wT Cee Ey LIE Joun M, Buchanan

roi 32-16 Broad Sereet Presbyterian Church
february ¢, 1981 Columbus, Ohiu
Harnack concluded that it was a non-professional job. A distinguished historian

and theclogian of the last century, Adolf Harnack wrote a monumental work, The History of
Dogma, in which he concluded that the most effective missionaries were always non-
peofessionals but rather ordinary people trying to live like Christians in a pagan world. «
it is a conclusion widely shared. A British scholar, T.W.Manson wrote: .
"The Christianity that conquered the Roman Empire was not an affair
ef brilliant preachers addressing packed congregations. We have nothing
much in the way of briliijant preachers for the first 300 years of the
church's life...befere Christianity had made its way right through the
empire, end to end. It was done by servants, workers, shopkeepers,
teaching Christ through their work." (See Hans Ruedi-Weber, Salty
Christians, p.26).

We know the truth of thase conciusions,. We know that the only religion worth any-
thing at ell has to do with the common life.! What is it about Christianity that compels
your faith? As I have thought about it, IT s@@ now that the Christianity that continues to
claim me is appropriated through people for whom the Gospel of Jesus Christ has nade life
more vivid, more intense, more committed, more full of zest, flavor, more lively.

Sometimes the testimony has been terribly costly. Sometimes it has taken shape as the
deep love and courage and commitment stimulated by Jesus Christ came inte focus in an in-
tensely public manner: like the military chaplains, whose strong love enabled them to give
away life jackets, and arms linked together, to die that four others might live, three
Christians and a Jew. There's something awful and beautiful and saity and compelling to
we about that. Or the gentle pacifist theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wanted to be a
pastor and teach a little theology and read and write, but whese commitment to Jesus Christ
and his utter revulsion by Nazism, drew him into a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Or Dr. Martin Luther King, whose academic credentials were real, and who easily would have
been a distinguished theologian in a major university, but whose commitment to Jesus Christ
arew him into a radical confrontation with the principalities and powers of our culture.

Tut az Roes-ak / [Bean Was | Derm Wack

The Christianity that claims me is appropriated through lives of radical, unambiguous
involvement in the life of the world, Sometimes that spells martyrdom, but not always.
Sometimes it takes the form of an uncompromising love for the world, a deep embracing and
affirming cf life - life made forever different by Jesus Christ. A college professor, for
instance, wna intreduced me to Soren Kierkegaard, and who stopped by the dorm to talk
because he couldn't smoke cigars during meetings of the Campus Christian Fellowship and
whose love for God was rivaled oniy by his wnending devotion to the Chicago Cubs. Somewhere
along the line I had simply assumed that Christians were afraid to think, didn't care about
things like baseball and took a very dim view of pleasures of the flesh. But here was a
man who laved the Lord and Danish philosophy and a well-turned double play and a good ciger.
It was a conversion experience for me. Or Joseph Sittler, professor of the University
Emeritus, at Chicago, distinguished theologian who thinks and writes majestically, who also
loves poetry and plays the French Horn. Sittler caupht me as a student, frankly, because
his faith seemed to make him more human, more imaginative, more salty, more an unabashed
lover of life. In honor of his 75th birthday Fortress Press has published a little volume
of his essays under the title, "Grace Notes and Other Frapments". In one of them, "Polish
Sausage, St. Augustine and the Moral Life'', Sittier describes the white vending truck that
parked each noon in front of the Administration Building at the University of Chicago. The
speciality was Polish Sausage which he describes with enthusiasm and eloquence...'Rich,
juicy, odorous, garlic-laden, hot and smelling with all the herb-subtlety of a thousand
years of Polish Sausage culture." Their effect, he wrote, was to "bring tears to the eyes,

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a clutch at the throat, and clarification to the mind." The line of people waiting fur
& sausage was no respecter of station or academic rank; art historians, muclear physicists,
wingled with construction workers and truck drivers. One day Sittler met a friend in line.
Fram the encounter he builds an interesting moral argument. But for my purpose this
morning listen to his description:
"EL was astonished to see him - and said so: 'Dr, Platz, what are you
doing here? You are a pathologist: you know very well that you ought
not to eat one of these violent things! JI am only a theologian and [
don't know any better, But you are a doctor - a pathologist - and you
have professianally examined the catastrophic effect upon the stomach of
these explosive, corrosive tissue~eroding sausages!...' Charles Platz
fixed me with a cool gaze. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘you are quite right. But
these things are very good, aren't they?'" (p.74-75).

