In Our Favor

Matthew 5:13-20

‘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.

‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I warned you all a couple weeks ago that I’d probably be using Octavia Butler’s sci-fi classic Parable of the Sower in multiple sermons, and well—here we are. Now, the story is bleak, it’s about a postapocalyptic world that feels beyond hope, a world in which the ultra-rich live in walled-off fortresses hoarding resources while everyone else is left to scavenge and fend for themselves… and yet—the narrator and her gang of misfits band together to attempt to create a place where people can feel safe with one another once again. And a couple weeks ago, I talked about how the main character thinks of her version of God as change itself; she thinks of God as something to be molded and shaped. Well at one point, at the beginning of a chapter, she writes, “…we can rig the game in our own favor if we understand that God exists to be shaped, and will be shaped, with or without our forethought, with or without our intent.”

Now this may seem sort of blasphemous—the very idea that we could shape something unknowable and all-powerful like God itself; but people also thought Jesus was being blasphemous in his preaching. That’s much of what this passage is all about.

We’re still really early on in Jesus’ ministry. People are confused and concerned about what he’s saying—they think he’s come to do away with everything they’ve been taught in the past, but in this passage he’s telling them—no! in fact, he’s here to fulfill all of the hope and prophesy that the faithful have been taught in the past. And fulfill is actually a relatively ambiguous word translated from the Greek— one way it can be translated is that Jesus was coming to give his own, direct-from-God interpretation of the laws. And again—this may seem like blasphemy, but it’s actually right in line with rabbinic law and culture of the day. I think when we think of really conservative, fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, we simply think of Biblical literalists. But rabbinic tradition is all about listening to one another, and  debate and discussion and discernment.

Jesus is dead-serious when he says not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will change until we bring about an earth as it is in heaven. He’s not here to change the laws, or to change the way people worship—but he is here to change the way we think. He’s here to change the way we think about faith, God, the world around us, one another. And he does this by opening our eyes to the fact that this world doesn’t have to be the way it is—we can have the world that Isaiah prophesied, a truly post-exilic world where every sing person has a home, where all are safe.

Now if we go back to that quote from Parable of the Sower, she’s saying that regardless of what we do with God, the concept of God and faith is going to be changed, is going to be molded into something by someone. If we choose to live in ignorance, that won’t change God being molded to rig the game in the oppressor’s favor. We see this playing out today. We see this in the racist rhetoric of white supremacy and Christian nationalism. People are molding God and molding an inclusive, loving faith by changing it into something cruel and exclusionary; changing it into the complete opposite of what it was meant to be. A very real and close-to-home example of this—one of Chris’ closest friends currently teaches at New College of Florida, a public university that has a reputation of being inclusive, open-minded, and eye-opening, welcoming of people of color, the undocumented, queer folks— well Chris’ friend is deeply fearful for his job now because the governor of Florida is trying to change New College by using the blueprint of a deeply exclusionary, private Christian college—a place that teaches fear and censorship. This is someone molding God into something that’s going to put people in danger, something that’s going to hurt people— that’s going to hurt the most vulnerable among us— queer folks, trans folks, people of color, the undocumented. Church, this is not what Jesus had in mind when he was preaching. He was not interested in gatekeeping his Love from anyone, much less the oppressed who need it most

We cannot live in blissful ignorance as the world crumbles around us. We have to work to make sure that the inclusive, unconditionally loving Christianity we know and practice is one people see and one people can turn to. We have to make sure that we do what Jesus asks of us, and not change the gospel, but rather really think about, what it means to us, what it means to our community, and really engage with people and be in community with one another— rather than try to force some kind of hurtful ideology onto others. We need to be intentional about our beliefs by way of our words and actions.

When Jesus says that our righteousness, our faithfulness, needs to exceed those of the scribes and Pharisees, he’s not necessarily saying that we need to be more zealous than them or even more educated than them— I mean, after all, the scribes were educated to be copyists and interpreters of scripture, and the Pharisees had the reputation for being very well-educated and little… snobby about it. When Jesus is saying that our righteousness but exceed these people’s, he’s saying that we have to have real intention and action behind our beliefs. The implication here is that the scribes and Pharisees were doing it for the wrong reasons—for status, for money, for a reward in heaven, for bragging rights.

