Internal medicine
Commentary
Object:
Some years ago Europa Times carried a story in which Mussa Zoabi of Israel claimed to be the oldest person alive at 160. Guinness Book of World Records would not print his name, however, simply because his age could not be verified. Mr. Zoabi was older than most records-keeping systems. Whatever his true age, Mussa Zoabi believed he knew the secret of longevity. He said, "Every day I drink a cup of melted butter or olive oil."
Doesn't that sound like a great diet? Diets are quite the rage. Everybody has a special diet. One says his diet can cure cancer. Another promises to reduce your weight and then to keep those extra pounds off.
Already in ancient times there were diets that supposedly turned on the sex hormones and made a person incredibly irresistible. Most of us know the truth and the lies about dieting and for that reason, perhaps, think we know all about the issue of fasting that scripture raises. Fasting sounds a lot like dieting. You stop eating for a while, or at least you slow down, and you do it for a noble cause (even if it is just to fit into those slacks again!).
But fasting is not dieting. Neither is fasting like the hunger strikes we read about now and again. Comedian Dick Gregory, for instance, used to stage hunger strikes in protest of the Vietnam War. The mayor of Cork, Ireland, died of a hunger strike against English rule in the 1920s, giving rise to much larger protests. History repeated itself in the 1980s, when Irish political prisoners in Maze Prison, near Belfast, carried on widely publicized hunger strikes. Several died in their protests against England. Again, during the days of the Cold War when tension tightened in the old Soviet Union, some of the Jewish people who weren't able to get exit visas went on hunger strikes. The media turned on the spotlights, and the Soviet government was forced to comply.
While it is true that hunger strikes can be powerful tools for peaceful resistance in our societies, especially where they have "religious" motives, biblical fasting is actually something else. This is particularly true in our passage today from Isaiah's prophecy. But the New Testament and gospel readings as well focus on the spirituality of hunger and poverty in which denial is great gain. It is, indeed, a very good "internal medicine."
Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)
In the biblical world there were three specific reasons why people fasted. The first was repentance. You fasted because you sinned. You fasted because you did something wrong. You fasted to say to God: "I'm really sorry!"
When my older sister first got her driver's license, she suddenly knew how to drive! That summer we were going to go on a long trip together as a family. The day before we were leaving, Jean asked if she could wash the car and get it ready for the travels. It was a nice thought, of course, but what she really wanted was a chance to drive the car.
We lived on a farm out in the Minnesota countryside, and the garage was really an ancient horse buggy barn with very small doors. The car could barely squeeze in. Mom and Dad had told her so often, "Make sure you check behind you when you back up! Be careful for anyone else who might be there!"
So Jean got in the car and started it. She stepped on the brake and slipped the gear shift into reverse. Then she turned around and looked back to make sure there was no one behind. She let off the brake and revved the engine. And, as she looked back she turned the wheel!
SCREEEEEEEECH! She proved the law of physics: Two bodies of matter cannot occupy the same place at the same time! The left front fender is wrapped around the doorjamb on the garage.
I'll never forget what Jean did then: She jumped out of the car crying and shouting at the top of her voice, "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I'll stay home! I won't go on vacation!"
She was saying what we all need to say sometimes: If you do something wrong you need to make amends and that might include giving up something significant to you. So it is with fasting. Great King David fasted after he did his thing with Bathsheba. When God checked in with David through Nathan the prophet, David collapsed in grief. "What have I done?" he wept. "How did I get myself into this? Where did I sell my soul to turn this corner?" That's when David fasted. He fell on the floor of his room in prayer and repentance, and he would eat no food until God resolved the matter with him. That's why people fast! They know just how deep sin sinks into their lives, and they know that without the struggles of pain in the body there is sometimes no struggle of agony in the spirit.
The Bible tells us of other fasts like that. King Ahab fasted in repentance before God after he and Jezebel stole Naboth's reputation, life, and property. The people of Nineveh fasted in repentance to God after Jonah shouted his warning through the city streets. Fasting was even built into the regular rhythm of Israel's life as a nation. There was the annual Day of Atonement, when the whole nation fasted and prayed. They had a sense that it was possible to flit through life too carelessly without taking stock of the grit of sin that sticks to the soles of our feet, as the writer of Hebrews described it, and the tether of evil that snags our hearts at inopportune moments.
