Sermons

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

The Friday before the snowfall a couple of weeks ago I was on a call with the bishop, and I asked her if she had a parish visitation that weekend she was concerned about being able to make. She said she didn’t have to travel far, but was worried because, apparently, the City of Cleveland was facing a salt shortage. When I mentioned this to somebody a few days later, that person informed me that there is a huge salt mine in Cleveland where they extract rock salt for the express purpose of road deicing. After a little Googling, I confirmed this and saw that the proprietors of this mine simply failed to deliver salt which the city had ordered over a long enough period of time to create this problem. So, salt may be abundant but you can still get in a pickle by not having enough of it.

It puts a new twist on Jesus’ words in this morning’s Gospel “you are the salt of the earth.” There are two billion of us Christians in the world, but are we being sprinkled into the stockpots and spread over the highways of the world, or are we a couple miles under Lake Erie doing little good.

Maybe the superabundance of salt in ourordinary existence 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, and a salt shortage is a good reminder, even if it unfortunately caused some frustration on the streets for some of our fellow Ohioans. When we say somebody is “salt of the earth” we usually mean that he is an ordinary fellow: simple and honest and unassuming. In reality, what Jesus meant by “salt of the earth” was quite different, and stories of what happens when you don’t have it can make the point more apparent.

In ancient times salt was an even more valuable commodity than it is today. 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 word 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 a lot 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 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 it couldn’t happen. I’m a bit out of my depth here, but I understand that the “best by” date on table salt is because of the added iodine, which is a modern additive. (And, lest you think I’ve given way to conspiracy theories or recherché tastes, thank goodness for salt iodization and for water fluoridation and for dairy pasteurization and all the rest!) 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 MSG. That said, I suspect Jesus had a hunch that salt was logically necessarily salty. Why then this apparent warning? Perhaps 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 just have to be deployed to where we’re needed. 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 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 rather than staying in the cupboard. You might as well commit yourselves to figuring out what dark corner of this world could use a little light rather than staying in a box in the candle factory. 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.

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

We celebrate today the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, one of those great stories from the Bible which is so familiar that we’ve made some pretty serious errors in how we’ve received it. This is pretty common. The Christmas story is so familiar that we assume there were three wise men, while the bible never gives us the number—there were three gifts but an indeterminate number of magi. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is so familiar that we just know that the forbidden fruit was an apple, though this assumptions is not borne out in the text.

So it is with the story of St. Paul’s conversion, so I want to point out a couple of assumptions that we habitually get wrong about it. First, the Conversion does not come with an attendant name change. Common knowledge holds that Saul became Paul on the rode to Damascus, and that this name change indicates Paul’s change in character, much like Abram becoming Abraham in Genesis. This is not the case. Paul is still referred to as Saul for several chapters after the conversion story. The difference in how scripture names him has to do with his audience rather than the change on the road to Damascus. When he’s preaching to Jews, the Hebrew name Saul is used. When he’s preaching to Gentiles, the Greek name Paul is used.

Now that’s more a bit of trivia than something of theological significance, but the second mistake, I think, is more important for us to clear up, and it’s related. We have this vision of Paul changing his identity entirely at the moment of conversion- like Clark Kent turning into Superman in a phone booth, though in Paul’s case we imagine the change being from a purely evil character to a purely good character. Perhaps this is why we like the false name-change narrative.

I think this is the wrong way to view Paul’s Conversion. Those who have read much of St. Paul’s writing know that the characteristics which defined him during his life in Judaism—his pugnacious nature in particular—are still with him post-conversion. Paul doesn’t become a perfect person because he experienced Jesus on the road to Damascus. Rather, he becomes a person with a new mission, new goals, a new direction. Surely this new mission makes him a better person over time, but it’s a life’s work God sets him at. The transformative power of the moment of conversion is critical, but it’s a beginning whose implications will be borne out through a life of faithfulness.

So, Paul’s story does not mean that a personal conversion experience, a transformative moment, is the only thing that matters. Nor does it mean, and this is where I part ways with evangelicalism, that such an experience is necessarily normative. It is wonderful when it happens, but the Good News is more than “feel your heart strangely warmed once.”

The assumption that a once-for-all, affective experience of conversion is the “end-all-be-all” of Christian life stems, I believe, from both a misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching and of his experience on the road to Damascus. Paul’s response to seeing and hearing Jesus was not to say “thank God I’m saved, now my response to it for the rest of my life is neither here nor there.” Rather, he begins preaching the power of God to save all humanity, and indeed to redeem all Creation. Paul never says “accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, and every thing else just automatically falls into place” but he does write “run the race with endurance” and “[fight] the good fight… [keep] the faith.”

So, Paul’s Conversion and what it teaches us about conversion in general might be counter-intuitive for many of us. It seems that conversion isn’t only a one-time deal- God can continue to conform us more and more to the likeness of Christ as we strive with faith and obedience to do his will. Granted, I am perhaps more suspicious of religious enthusiasm than most, but for me I’ve found that the quotidian, rather “boring” approach of saying one’s prayers and trying to be loving offers a more stable foundation than the waves of emotion that may have as much to do with how much coffee I’ve had or how loud the Berlioz is on my boom box than anything pertaining to God’s movement in my life. One has to discern the spirits, and I find this to be a tricky business if I’m not rather calmly circumspect about it.