So much of Jesus’ message, particularly in Matthew, is all about showing your faith through action, through good works. It’s about thinking deeply about what it means to be Christian, what Christ is asking of us and then really acting on it. This is how Jesus is calling us to mold the view of God in today’s world, to show people what it means to really be a follower of his. It doesn’t just mean blindly forcing our beliefs on others, it doesn’t just mean showing off photographic knowledge of scripture or bragging about how much one prays or reads the Bible.

What it means is spreading God’s unconditional love by way of intentional action—spreading God’s love by showing God’s love. So we’re kind of working our way backwards through the scripture here, I realized— because I’ve spent the whole first chunk of the sermon talking about the second chunk of the passage, so now let’s backtrack a little— remember last week I brough up a recurring topic of sort of reclaiming the word evangelism— reclaiming it so that people no longer think of it as someone forcing another to convert or really shoving one’s beliefs down someone’s throat, especially when they’re not receptive.

This first section in today’s passage is what I’m thinking of when I think of evangelism, and it’s also a perfect example of what Matthew thinks of as being especially important when it comes to following Jesus—spreading the Good News through action, through these good works Jesus mentions here. If Jesus’ followers are to be the salt of the earth, meaning if they are the people who have the abilities to give the people of earth flavor and hope, what good are they if they don’t bring that taste out to others? What good are they if they keep the Good News for themselves? If we have skills and hope to share with the world, we must share it. Last week was our annual meeting, and I encouraged you all to think of the different skills and strengths you have so you can think about joining a committee and getting really involved in the life of the church. This is spreading your flavor around, this is spreading hope—it’s using the hope and love that Jesus gives us for the good of the community, for the good of others. It’s spreading the love.

And in just a couple minutes, we’ll sing a classic that has maybe been a little overused, that maybe some people are sick of—but how could I not put This Little Light of Mine in the order of service this week, as we listen to a passage about shining our light upon all people. And we’re also at the beginning of Black History Month—This Little Light was adopted as a Civil Rights anthem in the 50’s and 60’s. And there’s good reason for that.

Shining our light upon others doesn’t just mean spreading some easy-to-digest messages of love and joy. It also means shining our light on people who might not want to see it. It means shining our light and spreading news of radical love when people don’t want to hear it. This Little Light  was a way to encourage people who were understandably scared during the Civil Rights movement. Civil Rights activists were at risk of being jailed, injured, beaten. They were at risk of death. They were risking their lives for equal rights for all people, and so This Little Light, based off of this passage was a way to encourage people with the words of Jesus that no matter the danger, they were doing the right thing. They were doing what Jesus calls us to do—to shine our lights, not for glory or status or a place in heaven, but for the intention to bring about an earth as it is in heaven— for equality for all people.

For literally centuries before the Civil Rights movement, those in power were using the word of God to justify slavery and oppression. They were molding and shaping their own version of God, lightyears away from the God of Love that we know and worship. Because this is what happens if we ignore how God is shaped and molded and changed and willfully misinterpreted by the powerful. This is what happens when we don’t let our own lights shine, when we don’t share our savory and life-saving salt with those around us.

And let’s remember—when some of those slaveowners tried to convert enslaved people with their version of Christianity so that they would stay in line, those enslaved people saw right through it, and it backfired. The enslaved and oppressed heard the true message of liberation in the story of Exodus, they heard the liberation and unconditional Love in the words of Jesus. As the Black liberation theologian James Cone says in his masterpiece God of the Oppressed, “The scandal is that the gospel means liberation, that this liberation comes to the poor, and that it gives them the strength and the courage to break the conditions of servitude.”

And so this was indeed scandalous, what Jesus was doing in his day—he was taking something that had been corrupted or ignored the powerful, and was interpreting it and shaping it in a brand new way, scandalizing people into realizing that there are better ways to live, that we don’t have to live under the boot of oppression, but to get out from under that boot, we can’t be quiet. We can’t just let those in power take the Love we receive and know from Jesus and turn it into something that harms the most vulnerable, something truly evil.

It's really hard these days to be constantly aware of all the bad news we’re bombarded with, but we have to be aware of it, we have to pay attention, because whether or not we pay attention, oppressors will indeed shape God into something unfathomably cruel. And so to counteract this, we need to spread our scandalous spicy message of equality and hope through intention, through actions— through our radical hospitality and by welcoming all into this sacred space, as we did once again last night. We need to shine our light upon all people—so that the disheartened and oppressed may be uplifted by our actions and our good works.

We can rig the game in favor of the oppressed— as long as we understand that the true shape and message of God is Love. Amen.