Quick Summary:

Today’s gospel follows right after last week’s Beatitudes, where Jesus gives his growing community of followers a new way of seeing who and what is precious in God’s sight. With these words, Jesus lifts whole categories of otherwise invisible people up from the ash heap and declares them blessed.

This week Jesus shifts his attention ever so slightly, and the third person “THEY” becomes the direct address “YOU.” YOU ALL ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH. YOU ALL ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. What does it mean for us to be salt? What does it mean for us to be light?

Now there are many ways of being salt and light. Every community, every person, must answer the call to BE SALT AND LIGHT in ways that flow naturally from WHO THEY ARE. What our texts tell us this morning is that there is both an interior quality to being salt and light and an exterior or manifest quality to who we are and what we bring, and that one leads to the other.

Without that movement from interior to exterior, from personal to public, the spring dries up, the garden wilts, and hope wavers. But with it, with that juicy, savory, moist, bright exhibition of grace—light dawns, desert becomes oasis, and dryness gives way to springs of living water. That’s the way it is meant to be!