February 5, 2023

 For the last 3 years, my husband has done almost all the cooking for our family.  I love it!  He makes the menu for the week.  He goes shopping for it.  He cooks.  I make the salad.  We’ve been married 28 years, so by now we are quite aware of the different way we do things.  When I cook, I tend to see what ingredients we need to use up before they go bad and look up a recipe that will closely approximate what I want.  I scan the recipe for the ingredients and sometimes scan the steps involved.  My husband actually reads the whole recipe first.  Maybe that’s why he’s a better cook than I am.  Do you tend to read the whole recipe first? 

In the Sermon on the Mount, which we have been reading through beginning last Sundays with the Beatitudes and will continue with the next couple of Sundays, Jesus is reading the whole recipe to his disciples before they get started.  This is a recipe for building the Kingdom of God, for Jesus’ ministry.  He wants them to be as aware as possible of what is coming next and what they are getting themselves into.

Last week was about what the recipe is for—it is for blessing those the world doesn’t see as blessed.  It’s for turning the world upside down.  It is a recipe for finding hope when it seems like all the world is against you. 

 Today’s scripture begins with the ingredients we already have, salt and light.  This is a scripture about what we already are and not as individuals, but as Jesus’ collective disciples, students, learners.  You all are the salt of the earth.  You all are the light of the world.  This is what God has made us and so we are.  There is no should be, no shaming or blaming.  It is a reminder of who we are and our purpose.  You all are salt.  Salt is a very stable substance.  If you dilute it with water, you can boil the water away and you still get salt.  We eat salt and it remains salt in our blood stream and helps chemical reactions take place in our brains and bodies.  Salt is dependable, stable.  It is used to preserve food, to keep it from spoiling.  You all are salt.  You all are steady, stable, you enhance flavors, you preserve, and a little bit of you goes a long way so don’t overdo it.  We know that salt can enhance and salt can destroy, so it is a matter of how it is used and how much.

You all are light.  By yourself you are not the light of the world, but you all together are the light of the world, Jesus’ disciples, learners, students.  Light enhances, it reveals.  Our eyes can detect the flame of a single candle 2 miles away.  Light, like salt, can be used for good and too much can be destructive.  In Jesus’s day light was fire and we all know that can go terrible wrong.

Jesus is telling the disciples who they are and some of what their purpose is.  They are salt and light and they are for preserving, seasoning, revealing, shining.  They can be encouraged because they have Jesus and they have each other and they can be encouraged that a little bit goes a long way.  That takes some of the pressure off to take on this project with Jesus of loving the world.  Jesus is the cook.  We are part of the ingredients.

For many of us we hear “shoulds” where there are none.  We hear “You should not hide your light.”  That’s not what Jesus says.  He says, “No one does this!”  Ok, then we don’t do that.  A light is for shining and we don’t negate our purpose, so we will shine.  We don’t mix the ingredients to leave them sitting there on the counter.  We proceed with the instructions to achieve the purpose.  Furthermore, our shining is not to get glory for ourselves, but to give glory to God in heaven.  Our recipe is not to make ourselves look good.

Next has to do with where the recipe comes from.  In case we would want to forget the Old Testament, or the Hebrew scriptures, in case we would want to abandon Jesus’ Bible, Jesus says no, it still applies.  Everything we know about cooking has been handed down through the generations.  The law and the prophets—the law is the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.  The prophets’ Bible is the Torah.  That’s what they used to guide their faith, the very ancient but still very applicable recipe book.  Sometimes we think prophets tell the future but they were more focused on God’s saving acts in the exodus, ethics, covenants, and blessings.  They are concerned about separation from God and mistreating the poor.  Prophets are kind of like the scribbles in your recipe book when someone corrects the recipe or offers a substitution.  When something hasn’t worked out the way you hoped, you go back and note the correction or sometimes write a comment like “Yuck.”

Jesus has come to fulfill all the law and the prophets.  Remember Matthew really likes this fulfillment theme.  There is this plan that God has had since the beginning and Jesus is here to fulfill it.  Jesus has come as a continuation of that story of God’s saving love for the people, as a continuation and fulfillment of all those covenants between God and God’s people.  Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, not us.  We’re not going to be able to fulfill that and that isn’t our purpose.  Our purpose is to shine and to enhance and to reveal, to be ingredients and sous chefs in that plan. 

Jesus talks about whoever breaks the least of these commandments.  Well first of all it isn’t commandments, it’s teachings.  We’re talking all the teachings in the law and the prophets.  It isn’t just rules, it’s history, it’s stories, it’s the back and forth between God and the people.  In these stories the people are heard-hearted and stiff-necked.  They are learning to trust, they are forgetting to trust.  God is frustrated.  God threatens and then turns and relents from punishing.  It’s a back and forth.  A recipe, too, is a conversation.  Do you ever make all the recipes in the book?  Not very often. The point is joy and nourishment and there are lots of ways to get there. 

Jesus says, if you break these teachings you will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Well, I think any of us would be amazed that we made it there in the first place.  Least in the Kingdom of heaven is still pretty good!

And Jesus says unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders, you won’t enter the Kingdom of heaven—sounds kind of dismal.  The scribes and Pharisees were the ones everyone was striving to be like.  Jesus is saying that he is taking their place as the one to follow and strive for.  He is the new standard, the new example, the one to look to when you’re trying to figure out what to do.  The scribes and Pharisees recipe book is about making them look good.  Jesus’ recipe book is for building the Kingdom of God, bringing blessing and hope to the world, and sharing abundant life.

So put away your shoulds and remember who you are, who God made you to be as you read this recipe and prepare to do your part in its preparation.  Your light is shining and your saltiness is salty.  Thanks be to God that Jesus is the chef, that he has fulfilled all these teachings so that we can have hope and light and new life.  A cookbook is more than about making food.  When we eat together we build relationships, we build community, we build family.  These recipes are not to be kept to ourselves or under a bushel basket. Thanks be to God especially that Jesus teaches us to create family with those who have been left out so that the “you all” that Jesus was talking about can become a reality.  We pray that the orphans would teach us, that the refugees would teach us, that the poor would teach us what life is really about and that we would get out of the way of their light shining and showing us what hope really looks like.  May we all partake together of the delicious good news that comes from our Savior Jesus.