Will Rice- Sermon #17 - Come and See

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

John 1:43-51

“Come and See”

When I was a radio disc jockey, businesses use to pay me a lot of money to do something called a remote broadcast. I would head on down to, for example, the local Chevrolet dealer, and three times and hour, for sixty seconds, I would say something like, “Come on down to Outten Chevrolet in Allentown! You have to come and see the deals they have today! They have the lowest prices in town on new Chevrolet cars, trucks and SUVs. Come and see the best deals in town!”

These businesses could have just run sixty-second commercials, but they paid a lot more money to get me to come down and they did so for a very specific reason. I did the afternoon program on WZZO in Allentown for a number of years. People who liked rock music in The Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania heard my voice every afternoon on their way home from work. For good or bad, my voice had credibility. When I said, “come and see” people came and saw.

I love this piece of scripture. I think that nearly everybody can find themselves in it. You may find who you are, who you want to be, or even who you wish you weren’t sometimes.

We have Philip, the Bible’s foremost expert on church growth. Just moments after Jesus has said “follow me,” Philip is inviting Nathanael to church! We, as a church, would have never asked Philip to do that. We would call that “evangelism” and we reserve that for more experienced Christians. We never expect that of new people, but instead leave it to those with some training.

What about Nathanael. Maybe you don’t see yourself in Nathanael, but I do and we can all learn something from him. Nathanael is the typical cynic. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” I remember as a young person answering an invitation to church with “Can anything good come out of the church?” A modern day Nathanael might say, “All the church is interested in is my money!” or “The church is just a bunch of hypocrites!”

If we can see ourselves in this interaction, if we can take anything from it, it is how Philip, this man who has just started following Jesus moments ago, handles Nathanael’s objection.

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Put yourself in that place. How would you answer that objection?

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

If someone really knew the Hebrew scriptures, they might argue scripturally. “Of course something good can come out of Nazareth, I can show you the words of the prophets that will show you that the Messiah shall come from Nazareth.”[1] But Philip didn’t do that.

Someone else, especially someone like Philip, who just starting following Jesus, may react defensively, “How dare you question the credentials of the Messiah?” But Philip didn’t do that.

Another person might try to turn it around on the person, “What the heck do you know?” But Philip didn’t do that.

I am sure someone else would just give up. But Philip didn’t do that.

Philip simply said, “Come and see.”

“Come see for yourself!”

When I did a remote broadcast, I didn’t answer possible objections. I didn’t get into the specifics of the price of a new Tahoe or the trade in value of someone’s ’89 Cavalier. Sometimes businesses would want me to talk specifics. I always talked them out of it. I always told them, what I really needed to say was come and see.

Think about it in modern terms. You tell someone about church and they say, “What good can come out of the church?”

You could pull out your Bible and quote them scripture. You could get defensive. You could try to turn it around on them. You could just give up. Or, you could say, “Come and see.”

Here is the really scary part, what Nathanael did next,

^46bPhilip said to him, “Come and see.” ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him

Philip said, “Come and see!” and Nathanael did!

Back when I was a D.J. and I did those remote broadcasts, I always had to be careful about where I chose to go and do a broadcast from. If I said, “Come and see! Outten Chevrolet has the best deals in town” and people came and saw and were treated poorly or paid way too much for a new car, the next time I said “Come and see” they might say, “no, I tried that once.”

My credibility was on the line. For me, at the time, my credibility was worth money. If I kept saying “Come and see!” and people came and saw and were disappointed, after a while no one would come and no business would pay me to go there and say “come and see!”

In today’s passage, Philip is risking his credibility with Nathanael. He says “Come and see” because he believes once Nathanael sees, he will understand. Let’s see how that works out for him.

⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

This works out pretty well for Philip because Nathanael has and encounter with Jesus, and experience of the living Christ. Jesus greets him, embraces him for who he is, and says, “I have been expecting you!

If we were pretty sure that was going to happen when we said “Come and see!” perhaps we would say it more.

