Salt, light and chocolate

from Helen

I love chocolate, I don’t mean a little,  I mean lots. I used to say that if I had Jesus, chocolate and winnie the pooh,everything would be alright. Now, this is not always the best way forward, after all winnie the pooh might disappear, chocolate may run out but Jesus is always there. EverythingHe said will never, as we heard in the gospel reading this morning (Luke 5:13-20) disappear.

Back to chocolate. I have three occasions involving chocolate which remind me of what it means to be a follower of Jesus,that I want to tell you about today. They all relate to two of our readings this morning. 

The first is about a tea pot made of chocolate and is about how hard it can be to be follower of Jesus.

When I was a teenager a book came out called, “the chocolate tea pot”. It was a great book as it said that a chocolate tea pot would be great to look at but once it was near heat it would melt and be of no use at all. The book said that this is what we can be like as Christians, we look good on the outside but when things get tough we might melt. We may go away from our faith because it is too difficult.

In our gospel reading (Matthew 5;13-20) we heard Jesus telling the disciples that they were the salt of the earth. Not everyone likes salt but it does add flavour to food. Salt was also used in compost at the time of Jesus to help things to grow. We are to be more like Jesus and to stand up for Him and our beliefs, even when things are difficult so that we can grow the kingdom of God. 

I often feel at odds with things going on in the world around us. It can feel a bit like we are a tea pot made of chocolate about to melt away. After all, as followers of Jesus we are different. But by being like Jesus we can bring flavour, we help the kingdom of God grow as we seek to bring people to Him, and we do this by showing people that God loves them and cares about them.

This brings me to my second chocolate story.

I was once on a clergy conference in Oxford. There was a fair going on outside the Church where we were having evening prayer. One of my colleagues said afterwards that what would have been better, would have been all of us putting our clerical collars on and giving out mars bars to people and telling them that God loves them. This wasn’t to say that prayer was not important, we need to pray, but it was to show the ways that sometimes we can get caught up in our ways of doing faith to such an extent that we miss what God would want us to do.

In our Old Testament reading (Isaish 58:1-12) we heard of the ways that we are to make a difference not by carrying on in our own ways but in looking to God more. The people to whom Isaiah was speaking were not bad people, they kept religious observances, they fasted ,but they were doing it for themselves. They were so caught up in what they were doing that that they had stopped seeing God and doing things His way. For us, we can be so caught up that we can forget that it is only by looking to God that we can truly see what it means to be salt to the world, how we can bring flavor.

My final chocolate story is about how good God is, and how as His followers we are to being something better to the world. 

About 5 years ago our daughter Jess was given a box of chocolates for valentines day that weren’t from her husband. According to her son Jack, who was 6, they were from Jesus. They were actually from their neighbours Church but as they had a card on the front saying  - love from Jesus, well Jack obviously thought that Jesus had bought his mummy chocolate for valentines day. Jack liked Jesus already but the fact that Jesus gave chocolates to his mummy made Jesus even better. 

In the gospel reading Jesus didn’t just talk of us being the salt of the earth He also talked of us being the light of the world.

As followers of Jesus we are seeking to show the light of God, a light that no darkness can quench and we are looking to change the places where there is darkness. We do this through being more like God, by praying more by being light in dark places. It only takes a very small light to make a difference. 

We are the children of God who should be seeking to make the World a better place by bringing it more into line with the rule of God. 

We can do this by loving others, by seeking to drive out hate with love, driving out poverty through action and prayer, by seeking peace in our own lives and spreading that peace to others- we can make a difference. By trying to be more like God every day in our lives we will bring light to the darkness we will  be the salt of the earth.

There was a man who was giving his first lecture in New York and he was very nervous. So he had got lots of slides to support him, and had all the equipment that he needed, he set up a slide projector and began to teach, after a while he noticed that he was being copied, this bothered him, but he carried on all the same, after about 10 minutes he was still being copied, so he asked the students if they would please grant him some respect and listen intently, after 20 minutes he was still being copied so he decided that it was time to really push the point that it was unfair to copy him and mock him. As he turned to shout at the students he realised that the person copying him was actually his own shadow, that had been caused by the light !

We are called to be the shadow of Jesus in the World, to be salt and light. Yes we will be different at times but to be honest it is much better to be full of the light and love of Jesus than to be any other way in the world. May we all be salt and light. AMEN