Salt, Light, & Persecution

Introduction: A City Upon a Hill

As John Winthrop was preparing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a group of Puritan immigrants coming to the Massachusetts colony, he gave a sermon called A Model of Christian Charity. The sermon is well known for one of its famous lines, and I'll read it to you here. He says, "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world." You see, the Puritans earned their name because it came from a desire to purify the church and Christian life from what they believed were corruptions that had accumulated over time.

And Winthrop envisioned, as they came to the Massachusetts Colony, that they would be creating a new community where there would be an opportunity to live faithfully before God. And they hoped that that would also be a way they could do so visibly to the world. What's interesting about that phrase is it was picked up again about 350 years later by a guy named Ronald Reagan. And during his first election campaign, the city on the hill became a defining metaphor for him about America. And here's what he said:

"Well, America became more than a story or a byword. I believe that Americans are every bit as committed to that vision of a shining city on a hill as they were those long ago settlers."

You see, in Reagan's hands, the biblical image of a city upon a hill became the image of America itself—of hope, of freedom, and exceptionalism. Now, for those of us who are older—I was just born about that time—this probably rings a bit true in our ears. We believed that what he said really was true. And I wonder if we feel some of the pangs of that as we look at our world now. In fact, that might explain some of the intensity of the political movements that come from the feeling that we have right now that we're losing what we believed America was supposed to be.

But that's not what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount.

If you remember last week, Jesus begins the sermon with the Beatitudes, those series of blesseds where we see what life in the kingdom of heaven looks like. We see things like poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, and mercy, among other things. These are the things that, as we shall see today, glorify our Father in heaven. But Jesus also tells us that living this way is going to lead to various degrees of persecution, because the kingdom runs against the values of this world around us. It shows the culture that rather than being a mature, modern person or properly progressive as we think we are, we're actually missing what God has intended for humanity all along.

The place where this is lived out most clearly is where the kingdom is most visible. And that's amongst God's people, the church. Jesus calls us, the church, to be salt (which is a preservative) and light (a source of illumination) in a world that is opposed to God. In light of that, therefore, Christ calls his church to be a preserving and an illuminating influence in the world, even when our faithfulness brings opposition, so that the reality of the kingdom of heaven might be known. He does this in three ways—at least we're going to look at it in three ways:

First is the idea of being a salty church.
Second, the idea of being a shining church.
And lastly, being an enduring church.

1. A Salty Church

So verse 13, as we dive into our text, says, "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot." What do you think Jesus means here? Here are some observations that perhaps would be helpful as we look at this.

First, the word "you" here in this passage is plural, not singular. We often have a tendency in our Western culture to think very individually when we see "you." The first thing we think of is me, right? I'm the "you" in that sentence. And while there's some truth that we are involved in this, the real thing that Jesus, I think, is talking about—he has gathered his disciples in front of him to teach that he sees them as a collective. Jesus is addressing them. He says, these are the ones for whom the kingdom of heaven is most present at the moment. "You are salt," he says. So for today, let me read this as if first, we're speaking about us together, that we are salt together as a community, as a church. And then we can see that there are practical implications that flow from that.

Second, salt in this passage is a primary metaphor. You know, the funny thing about salt is we don't often think about salt very often, do we? Except if we have, like, a diet and can't have too much salt. But in the ancient world, salt was extremely important. Salt had a number of uses in the ancient world. One is that it preserved food from decay. It seasoned food as well. It's often seen as a nutrient, right? There's companies right now that are making a lot of money selling little packets of, like, flavored salt to put in your water. Jesus doesn't stop to tell us exactly what way he wants us to use salt, but the image is clear: his kingdom people are to have a distinctive and beneficial presence in the world around them, just like salt in proper doses has a distinctive and beneficial presence to the things in which you put it.

And the third thing, he says that once we lose our saltiness, we can't be made salty again. And salt that isn't salty has ceased to fulfill the very purpose for which it was made. Jesus isn't telling us that the salt might become a little less salty and therefore maybe a little less beneficial; rather, he's describing something that undermines its very purpose. And if that's the case, what good is it? It's to be trampled underfoot. In fact, we sort of do that on an icy day when we need traction. Like, yes, we're using the salt to melt ice, but sometimes it's just nice to have salt down so I don't slip.

