In a thought provoking op-ed article in The New York Times (October 27, 2015), David Brooks asks what ‘A Sensible Version of Donald Trump’ might ‘sound like’. He asks the question because Donald Trump, like Dr. Ben Carson, has not come out of the typical party-political ranks, but has caught the attention of a not insignificant number of people because he is a political ‘outsider’.
David Brooks paints an idealized portrait of what a president who is ‘some former general or business leader with impeccable outsider status but also a steady temperament, deep knowledge and good sense’ might do. While there is applause for the Brooks op-ed article, responses indicate it could never happen.
JESUS THE ‘OUTSIDER’
My purpose in touching on David Brooks’ piece, is not to engage in political discussion, but to discuss what another ‘outsider’ in history taught and did. I am speaking of Jesus of Nazareth and the legacy he left his people and the world.
With the opening words of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus knew he could be accused of changing the meaning of the law of Moses and developing a ‘new speak’ concerning the commandments of God. Indeed, those nice sounding Beatitudes (Blessings) seemed to be setting out very new ways of expressing our relationship with God and with one another. In the eyes of the religious establishment he was in every way ‘an outsider’.
COUNTER-CULTURE
Consider what Jesus says to anyone who would follow him. He expects our lives to undergo radical changes, counter to the values and practices of the culture. Instead of thinking we can contribute to our relationship with God, we need to feel our poverty before his awesome holiness. Instead of being indifferent towards unbelievers, we need to feel the pain for a world that mocks the very idea of God. Instead of engaging in the power play and plotting of the world to achieve our goals, we should walk the tougher path of humility and service.
Furthermore, Jesus calls on us to ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’, to ‘show mercy’, ‘pursue purity’, and to ‘work for peace’. Knowing that life won’t always be easy for his followers, Jesus urges us to stay firm in our faith and persevere. ‘It will be worth every bit of it’, he says. ‘And understand this,’ he continues, ‘You are the salt of the earth’ and ‘the light of the world’ (Matthew 5:1-16).
TRUE EVANGELICALS
In the 16th century Reformation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and those around him were part of a movement rediscovering the unique authority of the Bible and its clarity concerning Jesus’ teaching, life, death and resurrection. The changes they initiated re-formed what had been a de-formed church and had an outcome for good in the church and the wider society.
Historians today refer to Cranmer and those around him as ‘evangelicals’. They were men and women of faith who were committed to the priority of the ministry of God’s gospel and growing God’s people in their walk with him.
At the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th, William Wilberforce and Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, initiated anti-slavery laws in England, and facilitated education programs and better conditions for the poor.
The starting point for all of them was a healthy awareness of a good and merciful God, and a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, the voice of the most significant ‘outsider’ in history is scorned if not simply dismissed.
Here then is our challenge. We need to encourage one another to bring God’s truth back into the conversation. We need to equip one another to answer questions people ask about the present woes and the larger issues of life. I have found the Book of Ecclesiastes is a helpful starting point to do this.
Let me urge you to take to heart Jesus’ Beatitudes. Own afresh his words that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We can’t do this in our own strength. We need to pray for his mercy and courage to live out our calling. More than ever our world needs to hear of God’s extraordinary love and compassion. The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers… (Luke 10:2).
In an op-ed article in yesterday’s New York Times, David Brooks wrote of the way that ‘great powers’ have allowed ‘the global order to fray’ because of the loss of conviction and meaning.
He concludes by asserting the primary problem is mental and spiritual. Some leader has to be able to digest the lessons of the past 15 years and offer a revised charismatic and persuasive sense of America’s mission. This mission… would be… more realistic about depravity and the way barbarism can spread.
Increasingly I find people around us are looking for answers. Indeed over coffee or at dinner party the conversation often turns to concerns about the future and where the world is going. We need to consider ways we might respond.
LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE
It’s important we keep Jesus’s words before us: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).
What we often overlook is that the world into which Jesus Christ spoke these words was a time of one of the most powerful and ruthless dictatorships – the Roman Empire. Most people had no vote and there was no such thing as free speech. Say a word against the emperor and you could be jailed.
In his Letter to the Philippians Paul the Apostle applies Jesus’ words when he writes: Do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world (2:14f).