The second reason people fasted in Bible times was to remember. When King Saul and Prince Jonathan died in battle with the Philistines, David, who took up the reins of power, called the nation of Israel to a day of fasting because something tragic had happened. When tragedy strikes, only the careless and the cowardly and the callous are unmoved. "No man is an island," said John Donne. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind!"
Daniel fasted when he remembered the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of his people's homeland. In Jesus' day there was an annual fast to remember the holocaust that nearly wiped out the Hebrew race when the hordes of Babylon swept down from the hills of Ephraim.
Fasting showed solidarity. Fasting declared shared involvement. Fasting said: "What happened was tragic, and I will not forget the pain of it!"
The third reason people fasted during biblical times was to rivet attention on God. When Queen Esther had to go to her husband, Persian King Xerxes, to plead for the life of her people, she asked her friends to fast with her. She couldn't do something like that without getting in tune with the spiritual dimensions of her soul.
In a similar incident, when Ezra was about to lead a contingent of Jews across the desert wastes to Jerusalem, they prepared well by gathering food for the journey, obtaining letters of legal documentation, and organizing the travel groups. But when they had finished their other preparations they fasted together for several days, riveting their attention on God, whose leading they hoped to follow.
Jesus fasted for forty days before he started his public ministry! Can you imagine that? The very Son of God fasted in order to get in touch with his own father!
In Acts 13 we find Paul and Barnabas fasting and praying, and the whole congregation at Antioch with them, in order to find the future directions of the ministry God was calling them to. Fasting helps people get in touch with God.
That is precisely what the word of God is about here in Isaiah 58. The people may have been practicing ritual fasts, but their hearts were not in it. Only when they got back to the real reasons for fasting would they find God once again. And only then would they begin to live out the justice and righteousness of God in society.
1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
There is an ancient legend first told by Christians living in the catacombs under the streets of Rome picturing the day when Jesus went back to glory after finishing all his work on earth. The angel Gabriel meets Jesus in heaven and welcomes him home. "Lord," he says, "Who have you left behind to carry on your work?"
Jesus tells him about the disciples, the little band of fishermen and farmers and housewives.
"But Lord," says Gabriel, "what if they fail you? What if they lose heart, or drop out? What if things get too rough for them, and they let you down?"
Well, says Jesus, then all I've done will come to nothing!
"But don't you have a backup plan?" Gabriel asks. "Isn't there something else to keep it going, to finish your work?"
No, says Jesus, there's no backup plan. The church is it. There's nothing else.
"Nothing else?" says Gabriel. "But what if they fail?"
And the early Christians knew Jesus' answer. "They won't fail, Gabriel," he said. "They won't fail!"
Isn't that a marvelous thing? Here are the Christians of Rome, dug into the earth like gophers, tunneling out of sight because of the terrors of Nero up above. They're nothing in that world! They're poor, despised, and insignificant! Yet they know the promise of Jesus: "You won't fail! You're my people, and you won't fail!"
That's what Paul tells us in these verses, doesn't he? "When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom," he says. "I came to you in weakness and fear, with much trembling." Why? So that the true power of God might be revealed.
Tony Campolo once told of a friend of his who was walking through the midway at a county fair when he met a tiny girl. She was carrying a great big fluff of cotton candy on a stick, almost as larger as herself! He said to her, "How can a little girl like you eat all that cotton candy?"
"Well," she said to him, "I'm really much bigger on the inside than I am on the outside!"
That's essentially what Paul is saying here. On the outside we seem to be nothing, but on the inside we are as big as the kingdom and the power and the glory of our God. Says Paul, "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual words." Indeed.
Matthew 5:13-20
Can salt lose its saltiness? Is it possible for salt to become unsalty? Not really. Any chemistry teacher will tell you that. Sodium chloride is one of the most stable compounds in the whole of the universe. It doesn't change. It doesn't lose its character.
