This Little Light Of Mine

This Little Light of Mine Matthew 5 13-20

I don’t know about you, but when I cook, I often don’t follow the recipe. Sometimes it’s because it’s too complicated, others because I don’t have the ingredients. So I make stuff up, I’ll make it spicier or throw in a dash of wine. How many of you have saltshakers at home. A necessity. Now Interestingly, despite today’s focus on salt, I try to avoid adding it, health reasons, but I consume copious quantities eating pizza, chips, olives, cheese, pickles, spaghetti sauce. You get it, right? Hard to avoid. Even so, in my kitchen cupboard is iodized salt, kosher salt, sea salt, pink salt from the Himalayas, and fleur de sel from France. But today, most of the salt I use everywhere is outside where I walk. Rock salt.

Salt is key in both ours and in Jesus’ world where there weren’t any refrigerators to preserve food or 32 spices on a rack. No electricity either. Important for survival. Not surprising Jesus would use salt and light as analogies for people spreading the good news, the gospel. And so we hear Jesus saying, “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” Jesus says, “If salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” He’s not talking chemistry, he is putting forth a theology. Salt loses its flavor when it gets diluted—mixed with too much of everything else. And faith does the same. We don’t usually lose our faith because we stop believing. We lose it because we stop living it clearly and distinctly. We blend in with others, so likely people don’t even know we are Christians. We avoid inconvenience. We soften the edges. Most often we may stay quiet when truth costs something. Martin Luther King made this famous. “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

Jesus is polite—but he is clear: Salt that doesn’t act like salt isn’t doing what it’s meant to do. OK followers of Jesus, he’s saying, get with the program. So what does this salty faith look like in real life? Integrity, kindness, courage. It looks like integrity when cutting corners would be easier. Basically, not doing our best in our actions. It’s kindness that costs time, not just good intentions such as the proverbial thoughts and prayers. It’s refusing to be silent when there is truth to be told. When Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth,” he is not calling for extraordinary faith. He is not calling us to shout, or to spout bible verses to everyone. He is calling for faith that makes a real difference in ordinary places. Martin Luther insisted that good works are not performed to earn God’s favor—because God’s favor is already given by grace alone. Instead, good works flow naturally from faith, the way salt flavors food simply by being what it is. Luther said that God does not need our good works—but our neighbor does.

Then Jesus shifts the image. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.” Jesus is echoing Isaiah 49:6“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” What Israel was meant to accomplish, Jesus asks this of the disciples. No small task.

Jesus isn’t talking about our faith shining a spotlight on us. He’s talking about observable faith. For many of us, faith is personal, and we keep it to ourselves. We were taught that faith is private. Something kept tucked away.
But Jesus never says, “Keep your faith to yourself. He says, “Let your light shine.” Not so people admire you—but so they may see your good works and give glory to God. Martin Luther, taught that God places God’s work in ordinary callings—parent, neighbor, worker, citizen. This is Luther’s theology of vocation

How does your light shine? When you practice mercy instead of retaliation. You let your light shine when you notice the overlooked—the lonely person in the room, the cashier no one looks in the eye, the neighbor no one checks on. You let your light shine when you forgive someone who didn’t earn it. Not because it was easy—but because bitterness is heavier than grace. Martin Luther King “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” You let your light shine when you live with hope in a cynical world. Not naïve optimism—but stubborn hope that says God is still at work. You let your light shine when you show up.
Our light can look like courage. Sometimes it looks like patience. Or it looks like simply being agreeable in a world that rewards toughness. Jesus says no one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel basket.

And here’s the hard truth. Most of us don’t hide our light intentionally. We hide it politely. We don’t want to offend. We don’t want to seem strange. We don’t want to be misunderstood. So our light gets dimmer.
The world right now is not suffering from too much light. It is aching for it. The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people., King preaches again. Tragedy occurs when we put a bushel over our voices, our light.

The question is not whether you have salt or light—because Jesus says you do.
It’s whether you will trust it enough to let it be seen. Don’t hide your gifts that God has given you. You can create your own recipe as to how to follow Jesus and carry out his mission.

Where has God placed you as salt right now? Where is your light already shining—perhaps without you even noticing? Because the good news is this: God is already at work through who we are—right here, right now. Let your life, our church—ordinary, faithful, imperfect— shine for the life of the world. Because this—Jesus says—is how the world begins to change. This is how God’s kingdom comes. As MLK said, “We must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.” Thanks be to God. Amen