Salt of the Earth (Philippians 4:4-9)

This morning we conclude a series of sermons aimed at helping us remember that Jesus calls his disciples to be “the salt of the earth.”

With this in mind, for the past three weeks, we’ve placed a spotlight on qualities and characteristics that Jesus wants to see in us as his followers.

Along the way, we’ve connected each characteristic with a letter in the word salt in order to create an acronym for marks of salty discipleship.

Do you remember what each letter stands for?

S is for Surrender because surrender is what Jesus is talking about when he tells us to take up our cross and follow him.

A is for Awake because Jesus needs awake, alert, and attentive followers to share Good News in a hurting world.

L is for Livid because Jesus needs disciples who burn with righteous anger like him and are ready to take loving, self-sacrificing, holy action to heal broken hearts, relationships, and communities.

And today, T is for thanksgiving because we can’t understand grace, praise–basically anything else about who Jesus is and what Jesus wants for us–unless our lives are firmly rooted in a deep sense and disposition of gratitude.

Now, to help us unpack what that means, I want to tell you about the person who shaped my understanding of discipleship as much as, if not more, than anybody else, my Grandmother Kemp.

My Grandmother Kemp, Gram as we called her, my mom’s mom, was a major figure in my life.

Gram and my Grandpa looked after my brothers and me after school and during the summers when we were little and they helped to give us an unbelievably good childhood.

My grandparents had a little farm with a garden, a couple of cows, and chickens. We spent our time on sunny days fishing, taking walks in the woods, and playing baseball in the pasture. We called it Cow Patty Stadium.

On rainy days, we played board games or colored pictures. Gram even taught us how to sew.

Whether we were goofing off by the pond, cooling off with a pitcher of Kool-Aid, or playing a game of Yahtzee around the kitchen table, if Gram was with us, then she made sure that we knew Jesus was there, too, and I mean that in the absolute best possible way.

That was just the way she lived her life and the way she talked.

Faith, love, and joy permeated everything that she did.

Throughout this month I’ve thought of my grandmother a lot because she was the kind of person many people think of when they talk about “the salt of the earth.”

She was kind, modest, loving, honest, decent, good.

My grandmother was also the kind of person more sophisticated and cynical people might regard as naive, her faith simplistic.

A wife and mom on a small farm in a small town? What does she know of the world and its troubles?

But those who loved her knew that my grandmother’s faith came from a very deep place and that it had been forged in the fires of intense grief and loss.

When we were little, Grandma always told us that one day she was going to write a book about her life–the hard things she’d experienced, and how good God was to her through it all.

When she was almost 90 years old, she wrote that book. She called it The Message Glorious, a title she’d selected almost fifty years earlier.

Gram died a few years ago and every now and then, I’ll pick up her book and read a little bit.

It always makes me smile. Sometimes I’ll cry.

It helps put things in perspective.

I read some of The Message Glorious this week and noticed a passage that I’d never really appreciated before.

There’s a paragraph toward the end where she writes about the three times in her life when she felt closest to God.

Now keep in mind that this was a woman who spent every Sunday in church, attended her weekly prayer and share group faithfully for decades, and began every day reading her Bible, praying, and journaling.

Here’s what she wrote,

Three times in my life, I’ve felt the Lord’s presence so close I could nearly reach out and touch him. One time was when I was looking out our hospital window seeking God’s wisdom concerning [my 12-year old son] David’s terminal [cancer diagnosis]. Another time was when our dear [David] breathed his last breath here on earth. And then, [at my husband’s funeral] when we started to sing [his favorite hymn], and we all rose to our feet in the crowded funeral parlor. (p. 170)

It’s not lost on me that the person who taught me so much about God’s love, the person whose kindness touched so many, someone who could talk about time spent with Jesus so genuinely, so sincerely, knew heartbreak so deeply.

That’s what grabs my attention this week as we’re thinking about giving thanks.