Still, there is truth to what Jesus is saying. Much of the salt used in Palestine came from the area around the Dead Sea, which at more than a mile-and-a-half below sea-level, is the lowest land area in the world. The waters of the Sea of Galilee flow into the Jordan River and run down there to the bottom of the earth. Once they get there, it's the end of the line. There's no place to go. The hot desert sun evaporates the water and leaves behind a chunky white powder made up of a combination of salts and minerals.
That powder contains enough salt to season meat or to add a little flavor to soup. For that reason the people of Palestine have always scooped it up to use in trade and in cooking. But the salt is mixed with minerals. It's not pure sodium chloride. Indeed, it is possible, under certain circumstances, with a little dampness in the air, for the salts to be dissolved first and leached away.
You may not notice it. What you have left looks the same, yet the taste is gone, and people throw it out. There may be a little salt left, but it isn't enough to make a difference, so the whole batch is chucked out into the street.
The comparison point Jesus makes, in essence, is that strength is found in community. A single grain of salt may make a slight difference, but it takes the concentration of a cluster of them to make a real impact. Similarly, one disciple with a sense of purpose may make a statement in the world, but it's the community of Christians that turns the world upside down.
Besides the power of flavor there was an even greater strength of salt in the world of Jesus' day. Salt was used to confirm agreements, to seal treaties, and establish covenants. If you ate salt with someone, you became blood relatives. You had a stake in each other's lives. You were part of the same family.
King Abijah, in the Old Testament, reminds the people that they made a "treaty of salt" with David, and therefore they can't break it. The enemies of the Jews, in the book of Ezra, write a letter to King Artaxerxes of Persia, telling him that they will be his servants forever because they have eaten salt from his treasuries. They are his servants, confirmed by eating his salt.
In Arabic, the word for "salt" is the same word as the word for "treaty." Similarly, in Persian, the word for traitor means "someone who is faithless to salt." Such an idea resonates with what Jesus gives us here. "You are the salt of the earth!" he says. You are the essence of God's relationship with the world around you. The church isn't just a little community off by itself somewhere. It is the confirmation that God still has an interest in our world!
The apostle Peter picks up that same theme in 2 Peter 3. He says there is enough evil in society, enough wickedness in our world, for God to let loose the fires of his judgment. But he's not going to do that yet, says Peter, because he has people living throughout the whole wide world, and they make a difference. They confirm his relationship with his world. They are the salt of the earth!
What would our neighborhood be without us? What would our area be like without the church of Jesus Christ? Where would our nation be without the conscience of the people of God? "You are the salt of the earth!" says Jesus. "You are the light of the world!" It's not enough to be anti-abortion; you must be pro-life and remind your community what real life, God's life, is all about! It's not enough to be against immorality; you have to be the conscience of society, turning its thoughts toward love and laughter and life! It's not enough to protect your own interests; you have to speak out for the welfare of the poor and the disabled and the oppressed!
It's not enough to be socially active, socially responsible, socially concerned. "Let your light shine before men," says Jesus here, "that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven!" Turn people's thoughts toward God, says Jesus. No mind is truly enlightened until it is flooded with the glory of heaven. No body is truly healed until it is touched by the power of the Creator. No person is truly set free until there is freedom of the Spirit of Christ. And this is how it happens: "… that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven!" That's great internal medicine!
Application
There's a marvelous little story tucked away in the pages of Edward Gibbon's seven-volume work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It tells of a humble little monk named Telemachus living out in the farming regions of Asia.
Telemachus had no great ambitions in life. He loved his little garden and tilled it through the changing seasons. But one day in the year 391, he felt a sense of urgency, a call of God's direction in his life. Although he didn't know why, he felt that God wanted him to go to Rome, the heart and soul of the empire. In fact, the feelings of such a call frightened him, but he went anyway, praying along the way for God's direction.
