The gospel of Matthew has been our focus during this liturgical year. We began hearing passages from it in Advent: the birth of Christ, the Magi, John the Baptist’s preaching, Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, the call of the first followers and the beginning of Jesus’ preaching and healing in Galilee. To put it in secular terms, in today’s gospel we are “getting down to business” — our response to the call we baptized have received.
Last week was the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. Had it been not replaced the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we would have heard the opening lines of the Sermon on the Mount — the Beatitudes. Our text this week follows immediately after the Beatitudes. It’s a shame we didn’t get to hear the blessings and the promises that opened the Sermon, for they tell the listening crowd that they can already experience the rewards of discipleship in this present life. Each beatitude begins, “Blessed are…,” and assures Jesus’ followers of the blessings that are theirs now and which await fulfillment at the end time. Jesus’ message, that his disciples are already beatitude people, continues in today’s passage. He speaks again in the present tense, “You are the salt of the earth….You are the light of the world.”
It is very common these days, upon entering a church or religious institution, to see the community’s “Mission Statement” prominently posted. Usually, such a statement is the result of a prayerful dialogue by the community to arrive at a description of its identity and mission in the light of the Gospel.
One business webpage (entrepeneur.com) gives guidelines for composing a mission statement. It says that it is more important to communicate the mission statement to employees than to customers. I guess that is why I read so many mission statements on the covers of parish bulletins, available for reflections by those attending worship. In the words of the business model, the mission statement is meant more for “employees” than the “customers.”
At one parish some members of the staff told me the pastor composed and published the statement without consulting members of the staff, parish council or parishioners. A woman said, “Since we didn’t have any input, how can we identify with and fulfill that mission statement? It’s not ours, it’s his. He shouldn’t have done that!”
She was right. But Jesus has that authority. Jesus’ mission statement to us, his followers, fits the requirement of a brief, focused and easily remembered summary of our task. Even those who don’t read much scripture can quote today’s teaching, “You are salt of the earth….You are light of the world.”
So, excuse the language, but we Christian need to “get down to business.” We are to be witnesses to the world. Jesus begins to describe the task for his disciples by using two images. We are to affect the world the way salt and light affect their environments. Salt seasons food, and in Jesus’ world, it was used as a preservative. It kept food from spoiling. Light removes or pushes the darkness back. Even one lighted match can be seen at a distance on a dark night. It doesn’t take much to have a surprising good effect when light is lacking.
With the salt image comes a warning. “But if salt loses its taste…it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” Christians cannot merely co-exist and comfortably fit in. We must change what needs changing. Remember the saying, “If it were a crime to be a Christian, would they have any evidence to convict you?” Hence, Jesus’ warning that salt can lose its capacity to season the food it is in and should be thrown out. We are sent on mission into the world to change it — not merely to live in it.
Jesus tells his disciples that, though they are only few in number, they are salt. The danger for the church is that, being in the world, we disciples can take on worldly ways and lose our “saltiness” to flavor those around us. Then the church is useless. (Cf. “Quotable” below)
Disciples are to draw out goodness in the world by supporting what protects, nourishes and enhances life, while rejecting what limits or destroys it. There are times when disciples can’t let things continue as they are: neglect of the poor, destruction of life in the womb, mistreatment of immigrants, violence against women, an unbridled military, etc. For these and other positions of the status quo, “salty disciples” are to be agents of change. If we cannot bring about more humane conditions for all, then Jesus is right, we are salt without flavor and useless for his purposes.
As we hear the challenging mission Jesus gives us we can feel what those first disciples must have felt — we are not large or influential enough to affect the world and resist the powers that “run the world’s business.” On our own, that’s true. But remember we are not on our own. Jesus began his sermon with a reminder of God’s blessings here and now.
Those blessing keep us united to God and to the community of believers. Because of Jesus we have been set right with God. Now we are called to reflect that righteousness in our relations with others. Or, in the images Jesus used, we are to be salt of the earth and light of the world.
At this Eucharist, through Word and Sacrament, we are again formed and reformed by God. We are the beatitude people and followers of Jesus whom God blesses and Jesus sends on mission. We strive, with God’s grace, to live out the gospel mission statement Jesus has enfleshed by his life, death and resurrection.