Being Salt and Light to the World - Matthew 5: 13-20

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel reading from Matthew 5.

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.”

I made mashed potatoes for dinner the other evening. I boiled the potatoes and, when they were tender, I dumped the water off, let them steam a bit to dry, then added butter and milk and smashed them. When I tasted them, I realized what I had forgotten: salt. It didn’t take a whole lot - I probably used less than a teaspoon of salt. Had I dumped in a whole handful, the potatoes would have been ruined, but the right amount was the difference between “meh” and “delicious.”

When I was a boy, the darkness bothered me. Well, to be honest, it scared me. I had a little night light that sat on the dresser, a Raggedy Ann and Andy lamp. I looked on Ebay the other day; both my wallet and I wish I still had that, but for different reasons. As I prayed, “Now the light has gone away, Father listen while I pray; asking Thee to watch and keep, and to send me quiet sleep,” the soft glow of that small bulb provided tangible comfort and assurance that all was right. Had Mom left the room light on, it would have been too much; the small glow was all I needed. I could go to sleep in peace, the light aiding mom and dad’s comforting words “Mom loves you; Dad loves you; Jesus loves you most of all. Sleep well. See you in the morning” into being believable.

Jesus isn’t giving cooking instructions. He’s not giving home decoration tips. He’s speaking about what it is to be His disciples, His followers, to the world. A little bit of salt makes a big difference in food. A little bit of light makes a big difference in the darkness. When disciples practice faithfully living in service to others in the name and in the joy of the Lord makes all the difference in the world in which we, as God’s people, find ourselves in a day-to-day place and time.

The word for that is “vocation.” The Latin root word is vocatio, which means “calling.” Vocation is the place where God calls us to serve one another in the name of Jesus. In the time of Martin Luther, it was taught that the only vocations that were truly pleasing to God were the church vocations – priests and nuns. If you were a farmer or a mother or stable-boy, your work was outside of God’s favor. It wasn’t a holy task; it was just work. Luther changed that, teaching that all of a Christian’s work is declared holy by God’s grace through faith. Let me say that again: the doctrine of vocation teaches that even your work, whatever it is, is covered in the righteousness of the cross of Jesus so God sees your work as holy and good. Further, Luther taught that in your vocation, God was at work through your service. The Christian, the person, was the means, the vehicle, through which God worked. Vocation was no longer an inverted me-to-God vertical relationship under Law where you served God; vocation was a vertical-to-horizontal God-to-me-to-neighbor relationship where the Gospel is delivered.

Suddenly, every vocation was a holy one and every vocational task, no matter how unpleasant or difficult or unpopular, was God-pleasing because in and through that vocation, God is serving those around you. A Christian mother who changes her baby’s loaded diaper is doing a holy and good work as she serves her child. A Christian septic tank pumper is doing a holy and good work as he serves the client. A Christian surgeon who removed a cancerous growth is doing a holy and good work for her patient. A Christian engineer who designs bridges for safe travel is doing a holy and good work for those who travel over it. A Christian student who struggles and fights to correctly solve math equations, or grasp subject-verb agreement, or who remembers the Alamo and Goliad, that student is doing a holy and good work, even if the grade book doesn’t show it.

For most of us, we have multiple and varying vocations. We have vocations in which God has placed us to provide for ourselves and our families. Nurses, pastoral ministry, teachers, office administrators, technicians, ranchers, farmers, sales, grandparent – all are vocations where the Lord calls us to serve our neighbors and, by extension, ourselves and our families. But don’t just think “job” or “career.” That’s how the world thinks. Your minds are set on something higher. Vocation is calling into service for others in the name of Jesus, remember, and we hold many such vocations of service: spouses, parents, children (yes, that means adult children, too), sibling. Think outside of the family, too: you are a neighbor to those in this community, a citizen within the government of the county, state and country. Each of those are special vocations, special callings of the Lord for the baptized child of God.

You notice, I said that these are Christians in their vocations and that a Christian’s works, life, and efforts are all made holy through faith in Christ. The same cannot be said for a non-Christian, someone who lacks faith or who denies Jesus. Their works in their vocation might be morally right and good and pleasing to their neighbors, but they stand alone under the holy and divine judgement of God. Non-Christians are able to serve in these vocations, oftentimes very well. While the Lord places non-Christians in those same vocations, they serve others neither recognizing the Lord’s hand nor serving others in His name.

So, what does all of that have to do with being salt, being light. There is one vocation that is unique, a vocation that only someone who is part of the body of Christ can fulfill. That is the vocation of discipleship. We are called by Christ into the vocation of discipleship, following Him so that as we act and interact with others, God is at work in and through us to those around us, in particular with those in whom He places us in contact. In other words, only Christians can be salt; only Christians can be light. The earth needs to be salted with the Gospel; people need to be brightened by the Word of the Lord that both calls to repentance and proclaims forgiveness in the name of Jesus.

