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Sermon on the Mount: Salt and Light

 Matthew 5:13-16

 

Fathers' Day

June 15, 2003

Salt and Light

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.

¹⁴“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

One hot steamy August day when they had guests for dinner, a father asked his four-year-old boy named Johnny to say the blessing for the meal.  He thought it would be cute.  Johnny didn’t really want to and complained, “Dad, I don’t know what to say!” The father glibly replied, in front of their guests, “Oh, just say what you hear me say.” Obediently, Johnny bowed his head and mumbled, “Oh Lord, why did we invite these people over anyway?”[1]

As most of us who have children well know, children are hogwash detectors.  If you have anything to hide, if there are aspects of your life that you are not comfortable with or are not proud of, don't let the folks of whom you are most afraid, talk to your kids.

For over fifteen years, I have been active in Christian ministry among youth.  If you have been a teacher, a youth counselor or a parent of teenagers, you too must know, that insincerity and inconsistency turn young people off and send them running for the hills faster than a pop quiz after Christmas Vacation.

Integrity and character and consistency in the influence of individuals upon one another, these are the teachings that come to us today from the Sermon on the Mount.

Today is Fathers' Day and on a day like today, we consider the relationship of parents, and most particularly fathers with their children.  Yet some of the principles of parenting and relations with children and young people are common to all relationships we have and are particularly important in light of Christ's call to all people, to be salt and light in the world, to be as a shining city on the hill, an example and a testimony of Christian life and character in a world that needs the grace and love of the Gospel message.

More than ten years ago, a story was done in Time magazine on the state of American fatherhood. 

In the story the author cited studies of the families off young criminals that found that more than 70% of all juveniles in state reform institutions came from homes in which a father has had no positive relationship or influence.  Children from such ruined families were found to be nearly twice as likely to drop out of high school as those children in families where fathers still related to their kids.  After assessing the studies, one economist suggested that ``school failure may well have as much to do with disintegration of families as with the quality of schools.''

In her 15 years tracking the lives of children of divorced families, another researcher found that five years after a split, more than a third of the children in the family experienced moderate or severe depression.  After 10 years a significant number of the young men and women appeared to be troubled, drifting and underachieving. At 15 years many of the thirtyish adults were struggling to create strong love relationships of their own.  It was found that daughters with such conflicted relationships with their fathers, ``often experience great difficulty establishing a realistic view of men in general, developing realistic expectations and exercising good judgment in their choice of partners.''

For boys, the crucial issue is role modeling. There are psychologists who suggest that boys without fathers risk growing up with low self-esteem, becoming overly dependent on women and emotionally rigid. ``Kids with bad fathers are forced to find their own ways of doing things,'' observed one social worker. ``So they come up with their own ideas, from friends and from gangs. Nobody is showing them what to do.''[2]

The influence fathers have on their children is undeniable.  The influence of a father on his child can not be avoided.  It is clear that even a totally absent father has influence by his absence.  But what kind of influence should a father who is present provide?  How does anybody who is in relationship with others, whether they be a father or mother, a friend, an acquaintance or whatever shed light, provide flavor of act as a good example?  How does any Christian man or woman positively impact those around himself or herself?

A preacher in the Midwest tells about a couple in his church who boasted to all their friends & neighbors that they were flying to New York City. They were only going to be able to spend one day there, but the highlight of their trip would be to go & see the Broadway play, “My Fair Lady.” They were so proud of this, & everyone was really impressed because no one else in that small town had ever been to a play on Broadway.

The day came, & when they arrived in New York they took a taxi to the theatre where “My Fair Lady” was playing. To their dismay, they found that the play was sold out for the night.

They thought, “What do we do now? Everybody knows that we came to see ‘My Fair Lady.’ We don’t dare tell them that we didn’t.” So they found a couple of ticket stubs on the sidewalk & picked them up. They bought a program that described the various acts of the play. They went home singing “I Could Have Danced all Night.” And they told everybody that they had gone to see “My Fair Lady.”

The preacher said, “That’s right. They had the ticket stubs. They had the program. They had been to the theatre. They knew the music. But the trouble is, they didn’t see the performance.”