If I have even a glimmer of insight into the profound wisdom Saint Paul shared in the passage we’ve read today from his Letter to the Philippians, it’s because of my grandmother.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice…The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7)

“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say rejoice.”

While some of the Bible’s teachings cause us to do a double take—things like loving our enemies and always being ready to forgive, for example—Paul’s admonition to rejoice seems on the surface to be much more palatable to our modern sensibilities.

“Rejoice in the Lord always.” We put it on cards and bumper stickers and share it on Facebook.

The only problem with all of that, though, is that joy is often as difficult to find in life as the will to forgive and love.

In a broken world, amid broken lives, joy can be elusive—and it doesn’t take a particularly dour person to notice that.

If we’re going to hear and respond to the Good News about joy, gratitude, and thanksgiving with some integrity, though, instead of reducing all this to some syrupy sweet slogans, then we need to take a closer look at the Letter to the Philippians, and taking that closer look, we find two essential characteristics about the joy Paul describes.

First, Paul’s joy is rooted in a deep love for God and an understanding of God’s deep love for all people. There’s nothing superficial or self-serving about it.

When Paul says “rejoice in the Lord always” he isn’t saying that we should “always look on the bright side of life,” nor is he particularly interested in seeing people become more optimistic or positive in their thinking. He’s not interested in those things because he knows—from experience—that that’s not how the Christian life worked.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians is one of a handful of letters that the Apostle wrote while he was in prison because of his work as a missionary.

“I’ve been thrown in jail more than any other minister,” he wrote in another of those letters. “I’ve been flogged too many times to count, whipped five times, beaten with rods three times, and stoned with rocks once…I’ve even been on three ships that sank…Yet even so, I am content with weaknesses, insults, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 11:23-25)

To an outsider, it might seem as though Paul had joy in spite of his faith, not because of it. Those who knew him, however, knew that the Good News about God’s forgiving mercies made known through Jesus Christ was the only thing that mattered to Paul, and worth any cost he would personally have to pay.

That’s why he could write with so much joy, even from his prison cell.

"I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel…and I will continue to rejoice!" (Philippians 1:12)

When Paul encouraged the church to rejoice, then, he was drawing from his own experience with God—the experience of finding joy and peace in the midst of tremendous hardships—because he wanted the faithful to have that experience, too.

He wanted them and he wanted us to have that experience because Paul knew that when God’s love defines us, we will find joy and peace and the will, passion, and encouragement to accomplish great things in God’s kingdom.

This brings us to our second point about Paul’s joy. Paul believed that when Christ-centered joy takes root in our hearts, then we are one step closer to the fullness of life God’s grace makes possible.

We find the second step just a few lines below where we stopped reading today, in the 13th verse of chapter 4 where Paul writes, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

Paul’s ministry teaches us that when we know where we stand with God we will be able to stand up against any challenge we might face.

The chains of his prison, the hardships of his travels—Paul met these head on with the confidence of someone who knew that his body could be held, but his mind, his heart, his spirit were forever set free by Jesus.

“Rejoice in the Lord always…The Lord is near.”—closer than your fears, closer than your doubts.

The Philippians might face persecutions, they might suffer unjustly—but what they had within their hearts, the world didn’t give it to them and the world couldn’t take it away.

Faithful disciples–salty disciples– like my Gram, know the power of this wisdom, too.

Salt is small, but it makes a big difference.

A pinch of it can transform a meal; it preserves what might otherwise be lost; it brings out the best flavor in what already exists.

In the same way, when stale ideas and bitter words leave people searching for something that will satisfy their hunger, Jesus reminds us that the Church should season the world with faith, hope, and love.

There is power when disciples commit themselves to be Surrendered, Awake, Livid, and Thankful.

There is power when we heed the call to be the salt of the earth.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.

Image: Doris Kemp, my grandmother

Livid (Isaiah 53:4-9, John 2:13-17)

I graduated from a Christian liberal arts college, which means that while I attended school with many future pastors and leaders of faith based not-for-profits, I also counted a wide array of future nurses, doctors, business people, teachers, journalists, and artists among my classmates.