So how might the church, as an expression of the kingdom, be like salt? Well, one way that we do this is through our charity to the world around us. You see, when we come alongside others who are in need, we are being like salt in the world. And in these ways, we act as a preservative in our culture, helping to make sure that things don't go rotten or decay.

So here's a couple examples that we'll look at this morning, just thinking about Redeemer itself. You know, there are times when people are going through things that are just more than they can manage. And one of the things that we offer—in fact, we're about to do it for two families—is we offer meals for people. It's a simple thing, it's a simple way, and yet the idea of saying, "I don't have to come home and make dinner while I'm learning how to add a baby into my family," is a tremendous way to do that. And it's something that as anyone coming into our kingdom or into our church here has a need, we would be more than happy to provide that sort of need for them.

Another, we had Nick from Love INC here last week, and for the last few years, we've been having an annual workday with Love INC. We go out into the community and we're looking to help individuals with real and tangible needs. The goal is to help people who are struggling, and in doing so, we're giving them a practical example of what it means to live life within the kingdom of heaven.

We see this in the ancient church when they used to rescue exposed babies. In a world where one of the primary ways of dealing with unwanted children was to set them out in the wilderness and to let them die, the church was known for going out and rescuing those children and bringing them into their home and raising them as their own. We do the same thing when we foster kids or when we adopt children who don't have parents. We often do similar things when we come alongside ZoëCare in the community, either as a sponsor or a volunteer, in order to help women who are in need of reproductive care.

We also see this in how the ancient church dealt with slavery. Slavery was not just common in the Roman world—in fact, there were millions of slaves all throughout the empire. Many of the early Christians were probably slaves. And as Darren has reminded us, when you hear the name Secundus and Tertius, those are numbers, because oftentimes slaves were not named, but slaves were numbered. Paul wrote a whole letter introducing a kingdom reality into the master-slave relationship. He writes a letter to a slave owner named Philemon, whose slave Onesimus had run away. And Paul's like, "Hey, he ran away. He's become a Christian, and he's been really helpful to me. I send him back to you, but I send him back to you not just as a slave now, but as a brother." And one of the implications many scholars would say of the letter is: maybe you should start having him be less of a slave and more of a brother. And if you could, could you send him back to me? Because he's really helpful.

And we see this even more clearly in the life of someone like William Wilberforce, who was an English politician who spent decades of his career looking to end the slave trade throughout England. And all of this was directly because of his faith. Since we don't generally keep slaves anymore, when the church advocates for proper justice in a world where justice isn't present, we are doing the same thing. We are being salt in a world that needs to be preserved and seasoned rightly. When we care for refugees and seek to find safe places for people, that's another example of being salt in the world.

But all the good works that we've just shown don't replace the gospel. In fact, they help to embody it. Our proclamation of the gospel doesn't excuse us from the good works that Jesus has planned for us. They actually flow from the reality that the kingdom is here, and the kingdom doesn't exist simply to make life better or to make dreams come true, or to fulfill even what Ronald Reagan's dreams for America might be. But it comes, rather, to redeem sinners, to break generational patterns of sin, and to give us what we need most: connection to God. We do these good things not because of merit or any good they do us personally, but because they glorify God and they bring life to those who are dying physically, metaphorically, and spiritually.

So what does it mean, then, for us to lose our saltiness? Well, one thing would be to stop caring about the kingdom. When our engagement with the world around us stops us from bringing the reality of Christ and the call to his kingdom life with it, all we're doing is behavior modification. When we replace the goodness of Christ with the goodness of an outcome, we stop being kingdom people. And when the church focuses on social ills to the neglect of the actual gospel itself, we lose our saltiness.

