Shaking the Shaker: One Person Can Change The World …By Being Salt and Light.          Matthew 5:13-16

Sermon by Paston Dennis Gleason - Sunday, January 24

Dr. Frank Mayfield was touring Tewksbury Institute when, on his way out, he accidentally collided with an elderly floor maid. To cover the awkward moment Dr. Mayfield started asking questions, "How long have you worked here?"

"I've worked here almost since the place opened," the maid replied

"What can you tell me about the history of this place?" he asked.

"I don't think I can tell you anything, but I could show you something."

With that, she took his hand and led him down to the basement under the oldest section of the building. She pointed to one of what looked like small prison cells, their iron bars rusted with age, and said, "That's the cage where they used to keep Annie."

"Who's Annie?" the doctor asked.

"Annie was a young girl who was brought in here because she was incorrigible - which means nobody could do anything with her. She'd bite and scream and throw her food at people. The doctors and nurses couldn't even examine her or anything. I'd see them trying with her spitting and scratching at them. "I was only a few years younger than her myself and I used to think, 'I sure would hate to be locked up in a cage like that.' I wanted to help her, but I didn't have any idea what I could do. I mean, if the doctors and nurses couldn't help her, what could someone like me do?

"I didn't know what else to do, so I just baked her some brownies one night after work. The next day I brought them in. I walked carefully to her cage and said, 'Annie I baked these brownies just for you. I'll put them right here on the floor and you can come and get them if you want.' Then I got out of there just as fast as I could because I was afraid she might throw them at me. But she didn't. She actually took the brownies and ate them.

"After that, she was just a little bit nicer to me when I was around. And sometimes I'd talk to her. Once, I even got her laughing. One of the nurses noticed this and she told the doctor. They asked me if I'd help them with Annie. I said I would if I could. So that's how it came about that every time they wanted to see Annie or examine her, I went into the cage first and explained and calmed her down and held her hand. Which is how they discovered that Annie was almost blind.

"After they'd been working with her for about a year - and it was tough sledding with Annie - the Perkins institute for the Blind opened its doors. They were able to help her and she went on to study and became a teacher herself.Annie came back to the Tewksbury Institute to visit, and to see what she could do to help out. At first, the Director didn't say anything and then he thought about a letter he'd just received. A man had written to him about his daughter. She was absolutely unruly - almost like an animal. He'd been told she was blind and deaf as well as 'deranged' He was at his wit's end, but he didn't want to put her in an asylum. So he wrote her to ask if we knew of anyone-any teacher-who would come to his house and work with his daughter."

And that is how Annie Sullivan became the lifelong companion of Helen Keller.When Helen Keller received the Nobel Prize, she was asked who had the greatest impact on her life and she said, "Annie Sullivan."

But Annie said, "No Helen. The woman who had the greatest influence on both our lives was a floor maid at the Tewksbury Institute."

Post Script: History is changed when one person asks, What can someone like me do?

That is the question we must ask as we come to our text for today: Matthew 5:13-16 "What can someone like me do?" Jesus’ answer is found in our text;

³"You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it useful again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. ¹⁴You are the light of the world—like a city on a mountain, glowing in the night for all to see. ¹⁵Don’t hide your light under a basket! Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all. ¹⁶In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

When we considered the Beatitudes recently we noted that Jesus was spelling out the characteristics of Christian Character. The remainder of the Sermon on the Mount is application of the characteristics in the lives of the people who believe in Jesus Christ and become his disciples. To put it in another way, Having seen what a real Christian is; now Jesus shows us how the Christian should manifest this character in the world in which we live. So we could say having realized what we are; we must now go on to consider what we must be.

We live in this world but we are not to become worldly. However, we can never retire out of this world. Many Christians have tried to separate themselves completely from the world. Several examples of this come to mind: Monastics try to remove themselves from the world and live in their own community without ties to the world around them. The Amish, Christians of a Reformed Church background, have refused to take part in those things which tie them to the culture of the world. They stopped modernizing their lives maintaining an early 19^th century culture without electricity, buttons, or gasoline powered machinery or such. Try as we might we will never successfully remove ourselves from this world.

