Author: John Drymon

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you’ve done much hiking, particularly hiking up mountains, you’ll know that the old saying “it’s all down hill from here” may well not be as comforting a thought as it’s supposed to be. Certainly the uphill climb can be more tiring, but the trip back down has its own difficulties and takes its own toll on your body. When you’re walking uphill your muscles are working hard, but when you’re hiking downhill, gravity does much of the work, and so your joints, particularly those in your knees, are absorbing the impact. Plus, it’s a great deal more dangerous hiking steeply downhill, as one can easily let gravity take them too fast, leading to a fall.

But what’s always been the most difficult thing about the descent for me is its psychological difficulty. In college, my friends and I did a lot of backpacking in the northern New York and New England. We’d usually pick a particularly daunting summit and spend a day hiking to some base camp, a day to go up and down the mountain, and a day to hike back to the car. Excitement would build as we pushed ourselves up the mountain, and when we got to the top there was this feeling of both accomplishment and relief.

We’d usually stay on the summit for an hour or more, procrastinating. It’s not that we were too tired to begin the descent, and it wasn’t necessarily because the vista was too beautiful not to spend so much time at the top on the mountain. Sometimes the summit would be socked in, and we couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead of us, but we still stayed up there. We were putting off the descent, delaying the inevitable, because of a lack of motivation. We’d accomplished what we came for, and the slow, dangerous hike back down wouldn’t end with a great sense of accomplishment in itself. It was a necessary evil.

Peter’s response in this morning’s gospel is comparable. Of course, Jesus and the disciples climbed an actual mountain before the transfiguration and had to go back down, but it’s not a lack of motivation about the literal journey back down that leads Peter to recommend building tents and staying at the top.

Six days earlier, Peter had made his great confession, he had recognized Christ’s identity, and Jesus pulls the rug out from under his disciple:

From that time [Matthew writes] Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

We know what happened next. Peter expresses his misgivings about his Lord’s understanding that he must be killed, and Jesus rebukes Peter (actually calls him “Satan”) for his lack of faith, not two verses after he commends Peter for recognizing him as Messiah.

All of this would have been fresh in the minds of the disciples on the day of the Transfiguration, and after so long a journey they had taken with their Lord over the previous three years, the mountaintop experience would have been not only a literal but a figurative summit. They would have, to their minds, accomplished what they came for. Here was their teacher, and finally they see him in all his glory. They see Jesus in dazzling white surrounded by Elijah and Moses, God’s most highly favored prophets. Here, on the summit of Mount Tabor, the disciples would have seen what they came for: final, incontrovertible proof that this Jesus of Nazareth whom they had been following was none other than the Messiah.

Who wouldn’t want to stay on the mountaintop, knowing that the long, dangerous journey downhill would end with their master’s gruesome death? Our tendency to put off the inevitable is nothing new, and Peter’s reluctance to go back down the mountain would probably have been our own response.

We are in the same situation today as Peter was then. For one thing, our observance of the Christian year forces us into something like Peter’s reluctance. We’ve been slogging up the hill over the last several weeks, learning more and more about the moral demands incumbent on us as Christians over the season between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday. We’re now at the top of the mountain and we’re celebrating it. You’ll notice that our hymns this morning are not short on “Alleluias”. We’ll extend this celebration a couple of days, as we enjoy a great feast together on Shrove Tuesday.

And then, we’ll come back down the mountain the next morning. We’ll start our annual, communal journey to the cross and the grave. Through the difficult, dangerous path of prayer and fasting we’ll approach Calvary again.

This communal journey up and down mountains we take through the church year, reflects our own individual journeys. We each have mountaintop experiences at various points in our lives, and then we have to come down the mountain and walk through the desert for a while. And while we’re in those spiritual wastelands, we pray that the experience back on the mountain gives us courage to keep going, and we know that remaining steadfast in prayer will give us the nourishment we need, whether we recognize it at the time or not.

So, today, let’s procrastinate on the mountaintop for a little bit, but not too long. We can’t build a tent and live this day forever. Let’s sing our Alleluia’s forth in duteous praise, but then be ready for the hard journey of Lent that begins on Wednesday, knowing that the road downhill will be hard, but that Easter joy, when it comes, will take us by surprise and make our Holy Lent all the holier, all the more worthwhile.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Douglas MacArthur is attributed with an axiom which has become remarkably popular in the last half century: “Rules are mostly made to be broken,” he said, “and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.” Depending on your general disposition, you probably either mostly embrace this idea or mostly reject it. I fall into the latter category, myself. I’m a rule-follower. I love it when accepted procedures pave the way toward my completing some task, and it burns me when somebody goes rogue, as it were, and does things his own way. It strikes me as rather presumptuous for somebody to think he knows better than whoever came up with the blessed rulebook. Conversely, I’m sure my own love of rules and policies and procedures sometimes irritates those who think that rules are made to be broken, who believe that my problem lies in being too uptight. In reality, there is probably something to be said for both approaches and both criticisms.