When I talk to people about inviting people to come to church, I hear lots of reasons not to. People say that they are uncomfortable talking about religion or they are afraid they are going to offend someone, but I think that a lot of what is going on is about fear of losing credibility. You may know the joy of knowing God through Christ, of having a church family, of being involved in fellowship and in mission. You know that your friend or loved one would feel the same way, if she or he could truly experience it when they came to church

Has anyone ever invited someone to church and had them come? This may not be true for everyone, but I bet for some of you found yourself nervous the day that came. The people we tend to invite are our friends and family and coworkers, people who may have accepted our invitation because we have some amount of credibility.

I probably invited more people to church before I was a pastor than I do now, because I worked with and hung out with a lot more people who weren’t already members of my church. When I would invite them to “Come and see” and they did I would be exceptionally nervous at church that day. As I drove in, I would look at the parking lot. I hope there is a spot. If my friend gets up early on a Sunday and comes down here and doesn’t find a place to park, I really blew it. As I would walk in, I would look to see who the greeters were. I hope they are our best greeters. I hope they are paying attention so my friend isn’t greeted by someone’s back. At the church I was at the time, I would hope it wasn’t raining so there wouldn’t be a garbage can in the isle to catch the leak from the roof, I so wanted it to look like we had our act together. I would scan the bulletin to see which pastor was preaching, what was the text. Had I seen the pastor around the office that week, had they put any time into this sermon? What is the choir singing? I hope our best soprano isn’t away on vacation this week. I would look at the hymns hoping were weren’t singing the hard ones that nobody knew.

I was a nervous wreck, because my credibility was on the line and I knew that the person I had invited might be as cynical as Nathanael. Perhaps the person trusted my credibility, perhaps my friend trusted me enough personally to “come and see.” However, that didn’t mean they weren’t still asking, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” “Can anything good come out of the church.”

They might want to trust me, but part of them is just looking for confirmation of what they had already believed. When Nathanael had followed Philip to Jesus, Jesus reacted with:

⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

Imagine if instead, Jesus didn’t show up that day, or Jesus was in a bad mood, or Jesus disciples were all standing around blocking the way. Nathanael response would have likely been, “See, I told you nothing good could come out of Nazareth!” And he would have never listened to Philip again.

Think about how that works out in our context. What if someone says “come and see” and someone listens and they come and there is nowhere to park? Or what if they can’t find the right entrance or can’t find the way to the sanctuary or can’t find a place to sit, or a place to sit that isn’t right up front with the pastors or in between two people they have never met? Us, “church folks” have trouble getting that, because we know there is always “somewhere” to park. And if we are visiting a church and can’t find the door, we just ask someone, no problem. And it doesn’t matter if the only seats are right up front or if we have to sit right next to someone we have never met.

But think about Nathanael,

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

He is almost looking for an excuse not to come! A cynical person, who has only accepted the invitation on someone’s credibility, is still looking for an excuse not to come. “There’s nowhere to park, I can’t find the door, I can’t find a seat.” A cynical person may be looking for an excuse not to come. We have to make sure they don’t have one.

The outside invitation to “come and see” must be followed up with the welcome here at the church that says, “we have been expecting you and YOU are welcome here, just the way you are.” Not just a welcome from a person at the door, but a welcome that is built into a very DNA. A welcome that reflects our name, Grace. A welcome that says we accept you for who you are, wherever you are, no matter what.

Oftentimes people suggest to me the idea of a church open house, a time to invite our friends and members of the community to come to the church. When churches do these sorts of things, they usually go all out. They mow the lawn and trim the hedges and maybe even paint the trim. They vacuum the carpet and pick up all the stuff that is laying around the church. They put out some food and drinks and when the people come, they make sure that they are greeted by a smiling face and a warm handshake.

When people suggest the idea of an open house to me, I usually say no. I say no because every Sunday is an open house. Every Sunday is a day when someone may be responding to the invitation “come and see” and every Sunday is a day that we have to do everything we can to say, “we have been expecting you and YOU are welcome here, just the way you are.”

