Sermon – Salt and Light Rev. Sandy Lacey February 08, 2026
So, why are we here? Why is what we do on Sunday important? In the Presbyterian Book of Order we are told that the Church has six great purposes – six great “ends.” These statements were developed a little over 100 years ago and they define what we are to be about both locally and universally as a community of faith. The six great purposes are: to tell the love of Jesus so that others might also be free to live as God created them (evangelism); to provide for the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship for God’s children; to maintain worship of God; to preserve God’s truth; to promote “social righteousness;” and to demonstrate what God’s Kingdom looks like to the world around us. This is why we are here. It is our purpose as a community of faith. Our two Scripture passages from Isaiah and Matthew this morning talk about three of these great purposes – the maintenance of divine worship, the promotion of social righteousness, and the demonstration of what the kingdom looks like. Our first passage from Isaiah tells us that the prophet is concerned about the Hebrew people’s worship practices. The prophet says the people are worrying too much about the right way to fast. Additionally, the people are needlessly wondering if God is paying attention to their worship practice. Isaiah reminds the people that God is more concerned about how the practice of worship is lived out in their daily lives; in other words, what happens after communal worship. Instead of using their worship as some kind of “show” for God, is their worship issuing forth in right living toward God and others? Are they moving from their worship to caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and releasing those who are held hostage? Isaiah claims God is more concerned about their translation of worship (in the world) than their actual practice of worship. You can fast all you want, Isaiah says, but if you oppress your employees, if you are quarrelsome; then God will not hear you and will not consider you a righteous individual or community. “Righteousness” is one of those words that trip us up sometimes. We tend to associate that word more with personal piety than we do with social justice – how we treat others. But they are the same in the Hebrew understanding. Righteousness can never look like an active, engaged prayer/Bible study time while at the same time refusing to pay employees a living wage, for example. Righteousness can never have an internal pious spiritual life that ignores the needs of others in our midst. It is always both/and. For Isaiah right worship leads to “loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoked and letting the oppressed go free.” It “shares our bread with the hungry and brings the homeless poor into our house” and it covers the naked. With this kind of worship practice, Isaiah says, “your light will break forth and the Lord will hear you and satisfy your needs in parched places.” As Andrew Foster Connors says, “according to Isaiah, worship style and practice are not what pleases or offends God.” Instead, “Isaiah is concerned that obsession with right worship distracts the people from what really determines the future of the community – its effort to fulfill the ethical obligations of justice.”[1] Likewise, today’s Gospel passage in Matthew has something to say about righteousness, worship, and how to be a community of faith in the midst of God’s world. From last week’s emphasis on who God honors and therefore, who we are to honor, in the Beatitudes; we hear Jesus say to his followers, “you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” Jesus does not ask for it to be so; Jesus declares it to be so. It is both a statement of fact and a commission. We, as Christ’s followers, are not an introverted secret society or social club that shields itself from the world. No, instead, we are in the world, flavoring it and bringing light to it. I like how Eugene Peterson translates this passage in The Message: “You’re here to be salt seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of the earth. You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.” This passage in Matthew goes hand-in-hand with the Hebrew understanding of righteousness. It is not just a personal piety kind of thing; it is active engagement in God’s world to bring God’s light and God’s flavoring to it. Peterson’s translation reminds me of an old movie called, “The Music Box.” In it, the scene opens with a colorless city – all grey – and a city full of colorless and merely existing people in boring, unexciting jobs that pass the day by screwing tops on bottles in an assembly line. The individual family that that the movie focuses on goes to work and school, they come home, they stare at the television, they eat a boring meal, they do not hardly talk to each other, and then they go to bed, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again. One day one of the family members finds a music box that when opened plays wonderful and exciting jazz music. He is so thrilled with it that he takes it with him everywhere and privately pops it open several times a day for a kind of pick-me-up. He does not share it with anyone, including his family. But they begin to notice a change in him and he is compelled to not only share it with them but with the entire city. When he does, the family becomes more animated and alive. And when he opens the box and shares it with the city, the city’s grey color becomes alive with bright blues, reds, and yellows. It becomes more animated and alive until color floods the people and the city itself. Jesus declares his followers to be salt and light in the world. Following the teaching section of the Beatitudes in which Jesus tells his disciples who and what God honors; now Jesus moves beyond teaching to doing. Matthew does that a lot in his Gospel – he moves from Jesus’ teaching to how it is to be lived out. So last week