We also do this when we try to be salt, but only become salty. Glad you guys picked up on that! An example would be when we try to "own" those people with whom we disagree. In fact, one only needs to do a short little search on YouTube and you'll get video after video with a title that riffs something along the lines of "Christian Destroys Atheist" or "Progressive Owned by Christian Comeback." And while some of these things are things that I would like to see—I would love to see an atheist argument get utterly shown to be false—I wonder if the more we use that language, the more likely we are actually going to do that to other people in the world around us. If we're simply keyboard warriors for Christ, rather than being salt, we're just being mean. And when we do so, we're not acting as salt anymore. You see, salt is different from what surrounds it, but its purpose is not to destroy it. Its purpose is to preserve and to make better. And so as salt, we're not called to blend into the world that we live in. We aren't called to wage war against the world either. Jesus has placed us into the world as a life-giving presence that makes his kingdom known to people who are in need of everything it brings.

2. A Shining Church

The second metaphor that Jesus gives us in many ways is similar to the first. It's a parallel. Let's look at what he has to say. He begins verse 14 by saying, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden."

Just a couple observations. One actually is the metaphor of light being so important. Light is the language of goodness all throughout the Gospels. In fact, in Matthew chapter 4, verse 16—not like 30, 40 verses before, 20 verses before—Jesus says, quoting from Isaiah, "The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned, a light has come." And so now, a handful of verses later, he says to his disciples, "The light of the world you now are a part of." Jesus is the dawning of the light of the kingdom, and now he invites those who are gathered around him to reflect that light and join in making the city known.

He says that a city on a hill cannot be hidden. And one commentator I read notes that most cities aren't built on hills, because to build a city on a hill is pretty expensive. Gotta move all the stuff up the hill, right? Oftentimes cities are built at the bottom of a hill. But if you build a city on a hill, you're doing it to say something. You want it to be seen. And as the light at night from that city goes out, people can see it from afar. The goal is to say, "We are here; you can come."

He goes on to say in verse 15 that neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on a stand so that it will give light to the whole house. Most Jews lived in a one to two room house at best, and they didn't have 60-watt light bulbs and electric switches. They'd have one, maybe two lamps to provide light, and they'd probably be the equivalent of a 20-watt bulb. So you don't put it under a bowl, because again, to put a light under a bowl is to cover its light. And a covered light isn't doing its job; it's not illuminating anything. Instead, he says, you take a light and you put it on a stand, because when you put it on a stand, the light now, rather than just looking at the page in front of you giving you a chance to read a book, it illuminates the whole room and everyone benefits from it. And this is how we, the people of Jesus' kingdom, should live our lives: lights to the world.

He goes on in verse 16, saying, "In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." There's an interesting set of ideas here, because in other places—like just a few verses down in Matthew chapter 6, verse 1—Jesus actually says, "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them, because if you do, you'll have no reward from your Father in heaven." So which way is it? Are our good deeds to be seen, or are our good deeds to be hidden? I think the answer lies in who gets the glory. You see, in Matthew 6:1, he makes it pretty clear that we're the ones who want to receive the glory, and he basically says, "You have received your reward already." But in Matthew 5:16, the one who is glorified is the Father. And that is our job as God's people: to bring glory to the Father.

I also don't think he's merely talking about isolated good deeds. We often think about like, "Hey, you know, I was a Boy Scout when I grew up and I had to do my one good deed a day, right? Had to check my box, walk ladies across the street." But I think Jesus is actually talking not just about our isolated good deeds, but this idea of a life that is oriented toward doing the good things that the Lord would have before us. It's a life that expresses the kind of goodness that flows from the Beatitudes that we looked at in verses 1 through 10 last week. It's a life that comes from the transformation that only the gospel can bring us as the Spirit enters our heart and changes us and makes us more like Christ.

And again, this is where the kingdom is different from the rest of the world. We do what we do not to bring an end to all of the evils in the world, although that would be nice. We do what we do to bring glory to the Father. Jesus doesn't call us to eliminate the darkness before the kingdom will come in its fullness. He calls us to shine within a world that is dark.

What does that look like? Well, in many ways, as I mentioned before, it's probably done mostly by the saltiness that we just looked at when we do all the things that we looked at already—caring for the needy, the broken, and the hurting. We also do it, though, when we proclaim who Christ is and what he's done. When we invite people to enter into the kingdom of heaven by inviting them to trust in Christ, we are shedding light in dark places. It's in those times that we display the goodness of who he is, we proclaim the goodness of who he is, and ultimately we act as a beacon to those who are in need of a light that leads to redemption. And this gives us the chance to present the reality of a kingdom that looks different from a world that seeks its own.