Most people’s initial analysis of Jesus of Nazareth is that he was a rule-breaker rather than a rule-follower. He ate with tax collectors and sinners; he seemed far less impressed by those who followed the Old Testament rules “to a ‘T’” and far more concerned with what was in one’s heart. But then, at the end of last week’s Gospel, Jesus said something we might find rather shocking:

Truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Was this not, we might ask, the same Jesus who seemed not to care so much about the rules? Was this not the same Jesus who criticized the Pharisees for their obsessive, hypocritical rule-following?

This is indeed the same Jesus, and he is not contradicting himself, though it will take a little theological work to see what this apparent tension in Jesus’ teaching is all about.

In this morning’s Gospel Jesus picked up where he left off by outlining how one’s righteousness can exceed that of the Pharisees and scribes. Whereas the law said “thou shalt not kill”, we are enjoined to not even hold onto anger with our fellows. Whereas the law said “thou shalt not commit adultery” we are prohibited from dwelling on lustful thoughts. Whereas the law required faithfulness to oaths, Jesus said we should be so honest as to not require oaths.

At first glance, Jesus seems to be making a move that was rather common among his coreligionists at the time. The Pharisees were known for a practice called “hedging the Torah”, in which they would create rules around rules, as it were, such that nobody would be in danger of accidentally breaking the law. If the Old Testament said you cannot boil a calf in its mother’s milk, the Pharisees would say that you’d better not mix meat and dairy at all, just to be safe.

While this is what Jesus seems to be doing, I don’t think that’s the real point. For somebody so concerned with conscience above blind obedience, with love above scrupulosity, the practice of “hedging the Torah” would have likely been so out of character for Jesus as to lead to real contradictions. I think what’s really going on here is a great deal more subtle.

To get to the point, we need to look at a possible misunderstanding which might accompany the New Covenant of Grace. We all, I hope, know that the primary distinction between the Old and New Covenants with regard to salvation is the distinction between obedience and faith. A faithful Jew had many rules to live by. They were not just rules to live by, but rules which, by following, had the effect of justifying the rule-follower. The New Covenant, by contrast, recognizes our inability to follow the rules perfectly, and by means of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross has opened the door to Grace, that our faith alone is sufficient (as far as our part is concerned) to obtain the remission of sins. This much shouldn’t be news to most of you.

Unfortunately, a deadly misunderstanding can attach itself to this life-giving truth. You may have heard some claim, if not in such lofty theological terms, that the freedom effected by God’s Grace has exempted them from righteousness. In less theological language, people might say, “I will be forgiven, so I intend to do whatever I please.” This misunderstanding is often connected to a rather narrow view of salutary faith: the kind that sees one “saving” experience or the sincere recitation of some prayer on the televangelist station a single time, as being a sufficient definition of faith. That faith is more than a one-off experience or prayer is beside the point, though, because even those that recognize that faith is a process of being in relationship with God can fall into the trap I’ve mentioned.

What I believe Jesus is telling us in this morning’s Gospel is that we are not exempted from the responsibility to uphold the highest moral standards for ourselves. I’d even go a bit further (and those with a more reformed theology than mine may disagree), by suggesting that despite the fact that we’ll always fall short, our dogged attempt to follow the moral precepts of the law, which we know from scripture and which we know in our hearts, is itself an expression of the kind of faith which opens us to God’s grace. As the Epistle General of St. James puts it “faith without works is dead.”

But whether or not you can buy into James’ epistle or my admittedly unreformed view of justification, there is one thing about which I think we can all agree. Those sins which Jesus denounces in this morning’s Gospel severely handicap our Christian witness. Anger and lust and adultery and duplicity are rather popular in the church, and to those who need the saving message of God’s Grace the most, the presence of these sins is a scandal.

How many have been turned off of organized religion because of the hypocrisy of some of its adherents? How many have given up the faith because some priest or minister couldn’t keep his appetites for sex or money or power in check? How many have left the church because some fellow Christian harbored resentment for his neighbor or defrauded an associate? (And here’s a rather controversial one…) How many have got a bad taste in their mouth about our own Anglican branch of Christendom because liberals and conservatives alike have not followed Christ’s command to leave their gift at the altar and be reconciled, opting instead to take their brothers and sisters to court?

