Epiphany 5

Epiphany 5 (Matthew 5: 13-20) Let your light shine
Jesus is the light of the world.

Jesus is the light of the world reaching out to all people everywhere through us. The light reveals the truth. The truth is Jesus Christ.

The truth that Jesus reveals is that God is real. By Jesus’ time Abraham and Moses were already faded memories of a distant past. People read in the Bible how God spoke to Abraham and Moses audibly. Yet, it had been almost five hundred years since God had spoken even indirectly through a prophet.

People read in the Bible about the mighty miracles God had performed during the time of Moses. Yet, there was no evidence of such miracles for many centuries.

If people thought of God at all they thought of a distant, transcendent and silent Divine Principle that no longer spoke and no longer acted in the world of human events. Perhaps the stories were indeed just stories. Perhaps the history was allegory and not literal fact. Perhaps the history of the Patriarchs and the Prophets was similar to the pagan myths- not to be taken literally but to be understood for the moral content.

Religious people thought of God as the Lawgiver who had revealed the Law to Moses then vanished from human experience. The Law was the focus of the religion. The religion was the Law.

Jesus came into the world to reveal the reality of God. Jesus came into the world to reaffirm that God is real and God is personal. The purpose of religion is not to impose Law. The purpose of religion is to facilitate relationship.

Jesus was very careful not to suggest that he had come to abolish the Law. In fact, Jesus teaches that the Law is immutable in all of its parts. And, Jesus taught that righteousness is more than assent to certain beliefs or the fulfillment of certain actions.

The apostle James clarifies Jesus teaching when he declares that the Law, all 616 Laws, is a seamless whole. If you break one law even once you have broken the entire law and forfeited any claim to righteousness under the law.

The apostle Paul clarifies Jesus’ teaching by stating that the Law is holy and good but no human being can keep the Law. Only Jesus can and did keep the law. He kept the law by the power of his relationship with his Heavenly Father.

Jesus came into the world to reveal that God is love: steadfast, holy, unconditional love. The relationship God offers us is the relationship Jesus reveals is the defining nature of Divinity. It is One God eternally manifesting in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the One God eternally manifesting as a community of love. In that community each person is distinct and each person holds the essential unity of the One God.

Jesus came into the world to reveal that in his own person God unites Divinity with humanity. God finds all people in Jesus Christ as Jesus unites humanity with divinity. God offers all people everywhere the gift of reunification and transformation in Jesus Christ.

As God freely chose to unite divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ so in Jesus God offers us the choice to unite with him as we place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. It is in that call to unity, which is the invitation to salvation, that Jesus becomes for all who receive him the light of truth, the light of love, the light of holiness.

In the new relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ we see where we fall short and we see the new person we may become.

Jesus is the light who reveals to each of us who God created us to be, where we have rejected that creation, and how we can restore what we rejected. As we follow the light into the light we become light to others. We model in our own lives by our choices and priorities the pattern, plan and purpose of God for the human race.
Our righteousness can only exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees in the process of personal transformation. The Law can be a guide but the transformation can only take place within the relationship.

It is the relationship that produces the faith.

Righteousness apart from the relationship always looks for the loophole in the Law. It is salt mingled with sand that still looks like salt but is less that salt. Unscrupulous merchants in the ancient world mingled a little sand with salt to stretch the inventory and make more money. If the salt passed through several merchants before the end user received it there might be very little actual salt left. It would have lost its saltiness as the merchants diluted it to make more money.

Righteousness apart from relationship is like the diluted salt. It has mixed and mingled with the base and the secular until it no longer retains its distinctive flavor and its unique identity.

The relationship purifies righteousness through faith. Legalism dilutes faith with compromise. The compromise is always the dilution of faith with fear, self will and pride.

Fear casts doubt that the way of faith will produce desired results. Self will asserts the human will to power that insists each of us is the master of our fate and the captain of our souls. Pride redefines God as religion, religion as law, and law as subject to human opinion. Sadly, fear, self will and pride erode faith and lead to despair.

Jesus is not about religion. Jesus is the Way of life, the pattern of life, God has designed for each of us. Jesus is the truth, the guiding principle that underlies all existence. Jesus is life. He is the source of life, the giver of life and the very essence of life. His life is eternal.

Faith in Jesus Christ is not just a set of beliefs. Faith in Jesus Christ is trust in a person who invites us to follow him into a new life and a new way of living. Faith in Jesus Christ is not an abstract or arbitrary assembly of facts and ideas. Faith in Jesus Christ is an ongoing friendship with a real person who cares for us and offers not only guidance but the strength and courage to change how we make choices and set priorities.

It is the dynamic of the personal relationship activated by faith that transforms us into the light of Christ for our generation.

Our Heavenly Father invites us to walk in the light of Jesus Christ through our personal relationship with Christ. He gives us the Holy Spirit to enable us to make this choice and to live this choice by faith. As we make this choice, the Holy Spirit fills our soul with light so we can fulfill Jesus’ command: let your light shine.