There’s a saying that God comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.
In today’s Liturgy of the Word, God seems to be afflicting the comfortable. Both Jesus and Isaiah challenge the comfortable and complacent. Each tells something we would rather not hear.
Jesus tells me what I should be and usually am not. Isaiah tells me what I should do and usually don’t.
To appreciate Matthew, Chapter 5, Verse 13—16, we must first look at the historical and cultural context of the metaphors. Then look at it in the Christian context. What do the sayings of Jesus and Isaiah mean for us today?
First, why does Jesus choose these two household items as metaphors in his teaching? In the Jewish history and culture, these are two essential household items. The listeners of Jesus could not miss them.
In Palestine, salt was a must, and irreplaceable. It is needed to improve taste like meats and fish. Eating meat and fish without any salt is as tasteless as chewing a piece of cardboard.
A little pinch of salt makes all the difference in the taste of meat, fish, and even vegetables. Even more important, salt is used to preserve food. Salt changes what it touches, keeps it from spoiling, rotting, and corrupting. We make our dried fish (danggit, bulat, da-ing, tuyo), tapa (dried meat) and pickled vegetables and fruits with salt.
Salt is even use for purification. That is why in the Old Testament times, salt was used to season every sacrifice. That’s why God told his people through Moses, “With all your offerings, you shall offer salt.†(Lev. 2:3)
And what about light?
In the one-room cottage of the Israelite, the small dish-like device in which oil was burned was essential. Without it life would have been dark after the sun went down. People could not have read the Torah, could not have walked with sure feet and a light heart. So much of life would have stopped after sunset.
Jesus in today’s Gospel is making an astounding affirmation – directly to his first followers, indirectly to every disciple since he came down from the Mount of Beatitudes: “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.â€
Me and you? Is Jesus serious about this? I’m afraid – so. You are the salt of the earth. Jesus is insisting that, for its moral well-being, for its ethical good, this world depends in large measure on the Christian disciple.
Not simply apostles like Andrew and Peter, fervent followers like Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala. Not just Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, not just Teresa of Avila, and Mother Teresa. Not just Pope Francis and the Jesuits.
No. For genuine human existence, if we are ever to move from war to peace, from starvation to satisfaction, from hating to loving, this earth of ours rests on your shoulders and mine.
You and I have a clear call from Christ. Not a gentle suggestion; a loud trumpet sound.
We may seem small in our own eyes, insignificant; we cannot claim the power a Saddam Hussein, or a Bin Laden, or an Obama. Nevertheless, our task, like salt, is to improve the quality of human living, to change what we touch, to preserve from devastation this God-shaped, dreadfully scarred earth, this paradox of beauty and the beast.
If we, the disciples, turn flat, lifeless, tasteless; if like salt from the Dead Sea we give off a stale, acrid, alkaline taste, some of our sisters and brothers will suffer, spoil, and corrupt – will starve for bread or justice or love.
And we? Listen to the harsh judgment of Jesus: You will be worthless, useless, fit for the garbage heap, deserve to be thrown into the street with the rest of the trash.
And you are the light of the world. Meaning what?
Jesus is insisting that we, who believe he is Savior of humankind, we who have risen with him and live in his presence, we who eat his flesh and drink his blood, have no right to hide our gifts in a bushel basket, have no right to clutch them in warm little hands for ourselves or our small pious community.
The gifts we have – of nature and grace – should stand out, shine like guiding stars or lighthouse, should make people pause, force them to stop and look and listen.
Our faith should lend fidelity to the faithless, our hope raise the hopeless from the gutter, our love assuage the cancer of hate that rages through all too many hearts. Why? In Jesus’ words, that those who cross our path may “give praise to our heavenly Father, that in His human images God may be glorified.
Here in four Gospel verses, is your “Christian mystery.†Mystery in the sense that a tremendous truth hidden in God has been revealed to you by His very own Son. Your task as Christians is not to follow the culture that surrounds you. Your task, like mine, is to furnish a fresh flavor to the world you live in. To shine like Bethlehem’s star for such as are searching – searching for something, for someone, to make life more human, to make each day worth waking up to.
Now, how do you move from metaphor and mystery to the year 2014? How do you get the salt out of the cellar, how shine your light, so that men and women can be dazzledby the Christ glowing within you?
Isaiah Chapter 58 points out a way. Not the only way, but a way that is as imperative in 2014 as it was five centuries before Christ was born.
Listen once again to the Old Testament prophet as he challenges the first Jews returning to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon. The prophet hits hard at a practice dear to the Lord and His people:
Is not this the fast that I choose – to loosen the bounds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You shall cry, and he will say, “Here I am. If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness; if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. (Isaiah 58: 6-10)
Is it surprising that in God’s sight, this is when “your light shall break forth like the dawnâ€, this is when “your light shall rise in the darknessâ€? It shouldn’t surprise you. It was in such Isaian syllables that Jesus summed up his own mission in the Nazareth synagogue: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.â€(Luke 4: 18-19)
So, whether it’s Isaiah’s Jewish exiles returning to Jerusalem, or Jesus returning to Nazareth, or you returning from Sacred Heart Church to your warm cozy home, the Lord has some of His troubled people waiting.
But why should a little spot of God’s world be waiting for you? Because, like the exiles from Babylon and Jesus of Nazareth, you are uniquely gifted.
Not that all of you have the power to manipulate people like pawns, rate a “10†for sex appeal. But as St. Paul had to remind the Christians of Corinth: “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.â€
To all of them – foolish to the world and weak, low and despised – he made one poignant point: “Consider your calling.†Yes, consider your calling, my brothers and sisters. You are graced with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
But not just for yourselves. You leave here to come in contact with as many oppressions as ever Isaiah and even Jesus conceived, a neighborhood, a city, a country, and a world, where the St. Paul’s nine fruits of the Spirit clash constantly with nine fruits of Satan: love with hate, joy with bitterness, peace with war, patience with intolerance, kindness with cruelty, goodness with evil, faithfulness with infidelity, gentleness with savagery, self-control with unbridled license.
I cannot say specifically what your particular call will be. But this much I’m sure, despite all we actually do, many of us can do more; and unless we do much more, our Christianity will be tasteless, our world continue to corrupt, many salted Christians fit only for the garbage dump.
Secondly, while lighting the world with wonderfully visible beams – look more closely, more lovingly, into the eyes you meet each day. Oppression is not in exile from our pewsand our homes, is not confined to the slums. The oppressed rub shoulders with us.
Third, remember that you are still wonderfully and fearfully human; and so your own flesh and spirit will be burdened with yokes at times barely bearable. But this, strangely enough, can be all to the good; in fact, it seems indispensable for “the salt of the earth†and “the light of the world.â€
For, as the most effective servant is the suffering servant, the servant whose experience makes for “com-passionâ€, the servant who “suffers with.†It is especially “then†that you shall call, and the Lord will answer; “You shall cry, and he will say ‘Here I am.†(Is. 58:9)