Sermon - an intermission Sunday 6th February

Sermon given by Rod Dollimore - E100 Catch up week.

And so after 4 weeks of our readings being based on our E100 readings – this week we take a break – an intermission perhaps -.

It might seem odd to stop almost as soon as we’ve started, but the pause gives us the opportunity to change our focus,
and so as we return to the lectionary readings we pick up on the second part of the Sermon on the Mount

Today’s Gospel follows straight on from Matthews’s account of the Beatitudes.

"You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

Words so familiar, and ‘Salt of the earth’ in particular being in such common usage that its easy to forget that these are God's words, not those of a Tabloid headline writer.

They are Words that should challenge us in the way we should live,
Words that should challenge us in the way we should demonstrate our faith to others: -
Boldly, and full of confidence.

Because
Salt and light are powerful active things, not weak and passive

Salt is such a common and cheap commodity that we can so easily take it for granted,
2000 years ago it was a precious commodity, it wasn’t always pure, it was often tampered with – corrupted. In its purest form Salt purifies, preserves and flavours.
When it is tampered with or is corrupt it is useless.(from the time of Roman occupation salt gave us the word ‘salary’. the Latin salarium, was the money, paid to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt. And the Roman fashion of salting leaf vegetables gave us the word Salad.)

Just imagine your reaction if you went for a meal in a restaurant and there in a small bowl on the table instead of a fine and white and salty condiment there was a bowl of road salt – that would certainly corrupt your meal!!

Some years ago a friend of mine trained under a world famous chef – He tells the story that while he was preparing a dish a pair of ‘eagle-eyes’ noticed that he was putting a number of pinches of salt into the recipe. The great Chef walked over to my friend’s station – took a fistful of salt, added it the dish – giving it extra flavour -and said: -
“We’ll put you down for MANAGEMENT! Because cooking like that you’ll never make a Chef!’

Nowadays the health advice is to minimize our salt intake, but that is because our intake has become excessive.
Because it adds flavour, and preserves, companies have found it a cheap and easy additive in manufactured food preparation, so we get more than enough of our intake from pre-prepared food.
I can still remember my Grandmother putting what nowadays would seem excessive amounts of salt into the boiling vegetables. – They were always sharp, colourful, and full of flavour.

And like salt, our witness must be sharp, and full of flavour,
not so flat that we are hardly noticed.

Our challenge though is to proclaim our faith in our daily lives

And if salt is essential what about light?

‘“You are the light of the world.

Light was there from the first of our E100 readings when we started with Genesis

Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good;

And from then on when God speaks to people there is usually a bright light, it happens throughout the Old Testament, and when Saul is converted on the road to Damascus, he is ‘blinded by the light’ as Jesus speaks to him.

If you took your car in for a service and on the way home you realized the headlights didn’t work you would say
‘How can they do that?”
It is essential to have light and for that light to shine brightly.

Good headlights might brighten the few minutes of a journey across Dorney Common.

But Jesus’ light changes our lives forever.

But it takes effort – the light goes out without care.

We need to make an effort to continually tend the light (as we are with our E100 readings and our prayers),

We need to live in the light, and we will grow in the light.

AND We need to share the light

Every time we come to this service we hear the words

“Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven.”
OR DO WE?
We probably never really hear them, as this is the moment when we dive into our pockets or purses to find that forgotten envelope. So we only hear them as a regular prompt to undertake a regular task. NOT as we should, as a call to joyfully make our offering to the Lord – and as a reminder that we should be beacons in the world.

There is an old Irish folk custom of leaving alight in a window to guide the way of strangers, and when Mary Robinson was President of Ireland in the 1990s she started the tradition of putting a symbolic light in her kitchen window in the Presidential residence, as a sign of remembering Irish emigrants around the world. Robinson's symbolic light became an acclaimed symbol of an Ireland thinking about its sons and daughters around the world.

That’s very nice – but again we need to be more active than that.

Its all very good to put a candle up at the window but “Let your light shine before men,” is a command.

We have been called to share the light of Jesus, And to take our light out with us into the World

Salt of the earth. And light of the world.”

Sharp, Pure and uncorrupted, and shining like a beacon.
Like a nice crisp salad. – Not a bunch of soggy leaves.

Well there we are, what started as an intermission almost certainly introduced reading E101!

But there again, there can be no inter-mission –
No rest with ice cream & popcorn for us, because every one of us has our mission to fulfill!