Sermon: You are salt and you are light. You are.

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 9 February 2020.

3^rd Sunday Before Lent (Year A)

·       Matthew 5.13-20

A few hundred years ago, when everything was sepia (colour had not yet come in), I went to university. I read Theology, and, liking languages as I do, signed up for Biblical Hebrew as well as New Testament Greek. More than once I was told: if you ever wanted to do serious research in the Bible, go for the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

·       Hebrew is thought to be harder than Greek (it isn’t);

·       the Old Testament is thought to be less important than the New (it isn’t);

·       and the Old Testament is thought to be much, much longer than the new (it is).

The point is: it is not an exaggeration to say that every single word of the New Testament has been studied, analysed, and researched. So it is that much harder to say anything original.

There is a lot of truth in that. Every single word. Certainly, I know at least one person who wrote a whole dissertation (a small book) on the word… salt. To Halas in Greek. A waste of time and energy?

Actually, it’s not ridiculous, when you think about it. “We all know” what it is to be “the salt of the earth”. Someone who is “the salt of the earth” is

·       a kind and well-intentioned person;

·       a good egg;

·       a top banana;

·       perhaps even the bees-knees.

And so on. A good person. But of course we only “know” this meaning because of this Bible text. These meanings are what we have done with – what we have made out of – the Bible text. The meaning is later than the text. So the meaning Matthew intended – or the meaning Jesus intended – has still to be worked out. We do have to dig deeper into the mines of meaning.

Fortunately, this is (for once) not an impossibly difficult task. For all the evidence suggests that the purposes of salt have changed little over the centuries. Salt is used:

·       to give flavour to food;

·       salt is used to preserve food (especially in days before fridges, but to some extent still, by choice);

·       and (more unusual this), salt is used as a fertiliser;

·       [a member of the congregation added: also for medical purposes].

Can we work out which use of salt is to the fore in today’s gospel? That is not easy. Some say because the phrase is “salt of the earth” (to halas tes ges), then the use as fertiliser is the primary meaning. Salt for the earth, in effect. Maybe. And if so, this can work to keep us humble: we are, perhaps, not a million miles away from being like manure to be worked into the mud! But the meaning is as likely to be “salt out of the earth”. So we cannot say.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

Light is an easier symbol to understand, I’d say (thank goodness). But we just have to be clear that, since this text was written many centuries before electricity, here it means the light of the flame, the light of fire.

So we are salt, and we are flame.

We can say a few things about this.

First, as salt and as flame, too much of us in one place is a bad thing. Oversalted food, oversalted fields, oversalted medication, too much fire in a room – these are not just unpleasant things, they are dangerous things. So I say again, too much of us in one place is a bad thing. Except of course it’s not quite that. What is meant is rather if we are spending too much time in one place, that is a bad thing.

To be clear:

·       we gather (here we are);

·       and we are right to gather;

·       we need to gather;

·       and Gd calls us to gather.

·       It is good that we are here.

But! But we are here in order to be sent out. When at the end of the service we say or hear “Go in the peace of Christ” or “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”, this does not mean: “The service is over; we have run out of things to say, sing, and do”. No. We mean: “We, if we can inhabit and take to ourselves all that we have experienced, now have the forgiveness, compassion and strength we need to go out into the world and truly be salt and light in the wider mess that is the world.”

Second, salt and flame are very different things.

·       Salt works when it is hidden, when it is fully worked into something bigger than itself.

·       Flame works when it is on display, when it openly radiates its light throughout.

This is important. Important for us. It reminds us that we are called to both tasks.

·       Sometimes what we do is rightly and properly utterly hidden. No one notices, and that is okay. We do the right thing. An act of forgiveness here. An act of kindness there.

·       Sometimes what we do is rightly and properly public or “out there”. Taking a stance against racism here. Shutting down some gossip there. Neither the hidden nor the public ministry is more important than the other. The wisdom is knowing when to be hidden and when to be out. Salt here; flame there. We learn this wisdom by prayer, and from each other.

Third, and I don’t want to shock you here, but: salt is salt and flame is flame! I mean: the vocation of salt is to be salt, the saltiest salt it can be. Flame is called to be flame, the brightest and flamiest flame it can be. And we are to take comfort in this.

