Original Airdate: February 5, 2023
Isaiah 58:7-10 | 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 | Matthew 5:13-16

Keep your family safe, oh Lord, with unfailing care that, relying solely on the hope of heavenly grace, they may be defended always by your protection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever, amen.

This set of readings carries a beautiful message of light and life. I love the opening prayer, because it started with the idea that we are here in relationship with people, and God, who has care for us, interest in how our life goes, he looks at our family, the people that are in our life with us and asks us simply to rely on something called grace ⎯ grace, unmerited love, presence, care, attention from God and that he gives us enormous protection from something that the first reading talks about. And I love this image, because it’s so real in my life and in many of your lives, and that is this thing called gloom or darkness. I don't know how exactly to describe it, but one way I could is to say it’s about anxiety and about fear and about dread and even depression. So when we think about what God asks us to do and we think about why we should follow him, when we aren’t in union with him, when we’re not in the place that he calls us to be, there will be a sign that there’s something missing, and it is often anxiety and fear and shame. And it’s just a sign to us, like any corruption in any institution says things need to change, things need to be different, and maybe our relationship to God has to be radically different, because so often we’re doing what we think we have to do in order for God to love us. We have to clean up our act, do the right thing, stop doing bad things. And sometimes homilies do nothing more than give us good advice as to how to act, but when you listen to carefully to the insights of scripture, it really isn’t talk about doing as much as it’s talking about being. Who are you? For the thing that is overarching in this particular set of readings, I can say that who we are is someone who is dedicated and in need of a relationship with God that is real, that is tangible, that feels different. Life is different when you’re in it with someone, and when you’re with the one who’s created you and created the world and is in charge of it, there is a really wonderful chance that you will not be caught in darkness and gloom.

How do you know you’re with him? What is it he’s asking you to do or to be? Well, he uses images, and that’s really important, but the images are always more than what they seem on the surface. So here he’s saying, in Isaiah, God is saying, “I want you to be attentive to the needs of the people around you. If they’re hungry, I want you to feed them. If they’re oppressed and homeless, if they’re drifting and have no place that they feel is protecting them, do something to help them feel protected, feel enclosed in a safe place. And if they’re naked,” meaning if they don’t have a role or a place in the world, because clothing often depicts a certain office that you have, a police uniform, a collar on a priest, a beautiful dress on someone who’s not going out to do something like the market but going to something special. Clothes, in a way, have a way of saying, “This is who I’m about. This is what I’m doing. This is my persona in this particular case.” So when we see this promise in Isaiah that, if you listen to God’s desire, first and foremost, to do these things for you, then you will do them for others, and the sign that he’s not doing them for you is this darkness, and he’ll remove it. And the interesting thing of the sign that it’s removed from you, that you’re no longer feeling that you don’t have a place, that you’re somehow not enough, that you don’t know what you’re called to do, you don’t have a team of people around you that support you, then you’re going to be negative. And you know what it’s like to have a negative person in your midst. They’re constantly feeling ⎯ you feel oppressed, and you listen to them accuse everyone of bad choices and misinformation and conspiracies. It’s malicious speech that just pours out of you, because somehow you’re not in touch with who you are. Most of the complaining we do about other people is what we really are afraid is happening within us. So the first reading says, “Look, there’s something you have to allow God to do for you if you are going to be able to do it for others.” And I want to talk more about what it is that God offers you and me.

The two images that are so strong in this set of readings is a belief in who God is first and foremost, and that’s what we see in St. Paul. I used this particular passage ⎯ it’s really interesting to me. I used this when I had my first job of being in charge of a community. I’d been an associate pastor for six years, and I was made chaplain of the University of Dallas, and I was terrified. I was on my own, and I didn’t know how to do ministry with students. I’d never had that ⎯ I was a student at once. I had a chaplain that was deeply impactful in my life, but I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t think I had enough wisdom or enough strength to do it. So I immediately gravitated to this image of Paul being a person who said, “Look, I’m not a really smart guy, and I don’t have a lot of wisdom.” And I was going to be surrounded by intellectual people at the University of Dallas, and I thought, “Do I have anything to say that is smart, wise?” And all of a sudden, it made clear ⎯ Paul made it clear to me, is that I’m not here to talk in perfect sentences and perfect grammar and perfect insight and perfect, well-crafted sentences. I’ve come to offer something, and what I offer is my experience of Christ and Christ crucified. And what is Christ crucified for Paul, and what does he see in God so clearly that he never saw before and it caused his conversion? That was the crucifixion. God forgave sin through the act of Jesus dying on the cross so that Paul could be drawn into a religion that he felt and knew that he sinned against. And so he’s saying, “I can witness that. I can’t maybe articulate it like I’d like to, but I can witness the fact that I walk around being who I am because of a God who has taken me in in my imperfection, in my darkness, and he is leading me, and he is asking me to be a light to the world.” That’s what we’re asked to be to each other, a light, the light of life.

The gospel gives us two images of how we can imagine what this gift is like and what God gives us and what we’re asked to give to another. So Jesus talking to his disciples about their ministry, he’s not talking about how you start a homily and start a talk and then do this conclusion, you visit each house three, four times. He doesn’t give you things to do. He’s saying, “Here’s what I want you to believe. I’ve given you something. In fact you are something if you’ll just open your mind and your heart to being who I’ve called you to be. You are salt.” And what I love about salt, when he says, “Now, be sure you don’t lose this,” he’s saying, by using salt ⎯ salt doesn’t lose its seasoning. You can take salt and pick up a piece of salt that’s been on the salt for ten years, and it’s still salt. So there’s something about saying, “You have to be salt to the earth and don’t let that salt ever lose its taste.” Well, the only way you can do that is to not use salt, and what does salt do? It has two roles. It enhances the flavor of something. If you put it on spinach, it doesn’t make the spinach salty necessarily as much as it makes it more tasting like spinach. It’s like salt makes things more of what they are. What a beautiful image of who we want to be for each other. Help people to be who they really are. And then it is a preservative. It preserves things. It keeps things alive, from being ⎯ free of decay, darkness, gloom. So Jesus is giving his disciples, in this first image, a beautiful way of imagining what it means to be his follower. “Stay with me. Watch me salt people. Watch me do something that brings people into a place where they are being protected against that which would destroy them.”

And then he says, “Another thing you are is light.” And this one is so rich, because it’s all about being enlightened. Enlightenment is consciousness. It is an awareness of the reality of the mystery of God in a way that makes total sense and infuses itself into everything you do. It’s not just an idea. It’s not just a direction of what to do. It’s an experience. To be enlightened is to have light in you. To have light in you means that you’ve accepted your darkness as an impossible thing for you to remove, and yet you want it removed. So you open your heart to and your mind to enlightenment, and when you are enlightened, it is not for you to go in a closet and feel how wonderful the light is. No, your light is to shine before others so that they can see something. And notice it doesn’t say so they can see your good deeds, just you, but to see your good deeds and then, in the process of seeing deeds, to glorify your Heavenly Father, because he’s the source of all your good deeds, all your good works, all your good intentions, all the resonance of light and life that...