May our lights break forth like the dawn may we be like a watered garden......

“You are the salt of the earth” “You are the ”

These two lovely parables are familiar icons of our story.... Like prayer beads that have entered the unconscious and when they are poetry or music.

Salt, and light...... both essential to life....

We are spawned in the salt waters of our mothers wombs. Like seawater, our bodies contain salt; a tear, a drop of blood, a bead of sweat. Without salt our hearts would not beat, blood would not flow and muscles would not work properly.

As for Light, we exist because there is light. Whether the heat of the sun or the soft glow of a candle, light supports life...... the sunflower turns toward its source and the candle stands as a barrier against the fears of the night, the darkness of the unknown.

When Robert Louis Stevenson was a boy, he watched an old lamp lighter igniting lamps as he went down the street. Stevenson said to his nurse, “I am watching a man put holes in the darkness.” The light that emerges from within, is light that pierces and illumines.

For all the connections we can make to the significance of salt and water, all the ways we can redactively reflect on what this Gospel means. However, Jesus, is talking about something more..... !Jesus as always is pointing us to the deeper self, the self made of the underground seawater from which all life was born.... the self that rests in God. !Jesus points us toward the source...his stories urge us to dive beneath the obvious and search for the Divine. How is Jesus using these images? Perhaps as metaphor..most likely as he often does, he is speaking of images as close to our everyday lives as our own breath. He uses images born of the ordinariness of our lives to teach us about the extraordinariness of God, of the Holy. He expects the images to catch our breath, grab our attention. He seems to throw us a life line that will pull us toward our center....he wants us to leave behind the detritus of our small lives. He urges us to be who we most deeply are, spicy and luminous. We are called to put holes in the darkness.

1 Jesus does not say, (in Matthew’s telling) you are like salt, you are like light...... he says you are salt, you are light...... not, try to be salty, or get to work on your illumination...... we are not being given a goal to achieve. The light and the salt Jesus talks about are born in and with us....A God given gift.

These parables are not a requirement, but a Blessing. Not a commandment but a commissioning......

And what do we do with our gifts? Leave them on the shelf, hide or deny them?

These parables follow the ... and are a bridge to the rest of the on the Mount. So in Matthew, first we have the Beatitudes, then these two parables appear about salt and light, followed by the rest of the Sermon on the Mt. which talks about the 10 commandments and other aspects of Mosaic law. So, right in the middle of telling us about those who are blessed or satisfied or happy...and the part where he discusses issues of the law and ways to behave, right in the middle, are these two wisdom sayings...... it is as if he looks directly into our eyes and says to us let me tell you who you are.... now go out and live it....live your gift, live your light. The essence of who we are is what we take out into the world....our saltiness and our luminescence. What a relief! We don’t have to invent the story of ourselves. We don’t have to apologize for something we aren’t. We do, it would seem, have to accept the gift that is us and then, of course, make good use of it. These parables are not just nice stories, visual teachings to entertain us for a few minutes on a Sunday morning. They are meant to bless us into action and send us out as messengers of light. “Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of God with us!” These parables tell us we are salt to be scattered and light to pierce the darkness. We are the stuff of the stars, we are the seasoning that makes for Divine cooking..creative imaginative life food .... we are fed at this altar in order that we may be food for the world AND lights to enlighten the nations...the peoples. All this is about already having what it takes to be lovers of the world and live with compassion and justice and in peace. And, isn’t it hard to accept the goodness we are blessed with.. Isn’t it hard to simply say thanks for the gift . Oh no,we say, not me, you perhaps, but not me... Salty? No, might get me into trouble....wait a minute until I snuff out my flame...

2 If ever there is such a thing as sin it comes in the guise of excessive humility. Pretending not to matter, not to be gifted, not to be powerful in our spirit, not to dare to risk because someone once told us we must not brag or look too sure of ourselves, all those hide your light messages.

As I was thinking about this sermon I let my mind reflect on people I have known or known about who were both salty and full of light, daring, difficult people. Joan Chittister came to my mind, or Oscar Romero of liberation theology fame, or perhaps Pope Francis....time will tell... After yesterday’s sermon by Father Steve at the installation of Ernie Galaz at St Andrews, Nogales.... After his brave shout out for a post modern, non dualistic, explosive Christianity that will change and remake the church...... He has become my newest favorite salty persons not afraid to shine a very bright light on the possibility of Church, being much more than quaint theology, stained glass and stone walls.

Even closer to home, I thought about my 19 year old Granddaughter Hannah who came to spend a month with me this Christmas during her break from College. As I got re-aquatinted with her I saw her as a passionately inquisitive young woman, I saw her saltiness, her passion for the truth, her awareness that we live in a very broken world and her dissatisfaction with that. I could see the light of an old soul struggling to live in a world that seems to only know and speak the word NEW...a world where light comes from a screen in front of us and the stars seem very far away. In Hannah I could see her feisty, salty, luminescence and I pray for her daily. I pray for Steve daily too.....there are real risks in being salty, light shedding people.

What a challenging time for young people like Hannah, and for voices that speak to a beloved church that must continue to change if it is to have any meaning in a complex and multi faceted world. In Jesus time as well the light and saltiness he was calling his disciples to was hard to hear.... leave family traditions behind, live in a renewed interpretation of the law and the prophets, deconstruct, re -imagine, be salty, make waves, stir the pot....be difficult...maybe die...... at least show up!

Isaiah says to us:

“Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” I call you to a holy fasting. “this is the fast 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..to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly... If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and you gloom be like the noonday ...

3 The Holy One 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 whose waters never fail.

Get very still....find your voice, salt the life around with the flavor of love. Light your flame and place it on the highest possible hill. Be who you are. Hope for this lively living can be found in the details...the tiny acts of justice, compassion and peace and hope is also to be found in the larger reality, the vast expanse of interstellar space...the Holiness beyond the mundane, the salt, the light, the Source.

Amen

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