3. An Enduring Church

You'd think everyone would want this, right? You'd think, who would object to caring for the hurting, or to mercy, or to charity? I mean, surely if we lived this way, the world would welcome us, right? The world would love the people of God for doing that. But Jesus tells us, no, that's not what's going to happen. In verse 11, he says that we will be insulted, persecuted, and that people will give false testimony and say evil about us because of him.

One thing we should understand from this passage is not that we *might* experience negative consequences; I think Jesus is assuming that we *will* experience negative consequences. And I realize that living in modern America, it's sort of different for us to think about some of those things compared to, say, living in China or in India where they're shutting down churches and closing doors. But we often experience things that Jesus says. Let's think about a couple examples.

He starts by saying, "When they insult you." There are times in the media that Christians are portrayed as being less intelligent compared to, say, more modern people. One of my favorite examples is just in the character of Ned Flanders from *The Simpsons*. Ned is treated as an honest Christian, seems to care about Jesus and care about doing what's right, but he's also seen as tremendously naive and out of touch and a bit of a rube. We could come up with example after example of something like that.

He goes on. We could also say along with Jesus that they are falsely going to say all kinds of evil against you. Another example of this would be Christopher Hitchens, who is no longer of this world, but he was a well-known atheist, and during a 2007 interview on C-SPAN he described Billy Graham as being a self-conscious fraud and a disgustingly evil man. I'm sure he's done some wrong things, but that's a bit far.

Sometimes Christians have perhaps treated people who have gender issues badly and been rightly criticized for it, but there are times we're simply affirming a biblical ethic of sexuality has put us in a place where we have accusations of hatred and accusations of bigotry. Yes, there are many times where faithfulness to Christ is going to bring tangible consequences. It will bring tangible consequences to relationships and opportunities for us to be able to move forward, perhaps in our job or in other places. But for most of us, it still isn't comparable yet to what many of our brothers and sisters around the world are experiencing. Jesus says it'll come. When the church is the church, it will come.

And yet we have to understand the *why* we experience these things. It's because of Jesus. And he says in verse 11, "on my account." It is because of me. If you are disliked or hated because you are actively being an antagonist, you are not being salt and light for the kingdom. But when we suffer because we are truly representing Christ, when we live out the realities of the gospel—poverty of spirit, mercy, meekness, peacemaking, etc.—our lives expose the realities of a world that is in opposition to Christ, and they will hate us for it.

But you see, this is where the calling to be salt and light is most needed. It's when we are the ones who are suffering. Because when we suffer for the sake of Christ and his kingdom, we're just like the prophets, as he tells us. They also suffered for speaking truth to a rebellious Israel. And the disciples of Christ become like prophets to the world around them. And one thing that's true of the biblical prophet is they will always be persecuted. But rather than giving in for the sake of comfort or in the hopes of being accepted by the world, Jesus rather calls us to endure for the sake of the kingdom.

Jesus even goes further. He doesn't merely tell us to endure it; he tells us in verse 12 to "rejoice and be glad." Why? Not because persecution is good, but because "your reward is great in heaven." You see, the best the world can offer us is a few decades at best of rewards and riches, but Jesus offers us rewards with the Father, and those are eternal.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus redefined what it means to be blessed. The world tells us you're blessed when people respect you or approve of you or think well of you. Jesus responds with, "Blessed are you when they revile you because of me." As we embrace the reality of life with Christ in his kingdom, we are called to be faithful. You see, he never promised that if we're salty or bright enough that things would be easy. He calls us to endure when the darkness pushes back.

But the beauty of this is Jesus doesn't ask us to do something that he hasn't done himself. He's already walked this road before us. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was mocked, that he was falsely accused, that he was rejected, and ultimately he was crucified on our behalf. So the King who calls us to endure persecution endured that very same thing himself. And he invites us then to join in his experience as we bring the reality of his kingdom to earth. And he doesn't ask us to do it alone. He sends his Spirit. His Spirit indwells the church as a whole. His Spirit indwells our hearts to make us more salty and more like light, and to help us endure.