“Experimental
Faith”
Matthew
5:13-20
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
February
6, 2011
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John Shea tells the story about a
parish that decided to make a basketball court on one of its parking lots.
Almost everyone agreed it would be a good idea as it would give teenagers
a safe place to play and congregate. The
pastor suggested they put three basketballs in a net and tie the net around the
base of the pole that supported the backboard and basket.
That way, if kids just were wandering by and wanted to play, a ball would
be readily available.
The parish council objected to the plan
to supply the basketballs, insisting they would be stolen.
They would not last a day. The
pastor said he had thought about that and had come up with a solution.
He was not going to buy three cheap basketballs.
He was going to purchase three top-of-the-line expensive basketballs.
When people saw that these were pro-level basketballs, they would not
take them.
The parish council thought the
pastor’s reasoning naïve and wrongheaded.
But this was a Catholic parish and the pastor does what the pastor wants
to do. So three high-priced
basketballs were placed in a net and tied to the pole.
The first ball disappeared in a week.
The second one was gone in a month. But
it was five months before the third one vanished.
The council members admitted the balls
lasted longer than they thought they would.
But still they clucked and gloated, worldly men and women teaching the
idealistic pastor a thing or two about how things really are.
The pastor bought three new expensive
basketballs. He stated his principle
clearly: “Good basketballs for
good people.”
Jesus said it this way: “You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste,
how can its saltiness be restored? It
is no longer good for anything…”
And in the Letter of James in the New
Testament, James writes,
“My
dear friends, do not let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious,
Christ-originated faith. If a man
enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags
comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, ‘Sit here, sir;
this is the best seat in the house!’ and either ignore the street person or
say, ‘Better sit here in the back row,’ haven’t you segregated God’s
children and proved that you are judges who can’t be trusted?”
“Listen,
friends. Isn’t it clear by now
that God operates quite differently?” (Eugene
H. Peterson, The Message)
The priest in the opening story refused
to show the jaundiced partiality favored by the church council.
He knew that God operates quite differently.
He wanted to encourage those who would use the basketballs to live up to,
not down to, expectations. There was
no guarantee ahead of time that the council members would not be right about
what would happen. And they were in
a way, though it took longer than expected for their dire warnings to be
realized. It did not matter to the
priest. He was practicing what I am
calling today an “experimental faith” whereby he sought to march to the beat
of the gospel drummer. He believed
that he and the church were being called to be salt of the earth and that if
they lost their saltiness, of what godly good would they be?
The priest acted according to the kind of world of which he understood
God to dream.
Ten or twelve years ago several of us
here at the church learned that a minority businesswoman was having a difficult
time getting loans and grants from the city to which others seemed to have ready
access. Calling together a
cross-section of city and government leaders, we inquired as to the requirements
needed to qualify for the grants and loans.
It turned out that the woman did qualify for some of the incentive
programs but needed a co-signer for one of the loans that our Session at the
time, with my, uh, prodding, agreed to do. You
might remember the business venture called “Literary Tea” that was a
combination restaurant, bookstore, and gathering spot that became quite popular
and was one of the few places in the city where people from vastly different
walks of life could be found together in one place.
It was a lovely concept. Unfortunately,
in time, the business model the proprietor followed could not be sustained and
to the great sadness of a great many people, it closed and First Pres was stuck
with repaying the unfulfilled part of the loan to the tune of about $6000.
On the one hand, prudence surely could
make the case that it was too risky a venture for a church to undertake.
And we did get bit a bit financially.
And I took some heat and the Session took some heat, but it is a scar I
wear proudly for the church is called to be the salt of the earth and if the
salt loses its saltiness, how can its saltiness be restored?
And it is called to be the light of the world and if the light is hidden
under a basket, what good is it? The
business ended up failing financially, but, forever after, the loan and grant
access in Jamestown was opened up to a wider pool of applicants and for a while
there on Third Street in that little café where so many different people across
social groupings gathered there was an incarnation of the beloved community
among us.
When we who are the church live into
our call to be salt and light, we are compelled to show faith in the world as a
derivative of our faith in God. “God
so loves the world…” scripture tells us and thus the locus of our focus is
readily identified. I have said it
before, that the mission of the church is not to turn the world into a church
but to help the world become a better world.
So we can think creatively, imaginatively, even daringly.
An experimental faith. The
great thing about living as salt of the earth and light of the world is that we
do not always need to be successful as the world accounts success to be of use
or service. Sometimes failure born
of faithfulness becomes the fuel and fire God uses for subsequent
transformations.
Why create a beautiful
Where cross the crowded ways of
life, where sound the cries of race and clan,
Above the noise of selfish strife, We hear Thy voice, O Son of
So, when the weather turns we shall
replace the cross and the garden will bloom again and hopefully it will continue
to be a kind of Eden to remind the wayfarers from whence they have come and the
paradise to which, given sufficient salt and light, the world can become again.
An experimental faith.
We are the church in our individual
lives as well as together. So
Jesus’ teaching that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world
brings me up short and forces me to search my own life to see if I am losing my
saltiness or if I am hiding God’s light in me under a bushel.
It is not an altogether comfortable self-examination though I know it is
meant for my good and for the good of God’s way in the world.
That iconic singer, Tom Jones, recently
released a new gospel album that includes a song that could be a companion piece
to our gospel text. The song tells
how God does his part to keep us living as salt of the earth and light of the
world. The lyrics are worthy of
telling in their entirety but in the interest of time I’ll share just a
portion of the song. (If it wasn’t
Tom Jones to whom I would be compared, I might even sing it!)
When I close my eyes, so I would not
see,
My Lord did trouble me.
When I let things stand that should not be
My Lord did trouble me.
Did trouble me,
With a word and a sign,
With the ringing of a bell in the back of my mind.
Did trouble me,
Did stir my soul
For to make me human, to make me whole.
When I slept too long and I slept too
deep,
Put a worrisome vision into my sleep.
When I held myself away and apart,
And the tears of my brother didn’t move my heart.
Did trouble me,
With a word and a sign,
With the ringing of a bell in the back of my mind.
Did trouble me,
Did stir my soul
For to make me human, to make me whole.
To hear that together and individually
we are salt and light both takes me aback and propels me onward.
On the one hand, what a high calling and how humbling, that God would use
us in such a way. What a
responsibility. Yet, on the other
hand, what an adventure! How
interesting, how remarkable, how freeing to be called to live in a way that
would not make sense were it not for our faith and trust in the God who invites
us beyond the constraints and conventions of worldly ways for the sake of the
world.
When all is said and done, I think it
will not matter much to God if we have believed the right doctrines and dogmas
but if we have salted the world with gospel living and lighted the highway of
our God.
Our faith (that, by the way, is not our
own achievement but the gift of God) is our license to experiment with living in
such a way that honoring God by our daily living is of first order importance.
That is the praise and adoration that God desires from us.
I conclude by sharing Eugene H.
Peterson’s beautiful paraphrase from The
Message of today’s passage, the way Peterson thinks Jesus would say it if
he were alive here, today:
“Let
me tell you why you are here. You’re
here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.
If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness?
(You’ll have lost your usefulness…)
Here’s another way to put it: You’re
here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.
God is not a secret to be kept. We’re
going public with this, as public as a city on a hill.
If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you
under a bucket, do you? I’m
putting you on a light stand. Now
that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand – shine!”
Amen.