It's Time To Get Salty

The Rev. Sara Warfield

Scriptures: Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVaGzR9qDh0

Part of my morning ritual is checking the headlines from the Oregonian and the Guardian and, yes, even the conservative National Review that I receive in my email each morning. I’ve come to expect the usual litany of cruelty, dehumanization, and extremism being wrought by our national leaders in our name. And every day I’m ALSO heartened to see how some leaders and so many of our neighbors are responding: our Oregon governor and 31 mayors calling for a halt to immigration enforcement in the state, lines of minivans in Minneapolis driven by moms seeking to disrupt ICE activity in their city.

But Friday morning was different. On Friday morning, I read about the National Prayer Breakfast that happened the day before. Now according to its own website, the National Prayer Breakfast is “an opportunity for Members of Congress to pray collectively for our nation, the President of the United States, and other national and international leaders in the spirit of love and reconciliation as Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago.”

But here’s how Methodist pastor and writer Benjamin Cremer describes what happened on Thursday morning:

At that breakfast, Jesus’ name was spoken, prayers were offered, Scripture was referenced, and then the gathering was handed over to the president. What should have been a moment of humility became a spectacle of self-congratulation…Bombs were described as blessings. Brutality was framed as spiritual renewal. Pastors were warned, half joking, half not, that faithfulness would be rewarded by not having their tax exemption revoked if it aligned with him and punished by having it revoked if it did not. And the most grievous thing is that the room applauded. The room of those claiming to follow Jesus applauded.

This, out of all the dreadful headlines, stopped me dead in my tracks. I felt something break inside me, releasing a flood of anger and despair. That’s my faith they’re talking about. OUR faith. That’s our savior’s name they’re tossing about so casually together with their agenda of violence and domination. How can we all claim to believe in “the spirit of love and reconciliation as Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago” and come to such wildly different conclusions about what that love and reconciliation look like?

—

In our Hebrew Bible lesson today, an argument plays out between God and the people of Judah through the words of Isaiah:

Day after day they seek me

and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness

and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments,

they delight to draw near to me.

“Why do we fast,” they say, “but you do not see?

Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,

and oppress all your workers.

Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

and to strike with a wicked fist.

Look, you serve your own interest at the breakfast in which you claim to offer prayers to me.

Look, you pray only to kill people who disagree with you, and you steal children away from their parents and lock them in detention centers hundreds of miles from their homes.

Such fasting, such praying, as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.

I looked up the definition of politics: “The art or science of government or governing, especially the governing of a political entity, such as a nation, and the administration and control of its internal and external affairs.”

By this definition, Isaiah is a political document. He speaks to the nation of Judah, the hundreds of thousands of people of the house of Jacob, and through him God tells them how they are to govern themselves.

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

And not to hide yourself from your own kin. That verse hits differently right now, doesn’t it?

I have to remind myself that what we’re living through is not new. Since its very first days, defending Christianity, defending Jesus, has regularly been used to oppress others and justify violence. During the Crusades, hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims were slaughtered in defense of Christianity. During the Spanish Inquisition, thousands of people, including the “wrong” kind of Christians, were brutally tortured in the name of preserving “right” Christianity.

Since its earliest days, defense of Christianity, defense of Jesus, has been wielded as a tool for political domination.

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter cuts off someone’s ear in defense of Jesus. But Jesus’ response to that is telling: “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

“I don’t need defending,” He tells Peter, he tells us.

And then today, he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law and the prophets until all is accomplished.” Jesus came to fulfill the words of Isaiah.

If you remove the yoke from among you,

the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness

and your gloom be like the noonday.

So now it's our turn to follow Isaiah, to follow Jesus, and get political. No, not by papering over the Constitution with our choice of scriptures, with what we believe to be “right” faith. The separation of the Church from the power of the state is what keeps our religion humble, loving, and truly alive.

We get political by living our faith boldly in our community, in clear view of our neighbors and our leaders. According to both Isaiah and Jesus, that means “to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free.” If we stay silent as this administration restricts who can vote and how, we are not loosening the bonds of injustice. If we do nothing as ICE continues to indiscriminately and often violently abduct our neighbors, we are not letting the oppressed go free.

“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.”

It’s your time to get salty. Do you know what salt does? It brings out the flavors around it. To get salty means to know deep in your bones how God made you, to recognize what gifts and skills God gave you, and to bring them out. To wield them in service of the love Jesus taught, in service to the justice God has called us to since the days of Cain and Abel.

And to know that when you do:

The Lord will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to live in.

Amen.