Salt and Light

Children's talk:

Please scroll down for the recording of the main sermon.

When it's really dark outside, what do we do?
We turn on the lights, and we draw the curtains,
and we are all snug and cosy indoors.
Here in London, we don't often see it being really dark, unless there's a power-cut, because of the street lights and all the lighting up.

When I was a girl, the street lights in the town where I went to school were switched off around 11:00 pm or so,
and sometimes now they do that in parts of France and Germany to save energy.

And it does get really, really dark.
What if you were out then?
You'd be glad of a torch or a lantern so you could see where you were going, wouldn't you?
And you'd be glad if someone in the house you were going to would pull back the curtains so you could see the lights.

In our Bible reading today, Jesus says that we, his people, are the light of the world.
He didn't have electric lights back then, it was all candles and lanterns.
But even they are enough to dispel the darkness a bit.
And when lots of them get together, the light is multiplied and magnified and gets very bright,
so people who are lost in the dark can see it and come for help.
Which is why, Jesus says, we mustn't hide our light.
We don't have to do anything specific to be light, but we do have to be careful not to hide our light by doing things we know God's people don't do, or by not saying “Sorry” to God when we've been and gone and done them anyway!

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Main Sermon:

“You are the salt of the earth;” says Jesus,
“but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?
It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

“You are the salt of the earth;
but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?
It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Salt.
These days it's often considered a bad thing,
as too much is thought to be implicated in raised blood-pressure, and so on.
But back in the days before refrigeration and so on,
salt was vital to help preserve our foods.
Even today, bacon and ham are preserved with salt, and some other foods are, too.

Salt is also useful in other ways.
It's a disinfectant;
if you rinse a small cut in salty water –
stings like crazy, so don't unless you haven't anything better –
it will stop it going nasty.
And if you have
something that has gone nasty, like a boil or an infected cut,
soaking it in very hot, very salty water will draw out the infection and help it heal.

Salt makes a good emergency toothpaste, and if you have a sore mouth for any reason, you should rinse it out with hot salty water and it will help.

But above all, salt brings out the flavour of our food.
Processed foods often contain far too much salt,
but when we're cooking, we add a pinch or so to whatever it is to bring out the flavour.
Even if you're making a cake, a pinch of salt, no more, can help bring out the flavour.
And if you make your own bread, it is horrible if you don't add enough salt!

Imagine, then, if salt weren't salty.
If it were just a white powder that sat there and did nothing.
I don't know whether modern salt can lose its saltiness, but if it did, we'd throw it away and go and buy fresh, wouldn't we?

And Jesus tells us we are the salt of the world.
Salt, and light.

But how does this work out in practice?
I think, don't you, that we need to look at our Old Testament reading for today, from Isaiah.

In this passage, Isaiah was speaking God's word to people who were wondering why God was taking no notice of their fasting and other religious exercises.
And he was pretty scathing:
it's no good dressing in sackcloth and ashes, and fasting until you faint, if you then spend the day snapping at your servants and quarrelling with your family.
That's not being God's person, and that sort of fast isn't going to do anybody any good.

Jesus said something similar, you may recall, a little later on in this collection of his sayings that we call the Sermon on the Mount:
“When you go without food, wash your face and comb your hair, so that others cannot know that you are fasting—only your Father, who is unseen, will know.
And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.”

It's what your heart is doing, not what you look as though you are doing that matters!
Isaiah tells us what sort of fasting God wants:
“Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free.
Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor.
Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own relatives.”

This is what God wants.
It's not just the big picture, you see.
Yes, maybe we are called to be working for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, or whichever tribe is oppressing whoever – Ukrainians just now, I suppose.
Sadly, it seems inevitable throughout history that whenever two tribes try to share a territory, there will always be friction, whether it is the Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan, or Greeks and Turks, Tutsi and Hutu, Loyalists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland, or Palestinians and Israelis.
Throughout history it has been the same –
and that it has not been very much worse has been down to the efforts of God's people,
often unsung,
often not thanked,
often, even, persecuted and tormented for their efforts.
But they have been there, and they have helped.
And God knows their names and has rewarded them.