Our ministry in the world is not to do things that are utterly alien to us, that oppose or harm our true nature. Our ministry is to be our authentic selves, whatever that means. It doesn’t always mean doing what seems to come naturally, as our instincts and drives are not always right (to put it mildly). But it does mean that our vocation will be a coming to know ourselves as we really always were, as we always are. Further, we are right to be curious about our selves, and interested and find enjoyment in discovering our selves.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. The Greek sentences do include the verb to be (este). You may (just perhaps) remember that I’ve said that both in Hebrew and Greek you typically do not need the verb to be. It can be implicit. You the salt of the earth. You the light of the word. These would be perfectly good Greek sentences. So it may well be that the addition of the verb to be here is emphatic. You are. Who you are is the salt of the earth. Who you really are is the enlightening flame of the world.

·       So, most of your Christian life is to be lived dispersed in the world, the world in all its pain, mess and doubt.

·       Sometimes what you do will be hidden and unthanked; no matter.

·       Sometimes what you do will be public and so risky; no matter.

·       Don’t worry. In each and every moment, you are being called to do one thing only: to be what you are. To be who you are.

I’ll add: in all the renewal we are engaged in as a parish and as a worshipping community, all the change – the small and the big - is really all about helping us – as persons and as a gathering – to become who we are. Just as we want salt to be salty and the light of the flame to be light.

As this has been a reflection on a New Testament text, and knowing you as I do, I am aware that it is very unlikely I have said anything original. I give no apology. It is said with care and love. I address this to each of you as a disciple of Christ, and, yes, to me as one such too: By the grace of Gd, be who you are.

Amen.

Sermon for Bible Sunday

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford. 27 October 2019 (Year C)

·       Bible Sunday

Today is unusual; it may be unique. The sheets we have delivered have determined that today is “Bible Sunday”. We don’t normally keep “Bible Sunday”. We haven’t in my time, and I doubt you did before that. I think it is obvious why: if today is “Bible Sunday” what does that say of the other 51 Sundays of the year? Are they “Less-Bible Sunday”? Yet again, if every Sunday is “Bible Sunday”, why call one Sunday “Bible Sunday”?

But… I am happy to “roll with it”, as an “one off”. So we will call today unique, and we will call it (in case you haven’t picked it up yet…) “Bible Sunday”!

What I propose to do with this unique occasion is offer some teaching on the Bible, and you’ll guess that for me that means on the Bible in its original languages. This in turn means I am not going to offer an “exhortatory” sermon. (I know that’s what you were asking yourselves as you came to church today: “I wonder how exhortatory the sermon will be today”!) “Exhortatory” is just a specialist (or posh) way of saying a sermon which says how we should all be living. So you see: I am going to be even less bossy than normal. (And that’s not entirely a joke. It is also a warning: if you think I am normally bossy, you have been spoiled!) I am going to share some bits of knowledge, just to see if we can together agree that the Bible is fascinating.

And so to the Hebrew Bible, which Christians have tended and do tend to call the Old Testament (and I don’t say wrongly). This is, after all, the greater part of the Bible in terms of length, about 4/5 of the Christian Bible.  

The first thing you should know about Hebrew is that the core text does not have any vowels. This is true of every Torah scroll used in a synagogue. But it is also true of many/most newspapers in Israel today. You might think that makes things very hard. I suggest it doesn’t. You can test this. You can write some sentences down in English, but without the vowels – only the consonants – and give it to somebody else. My guess is that they will understand most of it.

Hebrew texts as such tend to have no vowels.

The second thing you must know about Hebrew is that the meaning of the words can change dramatically – utterly – depending on what the vowels in a word are.

For example

·       Lamad means “he learned” (maybe all by himself)

·       Limmad means he taught

·       Lummad means “he was taught” (by another).

That’s changing (pretty much) only the vowels.(1)  

So you can see that there is a problem: the core text has no vowels; the vowels often determine the meaning of the words.

And so it happened that, that between the 6^th and the 10^th centuries of our Common Era, some Jewish scribes started adding vowels to the text. They did this by adding dots and dashes above, below, and sometimes within the consonants. (I can show you later.) So a Hebrew text with the vowels added is called a “pointed” text. And by the end of the 10^th century, the words – the words with the vowels – were fixed. They weren’t added to the Torah scrolls themselves. The text on the scrolls was held to be too holy to have any later additions. But they were added to the books the congregation might have, or the books people practising reading or chanting the text might have.(Again, I have an example.)