Then he added, “A lot of Christians are like that. We come to church. We have the bulletin. We know the songs. We know how to sound and how to come off.  The problem is that many of us have never really made Jesus the Lord of our lives.”[3]

Fathers as much as any ordinary Christian, must have a depth and a grounding in their own life in order to have a lasting, caring and purposeful impact on any other life with whom relationships are formed.

A Christian father cannot call himself a Christian Father without Christ.  Any ordinary Christian cannot be a bearer of the gospel, cannot provide salt and light, cannot invite a friend to church or tell someone why their faith has been so important to them, without first knowing Christ and Christ's impact in her soul.

On and off since early May, we've looked at some of the Sermon on the Mount.  In those passages we've seen some of Jesus' advice on how to live a Christian life.  We've certainly left a great deal untapped and later in the Summer will return to some of these themes, both in the Beatitudes and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.  But today, I want to encourage and remind each of us that if we want to influence individuals in our lives with an effect that is charged with the Gospel of Christ, that is truly a light for the world, a city built on the apex of a hill for all to marvel at or a spice that adds flavor and zest to your life and to your world, you must turn to Christ and his word.

If you were to read only the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, from chapter five to seven, which describe only a fraction of all that Jesus taught and did, you would find instruction on the following topics:

The Bible is neither a manual to life nor a how-to book.  It is good news, it is gospel.  It tells the story of God's love and saving grace through the work of Jesus Christ.  However, it does also provide inspired and God-breathed wisdom from the Son of Man and the Author of life.

So then, what about for fathers?  Is there any special instruction here in this word of God for them, with which they may influence their children and help build homes full of nurture and nourishment?

In the Apostle Paul's letter to the Colossians we hear, "fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.[4]

In the letters of John we hear, "⁸I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you… ¹³ I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning… ²³And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. ²⁴All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us. [5]

Not provoking children to anger, disciplining and instructing in the way of God, loving one another and having the father himself obey the commandments, these are among the words of wisdom offered to fathers in the word of God.

Indeed, after a few thousand words debating the proper role of fathers in our society, whether its better to lay down the law but let a child's mother do the hands-on parenting or to actually get involved in diaper changes, homework and coaching baseball, the author of that Time magazine article concludes,

"While researchers have found that children whose fathers are involved in their early rearing tend to have higher IQs, perform better in school and even have a better sense of humor, psychologists are quick to say this is not necessarily a gender issue. ``It has to do with the fact that there are two people passionately in love with a child…'

Ultimately all the reading and ingesting the wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments, the teachings of the Prophets and the Abrahamic, Mosaic and Levitical Laws, and all the rest of the teachings of Jesus himself is not enough to impress Christian life on a peer or to provide guidance for a son or daughter. 

The proper way to act as a Christian Father, the most successful way to attract others to God, like a gleaming city on a hill or a light on a lampstand is to know the Word and to live the Word – to infuse and mold and glue together all the wisdom and thinking and teaching and knowledge you might have of the biblical witness, to the very marrow of your bones, to the way you act, the things you say, the character and personality you forge for yourself and the person you become with feats of love and faithfulness acting as the glue.  This is the very definition of Christian integrity.

The poet and columnist Edgar Guest wrote,

“I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day,

I’d rather one would walk with me than merely tell the way;

The eye’s a better pupil & more willing than the ear,

Fine counsel is confusing, but example’s always clear. …

I may not understand the high advice you give,

But there’s no misunderstanding how you act & how you live."[6]

In order to provide salt and light to another life, yes the gospel and the teachings of our Lord are essential, but they are not necessarily to be regurgitated and force-fed like multiplication tables or nursery rhymes.  They are to be lived.

"Love is patient, Love is kind…It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends,"[7]  says the Apostle Paul for instance. 

These are good words to know and to teach.  Yet they are even better words to live and show and embody and allow to shine forth like light from ones eyes and like a pungent, tangy flavor from ones interactions with others.

So on this Fathers' Day and every day of our lives I encourage every one of us fathers and every one else here today to, "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."