What Jesus is leading up to in this passage is this: we are to be poor in spirit, mourning over our sinfulness, merciful and meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, pure of heart and peacemakers, so that we might be the salt of the earth. What we are to contemplate in light of the Beatitudes is the function or purpose of the Christian in the world in the mind and purpose of God! His purpose for us is that we might be salt and light in a world that desperately needs both.

Jesus’ words about us being the salt of the earth and the light of the world tell us something important about us as Christians and by implication about the world in which we live.

1. Let’s look at the world for a few minutes: The world has seen some of it’s greatest advances in the past 100 years. Electricity was virtually unavailable in most of the nation and has become the driving power of much of our life and the economy of our world. During the past 100 years man has been able to fly…first of all, the 120 foot flight of the first sustained heavier than air flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. From propeller driven airplanes to the space shuttle man has flown around his world and then to the Moon and back. Diseases have been overcome and many of the scourges of the past have been eliminated. Polio was a crippler and a killer 50 to 60 years ago and now you never hear of a case of polio. Our average lifespan is in now more that 76.4 years compared to 47.3 years in 1900. Computers and automobiles have made our lives easier and more challenging. We could go on but many of us have lived through some of the most monumental changes and advancements in the history of the world.

1. However, we should also note that the world during that time has not become the paradise men expected at the end of the 19^th century. Advancements in knowledge, education, the mechanics of life have not changed the basic nature of the world. The words of Jesus…"You are the salt of the earth…" imply that the world is rotten and has a tendancy toward evil and more rottenness.
   • The Bible clearly paints the world as a fallen, sinful, evil place. It will only get more evil if left to itself. It is like meat that will spoil unless preservatives are added to it.  
   • As Christians, we should never be surprised at how bad the world is becoming.  
   • We should be amazed that it is not worse off than it is! Sinners are simply doing what sinners do. Evil is in the hearts of men.

Christians are to be salt in the world. We are to be unlike the world. What is the function of salt? In a negative sense we are to prevent rottenness.

• The principle function of salt is to preserve. Meat and fish are preserved by adding salt. Bacteria and germs cannot survive on the surface of the meat when salt has been applied.  
• God’s intention in leaving us in the world once we become disciples of Jesus is that we be agents in the world to prevent the process of rottenness and decay. Can you imagine the condition of the world if there were not Christians in it? We really can’t…but it would not be a very attractive place.  
• Salt also gives things flavor. Can you imagine food without salt? It would be insipid, and tasteless, bland. Think of the world without Christ: boredom with life, people chasing things to give their life "flavor" and meaning only to find that they are destructive and empty.

Jesus goes on to speak to us about light. He says "You and you alone, are the light of the world."

• Notice if you will the implication of this statement: the world is in a state of darkness. The world sees itself as a place of "enlightenment" that is achieved by increased knowledge, education. We know more about life and the world we live in than ever before, but we still do not know what to do with that knowledge to make life – life.  
• The result is that when it comes to how people should live - the world is in gross darkness. How many Enron’s and Arthur Anderson’s do we need to convince us of that fact? Jesus says that the world is in darkness and that no one but the Christian can do anything about it. The problem of man is sin and the darkness that comes with it.
• Jesus said: "I am the light of the world." ( John 8:12)  
• Jesus said to the people, "I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life."  
• Now in Matthew 5:14 he tells us that we are the light of the world. We are light because of our relationship with Him who is the light of the world. He gives us light. He makes us light. Ephesians 5: "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord."  
• We have received His nature. It has become part of our life and now we are reflections of that light to the world.  
• We have become transmitters of light. This is another instance in which Jesus speaks to us of what we are before He tells us what we are to do. Our problem of course is that we are not always salt and light. Often times our life has not caught up with our lips.

If the salt is a preservative and gives flavor to things, what does the light do?