But it's not just about the big picture, is it?
It's about the little things we do here at home, every day.
We can't always take homeless people into our homes, although some do –
but we can give to the food bank, either in cash or in kind.
Brixton Hill has been asked to be a food bank hub, a place where people can go to pick up necessary supplies each week, and maybe find out what benefits they are entitled to and how to claim them.
Incidentally, if that goes ahead – and please pray that our church council makes the right decision – if that goes ahead, we will be needing volunteers, so if you can spare a few hours, you would be very welcome!
But maybe we should also be asking our MP awkward questions about exactly why, in 2023, our food bank is so necessary!
Why must we host a warm space each week – not that we grudge doing that, you understand, but why is it necessary?
Why are people so poor that they need to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children?
This has been going on for far too long now, and the people who need to make use of the food bank, or of Brixton’s soup kitchen, have increased in number year by year.
Something is very, very wrong.
I would blame Brexit, but the soup kitchen had to be set up in 2014, long before then!

It’s part of what our being salt and light to our community is all about.
Not just doing the giving, not just helping out where necessary –
that too, of course, and it’s very necessary.
But asking the awkward questions,
not settling for the status quo,
making a nuisance of ourselves, if necessary,
until we get some of the answers.

It's not always easy to see how one person can make a difference.
Sometimes, I don't know about you, but when I watch those nature documentaries on TV
and they go on about how a given species is on the brink of extinction and it's All Our Fault,
I wonder what they expect me to do about it, and ditto when we get programmes about climate change and all the other frighteners the BBC likes to put on us.
But it's like I said to the children –
maybe one little candle doesn't make too much difference in the dark, except for being there and enabling us to see a little way ahead.
But when lots of us get together, it blazes out and nothing can dim it.
One person alone can't do very much –
but if all of us recycled,
and used our own shopping bags,
and public transport when feasible,
drank water our of the tap, rather than out of a bottle,
tried to avoid single-use plastic as much as possible,
and limited our family sizes;
if everybody did that, there would soon be a difference.

Obviously you don't have to be God's person to do such things.
The food banks are secular, as, indeed is the warm space, even though ours happens in Brixton Hill.
The one on Wednesdays happens in the Windmill Community Centre on Brixton Hill, and there are others, in churches or ot of them.

But we, God's people, should be in the forefront of doing such things,
leading by example,
showing others how to help this world.
Historically, we always have been.
But sometimes the temptation is to hide in our little ghettoes and shut ourselves away from the world.
It's all too easy to say “Oh dear, this sinful world!”
and to refuse to have anything to do with it –
but if God had done that, if Jesus had done that, then where would we be?

We don't bring people to faith through our words, but through what we do.
As St James says in his letter, it's all very well to say “Go in peace;
keep warm and eat your fill,” to someone who hasn't enough clothes or food, but what good does that do?
That person won't think much of Christianity, will they?

It’s about walking the walk, far more than talking the talk.
I heard of a woman who was unexpectedly widowed, and left with something like four children under four.
Her local church rallied round and supported her, not with Bible quotes or prayers – although I’m sure they did pray for her – but with practical help, getting her shopping for her, babysitting when she needed a break, that sort of thing.
And that woman came to faith, not because of what that church said, but because of what it did.

Another example is a church in America somewhere – I don’t remember where – that wanted a youth group and started to pray for one.
And one day, a group of rather rough young people came to the pastor and asked whether they could hold some kind of memorial for one of their number who had died of a drugs overdose, and whose parents had instantly taken his body home for burial.
The pastor agreed, and the young people sat in the church talking about their friend, sharing memories and generally beginning to come to terms with his loss.
And then that church’s hospitality committee gave them lunch.
One of the young people, saying thank you, added wistfully, “I do wish we could eat like this more often; it reminds me of my grandmother’s cooking!”
“Well, of course you can,” said the hospitality leader.
“We’re here every Sunday, so come and join us!”
There was no pressure on those young people to tidy up and look respectable, no pressure to attend services or “turn to Christ”.
Only steady love and hospitality, and accepting them for who they were.
I don’t know whether any of them did find faith, but I’d be very surprised if at least one or two didn’t.

Ordinary Time,
and we are in a brief bit of Ordinary Time before the countdown to Lent starts,
is the time when what we say we believe comes up against what we really believe,
and how we allow our faith to work out in practice.
It's all too easy to listen to this sort of sermon and feel all hot and wriggly because you're aware that you don't do all you could to be salt and light in the community –
and then to forget about it by the time you've had a cup of coffee.