Now, does this mean that until the vowels (the dots and the dashes) were added, people could just make up how to pronounce the vowels in the words, and so give the text the meaning they wanted? No, not at all. We have to remember that the early centuries after Christ, both Jews and Christians lived in what was basically an oral culture. They would be hearing these texts, year in, year out, week in, week out, or even day in, day out. So the vowels and the meanings would have been fixed (by and large) long before they were actually written down – written down in the form of those dots and dashes.

So, l am going to take a risk here. I am going to tell you something you may find boring, or you may just, like me, find intriguing. If you find it boring, you can tell me bluntly, as I won’t be preaching on “Bible Sunday” again. If you find it boring, but no more boring than any other sermon from me – that you don’t have to tell me.

Here goes. If we consider the Hebrew Bible as fixed by the addition of the vowels, how does the Bible begin? What is at the very opening of the book of Genesis? This is a real question…

Actually, the very opening of the book of Genesis does not say “In the beginning”. It does not work as a translation of the “pointed” Hebrew. The Hebrew says: “In a beginning”. The definite article – the word or the sound for “the” – is missing. But “In a beginning, Gd created heaven and earth” sounds strange in English, and more or less as strange in Hebrew. What might it actually mean? So it leads the grammarians/the translators to think creatively. So some modern translations read “When Gd began to create…” And I have to say: that is a fair translation of the Hebrew, really. “In beginning creating” might be the underlying idea.

This example also provides evidence for the point I was making earlier – that the later scribes did not invent new meanings from the consonantal text (the text that was just consonants) out of thin air. I say this because if we turn to the main Greek translation, the Greek also says: “In a beginning”. In the Greek, too, the word for “the” is missing. And this Greek text (which I also have with me) was written down a couple of centuries or more before Christ. It is unquestionably ancient.

And indeed, so fixed is this idea that the story of creation begins with the strange words “In a beginning”, that when St John wants to write his great meditation, reflecting and maybe going behind the story of creation, which he wants to relate to the Word of Gd who becomes a human being in Jesus Christ, he too writes as he starts his Gospel: “In a beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Gd, and the Word was Gd.”

Have I bored you to tears? I have really just wanted to drop the smallest hint that, if we do dig down into the biblical text in the original languages, things will become not easier, but more difficult and stranger for us, but – at least sometimes - more intriguing, deeper, richer.  

As for New Testament Greek, Greek does have vowels, and always has had vowels. What the oldest Greek texts do not have is.. gaps. Gaps between the words. Each word just runs on from the word before. Oh, and all in capitals, in the oldest texts. That makes like harder in another way. But – worry not – I won’t unfold all of that here. We’ll either have to keep “Bible Sunday” another year, or find another way of having some Greek for fun!  

Let us return to the Hebrew. I offer what I believe is one fair interpretation of Genesis 1, taking seriously the absence of that “the”.

When Gd began to create the heavens and the earth (you see, the earth was waste and void(2) and a darkness was on the surface of the deep, and a divine wind would sweep over the waters…) when Gd began creating, he said: Let there be Light, and there was Light.”

You may say that this sounds pretty similar to the traditional translation. Is anything at stake in preferring this new version? Oh yes. Most certainly. What? I am sorely tempted to tease you now and ask you to settle down while I outline the top twenty points why it matters. But that would indeed be to tease you. Instead, I will dare to hope that we might have seen that the Bible is a little bit more strange than we realised, and so intriguing, drawing us in. A blessed “Bible Sunday” to us all.

Amen.

(1) Readers rather than hearers will see that it also involves a doubling of the middle consonant. However, in Hebrew this too is shown not by a second written consonant, but a dot in the middle of the single consonant, i.e. here too the consonantal text does not as such determine the meaning. 

(2) The Hebrew is tohu va-bhohu, terms it is excruciatingly difficult to translate. Do they refer to some substances which predate creation as we can imagine it? The rabbis were apparently willing to imagine them as different types of slime – as one option among many, not an authoritative reading.