When he finally got to the city, it was in an uproar! The armies of Rome had just come home from the battlefield in victory, and the crowds were turning out for a great celebration. They flowed through the streets like a tidal wave, and Telemachus was caught in their frenzy and carried into the Coliseum.
He had never seen a gladiator contest before but now his heart sickened. Down in the arena men hacked at each other with swords and clubs. The crowds roared at the sight of blood and urged their favorites on to the death.
Telemachus couldn't stand it. He knew it was wrong; this wasn't the way God wanted people to live or to die. So little Telemachus worked his way through the crowds to the wall down by the arena. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he shouted.
Nobody heard him, so he crawled up onto the wall and shouted again: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" This time the few who heard him only laughed. But Telemachus was not to be ignored. He jumped into the arena and ran through the sands toward the gladiators. "In the name of Christ, forbear!"
The crowds laughed at the silly little man and threw stones at him. Telemachus, however, was on a mission. He threw himself between two gladiators to stop their fighting. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he cried.
They hacked him apart! They cut his body from shoulder to stomach, and he fell onto the sand with the blood running out of his life.
The gladiators were stunned and stopped to watch him die. Then the crowds fell back in silence, for a moment, no one in the coliseum moved. Telemachus' final words rang in their memories: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" At last they moved, slowly at first, but growing in numbers. The masses of Rome filed out of the coliseum that day, and the historian Theodoret reports that never again was a gladiator contest held there! All because of the witness and the testimony of a single Christian who had the power of the internal medicine of grace and God's goodness.
Alternative Application
Matthew 5:13-20. During the time of the Reformation John Foxe of England was impressed by the testimony of the early Christians. He gleaned the pages of early historical writings and wrote a book that has become a classic in the church, Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
One story he tells is about an early church leader named Lawrence. Lawrence acted as a pastor for a church community. He also collected the offerings for the poor each week and that led to his death.
A band of thieves found out that Lawrence received the offerings of the people from Sunday to Sunday, so one night as he was taking a stroll, they grabbed him and demanded the money. He told them that he didn't have it and that he had already given it all to the poor. They didn't believe him and told him they would give him a chance to find it. In three days they would come to his house and take from him the treasures of the church.
Three days later they did come. But Lawrence wasn't alone. The house was filled with the people of his congregation. When the thieves demanded the treasures of the church, Lawrence smiled. He opened wide his arms and gestured to those who sat around him. "Here's the treasure of the church!" he said. "Here's the treasure of God that shines in the world!"
Indeed. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You can make a difference together in the world for God!
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 112:1-10
Psalm 112 gives much attention to the attributes of the righteous. It also gives attention to what some have interpreted as the transactional nature of the relationships with God. In other words, if you're faithful to God, you will be rewarded. In most cases this is seen as material reward. This is nice, of course, and has led over the eons to countless people luring the faithful into relationships of faithfulness that promise reward. Again, a transactional relationship. You give God, or in some unscrupulous circumstances, the pastor, your money, and God will reward you!
It's a familiar tune. Indeed, the unseemly nature of this interpretation has driven many a would-be convert from the doors of our faith. So, let's set this straight once and for all.
Faith in God is not an investment that pays off in cash.
Faith in God is not an insurance policy that will protect us and our loved ones.
Faith in God will not keep us from poverty or suffering. It will not protect us from the wiles of evil doers. As a pastor for more than a quarter of a century, this writer has looked too often into the eyes of someone whose child has died prematurely and heard the question, "Why did God do this to me? I was a good Christian."
Having ventured into this inflammatory diatribe, it's important to help this psalmist with the list of things that faith will do for us. Faith in God will provide accompaniment through our struggles. Faith in God will propel us into supportive and loving community. Faith in God will literally save us from a life of brokenness and hurt. Faith in God will remove our fearful hearts and replace them with bold and loving hearts.
The important things to remember are the proper order of things in faith. This isn't, as Paul points out in Romans, about the things we bring to God. It's about the love God already has for us. It's about grace. God loves us fully and completely, and out of a life-changing experience of that love, we give our love and fealty to God. The experience of God's love is healing. It's transformative. It is saving. And it is out of that incredible experience that we, in turn, love God.
