s admonition to respect governing authorities as instruments of God’s justice has been cited to justify tyranny and condemn resistance to it. The Bible was regularly invoked to support the institution of slavery in the antebellum United States and afterward to support the systemic racism of Jim Crow. Biblical passages have been employed to demonize, ostracize and incite violence against gay, lesbian and transgender persons. The Bible is a complex, layered and diverse collection of literature filled with rabbit holes leading to dark and frightening places. It is a dangerous book in the hands of the wrong people.

That brings us to our reading from II Peter where the apostle says, “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” II Peter 1:20. That is not to say the Bible needs no interpretation. As noted above, it clearly does. The operative words in Peter’s remark are “one’s own.” Interpretation of scripture is far too important a task to be left to everyone’s individual conscience. It is too important to be placed solely in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities or left to the outcome of any democratic process. Interpretation of scripture is the task of the whole church. We need the wisdom and experience of bishops, pastors and teachers to school us in the lessons learned by the church over the centuries and the hard won teachings that have guided us. We need prophetic voices of preachers speaking from the margines to warn us when our orthopraxy does not match our orthodoxy and call us back to faithfulness. We need writers, poets, artists and musicians to stretch our imaginations and help us to see and understand in new ways our Lord Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims. I daresay we need even the heretics. While we may reject their claims and teachings, we can thank them for helping us clarify, revise and strengthen our own. (And I hope we are learning to treat them more grace and gentleness than we have in the past!) Through all these witnesses, we discover anew the Jesus we thought we knew as he is constantly transfigured and we are by him transformed.

Here is a poem about perception that transfigures and its transformative potential by Jennifer Jean.

Doors of Perception

My father leapt on stage at the Hollywood Bowl

to grab drum and cymbal sticks

from a star—he wanted to be

a star, a door, a Door. White. Security

thugs dragged him off

John Densmore. He saw doors everywhere, he saw Doors

everywhere—at the Whisky,

the Beanery, the Magic Mountain fest—and

in primary colors

in Windward, Oakwood, or North of  Rose. He wanted

to forget war in Venice, to be a door in Venice

and face the faux canals.

Later, he flew to Paris to pay homage to the Door who died

with a head of Alexandrian hair.

He carried huge pale poppies

to the “Poets’ Corner” in the Père Lachaise,

to this stranger under a cream coffin

door nailed shut. He said, Break on through.

He put a poppy in his pocket

like a receipt,

and chased daylight till he landed

in LA, saw a wave of  white

stars rippling

on the Pacific on new moon nights,

when the ever-present rust cloud was blown out to sea.

He found a motel room door, particle door, and shut it

on all that he owned

for fifty years. He lived there, adding up primary colors,

hour to hour in Bliss Consciousness—

crossing his legs on the bed, letting electric snow

hush the TV. Hush

gunfire and

blood. He forgot his father’s father’s Cabo Verde

and let himself   be Italian there—

a different kind of   Venetian—because who he really was was

too close to Black.

Source: Poetry (October 2020). Jennifer Jean is a poet, translator, editor and educator. She was born in Venice, California and lived in foster-care until she was seven. Her ancestors are from the Cape Verde Islands. She grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley. She earned her BA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and her MFA in poetry from Saint Mary’s College. Jean has been awarded fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Disquiet/Dzanc Books, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Kolkata International Poetry Festival. She received the Jean Pedrick Award from the NEPC, and an Ambassador for Peace Award from the Women’s Federation for World Peace. Jean is the founder of Free2Write: Poetry Workshops for Trauma Survivors, and has been the poetry editor for Talking Writing Magazine and MER. You can read more about Jennifer Jean and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] My friends who insist on an inerrant Bible find themselves drawn down a thousand rabbit holes, having to defend a literal six day creation, a literal worldwide flood and a literal halt to the earth’s rotation against all scientific evidence. This is necessary because if the Bible is found to be unreliable in any single detail, its credibility is destroyed and faith is undermined. But this is to do exactly what Jesus’ opponents were doing, namely, placing faith in the scriptures rather than the God to whom the scriptures testify.  

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Isaiah 58:1-12

Psalm 112:1-10

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Matthew 5:13-20

Prayer of the Day: Lord God, with endless mercy you receive the prayers of all who call upon you. By your Spirit show us the things we ought to do, and give us the grace and power to do them, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
⁷ 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.

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” Matthew 5:13.

Salt had numerous uses in the first century. It was used for enhancing the flavor of food as it is today. Salt was also employed as a preservative, critical for warm climates. It was used to brighten the light of oil lamps, increase the efficiency of baking ovens and as a cleansing agent. Salt was a component in ritual sacrifices, sometimes spoken of as a symbol of Israel’s covenant with God. For more on this, see Nolland, John, The Gospel of Matthew, (New International Greek Testament Commentary, c. 2005 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). We need not settle on which particular use Jesus had in mind to appreciate the metaphor. Whether acting as seasoning, preservative, cleanser, brightener, cooking aid or ritual symbol, salt is always used to benefit something else. The one thing salt cannot do is salt itself. Salt that has become degraded, diluted or altered in some way such that its effectiveness is impaired cannot be restored by adding more salt to it.