This is no secret: we live in a world that is evil, corrupt and deficient. It was true when Jesus walked the earth 2000 years ago and it is true still to this day. We see it every night on the news. We read it on the internet. We hear the stories of things that happen like in Minneapolis, where violence is excused under the pretense of protesting the violation of civil rights. We see people joyfully speaking lies and destroying the reputations of others, all in search of power. Civilians are blown to pieces because a oligarch wants to change national boundaries. The stories the fallenness of man are enough to break anybody's heart. It'd be very easy to stick our heads in the sand, wring our hands, and moan, “Oh goodness somebody had better do something. The world is going to hell in a handbasket just as fast as it can.”

But if we do that, or rather, if that’s all we do, we're missing out on one of the gifts and the opportunities that the Lord has given to us, his church, his disciples. He's called us to discipleship. He's called us to act and to interact in a world that is dying and broken and in discord and disharmony with the will and word of God. Jesus is calling us to be salt and light to the world in both our acting out the Gospel and our speaking the Gospel. Don't overthink the metaphors. This isn't about whether salt purifies or cleanses or burns or helps or flavors. This isn't about whether light is an LED, or solar, or has too much UV light, or is a soft glow. It's about how salt changes things, and how light brightens in the darkness. In short salt and light do exactly what they do because they are salt and light. If salt isn’t salty, it’s worthless; if a light is hidden, it’s not able to shine. The same is true of disciples. Disciples disciple by daily living out the faith into which we have been baptized, so that in our good works (which have been made righteous by faith in Christ, remember) others see Christ in us and through us. By nature of being Jesus’ disciples, we are salt, we are light to the world around us and the world we live in.

You know, and I think this is interesting: the blander the food, the greater a difference that a little bit of salt makes. The darker the room, the more a little bit of light illuminates things.

Your good works, even the seemingly little ones that are done in faithfulness to Jesus, have one overall, singular purpose: in serving your neighbor, you glorify God. It’s not about you. Your good works aren’t for attaboys and attagirls, for attention, for gold stars and blue ribbons. It’s so that others who see your good deeds give glory to God through their own repentance and faith and then thank God for you and your faithfulness.

In our vocations, there will be times for action and there will be times for words. Every moment does not have to come with a three-part witnessing statement, a handful of Gospel tracts, and an invitation for baptism. But we are called to be prepared to speak, so that when asked, or when the Lord provides opportunity for conversation, we are bold to speak of the Father’s work in creating, the Son’s work of saving, the the Spirit’s work of creating the very faith that saves. We share the same Word that was shared with us and as the Holy Spirit worked in us, so also He works through us. It's who we are, it's what we are, because we are called by Christ to be that very thing.

So, be salt and light in your vocation. On the one hand, be your ordinary self. You do not have to be Mom of the Year contender to be faithful in your vocation of motherhood. You don’t have to be Employee of the Month with your mug shot above the water cooler at work. You don’t have to convert dozens of heathens to saving faith in Christ. Be who you are as a baptized child of God. But, on the other hand, you are not ordinary. You are extra-ordinary because you are in whom and through whom Christ does great and wonderful things. So do not live as an ordinary person, that is, as someone who is not a Baptized child of God. You are called to be extra ordinary: extra-ordinary husbands and wives, extra-ordinary sons and daughters, extra-ordinary citizens and church members, extra-ordinary neighbors and employees, extra-ordinary in all that you are as children of God.  You do so with the unique gifts and talents that the Lord has given you.

There are over a dozen different salts at the grocery store, each with a slightly different taste or texture. Regardless, salt does only one thing: it salts. At the Big Blue Hardware Store, there are two full rows with lights and light fixtures. Regardless the light you get, light does one thing: it enlightens. That’s the point of comparison with discipleship. Just as salt salts and light lights, disciples disciple. Our identity is in Christ – we are His. With Christ in us and Christ working through us, we disciple. As St. Paul says, “In Him, we live, move and have our being.” As Jesus’ disciples, we “salt” those around us with the Good News of Jesus. Having received His blessings, enlighten those around us with the Word of He who is the Light of the World.

 

The Foolish Wisdom of the Cross - 1 Cor. 1: 18-31

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning, I’ll tell you stories about two men. The stories are true, but I’ve changed the names.

About twenty years ago, I had gotten into a new hobby and was really enjoying it. While searching for supplies, I emailed a small businessman - let’s call him Sam - with some questions about his product. Sam replied, answering my questions, but he also said that he noticed my email address was “pastormeyer@XYZcarrier.com” and was curious: was I, in fact, a pastor? Yes, I replied, I was a Lutheran pastor. It turns out that the man was Jewish from his father’s side. He was far from practicing Judaism as a religion, unless one considered politics to be a religion, which was his main connection with his Jewish roots. He could care less about Kosher, Sabbath, or synagogue, but if you said something bad about Israel, he would argue policy and history with you.