We do not love God because of what we might get back.
The first attribute of the righteous, it turns out, is the unflinching and unswerving love of a God who loves us first; who loves us so much that this God gave (him)self on the cross for us.
Doesn't that sound like a great diet? Diets are quite the rage. Everybody has a special diet. One says his diet can cure cancer. Another promises to reduce your weight and then to keep those extra pounds off.
Already in ancient times there were diets that supposedly turned on the sex hormones and made a person incredibly irresistible. Most of us know the truth and the lies about dieting and for that reason, perhaps, think we know all about the issue of fasting that scripture raises. Fasting sounds a lot like dieting. You stop eating for a while, or at least you slow down, and you do it for a noble cause (even if it is just to fit into those slacks again!).
But fasting is not dieting. Neither is fasting like the hunger strikes we read about now and again. Comedian Dick Gregory, for instance, used to stage hunger strikes in protest of the Vietnam War. The mayor of Cork, Ireland, died of a hunger strike against English rule in the 1920s, giving rise to much larger protests. History repeated itself in the 1980s, when Irish political prisoners in Maze Prison, near Belfast, carried on widely publicized hunger strikes. Several died in their protests against England. Again, during the days of the Cold War when tension tightened in the old Soviet Union, some of the Jewish people who weren't able to get exit visas went on hunger strikes. The media turned on the spotlights, and the Soviet government was forced to comply.
While it is true that hunger strikes can be powerful tools for peaceful resistance in our societies, especially where they have "religious" motives, biblical fasting is actually something else. This is particularly true in our passage today from Isaiah's prophecy. But the New Testament and gospel readings as well focus on the spirituality of hunger and poverty in which denial is great gain. It is, indeed, a very good "internal medicine."
Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)
In the biblical world there were three specific reasons why people fasted. The first was repentance. You fasted because you sinned. You fasted because you did something wrong. You fasted to say to God: "I'm really sorry!"
When my older sister first got her driver's license, she suddenly knew how to drive! That summer we were going to go on a long trip together as a family. The day before we were leaving, Jean asked if she could wash the car and get it ready for the travels. It was a nice thought, of course, but what she really wanted was a chance to drive the car.
We lived on a farm out in the Minnesota countryside, and the garage was really an ancient horse buggy barn with very small doors. The car could barely squeeze in. Mom and Dad had told her so often, "Make sure you check behind you when you back up! Be careful for anyone else who might be there!"
So Jean got in the car and started it. She stepped on the brake and slipped the gear shift into reverse. Then she turned around and looked back to make sure there was no one behind. She let off the brake and revved the engine. And, as she looked back she turned the wheel!
SCREEEEEEEECH! She proved the law of physics: Two bodies of matter cannot occupy the same place at the same time! The left front fender is wrapped around the doorjamb on the garage.
I'll never forget what Jean did then: She jumped out of the car crying and shouting at the top of her voice, "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I'll stay home! I won't go on vacation!"
She was saying what we all need to say sometimes: If you do something wrong you need to make amends and that might include giving up something significant to you. So it is with fasting. Great King David fasted after he did his thing with Bathsheba. When God checked in with David through Nathan the prophet, David collapsed in grief. "What have I done?" he wept. "How did I get myself into this? Where did I sell my soul to turn this corner?" That's when David fasted. He fell on the floor of his room in prayer and repentance, and he would eat no food until God resolved the matter with him. That's why people fast! They know just how deep sin sinks into their lives, and they know that without the struggles of pain in the body there is sometimes no struggle of agony in the spirit.
The Bible tells us of other fasts like that. King Ahab fasted in repentance before God after he and Jezebel stole Naboth's reputation, life, and property. The people of Nineveh fasted in repentance to God after Jonah shouted his warning through the city streets. Fasting was even built into the regular rhythm of Israel's life as a nation. There was the annual Day of Atonement, when the whole nation fasted and prayed. They had a sense that it was possible to flit through life too carelessly without taking stock of the grit of sin that sticks to the soles of our feet, as the writer of Hebrews described it, and the tether of evil that snags our hearts at inopportune moments.
