An Inside Job

Message for Sunday, February 9, 2014

 

  

Scripture   Matthew 5:13-16

Dear Jesus:

In John’s gospel we hear you testify: “I am the light of the world.”

And now we hear you say of us in Matthew’s gospel: “You are the light of the world.” 

  Now tell us, dear Jesus: Which should we believe?

Take a step back, you say? Okay: We will. For what’s this you say about a Gospel of Thomas? …

 

How many of us have heard of the so-called Gospel of Thomas? It’s not in our biblical canon, of course – and yet it’s a recent find I think we all need to know about. A little background, if I may; this is important, and at the risk of sounding dry …

The Thomas manuscript was discovered in Egypt in 1945. Many scholars believe it provides invaluable insight into the oral traditions that gave rise to our four standard gospels. There are no narratives in the Gospel of Thomas. It consists only of sayings attributed to Jesus.

The reason I share all this: Many of Jesus’ sayings here are found later in remarkably similar fashion in Matthew and Luke’s gospels. One of those sayings forms the basis for Jesus’ words we hear to his disciples today: “You are the light of the world.” 

Interestingly, there seems to have been an ancient clash between the “You are the light of the world” Jesus in Thomas and the “I am the light of the world” Jesus in John. Parallels between the two suggest that Thomas' work preceded John's work, and that John then issued a point-by-point rejoinder to Thomas.

 

Case-in-point: John’s foil we know as Doubting Thomas. You may recall that in John’s Gospel, when the resurrected Jesus appears to the other disciples,  Thomas did not believe what they told him: “We have seen the risen Lord!” He needed visual proof. When the risen Christ gave it to him, he shouted out that great confessional oath: “My Lord and my God!” One can almost hear John in the narrative background: “Gotcha, Thomas! The light is Jesus, and not in you! You’ve come around!”

In Thomas’ work – which again directly influenced Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount – resurrection is not mentioned as an external Jesus-centered event. Resurrection of one’s life is experienced through personal epiphany, teased out from us by Jesus: “You are the light of the world!” John’s gospel, however, has Thomas – again, his foil – experiencing only Jesus’ resurrection, and in so doing confessing John’s core truth: Only Jesus can be the true light and the true Lord.

 

So, friends – in the words of the late folk singer Pete Seeger: Which side are you on? The recently-discovered Gospel of Thomas, reflected by Matthew’s Jesus today: Jesus says, “You are the light of the world?” Or, do you side with the Gospel of John: Jesus says, “‘I am the light of the world.’”?

Joe Bunker has been helpful to me here. At 66 years and counting, Joe is our longest active member in our congregation. Going back to the first post-World War II years, Joe has seen a lot here – and has many stories to share.

And one story Joe has shared with me I share with you now with his permission. It seems that in the mid-1980s, Joe was approached in a restaurant by another member of this church. This was a time when our pastor was the late Tal Haynes, and there was a great controversy swirling: Tal had divorced his wife and one year later, with nary an announcement, married the church organist. Add that to the fact that Tal labored in the great Carl Pritchett’s shadow, and you can see where this was going: Some defended Tal, some wanted him out. Our church was divided; in a handful of years, we lost over half of our membership.

Back to Joe’s restaurant encounter. His friend approached him and asked, “Which side are you on?” Joe reports that he responded, “I’m not on anybody’s side!”

Guess who remains faithful to this church to this day. “I’m not on anybody’s side.”

Guess how God might want us to remain faithful today to the gospels passed down in our scriptures to us. Which side are you? Not anybody’s side – really. Regardless of what Jesus may or may not have said, I find it can be a faithful stance today to embrace the words found in Matthew and the ones found in John: “Jesus said, ‘You are the light of the world,’ and “Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world.’”

Let me suggest we embrace both. That we move beyond the search for discrepancy to discover integrity, from reveling in that Thomas-and-John conflict to enjoying our scripture’s harmony. Let me suggest we lay stake to this claim: God’s Epiphany light cannot be quenched however it shines – through Christ, or through us as in Christ. That God’s Epiphany light is found by Jesus through us, and found by us “in Christ”, as the Apostle Paul liked to put it. John and Matthew – Matthew borrowing from Thomas – are both “right”.