I was studying to be a social worker–so most of my course work was in the social sciences–sociology, psychology, and the like–but I also really enjoyed two required classes in biblical studies that everyone had to take freshmen year so I added a minor in Bible, too.

Since the school was small there weren’t a lot of options when it came to planning your schedule of classes.

Classes needed to complete your degree might only be offered once a year, and if that happened to be at 8AM every Monday morning, well, then you planned your weekends accordingly.

I was fortunate. An important class that I needed to take at the beginning of my junior year was offered Mondays at 10, earlier than my twenty-year-old self preferred, but doable.

However, this class had the reputation of being the school’s most depressing course regardless of when it was offered.

The class was called, rather ominously, Social Problems.

Social Problems might’ve just as well been named "People Are Horrible” because every class, every lecture, every assignment was about the horrible things people, countries, and corporations do to hurt others, often in the name of religion, ethnic supremacy, or profit.

Racism, genocide, pollution, landmines, domestic violence, child abuse–every topic we discussed displayed humanity’s inhumanity.

The callousness of it all was disturbing.

It was infuriating!

We listened to stories, and testimonies, and read research on topics like these every day that semester, and every day I’d ask myself, “How can people be so selfish? How can people be so cruel?”

And then, after Social Problems, I’d walk across the quad for my 11:00, which was required for my minor in Bible, Old Testament Prophets.

In Prophets, we’d read and discuss the relevant books of the Bible–books like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea–and it didn’t take long before I realized that the people the ancient prophets called out were just as selfish and cruel as people are today!

“This is just like Social Problems!” I wanted to shout.

Taking Social Problems and Prophets back-to-back really did a number on me.

They woke me up and opened my eyes to the historic and ongoing realities of suffering and injustice.

But, in addition to that, while they made me see that there are horrible things happening in this world, they also pushed and invited me to see the world’s brokenness not as evidence of God’s absence, but as one of the most well-traveled paths between God and humanity.

Social Problems confronted me with stories of a hurting world filled with hurting people.

Old Testament Prophets taught me that God not only hears the cries of the people, but jumps into the fray on behalf of those who are suffering, neglected, discounted, and oppressed.

These two classes also showed me that righteous anger has been a part of our faith tradition for a very long time.

Over 2000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle described the promise and challenge of righteous anger.

Writing in The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle noted,

Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy.

We read from John’s Gospel today what is probably the most iconic example of righteous anger in the Bible, an event commonly called The Cleansing of the Temple.

The Cleansing of the Temple occurred when Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem and drove out a group of merchants who were cheating and exploiting the pilgrims who came there to worship, to give their offerings, and to make animal sacrifices in accordance with the Jewish Law.

Saint John tells us that,

In the temple [Jesus] found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. (John 2:14)

The cheats and money changers were part of a system that was rigged, especially against the poor.

Officials would judge the animals and the money that the people brought with them to the Temple to be unworthy of being used in such a holy place. Instead, for a fee, there were perfectly acceptable animals available for purchase and acceptable currency for which you could exchange your own.

Taking it all in, Jesus was livid!

Making a whip of cords, [Jesus] drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:15-16)

It’s worth noting that Jesus’ last point about selling doves hit close to home.

Doves were the offerings made by the poorest people, including, according to Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Joseph–Jesus’ own family.

This was the abusive and unjust system that set Jesus alight.

Saint John concludes his account by telling us that when the disciples had an opportunity to debrief from what happened in the Temple that day, they recalled a verse they had read in the Book of Psalms.

“Zeal for your house will consume me.” or, said another way, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” (Psalm 69:9 in John 2:17)

“Jesus was like that,” they said to themselves. “Eaten up with zeal for God and God’s people.”

This morning, Jesus’ example and the role of righteous anger in our lives leads us to another mark of salty discipleship.

