Matthew 18.15-20 7 September 2008
“BIG DIFFERENCES IN LITTLE WAYS”
A lot of people today call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” I have no idea what that means. But I know why they say it. They want to distance themselves from church people with clay feet who bicker, gossip, and undermine each other. As though any human group could gather, work together, and behave perfectly.
A lot of people who call themselves “spiritual but not religious” have mixed sym-pathies. They profess to love Jesus, but roll their eyes at his Church. They smile at the name Jesus but are quick to write off the living, breathing body of Christ. Sometimes this upsets me. Thinking of my flaws, of our shortcomings, and how wonderful DUC still is, it is as though they could never find a church good enough for them. “Aw, c’mon,” I want to press them. “Are you really so untainted as that?” What they miss is that Jesus was God’s definitive attempt to enter and elevate the imperfect humanity the spiritual but not religious consider themselves above.
Our gospel text is but one example of how wrong-headed it is to separate Jesus from his church. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,” says Jesus, sharing and conferring his authority, “and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Mt 18.18) Strong words. Jesus makes steadfast the con-nection between himself and all who gather to follow him and advance his cause.
Annie Dillard’s words from Holy the Firm dramatize this point, “’Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?’ There is no one but us. There is no one to send nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, but only us. A generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, but there is no one but us, there never has been. There are generations which remembered and generations which forgot. There has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day. There is no one but us.” That puts things back into perspective, the real choices that we have as we pass our days.
It’s tempting to romanticize Jesus’ contemporaries, to pain them in pristine other-worldly watercolors. Before we do, let us recall Jesus was fully aware of Judas’ impending betrayal as Jesus stooped down in the upper room to wash his feet.
Yet despite being every bit of the mixed blessing to the world that we are, Jesus’ early followers and the first outbreaks of the church made a world of difference.
On Rally Day 2008, as Dennis Union Church gathers itself and rallies momentum with the start of our
Here’s how. Earlier in Matthew, Jesus used two images to describe us as his agent or force in the world. Salt and light. If we can only be that, friends, that is more than enough. You are the salt of the earth. Well, we don’t lack salty char-acters here, right? I buried one last week, Don Parker, a fishing charter captain.
Seriously, what is Jesus really saying by calling us the salt of the earth? Try this on. Of course, we consume huge quantities of salt in tiny amounts. The most ob-vious reason we hear for that is “salt makes food taste good.” Ask anyone on a salt restricted diet about the difference salt makes in food. It is big. True enough.
But recent research shows salt not only enhances some flavors, it hides others. Bitterness is one flavor salt hides. They don’t know how. They don’t know why. “You are the salt of the earth.” Here’s maybe one take on Jesus’ tagline for us: You, church, are a small, invisible, easy-to-be-taken-for-granted presence that absorbs the world’s bitterness of, and makes the delicious parts more savory. As for impurities within the salt? Disciples who don’t just grouse, but even undercut? All that gets absorbed even before we go into the world to absorb its bitterness.
The gospels begin with Jesus gathering a new community. Wherever Jesus goes to minister, at every point he assumes he can’t do what he needs to do by him-self. Whatever Jesus wants to do, he needs others—namely, us. He doesn’t hide that. And he is not waiting for perfect people. He knows there is no one but us.
And that is when Jesus employs images to describe us like “salt” and “light”. Two small, often unnoticed, seemingly insignificant substances—salt and light.
Light can be very fragile. But even in small quantities it can make a difference. Last week I happened to visit Bob McNeil in the hospital after his surgery. I loved the way he talked about how he loves the church, how much he admires and looks up to so many of you. It all began for him as a lad in an Episcopal church by the sound in
If he is like me, the powerful thing in candlelight services is how much difference even one candle makes. Its fleeting rays radiate through the entire room. We see our faces in a different light. Worship feels warmer by the glow of little candles. Studying human perception in college, I learned that were it not for the curvature of the earth, other objects blocking the view, and atmospheric conditions like hu-midity, the distance at which one candle is visible to the human eye is…17 miles.
It gives whole new meaning to: it’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. Sometimes we don’t need lots of light, just a little. Sometimes we can’t stand bright light flooding our consciousness, but a soft warm glow captivates us. Those are the times when we feel like the darkness might totally overwhelm us.
It’s interesting--isn’t it?—that when Jesus spoke of us, seizing upon an image to characterize us, it wasn’t, “You are a mighty army marching the highways and byways.” He didn’t say, “You are my official megaphone to shout out my message to everybody, whether they want to hear or not.” He said you are salt. You’re light. Small and fragile substances that make a transformative difference.
Can I give a visual for this? Picture our Sunday School teachers showing up here for our children Sunday after Sunday. They don’t get a motorcade with small flag on each fender with the word ‘Christian’ and motorcycles clearing the way ahead.
They come prepared. They slip in quietly. They do their work. They don’t look different than anyone else. Ordinary and unspectacular, like us. Still, with every ounce of energy they offer to get through to that “problem child” others warned them about (I’m thinking of myself back in my Sunday School days); with the depth of faith they discover for themselves as they answer what happened to the road kill frog a particular child saw walking to school; with the sense of adventure engendered by weekly shaping young lives; they invisibly become that substance which savors a world gone tasteless and dull. They have become those flickering candles of hope that we hold and elevate in the dark of Christmas Eve. On Rally Day they and Cindy, in their savoriness, are visible. And we thank them.
The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. It looked like such a small flickering candle. But it lit the way through the darkest nights. Amen.