Christian faith is made winsome when it can be seen in lives that are more human
because of it: lives that are more alive, more intense, more committed.That, I have a
growing hunch, was part of Jesus’ personal mystique, His obvious strong appeal. He was
lively. He was not grim, boring. Wis message was life-affirming; He generated excitement
wherever He went, controversy, heated discussions. People got steamed-up about Him and
what He was saying. It was interesting whenever He was around. He imparted all of that
to His followers. In fact, one time He said to them, "You are the salt of the earth; but
if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is good for nothing
except te be thrown out and trodden under foot."

As far as IT know “salt of the earth" was not a cammon idiom. It is part of our
language; it means "good, solid, stable, hard-working people". But in all likelihood the
disciples had never heard it before Jesus used it to describe them. The setting is the
Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes precede this saying. "Blessed - or better yet - how
happy are the poor, the meek, the hungry, the peacemakers, the persecuted." f've always
feit that the only honest initial reaction to the Beatitudes had to have been: "You gotta
be kidding!" Poor people aren't happy. There's nothing blessed about being hungry and
thirsty. Nice guys finish last, then and now. Or, as semeone told me last night after a
particularly intense High School basketball game with a great deal of emotional investment,
"People who learn how to lose gracicusly usually do.'' You have to imagine the twelve,
hearing those radical statements of His for the first time. I've always imagined them
consoling themselves by thinking: "He means it symbolically; He really doesn't mean for us
to be persecuted...or maybe He means that we can retire to a desert monastery and there be {>

meek, humble, poor and persecuted to our heart's content." I've always imagined the vit
disciples thinking like that because that's how we think. But Jesus forever closed the We
door on that possibility..."You are the salt of the earth.” i

They knew what it meant. It was a vivid metaphor. Salt was quite valuable and had
a number of important uses. Tt was a necessary preservative and purifier. [It was used
liturgically in temple sacrifices, Tt was a major item of international trade. But the
most interesting quality of salt, the quality about which we most care, the quality that
made it a valuable luxury + was as seasoning. Salt makes bland food tasty. It enhances,
draws out and amplifies flavor. Tt adds vitality and zest.

The first and basic point to be understood about this remarkable little metaphor is
that Christianity must be applied to the world or it is worthless. Following Jesus is
connected somehow with all the rest of life or it is not authen®€@) That, by the way, is

— hot at all a moot point. In fact, there is no more important issue, nor more controversial

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matter, than the relationship of faith to the rest of human life.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, we have convinced ourselves that life may be
divided into departments: economic department, political department, social, family,
recreation, and, of course, religious department. Sometimes the system is infinitely

Simpler and focuses on just twe cospeiteenbe: secular and sa.ced, religion and ail tin .ost
of life. That's a Greek letacy, by the way. What it dees, essentially, is allow vs to
wall religion off from life: perscenal religion and corpurate religion. When we Say, iar

instance, that relicion and pelitics don't mix, what we ordine tilv sean is that there is a
wall between my religious and political cempartments. The people who eonstructed and
operated Auschwitz believed very firmly in that division. They often said, "religion and
politics don't mix."

The author ef an article on Ulster's children in a recent Atlantic Monthly as¥ed a
ten year cld Relrast boy to draw a picture of the "troubles", "He drew for me a viciwsus
battle scene. Re posed the Trish against the British, and declared his Church, however

inposingly drawn, essentially off-limits, hence irrelevant..." (December, 1989, Atlantic

We may not agree with one another on the metter of Gapital Punishment or any one cf
susber of complex questions. May wae have the grace and the courage to agree to disazréc.
ut let us not ever masquérade political partisanship that has been offended by saying
religion and politics don't mix", The religion that dees mot mix with polities is like
salt that has lost its saltiness. It ig good for nothing. Comfortable perhaps, bland
almost certainly, and irrelevant. We are - Jesus said - the salt of the earth.
New wc ha ~