It's also all too easy to think it doesn't apply to you –
but, my friends, the Bible says we are all salt and light, doesn't it?
It doesn't say we must be, but that we are.
It's what we do with it that matters!
We don't want to be putting our light under a basket so it can't be seen.
And if, as salt, we lose our saltiness –
well, let's not go there, shall we?

Many of us, of course, are already very engaged in God's work in our community, in whatever way –
I’ve already talked about the food banks and the warm spaces, and there’s our youth work, and so on.

The question is, what more, as a Church, as a Circuit, could we or should we be doing?
What should I, as an individual, be doing?

And that's where we have the huge advantage over people who do such work who are not yet consciously God's people –
we pray.
We can bring ourselves to God and ask whether there are places that need our gifts, whether there is something we could be doing to help, or what.
Don't forget, too, that there are those whose main work is praying for those out there on the front line, as it were.
And even if all we can do is put 50p a week aside for the food bank,
and write to our MP every few months and ask why we still need food banks in this day and age and what they, and the rest of Parliament, are doing about it –
well, it all adds up.

Because I don't know about you, but I would rather not risk what might happen if we were to lose our saltiness.
Amen.

Come and See

You know, I don't know about you,
but usually when I think about the calling of the disciples,
I think about the scene by the See of Galilee,
with James, John, Simon Peter and Andrew all mending their nets after a hard days' fishing –
or, perhaps, them out in the lake still and Jesus pointing out to them a shoal of fish that he could see and they couldn't.
And Simon Peter falling on his knees before Jesus,
and Jesus telling them that if they followed him,
he would teach them to fish for people.
That's what I think of, anyway.

So this story in St John's gospel comes a little strange.
In this passage, Andrew is already one of John the Baptist's disciples, and, at John's suggestion, goes after Jesus,
and then comes and gets his brother, Simon Peter, and introduces him.
Not a fish or fish-net in sight!
You wonder, sometimes, when the stories were being collected,
who told what to whom,
and who was trying to make who look good!

Not that it matters, of course;
truth and historical accuracy weren't the same thing in Bible days,
and don't need to be today.
So for now we'll stick with John's story, since it was our reading for today.

And today's story introduces us to a very important person –
Andrew.
At least, Andrew is very important in John's gospel.
We don't often think of Andrew, do we?
He's Peter's younger brother,
but it's Peter, James and John who go with Jesus when he is transfigured;
it's Peter, James and John who accompany Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane.
Andrew gets left out.
Andrew stays back with the other disciples.

But here, according to John's version of events,
Andrew was with John the Baptist, and when they encountered Jesus,
he and his friend went off after him.
“What do you want?” asked Jesus.

“Where do you live?” asks Andrew, in return.
And Jesus says, “Come and see!”

We're all so used to the idea that “Foxes have dens and birds have their nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”
that it might strike us a bit odd –
but, of course, when Jesus hadn't yet started his ministry,
he was not yet itinerant,
and presumably still lived with his mother and brothers in Nazareth,
or perhaps at his lodgings in Capernaum.
Although, in fact, the story says that they were in Bethany,
on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptising,
and later on they leave to go home to Galilee,
so presumably he was staying with friends somewhere.
This wasn't the same Bethany where Martha, Mary and Lazarus lived, though, so he wouldn't have been staying with them.
This Bethany is sometimes called Betharaba, to distinguish it.

I did read that the questions have a deeper meaning –
I don't know enough Greek to be sure,
but apparently they can be interpreted as Jesus asking Andrew what he is really looking for,
Andrew asking Jesus who he is at the deepest level,
and Jesus inviting Andrew to come and find out.
But whatever happens, Andrew and his companion spend some time with Jesus, and the first thing that Andrew does afterwards is go and find his brother Simon Peter, and introduce him to Jesus.

Andrew does this a lot in John's Gospel.
He introduces people to Jesus.
First of all he introduces Simon Peter –
to become Peter, that great Rock on whom Jesus was to build his church.
And Simon Peter becomes one of Jesus' closest friends and supporters,
far closer than Andrew himself did.

Then a bit later on, Andrew introduces some Greek travellers to Jesus;
the travellers speak to Philip, and he goes to Andrew,
and then both of them take the travellers to see Jesus.
We aren't told what happened next;
John goes off into one of Jesus' discourses.
But it was Andrew who introduced them.

