Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Preached at Grace Lutheran, York and Canadochly Lutheran on February 5, 2017
Scripture text: Matthew 5:13-20

Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.”

Wait a minute here. If I may be so bold, I think Jesus got it wrong here. He’s the light of the world. I mean, that’s been kind of our overarching theme over these past several seasons of the Church year. It’s been all about light and how Jesus is that light.

• The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
• Those who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
• In the beginning...let there be light!
• The magi come following the light of a star to Jesus.

All this is about Jesus, about the Christ. Even our liturgy expounds upon this idea. Look at how many times in our worship service we refer to Jesus either as light or as the bringer of light into the world. There’s at least three or four places where that idea is expressed openly in our worship service.

He is the hope of the universe. He’s the one who has come to save us, to save the world. To redeem what has been lost in the fall. To put right what has gone wrong. To put sin and death asunder. Jesus is the light of the world.

And yet, here in Matthew’s Gospel, in the sermon on the mount, he says it is us who are that light.

What gives?

Truth is, God could have chosen from among an infinity number of plans to bring the world back into alignment with his will. An unending list of schemes that would put right all that sin had made wrong. With his power, might, and majesty, he could have done anything. He chose a plan however a plan that required an element of partnership with the human race.

Rewind all the way back to Genesis. God comes before a Sumerian of Ur by the name of Abram and says to him, “Hey, I need your help. I need you to become the father of a new nation, a new people. A people that I am going to teach my ways, my laws, my commandments, my desires. I want to use them to show the world how life could be. Because I want to bless everyone and I want to use you and yours to do it.”

That’s basically the Old Covenant in a nutshell. God making a pact, a partnership with the Hebrew people, so that they could show the world what God is about. In much the same way as a priest (or pastor) often acts as an intermediary between the divine and the mortal, the Chosen People would act as that intermediary between God and the world. God would reach the world through those Chosen and those Chosen would bring the world to God.

The rest of the Old Testament is made up basically of stories about one of four things:

• the people doing what God wants them to do and when they do, wondrous things happen. (the walls of Jericho, David and Goliath, etc.)
• The people failing to do what God wants them to do and God trying to steer them back onto the path (pretty much any of the prophetic writings)
• God teaching the people his will and desire (The ten commandments)
• God and the people dealing with some manner of setback that has cropped up (the Exodus, the Babylonian exile, etc.)

So there’s the Old Testament in a nutshell. Now, we come to Jesus. Why would things change now? The plan, so far, has been working. Not perfectly, of course; we are dealing with human beings after all. But the partnership has been working. Now, it’s time for an expansion.

Hence, Jesus says to the crowd “You are the light of the world.”

He says that first, of course, to the people gathered around him: Jews, descendants of the ancient Hebrews. People of the Chosen, reminding them that they are the Chosen. But we who hear those words now, generation upon generation later, have been Chosen as well, grafted onto the Old Covenant by the New. The light all of us reflect is not our own, but the light of God, shining in this dark world and setting things to right.

We are God’s partners. That’s what he has called us to be. He has called us to bring hope and light into a dark world, a world of fear, doubt, and uncertainty. He has called us to tell the ancient stories:

• of how God called Abram to bring forth a blessing for all,
• of how Jesus came, the son of God, born in a manger to be that blessing.
• Of how Jesus died and rose again to save the world. To save you and I and perhaps everyone.

That’s our job. That’s our calling as Christians, as people of the New Covenant. Go forth and show the light of the world.

You know, it’s funny. We talk time and time again in Church about how we’re to have faith in God, about how we’re supposed to believe in him and his promises. But passages like this remind us that it is, in fact, a two-way street. Yes, we believe in God, but by calling us to be the light of the world, he shows that he believes in us. He’s called us to be a part of his plan, to be his partners, in showing the world his love and salvation.

You are the light of the world. Go forth and shine, so that the world may see God in you. Amen.