Sunday, February 9, 2014

God’s work in us lights up the world – Matt 5:13-16

Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross-St. Stan's.

You all know very well the First Law of Thermodynamics.  Now, I’m not saying that you can necessarily recite it, but you know it.  The first law of thermodynamics states that work is heat and heat is work.  Knowing the first law of thermodynamics really just amounts to knowing that when you run your car engine, it gets hot.  Now, that’s not really its function (its function is to spin the gears and thus wheels and move your car forward), but a side-effect (a pleasant one in this weather) is that doing that work creates heat.  You know the first law of thermodynamics if you know that when you exercise, you’ll start to warm up.  Doing the work of contracting and extending your muscles to move around creates heat.  A room full of children running around won’t just be noisy, it’ll warm up.  And when things get hot enough, they start to give off light.  Think of sparks on a bandsaw.  Or, think of those light bulbs, which are designed to give off light and, incidentally give off heat.  The work there is the electrons in the metal of the filament moving backwards and forwards, changing direction over fifty times a second.  These tiny particles buzzing around do enough work to heat those coils and produce enough light to light up this Church.

God is at work in each one of us.  And work is heat, and if we let ourselves get hot enough, we’ll light up the world.  “You are the light of the world,” Jesus proclaims.  “Let your light shine before others… so they may give glory to God.”  To understand this, we really need to see it in its context.  This is the second in a series of readings from the Sermon on the Mount, the great teaching Jesus gives after he’s begun his healing ministry.  Confusingly, we didn’t read the first part last week, because we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation instead.  But, I’m sure you’re all very familiar with what we would have read.  In fact, we heard it this past All Saints’ Day in November: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

It goes on, nine beatitudes in total.  Nine times, Jesus declares happy the impoverished, the outsiders, the nobodies.  He declares happy those who live lives that seem foolish if freely chosen, because they will be vindicated, vindicated by God.  We are those who mourn, who mourn that God’s reign is not yet fully realized on earth, who mourn that we do those things we don’t want to do, who mourn that sin and death and illness and strife pull apart our families, threaten to extinguish the light we walk by and plunge us into darkness.  God will comfort.  God will make right.  God is at work in each of us.  Powerfully at work, working to make us into the saints He made us to be.  And work makes heat and heat makes light.  We are the light of the world, because God is at work in us.

That’s the pattern of the spiritual life, that God’s blessing, God’s grace always precedes any call to respond.  The most basic Christian commandment flows from God’s action in our lives: “be what you are.”  Be saints!  Be the locus of God’s activity, be windows through which light enters the world.  Light doesn’t exist to draw attention to itself, it exists to help us see what’s around us.  “Blessed are those who are persecuted, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”  God is at work in them to shine through them and give light to their persecutors!  Salt, the purifying preservative, purifies not itself, but what it’s immersed in.  Be salt of the earth, you pure of heart, and purify the world.

Each of the sacraments contains this dynamic.  God abundantly blesses us through his gracious action, so that we might set the world ablaze with His light.  Be baptized, receive your candle lit from the Easter candle, and shine that into every darkness of the world.  Receive Christ’s own body and blood in this Eucharist, become what you receive, and take that out to be Christ for your neighbor, encountering him again in the poor served.  Receive the great gift of God’s mercy in reconciliation, be forgiven, and go out to forgive those who wrong you, that they might see mercy in your light and give glory to God.

This weekend, we celebrate the World Day of Marriage.  I’d like all the married people here to do something quickly: look at your wedding band.  Remember when your finger first received this.  The words would have been something like this: you were called by name, and then heard “take this ring, as a sign of my love and fidelity, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the HS.”  And you gave the same.  God abundantly blessed your union, strengthened your consent and made you one flesh.  Thank you, married couples.  Thank you for being a sign of love and fidelity.  Thank you for being a tangible reminder to us of how Christ loves the Church.  Thank you for being what you are: blessed and beloved of God, consecrated through the Church to allow God to work in you salvation through the hard work, beautiful but hard work, of married common life.


Paul tells us in the second reading that he resolved to know nothing but Christ and him crucified, because it’s in that willing loving weakness that God’s power is disclosed.  That cross is what God’s love for us looks like.  It’s disclosed anew in marriage.  That’s the sign of love and fidelity.  That’s how far God will go to bless us, to work salvation and sanctification in us.  That’s how brilliantly we can shine.

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