As we move further into this section of Matthew known as the Sermon on the Mount, we hear Jesus becoming increasingly critical of the religion practiced by many of the scribes and Pharisees. He makes clear, however, that his criticism is not of Judaism and its practices. To the contrary, he makes clear that he did not come to abolish, but to fulfill the Torah. Jesus is fully supportive of his opponents’ practices of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. His criticism goes rather to the failure of their fasting, prayers and giving to inspire them toward observance of the “weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Matthew 23:23. In this Jesus was consistent with the prophet Isaiah who chides his own contemporaries for their scrupulous observance of ritual fasting on the one hand while ignoring the needs of their needy neighbors on the other. Faith that does not embody empathy toward the world of neighbors is not Christian, however much it might be plastered with crosses and smothered with mouthed praises of Jesus.

If the Sermon is to be preached faithfully, the preacher must recognize that it is an indictment of our own worship as much or more than that of Jesus’ contemporaries. Ours, too, is often worship that is more form than substance. It is one thing to issue preachy-screechy social statements condemning poverty. It is quite another to “bring the homeless poor into your house.” It is easy enough to condemn colonialism from comfort of our homes and offices built on land our recent ancestors stole from indigenous tribes. It is quite another to consider what it might mean to reverse the colonial systems from which we obviously continue to benefit. It is easy to lament and issue declarations of apology for our church’s participation with and complicity in our nation’s shameful history of slavery. As those of us who have been urging the church to take concrete steps toward restorative justice and reparations for Black Americans, acting on such bold declarations is not something our leaders are keen on pursuing.

The Sermon on the Mount is good news. To the poor it throws open the door to God’s reign of plenty; to those who groan under the yoke of oppression, it promises liberation; to those who are persecuted, it promises vindication and blessing; to the rich, it promises liberation from addiction to wealth; to the privileged, it promises demolition of the walls that separate us from the neighbors who have for too long paid the price for our consumptive way of life. In the Sermon, Jesus invites us to join him in a new way of being human in an increasingly inhumane world. No matter how beaten down one might be under the crushing oppression of empire, no matter how deeply one might be implicated in driving that oppression, the inbreaking of God’s reign opens up opportunities for repentance, justice and reconciliation (in that order). Jesus invites us to become “like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.” Isaiah 58:11. He calls us to become a sign of what our world can be.

That brings us back to salt, the substance that seasons, cleanses, preserves, enlightens and sanctifies-among other things. Disciples understand that they cannot establish the reign of God through their own efforts. They can, however, and must witness to it in deed as well as word. That is what food pantries in the church basement are all about. They do not make much of a dent in world hunger, but they season a nation, half of which is starving from lack of nutrition while the other is starving from lack of compassion. Protests against Donald Trump’s private army of ICE thugs killing their neighbors may not break the resolve of our government to inflict terror upon our neighborhoods. But it will shine a light on oppression and highlight the humanity of its victims. Sanctuary churches are not the solution to anti-immigrant violence and oppressive policies. But they do, along with numerous other communities of faith and humanitarian organizations, hold together vulnerable communities and provide essential support for families in the greatest danger of arrest and deportation. The preachers who find courage to speak truthfully to their congregations about what discipleship means in an age of bigotry dressed up as patriotism will not move the needle of public opinion. But they can perhaps light a flame that God’s Spirit will one day fan into a fierce and cleansing fire. Like salt, Jesus’ disciples are called to be agents of seasoning, preservation, cleansing, illumination and sanctification.

It may seem counterintuitive to think of salt as a healing agent. Nobody likes the idea of “rubbing salt into a wound.” But pain is an inevitable part of healing and recovery. A pinch of salt in the right places can be the catalyst for needed change. Here is a poem by Larry Neal celebrating the many people whose lives and struggles have seasoned the long (and as yet incomplete) sojourn of Black Americans toward liberation from the oppression of white supremacy. 

O God make us strong and ready

Source: Hoodoo Hollerin’ Bebop Ghosts, (c. 1968, 1974 by Larry Neal; pub. by Published by Howard Univ Press). Larry Neal (1937–1981) was an American writer, poet, critic and academic. He was a well known scholar of African-American theater who contributed to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Neal was a major force pushing for black culture to focus less on integration with white culture. He sought rather to lift up its unique features within an equally important and meaningful artistic and political field celebrating Black heritage.

Neal was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Woodie and Maggie Neal, who had five sons. He graduated from a Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia in 1956. He later graduated from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1961 with a degree in history and English. He then went on to receive a master’s degree in Folklore which became a major subject of many of his later works. Neal was a professor at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia and a copywriter in Wiley and Sons. He held professorships at City College of New York, Wesleyan University and Yale University. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship for African-American critical studies. You can read more about Larry Neal and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.