And in John's version of the story of the feeding of the Five Thousand,
it is Andrew who brings the boy to Jesus,
that nameless youth who had five barley loaves and two fishes, and who was prepared to share them with Jesus.
Andrew brought the boy to Jesus.

Yes, well.
I've heard, and I'm sure you have too, lots of sermons on St Andrew where they tell you that you ought to be like him and introduce people to Jesus.
Which is all very well, and all very true,
but it's not quite as simple as that, is it?

First off, when preachers say things like that, the congregation –
well, if I'm any representative of it –
go all hot and wriggly and feel they must be terrible Christians because it's so long since they last introduced anybody to Jesus.
And the ones who are apt to feel the hottest and wriggliest are those who really do more than anybody else to introduce people to Jesus.

But you see, Andrew only introduces people to Jesus when they want to be introduced.
Simon Peter, his brother, was probably already following John the Baptist, and was anxious to meet the Messiah.
He may, of course, have thought that the Messiah, the Anointed One, would rebel against the occupying power, an earthly leader,
but, of course, he soon learnt differently.
The Greeks in chapter 12 of John's Gospel had asked for an introduction.
The boy with five loaves and two fish was anxious to share his lunch with Jesus, but couldn't get past the security cordon of the disciples.

And when our friends want to be introduced to Jesus,
that's when we need to imitate Andrew.
If they don't want to know him yet, and we keep trying, we'll just end up being utterly boring and probably lose their friendship!
It's probably better to just pray for our friends, and hold them up to Jesus that way –
if and when they are ready for more, they will let you know.
There is, as the Preacher tells us, a time for everything!

Brixton Hill, as a church, does have activities which =make Jesus known in the community,
what with the various youth activities,
the Warm Space on a Thursday
and Pop-In.
We are giving people the opportunity –
they know what a church stands for, and if they don't, they can always ask.
We may never know how much we've done for people,
how much our example has led them to want to find Jesus for themselves,
to question the easy, unthinking atheism popularised by Richard Dawkins and his ilk.
That's as it should be –
our job is to be ourselves, to be Jesus' people, as we have committed ourselves to being.

So what sort of people are we going to be being?
I think Jesus gives a very good picture of what his people are like in that collection of his teachings we call the Sermon on the Mount:
poor in spirit –
not thinking more of themselves than they ought;
mourning, perhaps for the ungodly world in which we live;
meek, which means slow to anger and gentle with others;
hungry and thirsty for righteousness;
merciful;
pure in heart;
peacemakers and so on. 
They love everyone, even those who hate them;
they refrain from condemning anyone,
or even from being angry with them in a destructive way;
they don’t hold grudges or take revenge,
value or use people just for their bodies,
or end their marriages lightly.
Their very words are trustworthy.
In short, they treat everyone with the greatest respect
no matter what that person’s race, creed, sex or social class.
They also treat themselves with similar respect, looking after themselves properly and not abusing themselves any more than they abuse others.

We don't, of course, have to force ourselves to become like that in our own strength –
we'd make a pretty rotten job of it!
We do have to give God permission to change us, though,
to “let go and let God”.
We have to be willing to allow God to work in us,
gradually transforming us into the people we were created to be.
It isn’t easy –
I do so know!
But we do need to be willing,
or at the very least, willing to be made willing!

And as we do so, we will be able to have a response when our friends ask what Church is all about, or who Jesus is.

And people are asking, aren't they?
Like Andrew, they want to know where Jesus is.
Where is Jesus in this dreadful war in Ukraine?
Where is Jesus in the energy crisis, the rising cost of living?
Where is Jesus in the strikes that beset us?
Where is Jesus in Brazil, in the USA, in Iran?

Jesus answers us, as he answered Andrew:
“Come, and see”.
And the answer, of course, is that he is there in the middle of it all, as he always is.
“Behold the Lamb of God,” said John, “Who takes away the sins of the world.”

There are always dreadful things happening in our world.
There always have been –
even back in Jesus' day, you remember, the disciples asked what had gone wrong when a tower collapsed, killing rather a lot of people.
Look at the book of Job, or at some of the Psalms,
trying to come to terms with why bad things happen,
and so often to people who really didn't deserve it.
And there are no easy answers;
all we can do is to trust and to believe that God is there in the middle of it.
“Come and see,” said Jesus, and they went and saw.
And we are invited to stay with him exactly where he is:
in the middle of it all.
Amen.