I don’t know about you, but I find this composed vision of Christian conversion a lot more comforting than being obsessed with whether or not I’m supposed to have a particular, ecstatic experience once-and-for-all, at least when it comes to obtaining spiritual provision for the “long-haul”. It seems not only a lot more comforting but a lot more in keeping with what the majority of Christians throughout the centuries have experienced.

Again, there’s nothing particularly wrong with a dramatic conversion experience; sometimes that’s what it takes and it’s a gift from God when it comes, as it did to St. Paul. But we can all experience what we might call the “second phase” of Paul’s conversion, whether or not the first is needful in any person’s life—we can all experience the gradual growth of stability and wisdom and confidence in God’s saving action.

In other words we can reach the stage of spiritual maturity Paul himself wrote about in his Epistle to the Ephesians, not being as “children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine”, chasing spiritual highs as if they were a drug, but “speaking the truth in love… grow[ing] up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” This life, the life of a Christian, may start with a dramatic, burning bush, or it might not. In either case, the end-point, I think, is full of peace, a down-to-earth sort of joy, and quiet confidence. It may come sooner or it may come later, but that is the promise we have when God grants us continual conversion.

+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.

When I was a junior in college I did a semester abroad at the University of St. Andrews studying theology and philosophy. Being in Scotland (and despite the fact that there seemed to be more English than Scottish students) St. Andrews is naturally a rather Presbyterian institution. So when one evening I attended a fancy dress party (meaning costumes, not black-tie) put up by some of my fellow theology students,I decided to try to cause a stir by going as a very Romish version of St. Peter (bishop’s mitre made from cardboard, two ornate keys in one hand, and a scroll in the other reading “tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam.” (“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”) This did not cause any of my fellows to lash out with a denunciation of my popery, though, which I’m sure caused John Knox to spin in his grave. Sic transit gloria reformandi!

In addition to being the feast of the Confession of St. Peter, today is the first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, so I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time focusing on what I was trying to get my Scottish Presbyterian friends to react to—namely, the interpretation of this morning’s gospel which hold that here Christ was granting universal, metropolitical authority to St. Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome. Some will claim that it is just that straightforward and others will claim that here Jesus is referring to Peter’s confession not his person as the rock upon which the church is built. I tend to think the reality is more complicated than either extreme view. In the interest of full disclosure, I could have probably been a relatively functional if not perfectly happy Roman Catholic before the first Vatican Council defined papal infallibility in 1870, so any possibility of my “swimming the Tiber” (as we sometimes call conversion in that direction) was foreclosed more than a century before my birth. In all events, it being the week of prayer for Christian unity, it is more profitable for us all to remember that whatever issues of doctrine and discipline may divide us (some of which are important and ought not be minimized and others are things indifferent to the Gospel), all Christians are united at a fundamental level by our baptism into the Body of Christ, and our profession, along with Peter, that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God.

We’re not going to heal the broken Body of Christ at an institutional level this morning. God is the only one who can do that, and I suspect he won’t do so fully until the end of time, when he establishes the Kingdom for eternity. We can however, pray for a change of heart. We can pray that God would take our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh, softening our dispositions toward all of the Good Shepherd’s sheep. I don’t just mean this vis-à-vis those with whom we have religious disagreements, but those with whom we find ourselves at enmity on any issue.

You’ve probably gathered that one of my problems is I think I’m right all the time. I know I’m not, but let’s assume for a moment I am. Well, if so, I know that sometimes I’m so right I’m wrong. I’m so convinced that I have it all figured out that I fail to show grace and gentleness and forbearance to those I think wrong. Maybe you struggle with the same difficulty. Maybe you, too, can have all the correct opinions, but your heart hasn’t been softened.

Well, I think Peter had that problem, too. In confessing Jesus to be “the Christ, the Son of God” he showed he believed the most important fact it is to believe. But he still had a hard heart. He still thrice denied our Lord. He still needed to be reconciled to the risen Christ, by being thrice asked whether or not he loved him and thrice reminded to care for Jesus’ whole flock. Only by being thus softened could he become the solid rock upon which the church could be built.

I especially need to remember this. In this morning’s epistle, Peter is exhorting priests directly. (Our translation this morning rendered it “elders”; the word is πρεσβυτεροι, and he means here those ordained to the priesthood.) He is exhorting me and my colleagues, as a priest himself, to lead and serve you willingly, eagerly, and gently. I hope I mostly do that, though I know I don’t always. But (there’s always a “but”) this doesn’t mean everyone who’s not a priest gets to be peevish and prickly and petulant. Sorry. Peter is telling me to be a gentle shepherd so you can become more gentle, too.

The blessed irony, here, is that a soft heart enables a stern constitution. In learning love and gentleness from his master, Peter is given the strength and courage to proclaim the truth boldly before the religious authorities who could make his life very difficult or even end it. We didn’t get the context for Peter’s sermon in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning. To make a long story short, Peter and John had been arrested after performing a miraculous healing and preaching the Good News, and after a night in the hoosegow they’re called before the council. Instead of making nice in the hopes of getting released, instead of saying “sorry to cause a scene, your honors” Peter preaches to them. The council confers, says “we’ll release you if you promise to stop preaching” and Peter says “too bad, we’re gonna keep doing it.” This scares the council, and they release him and John despite their contempt of the court. Peter goes from being the smart kid in the class, to the frightened denial at the passion, to a tearful reconciliation, to taking a remarkably courageous stand when the need for strength and bravery are called for. All this, because he permitted Jesus to give him a change of heart. May the Lord so soften our hearts and then set them on fire.

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