This evening will you wish you were in Arlington, Texas? Will you be glued to your TV set at 6:30? Do I need to tell anyone that that’s kickoff time for Super Bowl XLV? As the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers face off against each other on the field, some of you might be more interested in the players than the plays. Did you know that many of the players on both sides are men of faith who are actively partnering with God to bring God’s kingdom a little closer? I’ll just hold up two of them. Wide receiver and Kalamazoo native Greg Jennings is worth millions as a star player for Green Bay. Through the Greg Jennings Foundation, a non-profit Christian organization dedicated to assisting children and families. Greg has been steadily and generously giving back to the community. Supported by donations, volunteers, fund-raising events, and Greg himself, the Foundation makes grants to organizations and people in need in Michigan and Wisconsin. Among other grants, last summer the Foundation supported a Habitat for Humanity house in Kalamazoo, and in November Greg personally helped distribute 500 Thanksgiving turkeys. That same month 2009 Steelers MVP James Harrison founded the James Harrison Family Foundation. James was inspired by both the generous support of his fans and his love of children, and he started this foundation so that he can make a difference in peoples' lives when they need it the most. Dedicated to fostering hope, the foundation provides aid especially to children with disabilities and their families in the greater Pittsburgh area. In mid-December the foundation invited 200 children and their families to enjoy brunch with Santa and take home new clothing and toys.
Most of the Packers and Steelers players have started such foundations. Many have been spurred to do so by their commitment to being Jesus’ disciples. I would guess that today’s Gospel passage has helped to inspire not only today’s players but also the many other athletes who have founded similar organizations. As you remember, Matthew was writing to a beleaguered community of new Christians, a community that included both Jews and Gentiles. With members of different ethnic traditions, this community, like the community in Corinth, and like many other Christian communities, was striving to live fully into the way inaugurated by Jesus. As we will see throughout our readings from the Gospel of Matthew this year, one of Matthew’s major concerns was to offer instruction to this community as to what Jesus’ disciples should be and do. The center of the story is made up of five great sermons of Jesus, all of which contain concrete instructions as to how a Christian community should form itself.
Here we begin to learn about community formation through Jesus’ instructions to his first disciples. You remember that Jesus has just called Peter, Andrew, James, and John away from their nets. Last week we heard the beginning of the first sermon, in which Jesus began by assuring these disciples that they were blessed by God when they depend on God’s grace to help them live in love and peace. Now Jesus begins to lay out the characteristics of a blessed community. Warning them that their righteousness needs to go way beyond the scrupulous law-keeping of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus tells them that they need two things. They don’t need to be captivating preachers (thank heavens!), they don’t need to be canny administrators, and they don’t need to be spell-binding evangelists.
The disciples do need to be who they are, by God’s grace, already becoming: salt to the earth and light for the world, people whose connection with God could be seen in who they were and what they did. Because they were now Jesus’ disciples, they shared in Jesus’ life, and they could show this Jesus-life to the world. Not by engaging in propaganda, not by haranguing people on the roads, but by being fully alive in Christ, by being the kind of people who make other people see the possibility that God might be real after all and at work in them. By living the kind of life that shows forth God’s goodness to others. For Jesus’ disciples, this means more than the personal piety that the scribes and Pharisees modeled so well. Living a life infused with Jesus-ness means engaging in concrete acts of mercy, justice, peace, and liberation – for the people in their own homes, on their own doorsteps, across the street, and across the world. Those who partake of Jesus’ own life are enabled by him to do Jesus in the world, not to win God’s favor, not to buy their way into heaven, but so that others “may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” So that others may be healed and restored, and so that ultimately all nations may be brought under God’s gracious reign.
Guess what? We are Jesus’ disciples too. We are also salt for the earth, we are also light for the world. Jesus’ challenge to his immediate disciples is addressed to us too. In The Holy Longing, his meditation on spiritual life in our time, Ronald Rolheiser reminds us that there are four “non-negotiable essentials” for a healthy spirituality: personal prayer and morality, mellowness of heart and spirit, communal worship, and pursuit of social justice. We’ve talked a lot about prayer, especially contemplative prayer, and some of us have experienced it here. And certainly we’re all trying to overcome our own personal brokenness and sinfulness. Mellowness of heart and spirit? We might say that that’s about acknowledging your dependence on God, being grateful for all of God’s blessings to you, and trusting the spirit to lead you. Communal worship brings us back together as the Body of Christ, enabling us to support each other as we enter into the sacred mystery of God’s presence among us. Pursuing social justice flows out of the first three practices. As we deepen our relationship with God through prayer, and as we are nourished by Word and Sacrament in worship, our ability to be and do Jesus in the world is strengthened.
Do you see pursuing social justice as essential to your spirituality? “Well, yes,” you might say, “but what can one person, or even one small parish actually do?” Just think of all the areas of our globe that need addressing: poverty, both right here in this county and in the rest of the world; sub-standard housing and homelessness; hunger; Third World debt; environmental justice; access to health care; human trafficking, sweatshop labor; fair trade purchasing; socially responsible investing. The list goes on and on. Do you feel stopped in your tracks, intimidated into total inertia by the enormity and complexity of all the areas of social injustice? Perhaps we can follow the advice of Mother Teresa: “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” Be and do Jesus for that one! Here at St. Peter’s, we understand that scale. Today, our youngsters are helping to complete our collection for the Souper Bowl of Caring. Food and dollars are still very much needed. We continue our Loaves and Fishes dinners, and our distribution of diapers with the Lutheran Social Services mobile food pantry. Where else might our ministries take us? Where else might we be and do Jesus in the world?
I want to challenge us. I know that pursuing social justice isn’t easy. In fact, sometimes it’s downright dangerous – as the history we remember in Black History month so poignantly reminds us. Nevertheless, I want to challenge us to be and do more than we think we can. I would like the children to think of something that only they can be and do between now and Easter. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!” Can you children think of a way that your light can shine brighter between now and Easter? How about the young adult group that’s forming? Yes, it’s important that you all come together in fellowship and strengthen the ties among you. But is there a way that you can grow in your love of God and of those around you? Yes, all of you are busy with your various obligations. I was a young mother once too, believe it or not. So if you can’t feed a hundred people, can you feed one? Is there one thing you can do between now and Easter? How about the ECW? Is there one thing you can do between now and Easter? How about you men? What can you do? Is there something the whole congregation can do together? Can we put old conflicts behind us and do something, really do something, together? Engage in a letter-writing campaign for Bread for the World maybe? I challenge all of you to come up with some ideas and then to follow through with them. The rest of us pledge to give whatever help we can!
Jesus told us, “You are salt for the earth, you are light for the world.” Confident that God will enable us to continue growing in our ability to be and do Jesus in the world, we are bold to pray, “O God, with endless mercy you receive the prayers of all who call on you. By your Spirit show us the things we ought to do, and give us the grace and power to do them, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.”
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