Again, to review, this month, in order to help us remember that Jesus calls his disciples to be “the salt of the earth” we’re creating an acronym from the letters that spell salt to highlight some of the qualities and characteristics Jesus wants to see in his followers.

S is for Surrender because surrender is what Jesus is talking about when he tells us to take up our cross and follow him.

A is for Awake because Jesus needs awake, alert, and attentive followers to share Good News in a hurting world.

And, today, L is for Livid because Jesus needs disciples who burn with righteous anger like him and are ready to take loving, self-sacrificing, holy action to heal broken hearts, relationships, and communities.

Livid means to be furiously angry, and I’ll admit that it’s a combustible addition to our list.

Aristotle was correct. It’s easy to get righteous anger wrong.

Nevertheless, I think it’s worth talking about righteous anger because getting in touch with why some things bother us so deeply while being committed to keeping our egos in check and using that anger for good strikes me as a worthwhile and holy pursuit.

L is for Livid because Jesus wasn’t wrong to let some things “eat him up.”

But Jesus has a way of doing weird things with anger–ours and his own, for that matter.

That’s where the course I had after Social Problems and Prophets comes into play.

After spending my mornings getting all worked up at stories of horrible people doing horrible things, at 1:00PM I headed back to the classroom for The Life of Christ. And along the way, one couldn’t help but to notice that Jesus didn’t really have a ministry to hurting people. He had a life among them.

Poor people, Samaritans, lepers, the grieving, sick people–Jesus walked among these and shared his life with them.

He loved them, suffered alongside them, and, in the end, he died and rose up for them.

And that led me to a huge realization.

Well, two realizations actually.

It’s a story for another day, but this was the time in my life when I heard and said yes to a call to ordained ministry. That was one very important realization.

But the second realization was that while our anger with a broken world often tempts us to lash out, maybe even to throw a punch, Jesus turns anger inside out, offers forgiveness to his enemies (even money changers and cheats), and takes the punches of a broken world instead.

As Isaiah prophesied,

[He] was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

Do you know what the word livid meant when it first came into the English language?

It meant the black and blue color of a bruise.

To be livid was to be bruised.

I think that knowledge coupled with Isaiah’s prophecy helps us better understand righteous anger and salty discipleship.

Love leaves a mark and sometimes that mark looks and feels like a bruise–not in some perverse “He only hits me because he loves me” way, but in the way that we will take on suffering for those we love–our kids, our closest friends, and as Jesus would have it, our neighbors in need as well.

Pricked by conscience and guided by God’s grace at work within us, therefore, there’s no shame in being bothered, disturbed, and even angered by actions and attitudes that degrade and harm others.

It’s a far greater problem to be indifferent to their suffering.

Jesus, however, teaches us that if it is to be righteous, anger must compel us to stand with those who are hurting, so close to them, in fact, that we might even get hit with a punch that was intended for them.

L is for Livid because Jesus needs disciples who burn with righteous anger–who get “eaten up” with injustice and cruelty–and are ready to take loving, self-sacrificing, holy action to heal broken hearts, relationships, and communities.

Thanks be to God, then, for righteous anger and salty discipleship.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.

Image: JESUS MAFA. Jesus drives out the merchants, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

Awake, Alert, and Attentive (Ephesians 5:14, Luke 10:25-37)

A painting entitled “At Dawn” by Belgian artist Charles Hermans caught my eye this week.

Completed in 1875, “At Dawn” captures the essence of the era that history remembers as The Gilded Age–a time of explosive wealth and riches for the privileged few and back-breaking poorly compensated toil for the many.

“At Dawn” shows us something like a snapshot from the time–an early morning scene on a city sidewalk.

Bleary eyed and well-dressed revelers pouring out of a club dominate the scene.

The men wear black suits and top hats; the women, long and brightly colored gowns.

The group is obviously drunk, unsteady. They look like they might tumble into the street at any moment.

In contrast, the figures on the remainder of the canvas stand sober and upright.

They are workers and laborers at the start of a new day.

They’re dressed modestly, practically.

