Let Your Light So Shine

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Savior of the world Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Over the last few weeks, routines have changed in the Safe household – we are getting used to the creaks and bumps in the night of our new old home, getting the furniture arranged, and unexpectedly replacing our septic and our furnace all within a week of one another. Sometimes, home ownership is grand. There have also been really beautiful perks, though, as well. The commute to work is considerably shorter now, and we live between the foothills of some really striking bluffs and the meandering Mississippi River. Living between the bluffs and the openness of the river, I’ve noticed some things about how sunlight interacts with our landscapes. I always like to get out on late afternoon/early evening walks when I can through main street Dresbach. If I time it right, I will be able to watch the sun set on the bluffs behind our house, which will soon become shrouded in shadow. Soon enough, the bluffs on the Wisconsin side of the river turn a fiery red as the sun shines the last of its daylight on them before they too will slip into night. In those small moments, I find light so intriguing – where in one instance the light has set, in another it is still shining. We know that this means night is coming – but that beyond night there is also dawn.

I think that these moments – of seeing the striking beauty of dusk and noticing the ways that the light plays off the landscape – can also be an illustration for our walk of faith as Christian people. Our Gospel text for today includes the continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and the blessings that he proclaims to the people gathered around him. In today’s reading, Jesus moves from performing blessing to sharing how that blessing is to be lived, and in doing so he uses illustrations of salt and light – “You are the salt of the earth”, and “You are the light of the world”. This illustration of light is used in our baptismal liturgy – “In the same way let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (vs. 16). The way that light works – illuminating against shadows, and helping us to find our path – illustrate how we are to live in our communities and be in our relationships as Christian people.

Consider for a moment the people whom Jesus is speaking to. As I mentioned in my sermon last week, these are ordinary people. These are people who have nothing less to lose, who are staking their hope on this man who up until now they have only heard of. They have heard Jesus call them blessed because they pursue peace and are meek and desire righteousness. How can these ordinary lives do something so profound such as pointing the way? I think it begins by doing this – as simple and as profound as it is.

We live our Christian commitment in this world by being who we are. Like on the bluffs of Dresbach, the light shifts and illuminates in different places. Salt, even when hidden inside something like a soup or a hot dish, heightens the flavor and makes everything taste as it should. You notice when salt is missing from your meal. Salt and light are constant, and exist in the world as they are, and their properties have been carrying out the same functions since the beginning of the created world. So it is with us today – we are who we are, a collective group made up of a diversity of perspectives, commitments, and values, and we strive to live in ways that are honorable, just, and kind. Our lives are largely ordinary – and yet, my friends, Jesus promises to still move through us. In a time when our society and communities feel like we exist in a state of upheaval – whether due to political differences, moral differences, or if we are weighed down by grief or uncertainty or disharmony – we can remember that Jesus has called our lives blessed, and when we are blessed Jesus calls us back to one another. Might we remember this calling when our lives feel difficult: that we exist to create love and to receive love, that we exist to share God’s light, and that we have been given this charge since the very beginning – “let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

To close my sermon, I wanted to share with you a poem from the late Mary Oliver – titled, “May You Go Easy”. May this be a blessing to you, and a reminder of the light that each of us carries within us, for goodness and for love even in the midst of our world’s shifting landscapes. Mary writes:

When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, "and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”

Amen.