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First Lesson: Isaiah 58: 1-9a (9b-12)
Responsive Reading: Psalm 112: 1-10
Second Lesson: 1 Corinthians 2: 1-12 (13-16)
​Gospel Lesson: Matthew 5: 13-20

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Grace and Peace from Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
​
Let me begin by telling you a story about a church not much different than this one, in a town not much different than Silver Bay. 

Pastor Doug had just received a call to Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church[1].  Saint Martin’s Lutheran was the most beautiful building that Pastor Doug had ever seen: gorgeous sanctuary looked like a log cabin inside, a row of very nice looking Sunday School classrooms, a brand-spanking-new kitchen, and a fellowship hall with plush chairs that could hold over 200 people.  For Pastor Doug, Saint Martin’s seemed to be a dream call until he looked at the attendance figures.  Pastor Doug started studying these figures and saw they had nearly 300 people at Saint Martin’s on a Sunday thirty years back; then the years went by, people started dying off or moving away or stopped coming altogether.  Now Saint Martin’s would be thrilled to get 75 people there on a Sunday morning. 

Pastor Doug began a new call like most preachers do with a great sense of optimism.  He began calling on inactive members, he helped organize meals to invite the community to Saint Martin’s, and he spent hours trying to craft his sermons.  Pastor Doug though like nearly every other pastor at Saint Martin’s before him saw nothing seem to change.  Everyone Pastor Doug talked to believed that Saint Martin’s was going to stay the way that it has always been.

Pastor Doug though had different plans.  Pastor Doug decides to take out an ad in the local newspaper.  Pastor Doug announces that since Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church was dead, that he was going to give it a funeral.  The funeral for Saint Martin’s Lutheran was going to be held at 2 P.M. on the following Sunday.  Everyone in town soon started talking about Saint Martin’s Lutheran.

Sunday Afternoon rolls around, everyone in town shows up for the funeral, here’s what shocked those in attendance.  Right at the front of the sanctuary was a giant casket adorned by flowers.  What was in the casket everyone wondered?  Pastor Doug gives a eulogy for Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church then invites everyone to come forward to see the casket.  Everyone was wondering what exactly lay inside this casket[2]. 

The lines of people begin seeing the inside of the casket.  Everyone who looked into the casket turned away as soon as they saw what was inside.  Heads were jerking away at a violent pace.  You see what was inside Saint Martin’s casket was a mirror.  Every person who looked inside Saint Martin’s casket saw their own reflection. 

Here’s the thing though about Saint Martin’s Lutheran it is not unique.  I read a book last week called Autopsy of a Deceased Church by Thom Rainer.  Rainer estimates that there are nearly 400,000 churches in this country that show signs of illness that could lead to eventual death[3].  Now here’s the thing though about nearly all these churches: they’ve had faithful pastors, they’ve all had committed members and leaders, they’ve all attempted to reach out and engage the community in some ways.  But no different than Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church years of numerical disappointment leads eventually to apathy and hopelessness setting in.

Is there hope for Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church, I’ll get back to them in a bit. 

Today’s Gospel Lesson comes to us from Matthew 5[4].  It’s the second part of Jesus’ Famous Sermon on the Mount.  Let me talk briefly about the audience for the Sermon on the Mount to help understand it a bit better. 

“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”-Matthew 5:20. 

The scribes were basically the Bible interpreters in Jesus’ day.  If you know any English teachers, scribes had to be nature very strict and rigid about following the rules.  The Pharisees were the religious elite sitting in the front row of the Temple every Sunday.  The Pharisees were held in high esteem throughout their community.  The Pharisees would have been made up of mostly, highly respectable businessman. 
Who does Jesus give the Sermon on the Mount? Basically, everyone but the Scribes and Pharisees? The Disciples were mostly a collection of uneducated fishermen and the rest of the people listening we hear as being either meek, mourning or poor in spirit. 

Now if you were to take a look at the people in the audience they would seem to be the last type of people that could turn a place like Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church around.  The type of people that Jesus should have saved his best sermon for another crowd.

Here’s the thing about Jesus though, he knew who was in the Sermon on the Mount crowd.

“You are the light of the world.   Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven[5].”

What Jesus is saying is that he chooses people to bring forth his kingdom regardless of their previous resume. 

I came across a quote this week that suggested perhaps it’s the cracks from within our lives (meekness, mourning, addiction, despair, regret, broken relationships,  depression, old age and fear) that bring God’s light into our lives.  Maybe it is through these same cracks where the love of God is meant to get out once again[6]. 

Perhaps the point of the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus is all about building his ministry through imperfect people.  People from whom light can shine out of the deepest darkness.

The question for this morning is how do we bring this light forth?

“Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.”-Matthew 20:15. 

Now Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church probably had all kinds of bushels[7].  They probably saw all kinds of ways why their light was merely meant to flicker, rather than shine.

They might have been comparing themselves to the other more seemingly religious successful churches in town[8].  They could have been obsessed with trying to recreate the good old days of the past, rather than boldly approaching an uncharted future. Saint Martin’s could have been consumed with conflict that pitted neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother[9].  Saint Martin’s bushel could be all about being the dream church where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average[10].

Here’s the thing though about bushels, we are not doomed to let them define us.  We can only block out the light when we believe reasons why God couldn’t possibly act in our own church or our own lives. 

Mary Poplin grew up in a Methodist Church[11].  Mary’s church growing up didn’t look all that different from Saint Martin’s.  Mary only went to church because her father made her.  Mary found the church services boring and irrelevant to her life. 