They appear to be yielding the sidewalk to the revelers.

None of the figures make eye-contact with one another, but they definitely see each other.

A reveler glances toward the workers as he descends the club’s steps.

Is it contempt in his eyes, or shame? Disgust with the common folk or with himself?

A working class mom on her husband’s arm stares at a woman’s dress.

Maybe she’s jealous. Maybe she recognizes the flowers the woman carries.

Her son also takes in the scene while his father looks at him.

What must the young boy be thinking?

What thoughts are on the father’s mind?

The contrast between the two groups is the painting’s greatest source of energy.

Hermans keeps the two, who are emblematic of the proverbial “haves” and “have nots,” at a distance from one another, yet fills the space between them with tension, a tension that was a hot topic of conversation and commentary in Europe and the U.S. as he painted.

At that time, people were beginning to wonder if such incredible inequality was compatible with the basic functions of government, Christian virtue, or any notion of a civilized society.

Many believed it wasn’t and that what they were living through was unsustainable.

Writing just a few years after the painting was completed, for example, Henry George, one of the era’s best selling authors, wrote in Progress and Poverty,

In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty . . .It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature. Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that work destruction.

At its premier, “At Dawn” caused a stir. It was controversial and some of Hermans’ peers wondered if the piece “had a socialist reach.”

The artist always denied that charge, however, noting that he had only painted a scene that he had witnessed one morning on a city sidewalk.

He remarked,

I tried to be as sincere as possible, while avoiding being both too sentimental and too realistic. The workers of the foreground, refreshed, peacefully go to work in the morning, while the dissolute, dressed in black, stagger noisily out of the golden pleasure-shacks where they spent the night….I never thought of ennobling the worker by showing the decline of [the] debauched. (quoted by Arthur Chandler)

While he might’ve resisted being pigeon-holed politically, I think it’s clear that Hermans wasn’t just an indifferent observer.

He had a point of view.

Whatever his politics were, the artist saw value in the stories of, or in his case, pictures of, the working class, and in an era when the rich and powerful regarded themselves as the rightful Masters of the Universe, just bearing witness to the humanity and dignity of those who worked was an inherently political and moral act.

Maybe there’s even a clue about the artist’s perspective right there in the title.

“At Dawn”--sure, that’s when the golden pleasure shacks close and the work day begins, but that’s also the time when many people wake up.

Perhaps the artist sensed it was time for the sleeping world to open its eyes.

Last Sunday I began a sermon series based on the favorable comparison Jesus made between his disciples and salt.

“You are the salt of the earth,” said the Lord.

I told you that we’d be building an acronym using the letters in salt (s.a.l.t.) to put a spotlight on qualities and characteristics that are intrinsic to the discipleship Jesus desires.

Last week we heard that S is for Surrender because surrender is what Jesus is talking about when he tells us to take up our cross and follow him. Today, A is for Awake because Jesus needs awake, alert, and attentive followers to share Good News in a hurting world.

Awake, O sleeper, rise from death, and Christ shall give you light;

so learn his love, its length and breadth, its fullness, depth, and height.

That’s the lyric of a hymn based on Ephesians 5:14 that invites us to note the connection between our spiritual posture or positioning and our effectiveness as disciples.

Called to reflect God’s light into the world, we must, first, be in alignment with God’s love.

Pastor Sammy Alfaro of Iglesia Nuevo Dia in Phoenix explains,

The mission [given disciples in Ephesians 5] is not to change the world through our own efforts or wisdom. But rather, believers reflect the light of the gospel into a dark world by allowing Christ, who is the Light, to shine on us!

You know it to be true that a mirror kept in a dark room will remain as dark as its surroundings, but when it is brought into the light, it can shine with the brightness of the sun.

Awake, alert, and attentive souls, therefore, will engage in truth telling, wisdom seeking, forgiveness practicing, peace making work in order to place themselves and their Church in the best position to powerfully reflect God’s light.

This, I think, gets at what it means to be “awake” in the New Testament sense of the word.

