Sermon - 2014-02-09

You are the salt of the earth.  This may seem a little odd, a little weird to us within our modern time.  However, we should understand the importance of salt.  For salt does two very important things.  Salt gives some food flavor.  It enhances the genuine flavor of a food. Salt will also preserve by ensuring that things do not spoil, but are kept good for a later time.  Salt would often be placed upon meat to ensure that moisture does not get into it so that it can be enjoyed later.  

Jesus draws in other understandings beside salt. A lamp on a lamp stand to light an entire house.  Even a city on a hill.  No one can look past it because it stands out on horizon and shines in the dark night.  Each of these things are like you.  Why does Jesus use these items to explain who you are and what you should be doing?  Jesus is reminding us of our original purpose on this Earth.  That God created us to be stewards of this world.  To care for the plants, animals, the sea, the air, and everything.  Remember in the Garden of Eden at the very beginning, we are called to be care takers.  We are suppose to caring for all living things and the whole environment so that it will be there for the next generation.  Not only that, but we are suppose to enhance the world around us and make it better by understanding what is it’s purpose is and allowing it to flourish.  Yet people will look to you and how you are living to understand how they should also be living.  

Jesus is calling the people back to their relationship with God and back to their created purpose in this world to find meaning and above all understand God’s calling for them in the world.  Jesus is calling the people to live out their relationship with the world, relationship with one another, creation and God.  Now we are able to through our Baptism, it is here in our Baptism that we hear the promise that God has made unto us.  God loves us.  God will be with us. God will make us his own children.  Yet also at our Baptism, we respond with promises to God.  Promises that we shall uphold throughout all our days.  However, as we live out our days, we tend to make mistakes.  We stumble on our journey of faith and we begin to forget what that promise that God made to us and we made to God is all about.  

Paul reminds us when we forget. Paul is reminding the people of the church in Corinth, but also us today.  When we forget about God’s calling and promise, we find ourselves not thinking about the calling that God has for us, but rather for the world around us: the wealth, power and other things that shall surely pass away.  We have fallen away from God and need to be brought back together to him.  God sends his only Son to come and to bring us back together.  We bear witness, just as we are a city on a hill that no one can look past.  Jesus Christ ascends to the top of a hill, where we can all plainly see and bear witness to the love, grace and mercy of God.  It is here at the cross that we are reminded of our own death and our own need for God.  

Now for many, this is hard to understand because it is not the wisdom of this world.  There is no power, no great fanfare, but it is pure and simple.  However, it is through the pure and simple things of this world that we bear witness to the Love of God that breaks into our lives.  Reminding us wholey and directly of the work that God and Jesus Christ have done for us.  For it was through Christ, God’s only son, who lived and dwelled among us, proclaiming god’s love for us.  Who went and took the foolishness that is this world and made it all new.  That is the wisdom of God that this world does not understand.

May you know of God’s love, may you receive God’s promise, and may you live out your life worthy of those gifts. Amen.