READINGS

Matthew 5:13-16
Isaiah 58:6-14
Isaiah 60

HOMILY

Our Gospel this week continues straight on from last week, when we looked at the blessed part of the Sermon on the Mount.

I suggested that 'blessed' are those who are going through the precariousness, the grind of the world, and becoming radiant with the presence of God, showing that they are God's children.

Now Jesus turns and speaks directly to his disciples and those listening with them.

The emphasis here is not on the descriptor but on the 'you':

You are the salt of the earth.

Jesus is referring to those people who are going through the system, but saying 'you want that to be salt on the earth', become the salt that is needed.

The salt this would have referred to two sorts of things.

Wisdom

The kind of salt that comes with the savor of fine things that have been understood.

These are people who are going to be producing the wisdom of this world - the salt of the world.

Sacrifices that would be pleasing to the Lord

These are the people who, by giving themselves away in the midst of the world, and it's lies, in its violence, are showing what is true and revealing God.

So they are taking part in his one true sacrifice, which is to come.

Of course, it's not the same as any of the world's sacrifices, which are to protect us from the light.

So Jesus is saying 'this is going to be up to you'; 'this is going to be your task'.

He says:

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?

If the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?

This is rather odd, because salt doesn't lose its taste.

Well, it turns out that there's a local reference here: the normal sort of salt that Palestinians worked with or got hold of in the time of Christ was from the Dead Sea.

This salt was actually full of chemical impurities with the result that, for instance, you could wash the salt away and you'd be left with bits of different elements that were actually no good for anything.

It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

They were the residue of the salt.

So Jesus is referring to an easily corruptable form of salt, which would have been familiar to people at the time.

The saver is going to be related to you learning how to give yourself away and discover wisdom during that.

And then Jesus continues with the notion of this particular flavor.

You are the light of the world.

This refers to a whole chain of Isaiah references to the light that is coming upon you and how you are going to become the light.

Particularly, you are going to become the light in as far as you learn to turn your heart towards the wounded, those with nothing, those who are hungry, those who are sick, etc.

The change of entering into the world of the precarious. That is how you are going to become the light.

So that's very good Isaiah stuff and he then says:

A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

So rather than a temple or a particular house, Jesus is actually referring to you as a collective.

You're going to be this new collective that's going to be built on a hill, the New Zion that I am going to refound. 

The New Foundation in Zion, which is going to be on another hill called Golgotha. 

And you're going to be the bearers of light. 

You're gonna become the radiance of the world just as you're going to become the taste of the world.

Then Jesus makes a joke:

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket.

Well, no one in the right mind would put a bushel basket over a flame, because otherwise you would have a very great risk of burning the bushel basket.

Setting your house on fire is exactly the wrong sort of light.

The city built on a hill that is burning is not exactly going to help anybody.

Curiously a bushel was a metal measuring pot, also referring to the actual measure of the grain.

To make sure that people didn't cheat with weights and measures, people would have a metal measuring pot for the bushel, so they would carry and weight the right amount.

The bushel measuring pot was rather like a big saucepan or casserole except that with the handle going up from the rim rather than sideways from the rim.

So they could be hung from a balance and form a measure to work out how much grain you had in your metal pot.

As it happens, people did use their metal measuring pods for putting over the lights in their houses.

There were several very good reasons for this.

A number of Jewish feasts had a considerable demand that you have the light on for a long time.

On the Feast of the Dedication or Hanukkah, you had lights on for several days.

Supposing that you didn't like sleeping with the light on or - and this was something that the rabbis recommended - wanted to have sex on the Sabbath and didn't like having sex with the light on.

How do you prevent there being light while not putting out the light, given that putting it out was a work, which was not allowed on the Sabbath or on certain holy days?

With your metal bushel jar - because it had the handles on the rim - it would sit over the lamp at an angle, which would mean that the oxygen could get in and out.

So you wouldn't be actually putting the light out, but the light wouldn't get out or wouldn't get very far, effectively creating darkness while not putting the light out and therefore you were backed by the law.

So that would have been a bit of a joke.

People would have got it at the time.

Jesus says:

Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

So here, in the same way, let your light shine before others.

You're going to become the celebratory lights that other people might try to put out, but you are not to allowed yourselves to be put out.

You are going to become that which lights the whole house, the whole city.

You're going to become the light of the world.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

You're going to become witnesses through going this process that makes you radiant.

Witnesses for the one who is bringing you into being, so as to show the light of God.

He will be your father in Heaven.

This is the first time Jesus uses this phrase here in Matthew's Gospel.

Please note that, as in throughout Matthew's Gospel, he never says our father except when he's teaching the disciples to pray, which is that you say our father, but he refers to my father and your father.

At the very end of John's Gospel, he says your father and my father, after the resurrection.

In Matthew's Gospel, it's your father who's in heaven.

He's teaching them how to find their way into the inside of becoming sons and daughters of God from himself, but without yet, at this point, showing how that is to be.

Another challenge to us is to find the way of Radiance, the way of saltiness, as we come through Matthew's Gospel finding ourselves on the inside of the precarious of the world and finding that God is in there, always trying to come through into us, so as to make God's self better known through us, who will be discovered to be daughters and sons of God.