Let Your Light Shine

Matthew 5:13-20

Since I attended seminary more than ten years ago, I’ve been aware of a constant narrative about the church in the USA: it’s dying.

Much ink, column inches, and webspace has been given over to pontifications as to why. Churches are dying because they are getting political. Churches are dying because they aren’t preaching about Jesus anymore. Churches are dying because they won’t pay for a band and insist on using an organ in worship. Churches are dying because they aren’t connectihg with young families. Take your pick!

But I wonder about what Jesus teaches his disciples on the mount in the Gospel of Matthew when I consider this question. Jesus tells the disciples “you are the salt of the earth,” and, “you are the light of the world.” And connected to this powerful affirmation is a warning: salt can lose its taste and light is in danger of being hidden.

What if the church is dying because it is losing its flavor and hiding its light?

I think the church, especially the mainline protestant church, has been in danger for quite some time because our witness to the world has become insipid—it has lost its saltiness. A message meant to be saltiness but which has lost its flavor. Some churches in the US have quite a salty flavor, especially the church that has attached it self to a growing political movement on the right that is taking our country toward authoritarian rule. The “good news” they proclaim is quite salty and flavorful.

But I think it doesn’t have much light. That message relies on a common enemy to cohere its followers. That message believes that the kingdom of God is made manifest through domination. (A really brilliant summary of this is made by an Atlantic investigative journalist; it’s worth the free digital trial to the atlantic to read this if you don’t have a subscription.)

But being the light of the world means something else to me. That means that people see God’s light through us. We are like lamps—and there are so many ways that the words we speak and actions we take can affect the kind of light people might see from us. If we are the light of the world, but we base on our faith on certain people being “in” and others being “out,” we dim our light. If we are the light of the world but the actions we take and the words we speak are completely disconnected from our faith, we dim our light.

If we are the light of the world, but we keep that light to ourselves, what is the point of the light?

The thing that keeps me grounded in my faith, a faith that was raised up in an environment where all of the emphasis was on believing the right things, is that faith is not an abstraction, it is something that comes to life when we live it out. Believing in the right thing isnt enough if we aren't putting that belief into action.

We believe that Jesus did not come to the world to condemn it, but to save it. And so we live our lives that way: not rushing to condemnation as a way to proclaim the Gospel, but rushing to Love. The church isn’t dying because we aren’t believing the right things, perhaps the church is dying because people have stopped seeing the church actually sharing light with the world. Perhaps the church is dying because our salt is losing its flavor.

And I think we can do something about that simply by making our faith a part of our life beyond Sunday morning worship.