Preacher: The Rev Dr Valori Mulvey Sherer
En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.
This past weekend your vestry and clergy met in retreat. It was an inspiring time together and you’ll be hearing more about it as time goes on. I
Knowing our own soul and our relationship to God and one another is what St. Paul is talking about when he says “we have the mind of Christ.” Priest and theologian Jim Marion says it like this: “For the Christian… the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven (higher consciousness) is Jesus Christ himself. (Jn 14:6) More specifically, it is ‘to allow God to transform us inwardly by the complete renewing of our minds’ (Ro 12:2) so that… we can honestly say, ‘We have the mind of Christ (1Cor 2:16)… that is, the Christ Consciousness… which is the goal of the Christian path.” (xiii)
In Jesus we witness a beloved life lived in the world. No matter how the world reacted to him or treated him Jesus maintained a consciousness of love and mercy even forgiving his executors from the cross on which they hanged him.
Jesus showed us that Christ consciousness takes us beyond obedience to the letter of the law to fulfillment of the law of love which forgives, restores, and reconciles all the world to God. This is what Jesus is teaching in today’s gospel from Matthew using the images of salt and light.
Salt was a valuable commodity in the ancient world. There was no refrigeration back then, so in addition to its unique ability to enhance the flavor of food, salt was also used to preserve food, which often meant preserving life.
Jesus said to his followers: You are the salt of the earth… What a powerful statement that was for them to hear. You are a commodity of great value. You are a preserver of life. And he followed it up with an equally powerful statement: You are the light of the world – something he said about himself…
When we hear this today, do we hear the power of these statements? Jesus says we are, not we will be, not we could become… but we are a commodity of great value, “endlessly treasured” by God, as Julian of Norwich said, and the truth of this should radiate from us like beams of light – bright, and warm, dispelling darkness wherever it is present.
The sad reality is that many people don’t know or experience the truth that we are all endlessly treasured by God. The world is far too ready to make us believe that we are valued only if we are successful (as defined by world) which means we have money, beautiful homes, bodies, or spouses; we have hundreds of Facebook friends or Twitter followers; we’re the first ones picked to be on the team; or we get to walk a red carpet bathed in the admiration of others.
It seems true, but it isn’t. It’s an earthly trap, a temptation that leads us to a prison of finger-pointing and speaking evil against one another, as the prophet Isaiah described it.
Priest and theologian, Henri Nouwen once said: “…When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
And that’s why we who follow Christ must let our lights shine. We must radiate with the light of our Christ consciousness and the truth of our existence: that we are endlessly treasured and beloved of God.
But what do we do when we don’t feel like we’re endlessly treasured or beloved? What about those times when the world beats us down and we can’t hardly stand up much less radiate our belovedness?
We come to church where someone will be radiating that light and that truth. Standing near their light is enough to dispel our darkness and open our eyes and hearts again to the Christ consciousness.
We come to church and worship, because even when we can’t utter the words ourselves, even when we aren’t sure we believe a single bit of it, the prayers of the community uphold us like a life raft on the river of life.
When Jesus spoke this teaching of salt and light, he was speaking to a community – the “you” was plural: “Y’all are the salt of the earth… Y’all are the light of the world…” (He should have been a southerner!)
Recognizing the truth of our belovedness as individuals is only the first step, but it leads to the second step – recognizing everyone else’s belovedness too. When that happens, we are set free from the prison of earthly blindness and we can look at ourselves and others with the eyes of God. Then we’re set free from the bondage of earthly judgment and we are free to respond to ourselves and others with the heart of God. Then we are living in Christ consciousness and it is as Nowen says, “Every time we encounter one another we are offered an occasion to encounter the sacred.”
The church, our church, is a place where the truth of everyone’s belovedness is intentionally and even counter-culturally lived out. When the world blames and excludes someone for being poor and hungry, we welcome them into our midst and feed them: food and friendship. When the world derides someone for whom they love, we celebrate that God is the author of all love.
Our church’s mission is to shine the light of the truth of everyone’s belovedness until everyone believes it… and lives it… and glorifies God for it. Then we shall be called repairers of the breach, restorers of the streets we live in.
It isn’t our light we shine, it’s the light of Christ. So we don’t need a lot of members or money or programs to do our work. We only need the will to shine the light that is in us, the light of Christ, knowing the world will not always welcome it.
In fact, often the world will disagree with us as it did with Jesus, and work to cover or douse our light with condemnation. Our communion of saints is replete with martyrs whose light was doused. But the light of Christ lives on and now it lives in us.
When Jesus said, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works…” his Jewish listeners understood that he was talking about works of mercy and reconciliation, service to others, which glorify God.
No matter how you feel about the Catholic faith or institutional churches of all kinds, it’s hard not to be inspired by the faithful witness of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. She and the community she founded shined the light of Christ on the most despised, wretchedly poor and outcast – and successfully dispelled their darkness enabling them to die knowing they were treasured by the members of her order: the Missionaries of Charity, and by God.
Her light will continue to illumine the world for generations to come. I pray ours will too.
The movement of the Holy Spirit among us and within us here at Redeemer is exciting in this moment of our common life. Your vestry and clergy are ready to lead our congregation in answering the present call of God to us - to place our collective lamp on the lampstand and let our light shine. Amen.
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