The second reason people fasted in Bible times was to remember. When King Saul and Prince Jonathan died in battle with the Philistines, David, who took up the reins of power, called the nation of Israel to a day of fasting because something tragic had happened. When tragedy strikes, only the careless and the cowardly and the callous are unmoved. "No man is an island," said John Donne. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind!"
Daniel fasted when he remembered the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of his people's homeland. In Jesus' day there was an annual fast to remember the holocaust that nearly wiped out the Hebrew race when the hordes of Babylon swept down from the hills of Ephraim.
Fasting showed solidarity. Fasting declared shared involvement. Fasting said: "What happened was tragic, and I will not forget the pain of it!"
The third reason people fasted during biblical times was to rivet attention on God. When Queen Esther had to go to her husband, Persian King Xerxes, to plead for the life of her people, she asked her friends to fast with her. She couldn't do something like that without getting in tune with the spiritual dimensions of her soul.
In a similar incident, when Ezra was about to lead a contingent of Jews across the desert wastes to Jerusalem, they prepared well by gathering food for the journey, obtaining letters of legal documentation, and organizing the travel groups. But when they had finished their other preparations they fasted together for several days, riveting their attention on God, whose leading they hoped to follow.
Jesus fasted for forty days before he started his public ministry! Can you imagine that? The very Son of God fasted in order to get in touch with his own father!
In Acts 13 we find Paul and Barnabas fasting and praying, and the whole congregation at Antioch with them, in order to find the future directions of the ministry God was calling them to. Fasting helps people get in touch with God.
That is precisely what the word of God is about here in Isaiah 58. The people may have been practicing ritual fasts, but their hearts were not in it. Only when they got back to the real reasons for fasting would they find God once again. And only then would they begin to live out the justice and righteousness of God in society.
1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
There is an ancient legend first told by Christians living in the catacombs under the streets of Rome picturing the day when Jesus went back to glory after finishing all his work on earth. The angel Gabriel meets Jesus in heaven and welcomes him home. "Lord," he says, "Who have you left behind to carry on your work?"
Jesus tells him about the disciples, the little band of fishermen and farmers and housewives.
"But Lord," says Gabriel, "what if they fail you? What if they lose heart, or drop out? What if things get too rough for them, and they let you down?"
Well, says Jesus, then all I've done will come to nothing!
"But don't you have a backup plan?" Gabriel asks. "Isn't there something else to keep it going, to finish your work?"
No, says Jesus, there's no backup plan. The church is it. There's nothing else.
"Nothing else?" says Gabriel. "But what if they fail?"
And the early Christians knew Jesus' answer. "They won't fail, Gabriel," he said. "They won't fail!"
Isn't that a marvelous thing? Here are the Christians of Rome, dug into the earth like gophers, tunneling out of sight because of the terrors of Nero up above. They're nothing in that world! They're poor, despised, and insignificant! Yet they know the promise of Jesus: "You won't fail! You're my people, and you won't fail!"
That's what Paul tells us in these verses, doesn't he? "When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom," he says. "I came to you in weakness and fear, with much trembling." Why? So that the true power of God might be revealed.
Tony Campolo once told of a friend of his who was walking through the midway at a county fair when he met a tiny girl. She was carrying a great big fluff of cotton candy on a stick, almost as larger as herself! He said to her, "How can a little girl like you eat all that cotton candy?"
"Well," she said to him, "I'm really much bigger on the inside than I am on the outside!"
That's essentially what Paul is saying here. On the outside we seem to be nothing, but on the inside we are as big as the kingdom and the power and the glory of our God. Says Paul, "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual words." Indeed.
Matthew 5:13-20
Can salt lose its saltiness? Is it possible for salt to become unsalty? Not really. Any chemistry teacher will tell you that. Sodium chloride is one of the most stable compounds in the whole of the universe. It doesn't change. It doesn't lose its character.