1. Light exposes the darkness for what it is. The Apostle Paul speaks about light exposing darkness: (Ephesians 5:8-14) For though your hearts were once full of darkness, now you are full of light from the Lord, and your behavior should show it! ⁹For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true. ¹⁰Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. ¹¹Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, rebuke and expose them. ¹²It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. ¹³But when the light shines on them, it becomes clear how evil these things are. ¹⁴And where your light shines, it will expose their evil deeds."  
2. We are not aware of the darkness until the light appears. The coming of Christ Jesus and the good news exposed the darkness of the world. For us just being a Christian reveals a difference about us from people of the world and the true nature of the world itself. In John 3 were find this: "This is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  
3. Men don’t come into the light readily because they know that their deeds will become known if they do.  
4. It also explains the cause of the darkness: the cause of the darkness in the world is nothing other than sin and man’s estrangement from God. When man does not come into the light of the presence of God, he goes desperately wrong. The result is sin and death. That has become unbelieving man’s nature. He prefers the darkness. He may regret it, but he still prefers to do what is evil. Man’s problem is with his nature that is sinful and darkness.  
5. Light not only exposes the darkness for what it is; it also shows and provides the only way out of the darkness. Jesus is the only way out. There is no one other than Christians to warn the world about the consequences of living in the darkness. The way out of the darkness is to get a new nature that will love and live in the light. That is what Jesus was talking about when He told Nicodemus "You must be born again" if you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The provision of God in the person of Annie Sullivan for a way out of the darkness for Helen Keller began with a simple woman, a floor maid who took a chance and offered a ray of light to Annie by her act of love and kindness. One person can make a difference.

ILL: Dr. John Geddie went to Aneityum in 1848 and worked there for God for 24 years. On the tablet erected in his memory these words are inscribed:

"When he landed, in 1848, there were no Christians. When he left, in 1872, there were no heathen." J.O. Sanders, Spiritual Leadership, p 24.

 

People who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord of their lives are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world so that people lost in the darkness of this world will have hope.

• The salt will preserve the good things about the world we live in and will hold back the evil for a time.  
• The light will reveal the darkness for what it is and will offer the way out of the darkness into the light of God’s presence. The world needs us to be salt and light.  
• How are we doing? Are we really different from the world? Are we real salt and real light to a lost and dying world?  
• The world needs us…it has no hope without Christ and those who will be His light to the world.

Lets go back to our initial illustration:

The world is like a Helen Keller, lost in the darkness of the blindness and deafness of sin. As Helen Keller could neither see nor hear, so it is with the world. Jesus says in this passage that we are the salt and the light left in the world so that it might see and hear the good news of Jesus Christ. Annie came to her as a light bearer, as one who could hear the rhythms of life and make them known to her. But Annie needed a light bearer for herself to set her free from the prison that contained her. It was that simple unnamed floor maid who began the chain of love, light and life.

When the crowns are laid at Jesus’ feet and He receives the honor and glory far greater than any Nobel Peace Prize, for the great things they represent, the great deeds done in His Name, this one would not have been possible had it not been for the floor maid…who chose to be salt and light in a world lost in darkness.

We will be those floor maids, those simple, unnamed servants who were willing to be the salt the world needs; who were willing to let the salt out of the shaker; who were willing to let their light shine so that people could find a way out of the darkness to Jesus who is the Light of the World.

This message cuts two ways today. If you have the light of Jesus in your life shine it so others can see. Perhaps you have found this message about the salt and the light and you have come to realize that you are lost in the darkness. You would like a way out of the darkness. You can have it. I t is just one short step back to God. Ask Jesus Christ to forgive you for the sin in your life and to give you that new life He spoke about to Nicodemus. He will show you what you need to deal with regarding the sin in your life. And then He will give you a new nature and you will have the light and eternal life He promised. If we can be of any assistance to you, you can email us at church@salt-creek.org.

 

--Pastor Dennis A. Gleason