It’s about understanding that we are the best, most radiant, most effective, most faithful, “saltiest” version of ourselves when we are awash in the light that shines from Jesus, then, equipped with such understanding, doing whatever we can, working with God’s grace, to be where Jesus is, blessing who he blesses, and serving as he serves.

One way to read the Parable of the Good Samaritan is to see it as a wake up call for people who are sleeping on this point.

The story of a wounded traveler who was ignored by two members of his own community, yet who received lifesaving help from one of his community’s supposed enemies–a Samaritan–is one of the most beloved stories Jesus ever told.

The parable emphasizes generosity, compassion, and mercy, and it is, justifiably, revered for these reasons.

But there’s more to it than that, a message bound up in what prompted Jesus to tell the story in the first place.

Luke tells us,

An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to vindicate [or justify] himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25-29)

The man’s self-serving question revealed to Jesus that something essential was potentially missing from his understanding of life with God.

Even though he knew the right words to say and the right scripture to quote, he seemed to lack an awakened heart that would make that knowledge useful or efficacious.

He was acting as though all of this was about a set of propositions to be affirmed, rather than a humble disposition before God to be lived.

In other words, he was asleep and the parable was his alarm clock.

Jesus asked,

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:36-37)

Hearing this wake up call, it’s also time for you and me to open our eyes.

Trying to be a Christian or a Church without tending to a deep connection with Jesus is about as useful as a mirror kept in a dark room.

But our destiny, our calling, our mission, our duty is to come into the light and shine.

Awakened souls will do whatever they can, therefore, working with God’s grace, to be where Jesus is, blessing who he blesses, and serving as he serves because we are the best, most radiant, most effective, most faithful, “saltiest” version of ourselves when we are awash in the light that shines from him.

A is for Awake.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Hermans, Charles, 1839-1924. At Dawn, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

I Surrender All (Matthew 16:24-25)

‘You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” (Matthew 5:13)

In this passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus compares his disciples to salt, and he meant it as a compliment. Salt, after all, is intrinsically useful. In Jesus’ day, salt was used in medicine, industry, agriculture, and was an incredibly valuable commodity, not to mention that it made food taste better and last longer.

Salt made people’s lives better.

But salt would lose its effectiveness if it got mixed up with other stuff. In the scene Jesus describes, it’s salt getting mixed up with dirt or sand or so much of some other substance that it becomes good for nothing–incapable of adding flavor, preserving, helping.

In a similar way, Jesus would teach his disciples that they could lose their effectiveness by getting mixed up with worldly concerns and vices.

Greed, materialism, self-righteousness, anger and violence–it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Jesus saying, “When your faith gets mixed up with things like these it’s no longer good for anything.”

In fact, he basically does say that in the sermon’s takeaway line,

But strive [or seek ye] first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

Today and for the next three Sundays we’re going to use the comparison Jesus made between his disciples and salt as our starting point for a deeper look at what qualities or attributes might be lacking from our life with God or what we might need in greater measure.

Remembering salt’s usefulness, we’re going to look at some of the ways good discipleship can make our lives and the lives of people around us better.

In order to help us maintain our focus and organize our thoughts through this series, I’ve created a simple acronym for salt or s-a-l-t.

Each week we’ll examine a quality of discipleship that begins with the corresponding letter in salt. For example, today, week one, it’s something that begins with the letter “s,” in week two, a quality that begins with “a,” and so on and so forth.

All the while, we’ll be looking for positive connections between our life with God, our inner life, and our life with others.

So let’s begin.

S, S is for Surrender.

An old gospel hymn introduces us to this elusive, yet powerful mark of Christian discipleship.

All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give;

I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live.

“I surrender all.”

I remember singing those words in church as a child. I didn’t really know what they meant, but I remember singing them nonetheless.

Actually, to be fair to little-kid-me, I wasn’t totally clueless. My parents, grandparents, and some of the saints I’m remembering today, worked hard to teach me the difference between right and wrong. They taught me that I should always try to do good, but that they and God would always love me and would forgive me when I messed up.