we heard about God honoring or being concerned about the poor in spirit, the mourners, the gentle, the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace makers, the ones who are treated wrongly. That was Jesus’s teaching and this week, we see what we are to do and be as a result of what we have been taught. We are to demonstrate God’s concern in the world with the things we do. Our worship must issue forth in right living. And then Jesus goes on to say that what we do must exceed the typical actions of the religious leaders of the day – the Scribes and Pharisees. For they were more concerned with form than with substance, more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit of the law. People are more important than rules, form, and surface concerns. So, what about us today? Does God care what kind of music we sing or does God care about the particular order for our worship when we gather? With these two passages staring at us in the face, why does our Presbyterian Book of Order have an entire section devoted to worship and how we do it? From the beginning our Reformed forefathers like John Calvin and John Knox were concerned about our worship because it is supposed to translate into a similar ordering of our lives. Worship should have a purpose to it and it should lead to the thoughtful, reflective ordering of our lives. In the Presbyterian tradition we say worship is central to the faith. Each week when we gather for worship, we have a teaching lesson in the important elements of our faith. Look at your bulletin – we gather together (community is important); we sing praises to God for all God’s creative activity in the world both in our lives and in the world around us; we corporately and individually confess our sins (we recognize our constant missing of the mark that God calls us to); we rejoice in God’s assurance of pardon in that we recognize that God’s grace is bigger than all our sin; we read Scripture; we hear Scripture interpreted and how it is to be applied in our life; we respond to God through affirming our faith, through giving of ourselves and our resources, and through celebrating the sacraments of baptism and communion; and we are sent from this place to be disciples – to bring out the God-flavors and the God-colors in the world. So, the Reformed Order for Worship is a teaching tool for how we are to live in God’s world each and every day. While God may not care about our particular order for worship; our forefathers in the faith knew that it would help us; it would inspire us toward righteousness – right living and right relating in God’s world. As Andrew Foster Connors says, “What concerns God is not our reordering of worship, but how worship reorders us.”[2] May it be so. AMEN.
[1] Andrew Foster Connors, Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Vol 1. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.) p. 316. 2 Ibid, p. 318.
So, why are we here? Why is what we do on Sunday important? In the Presbyterian Book of Order we are told that the Church has six great purposes – six great “ends.” These statements were developed a little over 100 years ago and they define what we are to be about both locally and universally as a community of faith. The six great purposes are: to tell the love of Jesus so that others might also be free to live as God created them (evangelism); to provide for the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship for God’s children; to maintain worship of God; to preserve God’s truth; to promote “social righteousness;” and to demonstrate what God’s Kingdom looks like to the world around us. This is why we are here. It is our purpose as a community of faith. Our two Scripture passages from Isaiah and Matthew this morning talk about three of these great purposes – the maintenance of divine worship, the promotion of social righteousness, and the demonstration of what the kingdom looks like. Our first passage from Isaiah tells us that the prophet is concerned about the Hebrew people’s worship practices. The prophet says the people are worrying too much about the right way to fast. Additionally, the people are needlessly wondering if God is paying attention to their worship practice. Isaiah reminds the people that God is more concerned about how the practice of worship is lived out in their daily lives; in other words, what happens after communal worship. Instead of using their worship as some kind of “show” for God, is their worship issuing forth in right living toward God and others? Are they moving from their worship to caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and releasing those who are held hostage? Isaiah claims God is more concerned about their translation of worship (in the world) than their actual practice of worship. You can fast all you want, Isaiah says, but if you oppress your employees, if you are quarrelsome; then God will not hear you and will not consider you a righteous individual or community. “Righteousness” is one of those words that trip us up sometimes. We tend to associate that word more with personal piety than we do with social justice – how we treat others. But they are the same in the Hebrew understanding. Righteousness can never look like an active, engaged prayer/Bible study time while at the same time refusing to pay employees a living wage, for example. Righteousness can never have an internal pious spiritual life that ignores the needs of others in our midst. It is always both/and. For Isaiah right worship leads to “loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoked and letting the oppressed go free.” It “shares our bread with the hungry and brings the homeless poor into our house” and it covers the naked. With this kind of worship practice, Isaiah says, “your light will break forth and the Lord will hear you and satisfy your needs in parched places.” As Andrew Foster Connors says, “according to Isaiah, worship style and practice are not what pleases or offends God.” Instead, “Isaiah is concerned that obsession with right worship distracts the people from what really determines the future of the community – its effort to fulfill the ethical obligations of justice.”