When Jesus speaks of the difference
his people make in the world, he uses two rather small, often unnoticed,
seemingly insignificant substances-salt and light. Today, we come by both quite
easily. Some areas complain of having too much light, calling it light
pollution. Some of us must limit our intake of salt. Personally, I rarely salt
anything anymore, having discovered that most meats have plenty of naturally
occurring salt. I have a good friend and colleague who surprised me when I saw
him put enough salt on his meat to turn it almost white.
In any case, in the days of Jesus,
these metaphors took on a quite different meaning. Light can be very fragile,
but even in small quantities it makes quite a difference. During my one
experience exploring a cave in southern Indiana, as we descended into the
darkness, I looked at the tiny lights we had been given to shine along our way.
They were just miniature flashlights, but in the darkness of the cave they made
all the difference. When the darkness is particularly great, one does not need
a huge amount of light to make a great difference.
Bishop Willimon, in a 1999 sermon,
said he finds it interesting that when Jesus spoke of us, seizing upon some
metaphor to characterize who we are, he did not say, "You are a great army
marching into the world." He did not say, "You are a loudspeaker put
up in the marketplace to shout my message to everybody." Rather, Jesus said
that we are "salt," and we are "light." Small, fragile, and
yet both of these substances go a long way. They can make all the
difference.
In both cases, light and salt
depend upon their environment in order to have the influence they are to have. The
church is not everything you need. Your families, your neighborhood, your work,
your government, are all vital parts of your life. Yet, the church has a
message and a life that is to enlighten and salt every part of your life.
A grandfather told this story to a
child. Once upon a time in a land far
away there was a lighthouse that sat on a rocky shore and helped ships get
through the water safely without hitting the big rock. One day the lighthouse operator got sick and
a substitute was put in charge of the lighthouse. When the big storm came, he got out a large
piece of canvas and covered up the lantern in the lighthouse so it would not
get wet in the rain. So the lantern
stayed dry, but no one could see the light to guide them through the dangerous
waterway. The boy thought about this for
a moment. "That new guy did
something pretty silly, didn't he!"
The grandfather said, "Honey, Jesus told a story like that
once. He would agree with you."[1]
It would not be natural to hide a
light when you need it to show the way. It would not be natural for salt to
lose its ability to affect its environment. Yet, it seems so easy for disciples
to find ways to hide their faith.
I can illustrate the struggle with
an article from the New York Times, around Christmas 2010, by Ross Douthat. He
begins by discussing the difficulty of being a Christian around Christmas time.
This quickly expands, however, into the notion of the changing culture in
America, and the difficulty amidst the changes. He refers to two books that
have helped him wrestle with this. One book is American Grace by Robert Putnam (Harvard) and David Campbell (Notre
Dame). The book is quite technical. It takes much work to mine any nuggets one
can find, according to some. As if to spare me the hard work of reading its 550
pages, he summarizes the book by saying that it examines the role that religion
plays in binding up the social fabric of the nation. Society reaps enormous
benefits from religious people engaging it, while suffering few of the
potential downsides. Widespread churchgoing seems to make Americans more
altruistic and more engaged with their communities, more likely to volunteer
and more inclined to give to secular and religious charities. Yet at the same
time, thanks to Americans’ ever-increasing tolerance, this country has been
spared the kind of sectarian conflict that often accompanies religious zeal.
All of that sounds like the church
is being what it is supposed to be, at one level. It is being salt and light in
American culture.
Another book, by James Davison
Hunter, To Change the World, presents
a different picture. By the way, the United Methodist Church says it makes
disciples “for the transformation of the world.” Yet, this author discusses the
vain attempts by Christians, whether from the political Left or Right, to
engage the culture from a “populist” perspective and have lost. Both groups
express themselves in the “language of loss, disappointment, anger, antipathy,
resentment and desire for conquest.” Thanks in part to this bunker mentality,
American Christianity has become what Hunter calls a “weak culture” — one that
mobilizes but does not convert, alienates rather than attracts, and looks
backward toward a lost past instead of forward to a vibrant future. He argues
that the Christian churches are mainly influential only in the “peripheral
areas” of our common life. One of his central theses is that
"culture" does not usually change in a populist, bottom up manner.
Rather, it changes by the influence of a small network of elites with symbolic
power to create and change the institutions in which we live. Churches used to be
among such elites. They are no more.
Douthat
concludes that believing Christians are no longer the influence they once were,
either upon popular culture or upon the elites with symbolic power. The term
for this is secularity, as the culture and the political class remove
themselves in an increasingly open away from the church. Christians need to
find a way to thrive in a society that is becoming less friendly to Christians.
Here is my struggle. The church is
rapidly becoming a minority movement in a culture it helped create. I would be
among those who feel some loss there. Yet, in the process, we may actually feel
more connected to the tiny band of followers to whom Jesus first spoke these
words concerning being salt and light.
Karl Barth[2]
suggests that the way salt loses its savor is the process of secularization. He
does not find it surprising that the world is secular, for that is what it is,
and always will be. The world will naturally live its life without God. However,
“when the church becomes secular, it is the greatest conceivable misfortune
both for the church and the world.” For him, this is what happens when the
church wants to be only “for” the world, nation, and culture. It loses its
importance, meaning and reason for existence. The secularization of the church,
in all its attempts to connect to the world, is actually its alienation. The United
Methodist Church wrestles with the relevance of this notion of influence in the
world. As a denomination, we have long sought to learn new ways of being
disciples in this world. One can also see that as “progressive Christianity”
continues to expand, it keeps favoring current political movements of the
political Left, trying to erase the distinction between itself and a part of
the culture, and yet, runs the risk of this alienation. The reason, of course,
is that if the church is only “for” the world, it is no longer “for” Christ and
“for” God. Later, Barth[3]
offers the opinion that sometimes, the church may be at peace with the world
precisely because it has lost its saltiness. Barth[4]
also says that the Christian community has a simple and unassuming task in
being light and salt. If God wills to accomplish much through its labor, that
is the affair of God. The Christian community can neither bring this about nor
enforce it. It has no right to ask for successes. It must simply hold itself in
readiness for God.
One author
imagines a speech by Jesus to the church of today:
How baffling you
are, oh Church, and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe! I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I
need your presence. You have given me so
much scandal and yet you have made me understand sanctity. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted
to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and I have touched nothing more
pure, more generous, more beautiful. How
often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I
have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, although not
completely. And where should I go?[5]
Light can be very fragile, but even
in small quantities it makes quite a difference. The metaphors Jesus uses here
challenge Christians to live the Christian faith in all areas of their lives. Indeed,
the church has a simple and unassuming task that can make all the difference in
our personal lives, those closest to us, and in a world that needs to see as
well as hear.
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