“To surrender,” in that context, was almost synonymous with asking for forgiveness.

“I surrender all to you, Jesus. Please forgive me for the wrong that I have done, the sins that I have committed.”

I can picture myself sitting in Sunday School circa 1982 in a hand-me-down suit with a clip on tie, bowing my head and praying a prayer that sounded a whole lot like that.

Maybe you have similar memories about the beginnings of your faith journey–baisc lessons, simple lessons, about Jesus’s love and the power of forgiveness.

That’s not a bad place to start, but our faith, like our understanding of self, grows and changes over time.

So does our understanding of life’s complexities and the web of motivations that often leave us confused, broken, and adrift.

If only the challenges and stresses of life were always about the decisions we make when faced with clear cut choices between right and wrong, then maybe we’d have a shot at figuring things out.

Instead, despite our best efforts, we often make a mess of things, hurt the people we love, and find ourselves discovering, like Saint Paul, that ”we can will what is right, but we cannot do it.” (Romans 7:18)

Our understanding of surrender, therefore, should change and evolve, too.

You see, it’s not that surrender isn’t about forgiveness, it’s just more than that.

Surrender is an inner disposition, a spiritual posture.

It’s not unlike the way Jesus talks about the crosses that he and his disciples must carry.

If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25)

Now it is, of course, true that Jesus’ death on a cross is a catalyst for and a sign of the forgiveness offered by God to all people.

But, as Jesus reveals in these words from the Gospel, carrying crosses is just as much about how he lived as it is how he died.

Carrying the cross is a way of life that is deeply rooted in selflessness, in sacrifice, in love, in surrender.

If you ever start studying about how Christians understand surrender, you will soon find yourself reading memoirs and reflections written by people who are working the 12-steps of recovery and sobriety.

There’s something about realizing your old way of doing things has led to rock bottom that can really make you consider an alternative operating system.

Holly Whitaker is one such writer.

She addresses the evolution of her thoughts about surrender in her memoir “Quit Like a Woman”

Whitaker writes,

I’d always considered the word surrender to be blasphemous. Surrender was never a possibility to consider; it wasn’t something self-respecting, self-reliant folk like me do—we scheme around and bulldoze through whatever stands in our way. That all changed, abruptly, on that day in 2012 when I finally ran out of options and did the thing I thought I could never do—concede.

Whitaker was struggling with depression, bulimia, and alcohol, among other things–but grief can take you to that moment, so can any kind of trauma–a job loss, a breakup, stress about money–anything that makes you feel like life is spinning out of control, slipping from your grasp, or shattering into a million pieces.

Experience shows that many paths have led people to the moment of surrender.

Considering this, Whitaker continues,

In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson says,…“The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins.” It is entirely cliché, but this was exactly my experience. The moment I finally let my knees hit the floor was when I finally stopped playing at life, and every bit of good that’s come to me since then stems from this reversal of opinion on surrender. (The Power of Surrender — Center for Action and Contemplation)

In much the same way, rockstar Bono describes his friend and bandmate Adam Clayton’s sobriety as “long obedience in the same direction,” saying, “I’ve had the honor of watching “surrender” work through this man’s remarkable life and times. I’ve watched this most elusive word become flesh in a series of good decisions that gave Adam back his life.” (Surrender, p. 540)

Surrender is long obedience in the same direction.

It takes our knees to the floor so that we stop playing at life and really live.

It becomes flesh, in us, through a series of good decisions.

It’s what Jesus is talking about when he invites us to take up our cross and follow him.

If you and I are to be useful and effective like the salt of the earth–if Asbury Church is going to make the lives of people all around us better–then we need to discover the wisdom, beauty, and power of surrendering ourselves to God’s love, to God will, to God’s grace.

We need to learn what it means truly to sing, “All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Dubravko Sorić SoraZG on Flickr, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons