City on a Hill by Bill Rogers, 2010
The Goal of the Sermon on the Mount
It’s important to keep in mind what Jesus is doing in giving the Sermon on the Mount. On one hand, he is giving commands. After all, it is his disciples who are gathered around him to learn from him. They gathered because he had been announcing the arrival of the kingdom of heaven1 and there was growing anticipation about what that would mean. The Sermon on the Mount contains the covenant commandments and shows us how Jesus has called us to live as his disciples, who are being called into God’s kingdom. But the Sermon is also more than that. It’s a telos, it is pointing the disciples of Jesus is a specific direction. The goal of Jesus’ teaching is the kingdom of God, not only as a place or time (i.e. “end times), but as a reality, a way of life, a way of being.2
The Sermon on the Mount is showing us what the kingdom of God looks like. We’ve already seen this in the Beatitudes. In God’s kingdom, the poor are made happy, the mourning are comforted, the oppressed are given justice, and the persecuted are vindicated. In giving us this Sermon, Jesus is forming a community around himself, and in that act he is opening a door to humanity to experience the reign of God. The community that Jesus is starting, the Church, is an eschatological community. It is an end-times community. The community is pointed already toward the time when Jesus returns to finally establish God’s rule. This is Jesus’ answer to the question, “What will it be like when God rules the world?”
This idea, that Sermon and the community that is formed by it around Jesus is pointed toward the kingdom of God, is an interpretive key for the next passage in our study. One more important thing to keep in mind here, Jesus is telling this group of people they are the salt and light of the world as Israelites. The imagery of salt and light is rooted in the idea that Israel was called to be God’s “royal priesthood,”3 which speaks to their calling as a people to witness to the world God’s holiness, goodness, and love.
Salt
There are two basic ideas tied to salt, preservation and flavor, and I think Jesus had both ideas in mind when he called his disciples the salt of the earth. Remembering that Jesus is speaking to and creating an eschatological community, a community that is being charged with witnessing to the gospel of his kingdom, the imagery of this community being salt comes into focus. Our very presence in the world as Jesus’ disciples is salt. But, salt for whom?
We are salt for humanity. Our lives as the kingdom community, where the realities of the Sermon on the Mount are beginning to come to pass, are a salt to humanity. A community where the peace and truth reigns, where lust and anger are forsaken, is flavorful to humanity. Generally speaking, the kind of community described in the Sermon is the kind of community that people everywhere are looking for, it’s the kind of community that makes life worth living. And, it’s is centered on the one who makes this kind of community possible through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ.
But it’s also salt for God. The presence of disciples of Jesus makes the world flavorful and pleasing to God. God loves all humanity, and in this way all of humanity is pleasing to him, but the presence of sin is real and is an offense to God. The presence of sin requires justice and judgment, and this is precisely why Jesus came into the world. What Jesus started in his incarnation and in his death and resurrection, is the remedy for sin. Each person, then, who is a disciple of Jesus is been brought into and has become part of the process to redeem the world. This is pleasing to God.
In this way, we are preserving the world from decay. Where sin brings death, the presence of Jesus in his disciples preserves life. This reminds me of the story of Abraham’s intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah.4 What we see in that story is God's desire to show mercy even though outcry for justice is impossible to ignore. If even ten righteous people are present in the cities, God will preserve them. Now, through Jesus' work, there are more than 10, and more than 50, righteous people in the earth.
Light
Again, remember that we’re talking about an eschatological community. Jesus calling his disciples a “city on a hill” is a reference to Jerusalem.5 This city was literally set on a hill. It was a holy city so people were constantly on pilgrimages there. Jerusalem represented God's presence among his people and God's presence in the world. One day, Isaiah promised, all nations of the world would flow to Jerusalem's gates.6 In this community, this group of disciples, Jesus was bringing to pass this reality. People from all over the world were going to come to the light of God's glory, but it's not Jerusalem (though one day it may be), but to the people Jesus has gathered around himself.
The disciples are the light of the world because the glory of God, which is the presence of Jesus, dwells within them. The Church is where the presence of God is to be found, and in the same way that a city on a hill cannot be hidden, the presence of God cannot be hidden in a community that is truly following the commands of Jesus found in the Sermon on the Mount.
That is why Jesus tells us to “shine your light before humanity,” because he has come to bring God’s kingdom, God’s reign, and God’s presence to the world, and the places where Jesus’ disciples are gathered are the flash points of God’s kingdom. It’s interesting to me that nowhere in this passage, and nowhere in the Sermon, does Jesus tell us to preach the Gospel.7 Instead, we are told to live like Jesus, to obey the Sermon on the Mount, and that in so doing we will witness to God’s good kingdom, and thereby people “see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Tasteless Salt and Hidden Light
At the risk of this post becoming too long, something must be said about Jesus statements about tasteless salt and hidden light. When we become Jesus’ disciples, we take on a great responsibility. We are agreeing to become representatives of his kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount isn’t merely about the good Christian life, though it’s certainly not less than that. Being salt and light means we represent God and show the world the kind of God we worship, and as long as we call ourselves Christians, that is what we do, and we can do that well, or we can do that poorly.
As we’ve seen over the last several years, with the exposure of sexual, financial, and power scandals across the Church in the United States, when those who call themselves disciples become tasteless salt, we leave a bad taste in the mouths of the world about Jesus and God’s kingdom. That is why Jesus says tasteless salt is worthless. Tasteless salt, giving Jesus a bad name, is hiding the beauty of Jesus and God’s kingdom, hiding God’s presence from the world. This is a matter that Jesus takes incredibly seriously.
Yet, I do take confidence in the purging that’s happening across the Church. Each revelation brings me grief and pain, sometimes even anger, but I believe this is actually God’s doing. Once the fire has settled and we can rebuild, we will have another chance to once again be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The cleansing process will make us humble, but we can take heart, for the meek shall inherit the earth.
Cf. Matthew 4:17
We won’t get into here, but the “kingdom of heaven/God” is talking more about the act of God’s reign than it is about what we might normally think of when we hear kingdom. It is the act of God’s reign in and among his people more than it is about boundaries over a geographical space, though in the end of all things, it will be that as well.
Exodus 19:6
Genesis 18:16-33
Cf. Isaiah 42:6
Isaiah 2:2. Here, Jerusalem is set on a mountain that is made higher than all other mountains in the world.
The Gospel will be proclaimed, as we see in Matthew 24:14, but we mustn’t miss that in Jesus’ covenant teaching, the way of proclaiming the good news of God’s coming kingdom is by how we live, not what we say.