In today's gospel pericope (Mt. 5: 13-20), Jesus uses two wonderful metaphors for his people. We are to be salt for the earth, adding significance and enrichment to everything we undertake. We are also to be light for the world, giving a new vision to a world in darkness.
I like the Spanish expression used to describe childbirth, dar a la luz, "give to the light." The mother gives the child to the light. In the same way, Mother Church brings her child from the womb of the baptismal font into the new Light to which God calls us in Christ and which we officially appropriate to ourselves in the sacrament of confirmation.
I wonder how many non-Christian and unchurched people today would say that the Christians whom they encounter daily act like salt and light. Not many, I suspect. Jesus tells his audience how to be about that work in their own time. First of all, he tells them that the Law of Moses will remain valid until the end of time, that not even a single piece of punctuation is negotiable.* Rather, he commits to fulfillment of the Law by getting serious about it, ending game-playing and loophole-finding so that each disciple from the heart acts out its intent. Jesus expresses this by torqueing-up the Torah. The Law says don't murder, Jesus says don't hate to begin with. The Law says don't have sex with your neighbour's wife, Jesus says don't lust after her. Jesus is all about getting to the root of problems and keeping it real.
In our text, Jesus' affirmation of the timelessness of the Jewish Law is followed by an observation that the person who dismisses even the tiniest commandment and teaches other that it is ok not to follow it, will be least in the Kingdom of Heaven. Here, the Matthaean Community, some fifty years after the earthly ministry of Jesus, has him firing a shot directly across the bow of Saint Paul, saying the non-observant Paul is least in the Kingdom, for the Matthaeans are observant Jews as well as Christians.
Next Jesus tells the crowd that their righteousness must exceed that of Pharisees, and their legal expert friends, or they will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Pharisees blindly impose rules and misinterpret Scriptures in order to aggrandize themselves at the expense of the most vulnerable and unschooled. When we see the same behaviour today from televangelists and mega-church pastors who accumulating millions of dollars in personal wealth and tout their influence, we may be sur e Pharisees are amongst us today. We need to call that for what it is.
I do not demean study. . But we make a mistake if we try to equate our Faith with knowledge. The intelligent and informed examination of Scripture is important, but mastery of a book, even the Bible, doesn't save us. Salvation is a free gift of God, growing in us to make us more real each day. The Word of God is not a book. The Word is Jesus, workingin us to make us the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
[* The allegation in Colossians 2:14 that Jesus abolished the Law by nailing it to his cross is completely spurious. Colossians is a pseudo-Pauline letter, not a genuine letter of Saint Paul. The very notion flies in the face of our understanding that God does not lie or go back on his promises. The ongoing validity of the Law for Jewish people has been affirmed by a variety of Christian traditions including our Anglican Tradition and the Roman Catholic Communion. And thus we do not proselytize Jews.]
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