Start a Fire! Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ Rev. Dr. Kathryn Nystrand Dwyer February 5, 2017 Isaiah 58:1-12 58Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. 3 Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice? Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. 4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11 The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. Matthew 5:13-16 13 You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. 14 You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light
to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. I associate this passage, you are the salt of the earth you are the light of the world with my childhood. This is one of the passages I learned as a child that stuck perhaps because I was fortunate to have parents who ingrained this message in me. They taught me through their words and through their actions that I was loved and had gifts that were meant to be shared with the world. They never actually told me I was salt and light, that I was made to shine, but even at a young age I could make these connections. I have always loved the song This Little Light of Mine. I loved and still do love the wonderful affirmation from this part of scripture. Every child and every human being deserves to have someone who can help them see that they are loved and have gifts that were meant to be shared with the world. Every child and every human being deserves to have someone who can help them see that they are enough. They don t have to learn something or strive for something to be able to share salt and light. Jesus didn t say, Become salt and light. He said, You ARE salt and light. However, I am no longer a child sheltered from so many of the world s challenges. And while this passage still provides an encouraging affirmation, today it sounds more like a clarion call for action and service. Last week we heard the Beatitudes, part of Jesus Sermon on the Mount, that comes directly before this passage. After the service, one of our travelers to Palestine shared a translation of the beatitudes they had heard while visiting. We are all familiar with the formula in the translation we typically read: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. This translator took this passage and went back to Jesus Aramaic. He writes, Blessed is the translation of the word makarioi used in the Greek New Testament. However, when I look further back to Jesus Aramaic, I find that the original word was ashray from the verb yashar. Ashray does not have this passive quality to it at all. Instead, it means to set yourself on the right way for the right goal; to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous. 2
How could I go to a persecuted young man in a Palestinian refugee camp, for instance, and say, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted, or Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven? That man would revile me, saying neither I, nor my God understood his plight, and he would be right. When I understand Jesus words in the Aramaic, I translate like this: Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you who are hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied. Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called children of God. To me this reflects Jesus words and teachings much more accurately. I can hear him saying, Get your hands dirty to build a human society for human beings; otherwise, others will torture and murder the poor, the voiceless, and the powerless. Christianity is not passive but active, energetic, alive, going beyond despair. 1 And right after Jesus saying, You who are mourning and meek and hungering and thirsting for righteousness all of you get up, go ahead, do something, move! we hear YOU are the salt of the earth. YOU are the light of the world. It s easy for us to apply our 21 st century ideas of Himalayan sea salt and LED lighting to this passage. But in the time of Jesus, each village had a common oven. Since villagers were often members of a large, extended family these were often considered family ovens. The fuel for these ovens was not wood, but camel or donkey dung. One of the duties for young girls was to collect the dung, mix salt in it, and mold it into patties that would be left in the sun to dry. In many Third World countries and part of the Middle East, these patties are still used as fuel today. To make a fire, a slab of salt was placed on the base of the oven and then on top of it, a salted dung patty. Just think of it as the initial self-igniting briquette for the grill or fireplace. Salt has catalytic properties which cause the dung to burn. Eventually the salt loses these properties and become useless. Or, as Jesus says, It is good for nothing but to be thrown outside where it can still provide a sure footing in a muddy road. 1 https://ukashray.wordpress.com/beatitudes/ 3
As the biblical scholar John Pilch says, This is the Mediterranean cultural imagery Jesus has in mind when he says, You, my disciples, are the salt, that is, catalyst for the earthoven. (In the Aramaic and Hebrew languages which Jesus spoke, one and the same word means earth and clay-oven. ) To be salt for the earth-oven is to start fires and make things burn. If Jesus disciples do this, they will also be light of the earth. The two images so masterfully joined show Jesus to be a clever and imaginative teacher. The Sermon on the Mount sounds a little different when we hear: Get up, go ahead, do something, move you who are mourning or poor or seeking peace or hungering and thirsting for righteousness - YOU are to start fires and make things burn! Yes, this passage is an affirmation. Yes, this passage is to encourage us and remind us that we are enough AND it is a clarion call to be a catalytic spark for the gospel of Jesus. And by that I don t mean the privileged Christianity we sometimes hear about that promotes a prosperity gospel, or the exclusive Christianity that gets too much airtime about who is a Christian and who is not. I am talking about the gospel that tells the poor that they are blessed, and that tells all of us that we are enough and that there is room enough and bread enough and love enough for all. We are starting to see a fire burn for the gospel. We saw more than 600 women s marches in 81 countries on January 21 st. I heard someone share on the news that they recently asked for a rally in Boston to oppose the travel ban and, within 24 hours, 20,000 people showed up. Amazing! Here in Washington, there are marches and rallies nearly every day. A march isn t a march, and a rally isn t a rally with one person or a few people. It is the many, many people coming forward who aren t thinking about it or wondering if their presence will make a difference, or pausing to consider what others may think. It is many, many people who just go and be. The marches are exponentially motivating. But it is often more challenging to figure out how to set the gospel on fire in our own day-to-day living. Do you have the courage, and do you trust that it might make a difference to respond to the person who sees violence and then says, that s why we need a wall or that s why we need to keep people out of our country? If you have lost your light or your flavor the spark inside that encourages you to take a risk ask yourself why. What, or of whom, are you afraid? Who or what has silenced you? 4
When Michael Moore was speaking a few weeks ago imploring the thousands of people at the Women s March in Washington, D.C. to run for office, he told them a story from when he was in high school in Flint, Michigan. Angry about a change in policy at his high school, Michael asked the principal how to change it. He said, get on the school board. As Michael tells it, he is a big introvert and was very afraid, but he went ahead and called the Flint school board. How do I get elected to the school board? You need a signed petition to be eligible to run. But how many signatures do I need? he asked. You ll need 20 signatures, the board employee told him. He got twenty people to sign it, and became the youngest person in the state of Michigan to hold elected office. Michael Moore encouraged the crowd at the January 21 st march by telling them, If I can do it, you can do it. May we be encouragers of the salt and light around us. Come back with me to my childhood impressions of this text. I heard YOU are the Light of the World and the Salt of the Earth. You are loved and have something to share. All true. But it is so easy to hear those words about being all about us, all about one person. That is God s message to ALL OF US that we are to be salt and light in a way that dissolves and dissipates as Brian Maas puts it. 2 I know I am mixing metaphors, but I like to think of the difference we might make, not actions that are ego-centered or concerned with who gets the credit, but as harmony. This week Laura Shatzer, a seminarian who I was fortunate to mentor, wrote about how she was walking at night in Boston and many steps in front of her there was a man who was whistling We Shall Overcome. She kept walking and she caught up to the music. She looked at this stranger, a person of color, and began to sing, putting words to his tune. He joined in and they sang together for a verse, he smiled and she smiled, and then she went on her way. 2 https://www.christiancentury.org/article/february-5-fifth-sunday-after-epiphany 5
You ARE the salt of the earth. You ARE the light of the world. Let us encourage one another to BE salt and light. Together, we will start a fire! Amen. 6