You may have already heard something about our Welcoming Team. Some of you have been praying for them. You may think about a welcoming team as just a group of people who stand and welcome people to the church or who puts ads in the newspaper, but this team is a whole lot more than that. This team is working to make welcoming part of the DNA of the church. They are working to make sure that we are doing all that we can to make sure that when someone “comes to see” that we will not stand in the way of their opportunity to experience Christ, but instead open our arms to welcome them and make them feel welcome and comfortable. I want every member to be aware of this group because the work they do will, in some ways, affect everything we do here at Grace and it should. At some point something they do might even get on your nerves and that might be a good thing. They might ask you to do something you are not used to doing. Or, they might move something or change something. They may even ask you to sit in a different place!

They will look at everything from how the church looks to new visitors, to how we personally welcome them to how we let them know more about this church, to how we begin to integrate them into the life of the church. They will try to see through the eyes of first time visitors and see things that we do, that we don’t even realize that we do that may put off people coming here to see God.

They are going to help us do the work of treating every Sunday like an open house, making sure we are always ready for someone new to enter our doors! Then it will be our turn to be like Philip and say to someone, “Come and see!”

If you have any thoughts, questions or comments on this sermon, click here to return to Will's weblog and post a comment.

---

[1] Matthew 2:23 reads, “There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’" However, there is no specific OT passage the corresponds to this citation.

Will Rice- Sermon #16 - Servants of Christ: First Steps, Next Steps

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

James 1:22

Today is the final Sunday of our three week emphasis on stewardship of service. I said this same thing last week, but let me say it again: the point of this is not just to find volunteers to fill all the positions within the church. The point is that God is calling us to be in service and that through joyful service in God’s name, we can be the salt of the earth, spreading God’s love and transforming the world that surrounds us.

Since this is the final week of this emphasis, I thought I would get right down to the real nuts and bolts of this thing. Honestly, there are about a billion reasons not to be a servant.

Often when I preach, I can imagine in my head what a lot of people are thinking. Don’t worry, I can’t actually hear what you are thinking, so if your mind is elsewhere, I don’t actually know where it is (but God does). But I can imagine that a lot of people are thinking to themselves, “well that is all fine and good… but.”

Usually I just let those buts hang out there, but today, with the help of scripture, I am going to hit them head on.

I think that most of us get that we are supposed to be doing something. Maybe. Let’s start today with the most complex excuse for not serving.

I am made right with God through faith (believing) not by doing.

If that is the reason you use for not serving, congratulations! Your excuse is theologically sound!

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Do you think I am running around spending my life sharing the Good news of God because I am trying to earn my salvation? Absolutely not! I am running around sharing the Gospel because I know that God already loves me.

This is one of those places where are relentless pursuit spreading the word of Grace actually gets in our way. The most important thing to understand is that God loves us no matter what. Sometimes, we just stop there. But, as a response to that love, God wants, expects us to care for our brothers and sisters. God expects a response, a response that reflects that love and shares it with all who surround us. Repeating a piece of scripture I read last week from 1st John 3:

17How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? 18Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
And from today’s reading from the Letter of James:
James 1:22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

I am not too worried about people using excuse number 1. If you truly believe that God loves you for you not matter what, it won’t be long before you start serving for God.

Let’s move on to some other reasons for not serving. I think these fall into two categories, which I will call for reason of simplicity, “I am not good enough” and “I am already good enough.” Let’s start with the first one. A lot of people, when they do realize that God is calling on them to respond to the grace of God with action think, “I am not good enough.”

This can manifest itself in a lot of ways, some of them practical, as in “I am just not equipped for this ministry,” some of them more personal as in “I am not good or righteous enough for this ministry.”

Matthew 4:18 18As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. 19And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." 20Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

What has always bothered me about this story is the “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Wasn’t there a training session? Didn’t they go to seminary first? Think about what their resumes looked like.

I have tried to use this excuse myself, many, many times and my first time wasn’t that long ago. If you look on my office wall, just a couple of feet from the piece of paper that says I am probationary member of the Annual Conference and therefore have authority to do all the pastor things I do, is another piece of paper saying that I was baptized on January 16th 2000. On the day that I got that piece of paper, I man in my church, Steve, came up to me and said, “So, are you ready to get to work?” To which I replied something like, “um, uh, well…” He said “Great, you can start next week.”