Still, there is truth to what Jesus is saying. Much of the salt used in Palestine came from the area around the Dead Sea, which at more than a mile-and-a-half below sea-level, is the lowest land area in the world. The waters of the Sea of Galilee flow into the Jordan River and run down there to the bottom of the earth. Once they get there, it's the end of the line. There's no place to go. The hot desert sun evaporates the water and leaves behind a chunky white powder made up of a combination of salts and minerals.
That powder contains enough salt to season meat or to add a little flavor to soup. For that reason the people of Palestine have always scooped it up to use in trade and in cooking. But the salt is mixed with minerals. It's not pure sodium chloride. Indeed, it is possible, under certain circumstances, with a little dampness in the air, for the salts to be dissolved first and leached away.
You may not notice it. What you have left looks the same, yet the taste is gone, and people throw it out. There may be a little salt left, but it isn't enough to make a difference, so the whole batch is chucked out into the street.
The comparison point Jesus makes, in essence, is that strength is found in community. A single grain of salt may make a slight difference, but it takes the concentration of a cluster of them to make a real impact. Similarly, one disciple with a sense of purpose may make a statement in the world, but it's the community of Christians that turns the world upside down.
Besides the power of flavor there was an even greater strength of salt in the world of Jesus' day. Salt was used to confirm agreements, to seal treaties, and establish covenants. If you ate salt with someone, you became blood relatives. You had a stake in each other's lives. You were part of the same family.
King Abijah, in the Old Testament, reminds the people that they made a "treaty of salt" with David, and therefore they can't break it. The enemies of the Jews, in the book of Ezra, write a letter to King Artaxerxes of Persia, telling him that they will be his servants forever because they have eaten salt from his treasuries. They are his servants, confirmed by eating his salt.
In Arabic, the word for "salt" is the same word as the word for "treaty." Similarly, in Persian, the word for traitor means "someone who is faithless to salt." Such an idea resonates with what Jesus gives us here. "You are the salt of the earth!" he says. You are the essence of God's relationship with the world around you. The church isn't just a little community off by itself somewhere. It is the confirmation that God still has an interest in our world!
The apostle Peter picks up that same theme in 2 Peter 3. He says there is enough evil in society, enough wickedness in our world, for God to let loose the fires of his judgment. But he's not going to do that yet, says Peter, because he has people living throughout the whole wide world, and they make a difference. They confirm his relationship with his world. They are the salt of the earth!
What would our neighborhood be without us? What would our area be like without the church of Jesus Christ? Where would our nation be without the conscience of the people of God? "You are the salt of the earth!" says Jesus. "You are the light of the world!" It's not enough to be anti-abortion; you must be pro-life and remind your community what real life, God's life, is all about! It's not enough to be against immorality; you have to be the conscience of society, turning its thoughts toward love and laughter and life! It's not enough to protect your own interests; you have to speak out for the welfare of the poor and the disabled and the oppressed!
It's not enough to be socially active, socially responsible, socially concerned. "Let your light shine before men," says Jesus here, "that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven!" Turn people's thoughts toward God, says Jesus. No mind is truly enlightened until it is flooded with the glory of heaven. No body is truly healed until it is touched by the power of the Creator. No person is truly set free until there is freedom of the Spirit of Christ. And this is how it happens: "… that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven!" That's great internal medicine!
Application
There's a marvelous little story tucked away in the pages of Edward Gibbon's seven-volume work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It tells of a humble little monk named Telemachus living out in the farming regions of Asia.
Telemachus had no great ambitions in life. He loved his little garden and tilled it through the changing seasons. But one day in the year 391, he felt a sense of urgency, a call of God's direction in his life. Although he didn't know why, he felt that God wanted him to go to Rome, the heart and soul of the empire. In fact, the feelings of such a call frightened him, but he went anyway, praying along the way for God's direction.
When he finally got to the city, it was in an uproar! The armies of Rome had just come home from the battlefield in victory, and the crowds were turning out for a great celebration. They flowed through the streets like a tidal wave, and Telemachus was caught in their frenzy and carried into the Coliseum.