[1] Likewise, today’s Gospel passage in Matthew has something to say about righteousness, worship, and how to be a community of faith in the midst of God’s world. From last week’s emphasis on who God honors and therefore, who we are to honor, in the Beatitudes; we hear Jesus say to his followers, “you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” Jesus does not ask for it to be so; Jesus declares it to be so. It is both a statement of fact and a commission. We, as Christ’s followers, are not an introverted secret society or social club that shields itself from the world. No, instead, we are in the world, flavoring it and bringing light to it. I like how Eugene Peterson translates this passage in The Message: “You’re here to be salt seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of the earth. You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.” This passage in Matthew goes hand-in-hand with the Hebrew understanding of righteousness. It is not just a personal piety kind of thing; it is active engagement in God’s world to bring God’s light and God’s flavoring to it. Peterson’s translation reminds me of an old movie called, “The Music Box.” In it, the scene opens with a colorless city – all grey – and a city full of colorless and merely existing people in boring, unexciting jobs that pass the day by screwing tops on bottles in an assembly line. The individual family that that the movie focuses on goes to work and school, they come home, they stare at the television, they eat a boring meal, they do not hardly talk to each other, and then they go to bed, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again. One day one of the family members finds a music box that when opened plays wonderful and exciting jazz music. He is so thrilled with it that he takes it with him everywhere and privately pops it open several times a day for a kind of pick-me-up. He does not share it with anyone, including his family. But they begin to notice a change in him and he is compelled to not only share it with them but with the entire city. When he does, the family becomes more animated and alive. And when he opens the box and shares it with the city, the city’s grey color becomes alive with bright blues, reds, and yellows. It becomes more animated and alive until color floods the people and the city itself. Jesus declares his followers to be salt and light in the world. Following the teaching section of the Beatitudes in which Jesus tells his disciples who and what God honors; now Jesus moves beyond teaching to doing. Matthew does that a lot in his Gospel – he moves from Jesus’ teaching to how it is to be lived out. So last week we heard about God honoring or being concerned about the poor in spirit, the mourners, the gentle, the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace makers, the ones who are treated wrongly. That was Jesus’s teaching and this week, we see what we are to do and be as a result of what we have been taught. We are to demonstrate God’s concern in the world with the things we do. Our worship must issue forth in right living. And then Jesus goes on to say that what we do must exceed the typical actions of the religious leaders of the day – the Scribes and Pharisees. For they were more concerned with form than with substance, more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit of the law. People are more important than rules, form, and surface concerns. So, what about us today? Does God care what kind of music we sing or does God care about the particular order for our worship when we gather? With these two passages staring at us in the face, why does our Presbyterian Book of Order have an entire section devoted to worship and how we do it? From the beginning our Reformed forefathers like John Calvin and John Knox were concerned about our worship because it is supposed to translate into a similar ordering of our lives. Worship should have a purpose to it and it should lead to the thoughtful, reflective ordering of our lives. In the Presbyterian tradition we say worship is central to the faith. Each week when we gather for worship, we have a teaching lesson in the important elements of our faith. Look at your bulletin – we gather together (community is important); we sing praises to God for all God’s creative activity in the world both in our lives and in the world around us; we corporately and individually confess our sins (we recognize our constant missing of the mark that God calls us to); we rejoice in God’s assurance of pardon in that we recognize that God’s grace is bigger than all our sin; we read Scripture; we hear Scripture interpreted and how it is to be applied in our life; we respond to God through affirming our faith, through giving of ourselves and our resources, and through celebrating the sacraments of baptism and communion; and we are sent from this place to be disciples – to bring out the God-flavors and the God-colors in the world. So, the Reformed Order for Worship is a teaching tool for how we are to live in God’s world each and every day. While God may not care about our particular order for worship; our forefathers in the faith knew that it would help us; it would inspire us toward righteousness – right living and right relating in God’s world. As Andrew Foster Connors says, “What concerns God is not our reordering of worship, but how worship reorders us.”[2] May it be so. AMEN.
[1] Andrew Foster Connors, Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Vol 1. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.) p. 316. 2 Ibid, p. 318.
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[1] Andrew Foster Connors, Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Vol 1. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.) p. 316. [2] Ibid, p. 318.