Sermon: Be Like the Light In the World
Matthew 5:13-20
In today’s reading, Jesus declares to us, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” This light in the world and in us is like a city built on a hill that cannot be hidden. This light is like the flame on a lamp. If you want to give light to all in the house, you must bring it out and find the right, open place to put it. If you put it under a bushel basket, the light is wasted, illuminating only itself.
Being the light is a great metaphor to explain how we can act as an agent to bring the life of the Kingdom of God forward, in our daily, social and political lives. In order to act, we must understand what it is like to be the light. We know that light is everywhere. I mean not just here, in Manitoba or on this earth, but light as a scientific phenomenon - the cosmic wavelength from our Sun that exists, with no need for human witness to see it exist. There are billions and billions of Suns out there in the universe, and some of the Suns (billions!) have planets, locked into orbit and circling around them, and some of the planets (who knows how many?) have enough gravity and air to contain and scatter the light from their sun. Like our earth, these numberless planets have days and nights.
I believe that when Jesus said, “You are the light in the world”, he was telling us to be like the light, in the same way that we experience it in the world. It’s the light with which we have relationship through experience. We may not notice it all the time, but when our heart becomes a little poetic, God may speak to us through light-inspired imagination and emotions.
In today’s reading, the light Jesus gives as examples seems to show light as the most advanced technology of his time, like a city or a lamp. He does not talk about the light in nature, in the night sky, outdoors, perhaps because the land was so available, unpolluted, undisrupted, as a “given”, in his time, there was no reason to talk about technology-free nature’s light. Now, for us, who live in a post-industrial, capitalist North American context, we may find some compelling reasons to discover the “quality of light” in the land, in the earth, in the sky, in humanity… rather than fluorescent light or neon signs.
Here, I am happy to share with you two quotes from two Indigenous writers. After experiencing the destruction of life, in one’s individual life and also through 500 years of colonial history, (in Alicia Elliott’s description, “as Indigenous people, we all live in a post-apocalyptic world”), more people have begun to write from “the heat of the earnest struggle” about the task of reconstruction, challenging colonial imaginings. People write about the human spirit, resilient and optimistic, searching for a better tomorrow, believing that even amidst the devastation of wartime, we humans must create life and art, fighting the exterior power that dehumanizes us. Writers, poets, prophets re-write, re-sing, and re-paint how we all are human, each with our deep, emotions and individuality…
So, the first writing is from Jeannette Armstrong’s Whispering in Shadows.
“Wake up. All the shadows are gone. There is daylight, even in the swamps. The blue jays are laughing…. Laughing at the humans who don’t know the sun is up and it’s a new day.”
The Second writing is from Quality of Light written by Richard Wagamese.
Here, Wagamese sings that there is an infinite quality of more colour and light to come.
“We are born into a world of light. Every motion of our lives, every memory, is coloured by the degree of its intensity or shaded by the weight of its absence.
I believe the happy times are lit by an ebullient incandescence - the pure white light of joy - and that the sadder times are bathed in swatches of purple, moving into pearl gray. When we find ourselves against the hushed palette of evening, searching the sky for one single band of light, we’re filtering the spectrum of our lives. We’re looking through the magic prism of memory, letting our comforts, questions or woundings lead us - emotional voyageurs portaging a need called yearning. Because it’s not the memories themselves we seek to reclaim, but rather the opportunity to surround ourselves with the quality of light that lives there.
The muted grays of storm clouds breaking might take you back to the hollowness you found in a long good-bye. The electric blue in a morning horizon might awaken in you again that melancholic ache you carried when you discovered love.
Or you lay on a hillside in the high sky heat of summer, the red behind your eyelids making you so warm and safe and peaceful. It’s like the scarlet a part of you remembers through the skin of your mother’s belly when you, your life and the universe was all fluid, warmth and motion.”
I imagine Jesus saying to us “You are the light of the world.” is also telling us “Be like the light in the world.” Greet a new day, greet family, friends, and neighbours, greet changing life, struggles, pains, happiness, sadness, loss, grief, greet the earth, everything with all that we are… with all of our humanity, with “more colours and more light” for tomorrow. Do not be afraid; let yourself be an emotional voyageur, truly, as the Creator shares her wisdom through all of our inner realms and geography. See how the Creator shines through us and through others for the Creator’s work and for the Creator’s people.
Courage is facing our foes with integrity, and faith is walking with courage. So, Courage is faith, illuminated.
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, so it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father/Mother in heaven.”
Individuals and faith communities are searching out where to go from here. Jesus’ wisdom? Be like the light in the world – stand tall, illuminate others, show the way.
Ha Na Park
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