Mary enrolls in a college where a new world presents itself to her[12].  Mary saw all kinds of new ways in which to engage the world around her: be more sophisticated, intelligent, and fashionable.  Mary’s such a good student that she eventually gets into graduate school.  Mary sees a former world of church and family that she wants no part of to be replaced with a more exciting world of booze, drugs, sex, and deeper intellectual discussions than she ever heard at her tiny, little Methodist church.

By the age of 41, Mary shows all the signs of being very successful by the world’s standards.  She’s a tenured professor at an elite college.  Mary had ditched God and seemed to be the better for it.

One day into Mary’s class walks a graduate student named John.  John was different, but Mary couldn’t quite tell how.  Whereas many of Mary’s students were angry at the world for all its perceived aggression, John seemed to be at peace[13].

Even after John graduates, Mary would call on his help from time to time[14].  Several years later John and Mary reconnect.  John senses Mary is lost with her place in the world.  John offers to walk alongside her.  Mary was at first taken back by John’s offer.  But soon, Mary has a dream where she encounters Jesus at the Last Supper that she needs someone to tell.  John listens to Mary talk about her strange dream.  John then suggests that Mary starts reading the Bible. The good word begins to change Mary slowly.  Mary soon after that returns to her Texas childhood home. Mary decides to attend church with her mother once again, doing everything she had previously rebelled.  The Pastor then offers for anyone to receive communion who believes that Jesus Christ died for their sins.  Mary Poplin went forward on this day[15].

Here’s the thing about John.  John was not a religious scholar, nor did he come from a particularly privileged place in life. John was like one of the crowd folks listening to Jesus give the Sermon on the Mount.  John was sent into Mary Poplin’s life to be her light. 

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness hasn’t overcome it”- John 1:5.

We will ultimately never change the world because we are great examples of anything, we are merely able to let our light shine before others because we have confidence in the promises of the Gospel to do as they say.  We become light only when we believe that the promises of Christ’s forgiveness are truly given unto us.  We become light because the Good News of the Gospel changes us as weak as we on our own might be.  The truth is a little bit of light can change a dark, dark world.

Let me close with one final story to illustrate this.  Thomas Clarkson was a deacon in the Anglican Church who never became a priest[16].  Thomas Clarkson though had one conviction that guided him that the slave trade was a great moral evil.  So Clarkson along with several Quakers decide to form a small committee which holds its first meeting at a bookstore. The odds seemed overwhelming; slavery was a big business which had been a relatively undisputed tenant of western civilization for generations. 

Clarkson though believed the cost of inaction was greater than the cost of action especially if his action could save the life of another.

Clarkson began distributing pamphlets and speaking all throughout England denouncing the slave trade[17].  Clarkson soon became many people’s public enemy number #1.  Clarkson describes the beginning of his journey being marked with “fear” and “trembling” over what lied ahead. 

The tide soon turned.  A little bit of light began shining in the darkness[18].  Petitions soon started making their way to parliament, British MPS soon started to convert to Clarkson’s cause.  People soon started boycotting sugar which fueled the slave trade. Within five years of the first meeting, the public had turned in Clarkson’s favor.  Years after setting out with a seemingly impossible cause, slavery would become outlawed in Thomas Clarkson’s Great Britain.

My point for this morning is this.  Darkness and death are never certain.  Saint Martin’s Lutheran Church only proceeded to die when they believed that light could no longer shine.  Mary Poplin thought she had left her former religion behind, right until a guy named John brought light into her life.  Thomas Clarkson believed that a little bit of light could even change the whole world regardless of what anyone else believed.  You see darkness and death are never certain.  Jesus promises that on days such as this one a little bit of light is always going to shine.  Amen


[1] The following is a re-telling based on David Rigg’s “A Church That Needs A Funeral” sermon found on Sermon Central given on April 19th, 2009 and retrieved on January 30th, 2017. 
[2] Rigg, David. “A Church That Needs a Funeral”. 
[3] Rainer, Thom S. Autopsy of a Deceased Church:12 Ways To Keep Yours Alive.  B&H Publishing. Nashville. 2014.  Print.P.87. 
[4] Matthew 5:13-20. 
[5] Matthew 5:14 a, Matthew 5:16.
[6] Zahl, David. “NBW on How the Light Gets Out”. MBIRD(Mockingbird Ministries). 14.Jun.2014. Web. Jan.30.2017.  The following is an excerpt from Nadia Bolz Weber’s “Sermon on that special class of salty, light-bearing people to whom Jesus preaches.” Published on Patheos on Feburary 13th, 2014. 
[7] Oden, Amy. “Commentary on Matthew 5:13-20.” Working Preacher. Luther Seminary. Saint Paul. 09.Feb.2014. Web. Jan.30.2017.
[8] Oden, Amy. “Commentary on Matthew 5:13-20.”
[9] The following paragraph is a mix of Oden’s commentary with Rainer’s book. 
[10] Garrison Keilor description of Lake Wobegon.
[11] Poplin, Mary. “The Unlikely Conversion of a Radical Scholar.” The Well (Intervarsity). 09.Dec.2008. Web. Jan.30.2017.  
[12] Poplin, Mary. “The Unlikely Conversion of a Radical Scholar.”
[13] Poplin, Mary. “The Unlikely Conversion of a Radical Scholar.”
[14] Poplin, Mary. “The Unlikely Conversion of a Radical Scholar.”
[15] Poplin, Mary. “The Unlikely Conversion of a Radical Scholar.”
[16] Stories for Preaching. “The End of Slavery” . Web. Retrieved on January 30th, 2017. 
[17]   Stories for Preaching. “The End of Slavery.”
[18]   Stories for Preaching. “The End of Slavery.”