Steve then told me (he would claim he asked me) that I was going to be a Sunday School Superintendent. All I had to do was collect attendance sheets and offerings and make sure all the children’s classes had graham crackers and ice water. I was terrified! I thought for sure I would somehow mess it up. In my full-time job, I was producing live radio shows in eight different cities every day. I was on the air in Lufkin, Amarillo, Lubbock, Waco Corpus Christi and Tyler, Texas; Pensacola, Florida; Modesto, California; Greenville, South Carolina, Yuma, Arizona; able to keep track of play lists of top-40 songs, oldies, country and rock, making sure Pensacola didn’t get Greenville’s weather forecast and making sure the folks in Modesto weren’t hearing about Sea Sculptures in Corpus Christi. That was no problem. The thought of being responsible for graham crackers made me lose sleep at night.
But God provided, I took on the challenge, and I got it down to a science, counting the offering, tallying the attendance, getting the ice water in the right room. Then, one day, a teacher caught me in the hall and said, “Will, I have a misbehaving kid, will you help me out.” To which I smiled and said, “I don’t do that.” To which the teacher said, “Yes you do, you are the Sunday School Superintendent.”

Now, in case you don’t know, I am not a parent. At that point in my life, I had one niece who I saw about once a year. I knew nothing about children. Suddenly I was responsible for making one behave.

I got through that, I have gotten through a number of unexpected challenges in trying be a faithful servant. Do not think that you can’t follow your heart into ministry because you are not qualified. God calls people who are not qualified all the time. Just read the gospels. The disciples are nearly comical in their lack of qualifications, yet, obviously they did something right or we probably wouldn’t be here.

Sometimes we feel we are not equipped, sometimes it is a more personal issue where we, consciously or unconsciously feel that we are not good enough or worthy enough or righteous enough to serve.

The prophet Isaiah certainly felt this way when, in a vision, he came face to face with God.

Isaiah 6:5

5And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

I remember the first time I was asked to preach. It was actually before I went to seminary, but I had already decided I felt called to be a pastor. I remember being asked because for some reason, part of my brain decided to make me act all confident and I said, “yeah, I would love to.” Meanwhile the other side of my brain was saying, “What? Why are you saying that? Who said you could speak?”

For me, getting up in front of the congregation to preach the Gospel was not a practical issue. I had the technical ability to do it. I had been a disc jockey for ten year. I knew how to talk, both on the radio and at public events. I wasn’t even that worried about writing the sermon. They say everybody has at least one good sermon in them.

For me, it was an issue of worthiness. How is it that I am good enough to stand in front of a bunch of people who have been Christians their whole life and pretend to proclaim the news of God?

9As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.

When you are considering your own worthiness to be God’s servant, you have to consider Matthew. Surrounded by the religious elite, those who spent their whole lives trying to be righteous and perfect in God’s eyes, Jesus calls one who would be considered anything but righteous. We are tempted to compare Matthew to a modern tax collector. That doesn’t quite work. We don’t like tax collectors today because we don’t like paying taxes, but they are mostly honest, not especially wealthy people. In Jesus day, a tax collector was a thief, collecting tax for Rome and collecting enough extra to build his own wealth at the expense of the poor. By anyone’s worldly standards Matthew was not righteous, but Jesus will choose who Jesus will choose. God will choose who God will choose.

I told you there were two main categories of reasons not to serve, “I am not good enough” and “I am already good enough.” Let’s look at that second one.

“I am already good enough” sounds a little self-righteous, but it is not always that extreme. A whole lot of us have said, either out loud or to ourselves, “I am already doing enough.” There are, indeed, times when that is true. Sometimes, in our zeal to serve, we take on too many things. We may get into “can’t say no” syndrome. This can be a real problem in any church, where a small number of people are responsible for most of the ministry because they keep taking on more and more. But sometimes doing more doesn’t mean adding on.

