Sermon on Matthew 5:13-20

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

There’s some harsh stuff in our scripture readings today:Isaiah saying God doesn’t want fasting from people who oppress their workers and Jesus saying entering the kingdom of heaven requires being more righteous than the religious leaders.

Even these tough words, though, can help us understand God better.

Our readings show that God is dissatisfied with religious practice that’s solely individual and doesn’t address the needs of the larger community.

In Isaiah, God’s people had recently returned from exile in Babylon, and God was reminding them of how to show their devotion to God.

Fasting as an individual practice wasn’t what God was looking for.Fasting while exploiting others wasn’t what God was looking for. Fasting without letting that spiritual practice moveone into collective acts of justice, mercy, and love wasn’t what God was looking for.

Then, our Gospel reading picks up right after the Beatitudes, which we read last week. Jesus had named the surprising people God favored. The Beloved Community was to be composed of people brought low by life’s circumstances and people who sought peace in a world of violence and domination. The Beatitudes answer the question of “who” was part of the Beloved Community.

Then, Jesus encouraged those blessed people to be public about the Beloved Community: to be salt and light. They were to bring their unique flavor and shine so that others would understand what the Beloved Community is about and join in.

This wasn’t about undoing the way of life God haddescribed in the Law. It was about living out that way of life in their current reality. Jesus was fond of reinterpreting the Law with his formula of “you have heard it said…but I say to you…”

Jesus wasn’t replacing those laws but leaning into them.He was inviting his hearers to live out not just the letter of the Law but its spirit. They would need to live out the way of Jesus in a way that the scribes and the Pharisees—the religious leaders invested in the status quo—weren’t prepared to. Not just their actions mattered, but the attitudes of their hearts. It’s a tall order, but no one said Beloved Community was going to be easy.

If the Beatitudes answer the question of “who,” then our Gospel reading today answers the question of “how” people in the Beloved Community are supposed to be in the world. The bulk of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is about “what” people in the Beloved Community are supposed to do: loving enemies, being exceedingly generous, not judging others, etc.

So, between our Isaiah and Matthew readings, we can see that God is concerned not just with individual piety but justice and how God’s people treat others.

As Lutherans, that’s a little challenging to hear, because we’re really concerned with not trying to earn God’s love or salvation.

But what our readings are talking about isn’t works righteousness; it’s about living in community.

Being a follower of Jesus isn’t about a checklist of individual spiritual practices or a pass/fail test about getting into heaven. We can’t earn God’s love, and we can’t save ourselves.Jesus took care of that.

At the same time, Jesus was working to make heaven here on earth, and if we want to, we can be part of that. Both our Isaiah and our Matthew readings talk about how to do just that: to live together as a community of God’s people.

The English word “economics” comes from the Greek “oikonomia,” which has to do with the household. And our word “politics” comes from the Greek “polis,” which has to do with a city. Both have to do with how we agree to live together as humans.

The founders of this country decided (wisely, in my opinion) not to establish a national religion. We talk often about the “separation of church and state,” and that’s a good thing for a lot of reasons.

It has, however, resulted in religion in the US becoming something personal that we largely practice in private. Religion is something we do as individuals or maybe as small groups for an hour on Sunday mornings.

So, we’ve lost the communal aspect of religion. I’m certainly not in favor of shoving religion down our neighbors’ throats or enforcing practices from one religion onto people who subscribe to another. But we’re missing important aspects of our readings today if we read them as commands directed toward individuals instead of as a recipe for building Beloved Community.

God throughout scripture talksdirectly or through prophetsto groups of people.

God is concerned not just with individuals but with the “polis” and the “oikonomia”—the city and the household of God’s people, which is everyone.

We’ve lost that when we insist that there shouldn’t be politics in church.

Don’t get me wrong—I will never endorse a candidate from the pulpit. And you’ve probably noticed that I’m not the best at preaching “with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other,” as Karl Barth recommended. It takes me a while to process what’s going on and feel like I have something to say.

But I am deeply troubled by the events of the past few weeks in Minneapolis and, to be honest, with many events over the past months.

I’ve watched videos of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

I’ve seen with my own eyes an ICE agent sitting in the back of an immigration courtroom, waiting to take people away the moment they step out of the room.

I’ve heard accounts from colleagues in Chicago of being arrested for protesting after they were denied permission to bring communion to people in a detention center.

I know a Fullerton resident—a US citizen who happens to be Latina—who won’t take her kids to the grocery store with her in case she gets racially profiled and detained, because she doesn’t want her kids to witness that.

We have neighbors—documented and undocumented—who are afraid right now.

We as Christians, as salt and light, are called to love our neighbors publicly. If immigration is where your heart is right now, do what you can to love our neighbors in that way.

But immigration doesn’t have to be what you’re passionate about—it’swhat’s on my mind right now, and it certainly has to do with how we live together as humans.

But maybe you’re passionate about education or the environment or disability advocacy or LGBTQ rights or cancer research.I know you care about feeding our neighbors body and soul.

All of this has to do with how we live together as groups of people—a polis. We’re called to love our neighbors publicly. Andwhen we bring our salt and light to these collective efforts, we are building Beloved Community.

Jesus said to those who were considered by society to be disposable and undesirable that they are favored by God.

He then said, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”

They were what was needed, as they were, to do the work of building Beloved Community together.

You, too, are the salt of the earth.

You, too, are the light of the world.

You are what is needed to build Beloved Community here on earth—not by yourself, but together with your siblings in Christ.

God isn’t impressed by individual spiritual practices if they don’t lead you to joining in making earth a little more as it is in heaven.

You are needed to join in caring for your neighbors who are afraid.

You are needed to join in providing for your neighbors who don’t have enough.

You are needed to join in speaking up until every human being is treated like the image of God they are.

So, yes, do spiritual practices—they help ground you and help you listen to God’s voice. But don’t stop there. We’re not meant to do life alone. Join with your siblings in Christ to build Beloved Community by being the salt and light you are.

The world needs your flavor.The world needs your glow.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, let’s build Beloved Community together.