Sam had been reading a series of fictional books set in medieval Germany. The story was set in the Thirty Years’ War between Lutherans, Protestants, and the Roman Catholic Empire in the 1600s. He had questions about what he was reading, especially what separated Lutherans from other Christians. Over the course of several months, we sent lengthy emails back and forth as I tried to answer his questions faithfully as a Christian. I was feeling quite good about the trajectory of our friendship. I had been praying about these conversations, that the Holy Spirit would use me as his instrument to bring this man to faith in the same Jesus that his genetic ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had yearned to see, and that my friend would be able to make the good confession of faith that Christ was also his Lord and Savior. I sent him a copy of Luther’s Small Catechism and an invitation to call anytime to visit about what he read.

Then, the conversation went silent: no emails, no phone calls. After about three weeks, I emailed him, asking if he got the Catechism and if he had any questions, I would love to talk with him. A few more silent days passed when, finally, he emailed me. He thanked me for the gift of the Catechism and told me it would have a special place in his library, right next to his other special religious books, including his Quran. I still remember the feeling in my stomach when I read what Sam wrote. He said something like this: “I have to know: do you really believe all that stuff? You really think that God would surrender his perfect Son for a bunch of stupid sinners who keep making the same mistakes over and over, and he keeps forgiving over and over, and there is never any consequence for what you do? You don’t think you have to try to win him back over, somehow, and try to fix your mistakes? What about being good and doing good things? Where’s the justice in ‘grace’?” There were a few other questions, but you get the idea. I emailed back, answering directly, simply, faithfully, restating much of the Apostle’s Creed, but even as I wrote, it felt that things had changed. Later that evening, I got an answer with a tightly worded email, “If you really believe all that, I’m sorry…You’re not as smart as I thought you were. I really feel sorry for you and the job you have to do.” We never spoke again. I discovered via Facebook that Sam died a few years ago, and when I read that, I wept. I wept because I lost a friend, or someone I thought was a friend at one point. But I hadn’t only lost him in this world. Sam was, as far as I knew, lost into eternity.

I thought about Sam when I read this morning’s Epistle. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God,” (1 Cor. 1: 18).  

To Sam, the word of the cross was nothing but foolishness. What kind of God was this, he wondered via email, who would kill his own son? What kind of God continued to forgive people who continued to break his rules over and over, seemingly without end? He was very much an eye-for-an-eye kind of guy, and the concept of full and free grace was too much to grasp. It made no sense – it was, in a word, foolish.

I wish I could tell you that was the first and only time I heard something along those lines. I wish I could tell you that I didn’t hear an elderly man in a nursing home tell me that Christianity was the stupidest thing he had ever heard of, or have a mother weep in my study because her daughter decided wicca’s white magic showed her what – quote - real power was like, or that a confirmation student told me that maybe, someday, she would have time to learn this “Bible stuff,” but for now, she just wasn’t interested and that her parents shrugged and told me, “Well, it is her choice, you know.”

You’ve had things like this happen to you as well, because of your confession of faith in Jesus Christ, living a life of repentance, and receiving the gifts given to you in your baptism. Someone in your family sees you as old-fashioned and out of touch. An aunt or uncle openly mocks those who bow their heads to pray over a meal. A cousin has embraced Islam, or Scientology, Creationism or some other religion claiming they are all viable gods and paths to heaven. Your son or daughter has embraced an alternative sexual lifestyle as being perfectly acceptable. A grandchild denies their infant baptism. A friend calls Christians judgmental hypocrites. A coworker has given up completely and says that there is no God and says you are wasting your time going to church.

But it’s not just in your family – it’s Christian families across the globe. For you, and for families like yours, your family dinner table is not so much divided by race or political party or whatever current topic is on the news - your family dinner table is divided because of Jesus and the word of the cross.  The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. It feels naïve, backwards, simplistic. How is it possible that one person could possibly forgive? How can faith save? What kind of God would make this a means to salvation?

You know, it’s funny. If you go back to Genesis chapter 3 and read the account of the Fall, you discover this: satan’s temptation caused Eve to see the Tree was “desired to make one wise,” (Genesis 3:6). Satan’s temptation was for wisdom, to be just like God. That’s worldly wisdom: be like God; take the place of God; make yourself out to be God.