In the final analysis, the rules by which we govern our common life as Christians are not rules for the sake of having rules. They are commandments by which we can live in faithfulness to God and in love with each other. They are the means by which we can more fully embrace the Grace given us as redeemed people, and they are the most powerful signs we have to point those who do not yet believe to a way of life defined by faith and love and mutual responsibility. In other words, the moral direction given us by God in Christ are not a set of rules to be broken. They are not dogma behind which the lazy may hide. They are a challenge to live a life together in which the Gospel is realized more profoundly and by which others may see God’s Grace and be drawn to it.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Salt is so common in our culture that Jesus’ words to the crowd in this morning’s Gospel “you are the salt of the earth” don’t initially make as much sense to us as they would have to the original audience. We have so much salt that not only do we put too much of it in our food, but when the weather gets bad we start throwing it on streets and sidewalks. If we’re not putting it in our bodies, we’re getting the stuff on our cars and shoes and the bottoms of our overcoats. Salt is ubiquitous.

Maybe our superabundance of salt is why we’ve taken that old expression from the Gospel “salt of the earth” to mean precisely the opposite of what it actually means. When we say somebody is “salt of the earth” we usually mean that he is an ordinary chap: simple and honest and unassuming. In reality, what Jesus meant by “salt of the earth” was quite different.

You see, in ancient times, salt was a relatively valuable commodity. You wouldn’t think about spreading it on roads, and unless you were particularly well off, you’d go broke before you had had enough salt to cause health problems. Certainly salt wasn’t especially rare, but neither was it inexpensive enough to allow an ordinary person to keep a salt shaker on his table, much less buy a frozen dinner containing 300% of his recommended daily sodium intake.

Salt wasn’t as common then as it is today, but it was likely a great deal more important. For one thing, we do need some salt to live, and sodium deficiency was probably a greater problem in the ancient world than was its opposite. What’s more, artificial refrigeration wouldn’t come for about 1800 years, so unless you lived in a cold climate, you’d preserve meat and fish with a hefty amount of salt. So important was salt, that Roman soldiers had at one time been paid with it, later being given a stipend to buy it, called a “salarium”, which comes from the Latin for salt and which later becomes the English word “salary”. So, in the ancient world the aphorism “time is money” would not have been as accurate as something like “salt is money”.

So, when Jesus says “you are the salt of the earth” he’s not suggesting that his disciples are defined by simplicity and a lack of pretension. Rather, he’s saying that there is something remarkably valuable about them, and not just valuable. Precious metals and rare spices and even glass were extremely valuable in ancient Rome, but they were luxuries. You didn’t really need them, and to have them served mainly to impress one’s peers. Salt was valuable, but it was also necessary. Everyone needed a little, and a little could make life so much better.

If a Christian is the salt of the earth, then, it means that what we are has the potential to bring a valuable and necessary commodity into the world. We who know Christ can season the situations in which we find ourselves with the salt of the virtues, and a little bit goes a long way. A little temperance here, a dash of charity, a few teaspoons of patience…

But then we get to that puzzling question which follows Jesus’ declaration that we are the salt of the earth: “but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored?” Now Jesus wasn’t a chemist, nor am I, but I think I remember enough from my junior year of high school to say with some certainty that salt cannot easily lose its saltness. (I’m sure some of you are more well up on your chemistry, so please correct me if I’m getting something wrong.) Sodium chloride is what we call a stable ionic compound, its atoms held together by electrostatic attractions formed when the sodium loses one of its electrons to the chlorine, creating a positively charged sodium and a negatively charged chlorine. These two atoms are held together by electrical forces which are very strong and thus difficult to break.

Though Jesus wouldn’t have known anything about chemistry, I suspect he knew that salt couldn’t lose its saltness through simple observation. He wouldn’t have ever seen salt go stale, because that doesn’t really happen. Now, some of the commentaries I’ve read this week did a lot of exegetical handwaving to explain how salt might be capable of losing its saltiness, due to impurities, but I think this misses the point, and I for one am not troubled about having a savior who didn’t know NaCl from potassium lactate. That said, I suspect Jesus had a hunch that salt was necessarily salty. Why then this apparent warning? Perhaps (and this is just a hunch) the point is precisely that the idea of salt losing its saltness is silly. It’s just as silly as that other image in this morning’s Gospel: hiding a candle under a bushel basket- which I imagine would either snuff the candle or cause a fire hazard, but in all events, nobody would have reason to do it. You’d just blow the candle out and light it later when you needed it.

Perhaps the point is that if we’re salt and light, we cannot be otherwise. We can convince ourselves that we’re not salt, but we still are. We can refuse to use that which is in us to season our encounters with others, but it’s still there. We who have been baptized cannot be unbaptized. We can ignore our status as children of God; we can try to run away from it, but our adoption as God’s children, our existence as salt and light, is objective and irrevocable.

So, to all who are baptized, you are salt and light. You can’t get away from it, so you might as well commit yourselves to figuring out what bland, perishable thing in this world could use a little seasoning and a little saving. You might as well commit yourselves to figuring out what dark corner of this world could use a little light. That is what we’re here for, but more importantly, that’s what we are. We might as well embrace what we are: salt and light.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.