Shine like stars. God wants us to shine like heavenly bodies in a crooked and corrupt world, a world of darkness and despair. But, Paul notes, ‘as stars in the world’ or, to use Jesus’ words, as ‘the light of the world’, we face a danger: As we stand together and work out our salvation (Philippians 2:12), we will encounter difficulties, hardships and frustrations. The sacrifices we have to make in dealing with people around us will lead us, in tough times, to grumble, to complain, to be bitter, and even to fight amongst ourselves.
You may know the lines: ‘To dwell above with saints we love, oh yes, that will be glory. To dwell below with saints we know, well that’s another story.’
Grumbling and complaining will make us blemished. The blazing witness of our lives and our church will dim or even be extinguished. Paul is saying that where the people of Israel failed, you ought to succeed for God is at work in you enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. This is a new feature of the new covenant. God’s Spirit is at work in us.
LIGHT OF THE WORLD
We are to shine as the stars of the sky, not in our own strength but in the strength of God himself. As heavenly lights, God’s people in Philippi and we today, are to shine in the world – a world that is crooked and twisted because it’s a world that is in darkness and despair, without ‘conviction’ and without ‘meaning’, because it rejects its God.
When people come to know we are Christian they will observe us. They want to know whether we are genuine, whether what we profess is changing us for the better – making us someone they might respect. For deep within many hearts is a cry for help.
We often forget a significant line in the Book of Ecclesiastes 3:11 – God has put eternityinto the mind of men and women, yet they cannot find out what he has done from the beginning to the end. God has given everyone a sense that life doesn’t end at the grave.
It’s a point I find that can be readily introduced into a conversation: ‘There’s more to life than what we have now’. And most agree. This in turn often opens up an opportunity to speak about God in a way that Paul did in his address to the Athenian intelligentsia (Acts 17:22-31). It’s worth working at this, for God has invited us to partner with him in revealing himself to the world.
Through the light of our lives others will be drawn to find out who we are and what makes us a dependable and joy-filled people whatever the circumstance of life. If we have taken Jesus’ Beatitudes to heart, and by his grace are living them out, others will notice. In turn, through the words of our lips people around us will come to hear God’s gospel, enabling them to glorify God on the final day. All of us have a part to play for we are called to be the light of the world.
Up until the 1970s there was an agreed morality in the West, grounded in the Judaeo-Christian ethic. As I indicated last week, this was the foundation for what developed, from the time of Alfred the Great, as the ‘Common Law’ of England and Great Britain. This was also influential in the development of laws in the United States, Canada and Australia.
At the heart of the ‘Common Law’ there was also something else. Monarchs, presidents and prime ministers, as well as justices of the courts of law, understood that they were accountable to a higher authority, the perfect lawmaker, God himself. Not that any of this made everyone Christian. But in bringing the light of God’s truth to bear it encouraged people to sort out their relationship with God.
AGE OF RELATIVITY
Now all has changed. Few leaders in government or in society today would challenge the prevailing assumption that there is no morally binding objective authority or truth above the individual. Today words such as true and false, right and wrong, good and bad, have lost their objective meaning. Everything is relative. We are in a world without compass bearings.
There is at least one person who is at odds with these ideas: Jesus Christ. Today we turn to a second command he lays on his followers: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house…”(Matthew 5:14f).
‘Light’ is a metaphor for truth. Because we live in an age of relativism and tolerance we easily lose the impact of this imagery. We don’t see the moral darkness of life around us, let alone in our own lives. Part of the problem is the prevailing ethos that there are no absolutes.
Into our world which reckons it has the answers, Jesus says to anyone who follows him: “You are the light of the world…” Two ideas stand behind his words. The first is Isaiah 9 where the prophet speaks of the people walking in darkness and seeing a great light. On those living in a land where the shadow of death falls, a light has dawned. A child will be born. He will be called “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
JESUS IS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
Isaiah was foreshadowing the birth of God’s King. Jesus is the light our world desperately needs. We may treat him as a cute little baby at Christmas, nod our heads sagely when the words of Isaiah are read, but ignore him for the rest of our lives. Yet Jesus doesn’t remain silent. He calls upon those who would follow him to be as a light to the world.
