“Your light must shine before people, so that they will see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5: 13-16
Today’s gospel-reading follows on immediately from last Sunday’s, in which we heard Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. Before Jesus listed six categories of people who were blessed by God, namely the poor, the hungry, the merciful, the peacemakers and the persecuted, we are told that he had been joined by his disciples. After listing the six categories I have just mentioned, Jesus adopted a personal note, saying: “Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you.” These words were probably directed especially to his disciples, whom he proceeded to identify as salt and light and encourage to step out and confront the world, including their persecutors, with those very same gifts. It was tantamount to saying to them: “Whenever others abuse you, dazzle them with the good things you have to offer!” Those good things – salt and light – are metaphors for the essence of the message which he had entrusted to them. Moreover, that message was so challenging that anyone who shared it would almost certainly be persecuted in return. Nevertheless, those who dared to share it could take satisfaction from the fact that their light would not have gone unnoticed and their salt would have savoured the situation to which it had been directed.
I dare to suggest that the key to grasping the intent of Jesus’ words about salt and light is that he directed them to the group that were his disciples. His words were an invitation to a group. It was a call to the disciples to join together and give witness to the reign of God they were jointly living. The light of one person will not light up a city, but the combined light of a community will. Similarly, a grain of salt will season little by itself but the contribution of a grain of salt from each member of a community will provide enough to season and preserve whatever they touch together. In order to avoid the insipidness and darkness of the world that surrounded them, Jesus called his disciples to band together to bring the savour and light of the reign of God to their world in need.
Today’s first reading from Isaiah offers an insight into the kind of community that would make a difference. In the verses preceding today’s reading, Isaiah voices God taking to task the Chosen people for their empty attempts to get God’s attention and approval. In response to their complaints that God had taken no notice of them and responded to their prayers, they got the following answer: “Look, you do business on your fast-days, you oppress all your workmen; look, you quarrel and squabble when you fast and strike the poor man with your fist. Fasting like yours today will never make your voice heard on high…Hanging your head like a reed, lying down on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call fasting, a day acceptable to God?” (Isaiah 58: 4-5) Today’s reading follows fast, stating what God required of the people of Israel:
“Is not this the sort of thing that pleases me – it is the Lord God who speaks – to break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and undo every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see naked and not turn from your own kin? Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over.” (Isaiah 58: 6-8) That was a social justice programme for a whole nation! And it is a programme to which Jesus returned in his words to the crowd, including his disciples, in today’s gospel extract from his Sermon on the Mount.
No matter how impressive our list of individual gifts might be or our list of academic qualifications or our personal curriculum vitae, Jesus is not inviting us to be loners in lighting up our world or preserving it. He is not interested in offering us a recipe or a programme for individual salvation. He invites us and baptises us into a supportive community whose members welcome and rely on one another and together reach out to our world to ensure that nobody is forgotten, neglected or overlooked.
Jesus’ reference to the metaphor of light and his pointing to Jerusalem as a city on a hilltop sit comfortably beside other parts of the First/Old Testament. Psalm 27 identified God as “light”: “The lord is my light and my salvation, whom need I fear? ” (Ps 27: 1). Psalm 119 used “light” as a symbol for God’s word: “Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.” (Ps 119: 105) Identifying his disciples as light and salt (so treasured that it was a substance used for paying salaries in the ancient world; the very word “salary” is a derivation of the word “salt”) effectively stated that their responsibility as a group was to continue to keep God present in the world.
As I read today’s second reading, I found it difficult to accept Paul’s description of himself knocking at the knees or trembling in his boots at the prospect of his telling the neophyte Christians of Corinth that the Cross, a sign of ignominy in the world they knew, was about to become central to their new lives. Paul was about to tell them the same message we heard Jesus telling the disciples at the conclusion of last Sunday’s gospel-reading: that they would be subject to persecution for daring to give their allegiance to, and proclaim the message of, a Jesus who would be, and was, executed on a Cross. The Cross, as we now appreciate, was Jesus’ passage to glory, his triumph over death and our guarantee of life eternal.
Today’s three readings leave us in no doubt that we, too, will be abused, disregarded and even persecuted for giving our allegiance to Jesus and his message and that we, together with our companion members of the people of God, are called to join together in becoming light and salt for our world in need. All we have to do is to work with one another to find practical and effective ways of doing just that. Today’s first reading offers us a good place to start.