We are salt as a church, a corporate entity, a conglomerate of folk who together
wish to follow Jesus Christ. But we are also individuals and we are, individually, salt of
the earth as well. Salt acts on its. environment. Salt changes whatever it touches: salt
melts, currodes, purifies, preserves, and flavors whatever it touches. So Christians,
dispersed throughout society, are called te mate their individual witness. Not many
people feel that we are vetting the job done, individually or corporately. It is not, TI
conelude, 4 failure of nerve, or strength,or will, sr ability. ft i imarily a theolevica
failure. Hans Ruedi-Weber helped me to see that in this paragraph: WThe church is failing
to accomplish its primary task of penetrating and transforming the world. One reason is
that too few Christians acknowledge that Christ, the Lard of the Church, is also the Lord of
the world..." (Op.cit., pry). | oo

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Jesus intended that His disciples would follow Him in the content of their lives,
not just in the Temple, or during their secret celebrations of the Lord's Supper, certainly
nat by withdrawing into a hidden religious community. He anticipated Christian fishermen
and hememakers and lawyers and tax collectors and soldiers. He intended, I believe, that
this dispersal of people in and through the common life would not only change the common
life - as salt does - but also that it would add flavor, zest, liveliness, vitality. That,
too - that, primarily perhaps, is the burden and the privilege of following Him today.

How sad that the reverse seems always nearer the truth. We are to bring flavor
to life, but, too frequently, we have made the Gospel boring. If you want to get depressed
turn in the Hymnal to the section entitled "The Life in Christ"...
Come unto me, ye weary
Jesus calls us; o'er the tumult cf our life's wild restless sea
Just as IT am, poor, wretched, blind

Jesus Lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee

Meny of you love these hymns, IT de tuw., They represent one of the meanings of the
Geevel, They are part of the Good News. But there are nec others in the Hywnal. Reading
tricugh the section as a representation of Christian life it is impossible not to conclude
reat our calllng is to follow Jesus away from the life most people choose to live most of
the time, Given the overwhelming incidence of hiding, fleving, ducking, cowering, and
turning away, it appears that life is fundamentally evil, to be avoided and escaped, and
that Christianity is every bit as other-worldly as the latter day adherents keep insisting.
Tre's almost as if He didn't say, "You are the salt of the earth."

God duesntt despise the world. He doesn't call peaple out ef or away from the world.
The Old Testament ig set in cosmic terms. God cheoses a people to redeem all people, Hans
Ruedi-Weber puts it nicely: "The_world is God's firsr Jove, his first fiance." (Op.cit,p.10).
To be faithful teday, therefore, is not to turn away from God's world and retreat into a
private world of prayer and meditation. It is to turn to the world, deliberately; to love
its life, to embrace it, to live it deeply and fully. It is to understand that somehow at
the heart of it all, te be a Christian is to be fully human; that we are never more faithful
than when we are fully human. The Gospel that compels faith is salty. T am claimed by the
wicress of well seasoned lives,

Tn an early book Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose experience I cited, commented on the
Sermon on the Mount. I looked up what he had to say about Matthew 5:13: "You are the salt
of the earth.'' He wrote in 1937, "The disciples then must not think only of heaven; they
have an earthly task as well." (The Cost of Discipleship, 9.104). Then I took from my
shelf his Letters and Papers from Prison published after his execution by the Nazis. They
are mostly letters ta his parents written from his prison cell. TI found the one dated
July 21, 1944, the day after the attempt to assassinate Hitler failed, an attempt in which
he was involved. Bonhoeffer knew he would die, end his letter that day carries special
Significance...
"During the last year or so 1 have cone to appreciate the 'worldliness'
of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a ‘homo religiosus',
but a man, pure and simple...I don't mean the shallow this-worldliness
of the enlightened, of the busy, the comfortable...It's something much
more profound than that, something in which the knowledge of death and
resurrection is ever present...I am still discovering up to this very
moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns
to believe. Iam glad I have been able to learn it, and I know I could
only have done so along the road I have traveled, So I am grateful and
content with the past and the present.

"Goodbye. Take care of yourself and don't lose hope - we shall all

meet again soant" (p.225,227).
To His first disciples, His only friends, and ta you and me, here, in this place,
Jesus said: "You are the salt of the earth...You are the light of the world. A city

set on a hill cannot be hid,,.”
Amen.

God, our Father: it takes courage to love the world as much as You want us to
love, Sometimes we get tired of the world; sometimes we want to escape. Lord God,
sive us heart and strength and faith to flavor our world with Your love: in Jesus

Christ our Lord.
Amen,