Jesus’ reference to lightpicks up another promise from Isaiah: Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you(Isaiah 60:1). This theme is taken up in John 1:14 – And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son,* full of grace and truth.God has come to us in Jesus Christ.
During the course of his public life, thousands were drawn to him. Following his death and resurrection millions upon millions continue to come to him, worshipping him as the Lord and Savior of the world. People everywhere have come to see him as the light of the world.
WALKING IN THE LIGHT
‘How then can we be the light of the world?’ we ask. The context of Jesus’ words gives us the clue: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven…” (Matthew 5:16).
‘Everything you are, everything you do,’ Jesus is saying to us, ‘must reflect all that I have taught you’ (the Beatitudes, for example). ‘Live your life as I command and others will be drawn to hear God’s gospel. It won’t happen otherwise.’ It’s an awesome thought. We’re all involved. No-one who calls themselves a Christian is exempt. All of us are commanded to reflect the light of Christ in our lives to the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer commented: ‘Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call. A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.’
The title of Woody Allen’s 2009 movie, ‘Whatever Works’ captures the mood of post-modern ethics. Starting with the presupposition that great thinkers like Jesus or Karl Marx were great teachers, the movie contends that religions work from the fallacy that people are inherently good. Life as we know it now, is all there is. There is no God; no final accounting. Part of life’s challenge is to find moments of love and joy. So, we need to do, ‘Whatever Works…’
The moral subjectivism of the movie seems so plausible, tolerant, and so mature. There’s no guilt in life, only disappointments. Because we all die we should do whatever works to make us happy.
One of the strengths of societies that have been framed by the ‘Common Law’, introduced in England in the 9th century by Alfred the Great, is that they have a moral framework. Much refined over the following centuries, this ‘Common Law’ is framed with reference to the Mosaic Law and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount’. This in turn has shaped the laws of England and Britain as a whole, as well as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
King Alfred, a professing Christian, was not only a capable military strategist but also a wise and visionary ruler. It seems that because he knew the Christ who had taught the Beatitudes, he worked for peaceful solutions even with the most ruthless of his enemies. As one historian comments: Alfred had the wisdom to realize that the sword, though powerful to defend, could settle nothing permanently, and that only the conquest of the heart could endure (Arthur Bryant, The Story of England: Makers of the Realm, 1953).
SALT OF THE EARTH
Why did King Alfred respond the way he did? Clearly he understood not only Jesus’ Beatitudes, but also Jesus’ following words: “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).
Salt. In Jesus’ day salt was used for a number of purposes – as seasoning to bring out the flavor of food, and also as a preservative. At a time of no refrigeration, salt was rubbed into fresh meat to prevent it from rotting. Jesus is saying that his followers are to act as a preservative in the world — to slow down the decay. This is what King Alfred was endeavoring to do in 9th century England. And as we look back over history, we see he was laying the foundation for a great nation.
COUNTER-CULTURAL LIFE OF JESUS
This becomes our challenge today. If we are to stand against the dehumanizing elements of our world, we need to be ready to understand the counter-cultural life Jesus calls us to live. We also need the grace and the wisdom to live it. Only when we are willing to stand up and do this as God’s people will we stop the rot. But this will only happen if we ourselves don’t become insipid. That’s why Jesus goes on to warn against salt losing its saltiness.
Now, strictly speaking salt can’t lose its saltiness. NaCl is a stable compound. However, in the ancient world salt was obtained from salt marshes rather than through the evaporation of sea water. There were many impurities in it. And there’s also a play on words here that Jesus’ first hearers would have picked up. ‘Salt’ in Aramaic is Tabel. And there’s a word very close to it, Tapel which means fool. ‘Watch out,’ Jesus is saying, ‘that you don’t become insipid, wishy-washy followers and so make fools of yourselves.’
What a warning. ‘If you call yourself a follower of mine,’ Jesus is saying, ‘your life will be different.’ So we need to ask: How do other people see us? Do we go to church but our life remains unchanged? Is our life shaped by the culture or by the Bible? Are we just as unforgiving, just as greedy and selfish as everyone around us? ‘If you call yourself a follower of mine,’ Jesus says, ‘let your life be transformed by my words, for You are the salt of the earth.’
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