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
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