I remember when I first felt a call to full-time ministry. My general response was, “Aren’t I already doing enough?” I was Sunday School Superintendent, I was a lay-leader, I was active in the United Methodist Men, I sang in the choir. But, you see, God wasn’t calling me to tack on more things, but to do something different.

Wherever you are in ministry, it is possible that God is calling you to do more, additional things. It is also possible that God is calling you to do more, other things, even possibly giving up the things you are doing now.

But let me honest with you, wherever you are in ministry, it is very unlikely that the challenge of the Gospel is going to say, “Good enough.:

At the risk of tossing out one of the most challenging pieces of scripture in the New Testament right at the end of my sermon,

Luke 18:

18 A certain ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 19Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 20You know the commandments: “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother.” ’ 21He replied, ‘I have kept all these since my youth.’ 22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ 23But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.

People get hung up on this because they think it is about money. But it is about more than money. It is making the point, no matter how good a job you think you are doing, there is more to do and God is going to call you to do it.

Which brings me to the last excuse I am going to cover today: “I am too busy.” You know what, you are right. You probably are too busy. I know I am. But, you know what, our busyness is our choice. There are things beyond our control. Perhaps we can’t work less, perhaps we have young children or aging parents that need our attention. But there are things we can control. We decide how much television to watch. We decide how much time we will spend on the internet. We decide what activities we or our children will participate in. We decide how much to buy and maintain and store. We decide how many hours we will spend worrying, fretting, planning procrastinating, blaming, hating, regretting, mistrusting, complaining…

Jesus was once asked:

36‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ 37He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

It may seem like too much, but as Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians:

Philippians 4

12I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. 13I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Today is a big day at Grace. Today we will decide if we will let the excuses determine our ministry or if we will be a church on fire with ministry. Today we have a chance to commit ourselves to reaching in to serve and nurture each other, to reach out to spread God’s love to our neighbors here and around the world and to reach up and personally take that next step in ministry leadership that will take this church to a whole new level of ministry.

I have been very clear what the excuses are. I hope I have been clear that the Gospel will not let those excuses fly. Today, I invite you to embrace the possibilities, to step up and step out. Today, I invite us all to be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

--

Your thought and comments are always welcome at willatgrace.blogspot.com.

Will Rice - Sermon #15 - Servants of Christ: Reaching Out to Serve

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Matthew 5:13-16

You can ask any member of my Disciple I class, Bible study is hard work. One of the hardest parts of Bible study is putting aside what you think you already know about what scripture means so that you can actually listen to what it has to say. It is not necessarily our fault that we come to scripture with a whole lot of preconceived notions about what it means. Even as a person who didn’t grow up reading scripture or hearing sermons, I had some notions about what things meant. As people over the years have interpreted the Bible, their interpretations have become part of the collective conscious of Christians a non-Christians alike. Some of these interpretations work their way into the language of the culture. You don’t have to read the parable of the Good Samaritan to know what a Good Samaritan is. I never read the Bible but I knew what it meant to say someone “walks on water” or is a “doubting Thomas.”

You don’t need a Bible study to know what the phrase “salt of the earth means.” You can look it up in the dictionary, which I did. It is listed as an idiom. Being a little fuzzy on high school English, I then had to look up idiom.

id·i·om (d-m) n. A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on.

Salt of the earth is an idiom that means “A person or group considered as the best or noblest part of society.”[1]

So, if I were to use the cultural understanding of this idiom to interpret the scripture from which it originally came, this would be a short sermon, I could say, “You are the salt of the earth! Congratulations! You have arrived!” I like the sound of that. They are very clear in seminary that you need to occasionally preach a “feel-good” sermon or people will stop liking you. I want people to like me so… “You are the salt of the earth! Congratulations! You have arrived!”

But, I am not so sure. What is salt anyway? Sodium Chloride is its chemical compound. I am not sure we think of salt the way that Jesus thought of salt. When I think of salt, I think of the stuff they used to melt the ice off the roads in my home in upstate New York. I also think of the chemical reaction that salt caused when it sat on the paint of my 1976 Datsun B-210. It caused oxidation leading to Iron Oxide, or rust, which led to pieces of my car falling off.

When I think of salt, I also hear my doctor’s voice in my head telling me not to eat so much of it, it is supposed to raise my blood pressure. When I think of salt, my heart is also strangely warmed when I think of all the things I like to put it on, especially French fries!

I think we can assume when Jesus speaks of salt, he is thinking of it in the positive way. In Jesus’ day and in the place where he lived salt was nearly as precious as Gold, though much more abundant. The Dead Sea area provided an abundance of salt through mines around the sea. One could also procure it simply by skimming some water out of the Dead Sea, putting it in a pan and letting the water evaporate leaving salt crystals behind.

Salt was precious because salt was life sustaining. Remember, people in Jesus time didn’t have refrigerators. Salt, because it was readily available, was an essential food preservative. Since most of us have refrigerators, we don’t do this much anymore, but meat soaked in a salt solution and then dried can last for months without refrigeration. The salt draws moisture out of the meat and kills the bacteria that normally makes it go bad. We tend to eat meat cured this way more as a delicacy than out of necessity. For people in Jesus’ day, without salt, food would spoil and there just wouldn’t be enough to eat.

Salt sustains.

You can imagine that a substance of this importance would start to gain, almost religious significance. This simple substance could stop rot and decay and help to preserve life-giving food. It may not seem so apparent to us in a time with frozen food and microwaves, but in Jesus’ time, it must have seemed almost mystical.

Now of course, it also didn’t take people long to figure out that this stuff makes things taste good. We now have so many cooking methods and sweeteners and spices that we tend to forget how miraculous salt can be. It is not the flavor of the salt, it is how it enhances the flavor of other things. Sometimes I will buy a wonderful piece of fish and cook it nice and slow on the grill and then bring it in and cut off a piece and it tastes like nothing. I then put just a dash of salt on it, and pow, the wonderful flavor of the fish and the smoke from the grill pop right out.

Salt seasons.

Imagine living in a time when cooking was pretty basic, done in a stone fire heated oven or over a simple open flame without any McCormick Grill Mates marinades or A1 Steak Sauce, salt was just plain miraculous.

The importance and value of salt is certainly attested to in the Bible. Job 6:6 reads:

⁶Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt?

Its seasoning properties are referred to as far back as Exodus (Ex. 30:35) as salt was used to season the incense used in worship. According to Leviticus 2, all offerings made to God had to be seasoned with salt.

¹³You shall not omit from your grain offerings the salt of the covenant with your God; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.

Which is all a long way of saying, when Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth;” he was saying quite a bit. I think with a deeper understanding of what salt would have meant to Jesus’ original audience, the idiomatic definition of salt of the earth as, “A person or group considered as the best or noblest part of society,” is quite limited, if not incorrect.

My contention is that this statement, “you are the salt of the earth,” is not a statement of status, but rather a statement of function.[2] I think this is immensely important so let me say it again. I believe the statement, “you are the salt of the earth,” is not a statement of status, but a statement of function.

Let me try to explain. If “you are the salt of the earth,” was a statement of status, I might say, as I did before “congratulations! (polite applause) You have arrived, you are the salt of the earth.”

If “you are the salt of the earth,” is a statement of function,” I might say, “we better get to work, we have a lot to do, we are supposed to be the salt of the earth.”

Now if being the salt of the earth is a statement of function, what are we supposed to do about it? You know a statement of function almost sounds like a mission statement. You know, I think we have one of those. It is Grace WINS, We Invite, Nurture, Serve.

Let’s think about it, what does salt do again? Salt sustains and salt seasons. Salt sustains life, it preserves food, it keeps bacteria from spoiling it. Salt seasons, we all know that one, it makes food taste better. How are we like salt? We sustain and we season this is our function. As Christ’s representatives in the world, we sustain life. We sustain it in two ways. First, and these are not in a particular order, We sustain life by sharing the Gospel, the good news of God in Jesus Christ. That is part of what we mean when we say we invite and nurture. Let me read you a line from the Gospel according to John 20:31:

³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,^* the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Second, we sustain life by providing for the least, the last, and the lost. That is what we are talking about when we say we serve. We sustain life by making sure that the people in our community, city, state country and world have enough to eat and drink, that they have clothes and shelter and a chance at life. 1 John 3

¹⁷How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister^* in need and yet refuses help? ¹⁸Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Salt sustains and salt seasons, the second half of that, seasoning means we are to, our function also is to season the world. Let me read you a quote:

Have you looked at these Christians closely? Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition; the sun shines for them, but they do not see it; the earth offers them its fullness, but they desire it no; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die.”[3]

That was written by Roman emperor Julian who took the throne after Constantine had made Christianity the religion of the Roman empire. Author Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”[4]

Well thank goodness that isn’t true anymore…

¹³"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

Well, here at Grace we are a pretty lively bunch, but I have to tell you, we have to think about perception. I can tell you from experience that young, unchurched folks think we are boring with a capital B. Now that may simply be a perception problem, but it is our perception problem.

Salt sustains and salt seasons. If we are to truly be the salt of the earth we must “discover the lost radiance of the Christian faith.” This should be exciting. It should be so exciting that people look at us and can’t help but wonder what the heck we are doing.

If we were more like habanero peppers and less like salt free all purpose food seasoning, we probably wouldn’t have to worry as much about evangelism because people would be coming to us to see what was going on.

Salt sustains and seasons. These two are intricately linked. It is through our actions as sustainers that we season. It is not as if we need to spend part of our time out bringing life and hope and part of our time being exciting. They are indeed one and the same.

Salt sustains and seasons.

I have to tell you, my first few weeks here at Grace were a little overwhelming. It seems I walked in during the middle of a little thing called Sea City Work Camp. Since I was so new and was still trying to find the bathroom and unpack my books, I was not much help to the youth and adults who were out in the sun every day repairing homes, replacing roofs and expressing God’s love to people in need in word and action. I got to watch and take it all in as they would all come back exhausted and exhilarated. They were invigorated by the life sustaining they were a part of and they were invigorating to watch.

Salt sustains and salt seasons.

You know, I spend a lot of time up here and in the classroom trying to be the one to share the gospel and teach the gospel and motivate others to accept and spread the good news, but here in the evening, watching those youth and adults reflecting upon what they did during the day, I was the recipient of the salty seasoning of their sustaining service.

Salt sustains and salt seasons.

Today is a day where if you realize that you want to be a part of sustaining and seasoning you can find how. Today is the second Sunday of our emphasis on stewardship of service. Some people misunderstand the goal of such a thing. They think that we, as church leadership are just look for volunteers to fill all the positions at the church. I will tell you honestly, if that was what church was all about, I would find something else to do with my time. This is about being the salt of the earth, this is about sustaining and seasoning ministries through which we reach out to each other and the world surrounding us to spread the love of God in word and deed and in doing so, radiate the love and joy that comes only from truly being active in the work of God.

Salt sustains and salt seasons.

In the list of ministries that you can commit to, ministries that you can learn more about in the glassway today, there is something that will not only bring God’s grace to someone else, there is something that will make your heart sing while you do it. It may be in feeding the homeless through Metro Ministries Loves and Fishes. It may be showing prison inmates that God’s love extends to them too through Kairos Prison Ministry. Maybe you are called to visit people who can’t come to church or who are in the hospital. You might be ready to help make Sea City possible touching the lives of our neighbors and the youth who serve. Some of you may be called to help with the All-Star mentoring program which gives local kids a better chance at life by connecting them with another adult they can look up to.

Maybe you won’t find anything among the ministries we offer. it may be that God has put something else on your heart. You might be being called to get Grace church involved in something new and there is a box on the commitment cards to check to talk to us about that.

You are the salt of the earth! That is our function, our sustaining and seasoning commission to bring life, to bring the good news of Christ to the world both through our actions and by the invigorating example those actions set.

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Through all this, may to God be the Glory.

---

[1] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[2] Douglas R.A. Hare, Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Matthew, (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993) 44

[3] Roman Emporer Julian, as quoted in, William Barclay, The Daily Bible Study Series, The Gospel of Matthew. Volume 1, (Phildadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956-58) 116

[4] Ibid., 116