Beatitudes continued...

 

We continue to find our way through the Sermon on the Mount, prayerfully seeking ways these words might find a way into our minds, hearts, souls, and whole lives.  Last week, we let the words of the Beatitudes sink and settle and sing to our souls.  We noticed that while we usually think, “Blessing/Happy are those who are famous and have a fortune and thousands of followers,” Jesus says, “Um excuse me while I tear up that script of life and run it through the shredder.” Eek! 

 

I wonder how many people sitting at Jesus feet on the mountain turned to their partner and said, “Honey, I am outta here.  I’ll be in the car.”  Insert people stomping off and slamming the church door.  By the way, I know Jesus was outside and there was no actual door.  The words of the Beatitudes can be difficult and demanding to embrace and embody day after day.  Maybe that is why in Matthew 5:1, the writer has a distinction between the “crowd” and “disciples”.  How many people went up the mountain?  Are we willing to go up the mountain to not just listen to these words, but find ways to live them?  We recognize this is a spiritual summit. 

 

After Jesus upends the script of life, he draws a comparison between your life, my life, our life together and salt and light.  Jesus says when salt has lost its saltiness or zest-iness, you might as well toss and throw it out the window. Here is the irony and contradiction, salt rarely loses its saltiness.  According to the Morton’s website, and they must be the authority because my grandparents bought Morton’s salt, salt doesn’t expire.  Sure if you add other chemicals to the salt..which means it is not longer really salt…it might lose some of the flavor.

 

Pause with me…what does it mean that you cannot lose your saltiness?  Or maybe we do lose some of our flavor when we end up adding too much to our lives?  What would it mean to live the truth that there is a zest-iness built and baked into your life because you are created in God’s image?

 

Wait…don’t race through that last question.  Try to answer that question right now and every day.

 

Jesus continues, that you don’t light a lamp and put a basket over it.  Of course not!  Did you learn nothing from Smokey the Bear…that could start a forest fire!  More to the point, for a lamp to be a lamp it needs to shine.  If that sounds familiar, that is an echo of Christmas Eve, when we centered around that truth that for a candle to be a candle, it needs to be lit. 

 

As we approach the threshold of turning the calendar to February, I wonder, what is adding zest or spice to your life right now?  What is adding flavor?  And where are you encountering light and where are you letting your light shine? 

 

One final thought has you ponder prayerfully those questions: salt and light are every day, ordinary, ho-hum things ~ true in Jesus’ day and true today.  So, when reflecting and responding to those questions, you don’t have to figure out some special or set apart moment.  This doesn’t have to be, “My vacation skydiving and running with the bulls in Spain is totally going to be salty.”  (By the way, that vacation itinerary just made my anxiety say, “No thank you”.)  You don’t have to think, my light is so brilliant and bold that I will inspire everyone around.  Most of the time, our precious ordinary lives offer a dash of salt (which is always enough) and a bit of light which can help illuminate the next right step.

 

Sit with these images of salt and light to consider ways you might embrace and embody these in beautifully ordinary ways this day.  Amen.