He had never seen a gladiator contest before but now his heart sickened. Down in the arena men hacked at each other with swords and clubs. The crowds roared at the sight of blood and urged their favorites on to the death.
Telemachus couldn't stand it. He knew it was wrong; this wasn't the way God wanted people to live or to die. So little Telemachus worked his way through the crowds to the wall down by the arena. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he shouted.
Nobody heard him, so he crawled up onto the wall and shouted again: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" This time the few who heard him only laughed. But Telemachus was not to be ignored. He jumped into the arena and ran through the sands toward the gladiators. "In the name of Christ, forbear!"
The crowds laughed at the silly little man and threw stones at him. Telemachus, however, was on a mission. He threw himself between two gladiators to stop their fighting. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he cried.
They hacked him apart! They cut his body from shoulder to stomach, and he fell onto the sand with the blood running out of his life.
The gladiators were stunned and stopped to watch him die. Then the crowds fell back in silence, for a moment, no one in the coliseum moved. Telemachus' final words rang in their memories: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" At last they moved, slowly at first, but growing in numbers. The masses of Rome filed out of the coliseum that day, and the historian Theodoret reports that never again was a gladiator contest held there! All because of the witness and the testimony of a single Christian who had the power of the internal medicine of grace and God's goodness.
Alternative Application
Matthew 5:13-20. During the time of the Reformation John Foxe of England was impressed by the testimony of the early Christians. He gleaned the pages of early historical writings and wrote a book that has become a classic in the church, Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
One story he tells is about an early church leader named Lawrence. Lawrence acted as a pastor for a church community. He also collected the offerings for the poor each week and that led to his death.
A band of thieves found out that Lawrence received the offerings of the people from Sunday to Sunday, so one night as he was taking a stroll, they grabbed him and demanded the money. He told them that he didn't have it and that he had already given it all to the poor. They didn't believe him and told him they would give him a chance to find it. In three days they would come to his house and take from him the treasures of the church.
Three days later they did come. But Lawrence wasn't alone. The house was filled with the people of his congregation. When the thieves demanded the treasures of the church, Lawrence smiled. He opened wide his arms and gestured to those who sat around him. "Here's the treasure of the church!" he said. "Here's the treasure of God that shines in the world!"
Indeed. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You can make a difference together in the world for God!
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 112:1-10
Psalm 112 gives much attention to the attributes of the righteous. It also gives attention to what some have interpreted as the transactional nature of the relationships with God. In other words, if you're faithful to God, you will be rewarded. In most cases this is seen as material reward. This is nice, of course, and has led over the eons to countless people luring the faithful into relationships of faithfulness that promise reward. Again, a transactional relationship. You give God, or in some unscrupulous circumstances, the pastor, your money, and God will reward you!
It's a familiar tune. Indeed, the unseemly nature of this interpretation has driven many a would-be convert from the doors of our faith. So, let's set this straight once and for all.
Faith in God is not an investment that pays off in cash.
Faith in God is not an insurance policy that will protect us and our loved ones.
Faith in God will not keep us from poverty or suffering. It will not protect us from the wiles of evil doers. As a pastor for more than a quarter of a century, this writer has looked too often into the eyes of someone whose child has died prematurely and heard the question, "Why did God do this to me? I was a good Christian."
Having ventured into this inflammatory diatribe, it's important to help this psalmist with the list of things that faith will do for us. Faith in God will provide accompaniment through our struggles. Faith in God will propel us into supportive and loving community. Faith in God will literally save us from a life of brokenness and hurt. Faith in God will remove our fearful hearts and replace them with bold and loving hearts.
The important things to remember are the proper order of things in faith. This isn't, as Paul points out in Romans, about the things we bring to God. It's about the love God already has for us. It's about grace. God loves us fully and completely, and out of a life-changing experience of that love, we give our love and fealty to God. The experience of God's love is healing. It's transformative. It is saving. And it is out of that incredible experience that we, in turn, love God.
We do not love God because of what we might get back.
The first attribute of the righteous, it turns out, is the unflinching and unswerving love of a God who loves us first; who loves us so much that this God gave (him)self on the cross for us.