Paul asks “where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world…” (1 Cor. 1: 20). Wow them with what you know, what you think, what you feel. It doesn’t even have to be wise, per se, in the traditional sense of the word, as long as it’s louder, faster, and more edgy than someone else. Do you remember the presidential race leading up to the 2024 election? It was almost as if the two candidates weren’t running for the highest office in the land, but to see who out-shouted the other while out-doing the other with outlandish promises. That’s worldly wisdom. For Eve and Adam, they listened to satan’s wisdom. In a left-handed way, satan did tell the truth – they did learn what evil was. They certainly gained a measure of wisdom with one forbidden bite. But they also lost the perfect relationship with God while gaining the knowledge of death.

In Romans 5, Paul says that by one man, sin entered the world and through another man the world would be saved (Romans 5: 12-19). To turn this slightly, through one tree, worldly, foolish wisdom entered the world; through another tree, God’s wisdom would be shown. It would be the fulfillment of the Tree of Life that Adam and Eve were banned from in the Garden. You and I know this tree simply as the cross: the cross of Christ.

The cross truly is the tree of life for those who believe the tree to be the instrument of terrible death for Jesus. He would die for the times that we chase after the world’s wisdom, with all its allure and tempting desire to be gods into and unto ourselves. He would die, perfectly resisting such temptations for himself, remaining obedient to the Father’s will for the salvation of the world. His death on the cross becomes the atoning price for us for the times we fail to resist wisdom’s siren song, the innocent for the guilty, the sinless for the sinful. This tree, this tree of the cross, gives life. You celebrate this fruit of the tree as you come to the Lord’s Table today. Here, truly present in, with, and under bread and wine, is the body and blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, giving to you want was earned at the cross. You leave, strengthened by the wisdom of the cross to endure the temptations of the world.

To the world, this word of the cross is folly. But for us, the being saved ones, this word – the word made flesh, Christ, the Son of God – of the cross demonstrates the power of God to save the world. The Christ of the cross is the wisdom of God incarnate, the fullness of the power of God to rescue and redeem the world from its own brand of foolish wisdom.

I told you about my friend, Sam. Now, I want to tell you about another friend whom I’ll call Rodger. Rodger had fought cancer for almost ten years. There were surgeries, radiation treatments, courses of chemotherapy, sandwiched between brief declarations of the disease being in remission. Unfortunately, the doctors, despite their best efforts, were proved wrong and, finally, “remission” was replaced with “untreatable.” The family threw him a big birthday party, wanting to celebrate with him. A family friend gave him a wooden cross, designed to fit comfortably in the palm of the hand while praying or simply to hold. As the disease continued to overwhelm his body, that palm-cross was an ever-present friend. When I asked him about it, Rodger told me that that little cross was a tangible reminder of the cross of Christ. “It reminds me that Jesus even has cancer beaten,” he said, “and if he has beaten cancer, he can certainly forgive me.” The cross went with him in a few ambulance rides, spent time in his hand in the hospital, and when the decision was made to enter hospice, the cross was right there, every day. His kids didn’t understand. They teased him a little bit about it, not to be ugly, but not understanding what the cross meant for their dad or for others who saw it as the sign of a promise fulfilled.

The night before Rodger died, I visited with him and his wife. We laughed and we cried together, knowing that the end was near. That night, we celebrated the Lord’s Supper together in his hospice room. In that meal, the power of the cross was present in the body and blood of Christ. To human eyes, to worldly wisdom, it hardly seemed like a meal at all – just a piece of bread and a sip of wine, and not good bread or wine at that. To human wisdom, bread and wine are incapable of offering anything other than satisfying hunger, but a bite and a sip are hardly satisfactory and certainly not able to offer forgiveness, life or salvation. To worldly wisdom, it was a waste of time. For Rodger and his wife, there was nothing foolish to them in that meal – it was the promise of Christ.  I had mentioned in a prior visit that I would like to pray the commendation of the dying with him. That evening, he said it was time. So with the same sign of the cross that was placed over him in holy baptism eight decades earlier, we placed the sign of the cross over him, commending him to the Lord’s eternal care. I’ll be honest: I choked up while praying the rite. I couldn’t speak, overwhelmed with emotion. With his frail hand, he held mine and placed his cross into my hand. “Don’t forget,” he told me, “Jesus died for you, too.”

That wooden palm-cross sat at my desk this week as I finished writing this sermon. To those who don’t know, who don’t understand, it’s just a hunk of wood. The same was probably said about the cross that held Jesus’ body 2000 years ago. To us who are saved, by God’s grace through faith, the cross preaches volumes. The word – the Word! – of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, Jesus is the power of God for our forgiveness and salvation. Amen.

(I'm humbly proud to say this sermon, along with last week's, was published in the Advent-Epiphany issue of Concordia Pulpit Journal, Vol. 36, Part 1, pp. 36-39; (c) 2025, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO. I thank CPH and the editor for asking me to write for the Journal.)