meditatio at the water's edge

"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. You are the light of the world--like a city on a mountain, glowing in the night for all to see. Don't hide your light under a basket! Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father."
Matthew 5:13-16

One thing I have been increasingly trying to do when I read a passage from the Scriptures is to look at how the passage reads my life. Rather than standing over the passage, observing it like a detached laboratory technician, I try to place myself beneath the text, and invite the Spirit of God to point out where my life is outside of God’s story. So I did this with this passage.

How does this passage read me? One way it reads me is that it points out that often, I mistakenly think that the Kingdom of God is revealed primarily in doing great works and being well-known by people.

Our culture has held up different models as 'more' significant, or 'more' respectable than others. From our scholastic past, we came to hold up great lecturers as the more spectacular expressions of the kingdom of God.

Others held up people, primarily men, who were effective motivators. If a person could get people to weep and dance and shake and run up to the altar at the end, THAT was what a person should aspire to become.

More recently, we have looked to effective 'leaders', the CEO and the mega church pastors have become the symbol for success. We protect ourselves from making them into idols by talking about the priesthood of all believers, but we still picture these people as perhaps 'more' loved or 'more gifted' by God.

So I have been tempted. I have been tempted to aspire to that 'great leader' type. I have been fooled into thinking that that is the only legitimate expression of the kingdom. To be seen, respected, inquired of, and admired--these are appealing things that come along with being 'the man.'

But what happens when I realize that I am not that kind of leader. "Learn to lead like that." I'm told. "God is going to use you in great ways" I'm told--I always assumed they were talking about having a big church with lots of people listening to what I have to say.

But maybe Jesus was saying that what you assume it means to be salt and light (flash, spectacle, significance, relevance, influence, etc.)--maybe Jesus is saying that these things are all wrong ideas about being his apprentice.

This passage reads me in a way that exposes my assumptions about what it takes to be salt and light. Maybe it is not in the ways that I have always assumed...being 'up front', leading, being the Bible answer man. Maybe it is in the ordinary, unseen things that I overlook and neglect each day.

Maybe it is in the simple ways of being a sign of peace.

Maybe it is in the simple obedience that I embody as I set my life apart to God.

Maybe it is the simple actions that flow out of an undiluted confidence in Jesus.

Maybe it is in the simple acts of kindness and goodness that communicate the compassion of God more than my mere words can say alone.

If Jesus was looking at a crowd of ordinary, uneducated, overlooked people, then maybe he was announcing that it doesn't take a title to be the people of God. Maybe he was announcing that it doesn't take accreditation to be salt and light.

Some of us don't feel qualified to see ourselves as pastors and missionaries. But that may be precisely Jesus’ point.

Now that all of us unqualified people have been given the invitation to receive and enter into the kingdom, and now that we have (for those of us who have), what are we doing about it? We like to talk about it, but what are we really doing about it?

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? I wonder sometimes whether it is something that I really want. I mean, I guess I know I really want that—or at the very least I want to want it--and that is significant as a beginning. But I feel, to an extent, that I am spending too much time in the realm of abstract ideas and I need to move out into more specific application of all this stuff.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that what the church needs is not more people with seminary degrees, but more people who see their 'ordinary lives' as something more than 'ordinary.' We need more people to stop allowing our witness to be diluted either by superficial and hollow displays of religiosity, or by self-indulgent compromise in the name of 'freedom.'

I am becoming increasingly convinced that what we need is people who understand that life in the kingdom of God is extra-ordinary. Not in the sense of being spectacular, but in the sense of being able to see the power of God in simple demonstrations of love and peace and joy--the simple acts that we neglect precisely because we see them as ordinary or unspectacular.

So Jesus interprets that act of a poor widow who gave a small amount as a great gift, and the large donation of the wealthy man as such a small thing. And he says other things like the first will be last and the last will be first.

These people who place their confidence in Jesus will be, like salt, a sign of peace and love for strangers; like salt, a people who set themselves apart for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And like light, these people will be a sign of God’s incredible, supernatural love. They will not let their saltiness dissolve, and they will not hide their light beneath a bucket.

As the ruling and reigning of God is a reality in their lives, they will not be able to prevent others from seeing the kingdom of God among them. They will see our deeds of goodness--our expressions of the goodness of God--and praise our Father in the heavens.