 

Now, saying that … it’s the words of Matthew’s Jesus we encounter today, and not John’s Jesus. So let me preach on these for just a little while!

Jesus says to us today, “You are the light of the world” – and he says to us as well, “You are the salt of the earth.” These are bold claims. Claims I find sorely need to be heard in this day and time by a mainline Protestant church such as ours.

For we mainline Protestants are no longer the Church of the Promised Land: when Time magazine loved us, Presidents cozied up to us, and governments on all levels took their moral cues from us. Today, we mainline Protestants are more of a Church of the Exile, if not the Exodus: holy remnants, if you will, either exiled by contemporary worship and megachurch interests, or wandering in our religious desert of an exodus while movements calling themselves “spiritual” sprout up all about us.

In this Exile-and-Exodus context, then, let us hear Jesus’ words afresh: “You are the light of the world … You are the salt of the earth!” For this is a day and age when the Christ-God of the Gospel of John – long emphasized by our Protestant forebears – no longer serves us well alone. This is a day and age we need take our cues from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well. That Jesus does not just work outside-in for us: “I am the light of the world – pouring down on you, laminating your Promised Land power!” We need to be reminded today that – lo and behold! – Jesus empowers us by pointing out what’s already inside and about each of us. What’s already inside and about us, that we might not only survive but thrive in an increasingly barren land.

Light, salt, dare I say joy – all of this, Jesus is teaching us today: we, a church in cultural exile and exodus.

All of this, we are learning anew, is an inside job.

An inside job intimately connected with Jesus' central Good News claim -- which is not and is never Jesus, himself! I invite each of us to hear in these bold words -- "You are the light of the world, You are the salt of the earth" -- familiar echoes of Jesus' Good News: the kingdom of God, among and within us!

If our Good News which is God’s kingdom – some would say “kin-dom” – is to be shared, we must let it shine anew, from within ourselves. Let us look from within – not from without -- and not from an illusion of being without. Let us forget institutional identity – what the preacher says or how the preacher says it – and let us forget Christ from on-high if you have to: Jesus is calling us to emanate saltiness from within – caught more than it is taught. Jesus is inspiring us to glow all about – not reflect and refract him in the stained glass, all around us.

I love Bette Midler -- and I have an issue with one of her most popular songs. Its refrain means a lot to some; this perspective is mine alone. Midler’s refrain: “God is watching us from a distance.”

Friends, our transcendent experience in this transcendent sanctuary need not be a removed experience – removed from God or one another. The light of the season of Epiphany may have begun with its emanation and illumination from this distant star over Bethlehem. And yet Matthew’s Jesus five short Sundays later – and three short chapters later – now has it radiating from a radically different and intimate place: the lampstand of our lives, with the lampshade removed.

Salt, light – the joy of the gospel:  We cannot give it to ourselves or even give it to the world. From Jesus to the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we are told: the salt, the light, the joy are a given – already present, in ourselves!

Picking up from Thomas’ cues -- Matthew’s Jesus, like Mark’s and Luke’s, teaches us this, and teaches us well: The Good News of God’s kingdom is an inside job. And our task is to evoke that from inside others, as well.

 

The story goes that three men from the East – the evil triplets of the magi of the Epiphany – took from humanity the crown of life: the thing that would make us the most joyful. They said to each other, “Now that we’ve taken the crown of life away from the humans, where are we going to hide it?”

“I know!” the first of the three said. “We will take it up to the highest crevice on the highest mountain and we’ll hide it there!” “No way,” the other two said, “You know how humans are. They’ll hunt, and they’ll search, and they’ll eventually find it there.” The second one said, “I know what we’ll do! We will take it to the deepest, darkest crevice of the deepest, darkest ocean and hide it there – they’ll never think about looking for it there.” The other two shook their heads: “You know how they are – these humans: They’ll hunt, and they’ll search, and they’ll eventually find it there.”

They pondered some more. Finally, the third came up with the solution they all could agree upon: “We’ll hide the crown of life – this thing that will make them most joyful – and put it inside of them. They’ll never think to look for it there!”