"‘You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.’”  Jesus isn’t trying to sell us something.  He’s trying to tell us something.  He’s blessing us.  He’s blessing us and telling us that we are, now, right now, the people of God in this place with power to influence it for what is eternally good.  We have all we need, right now, to make footprints for eternity everywhere we step.  Please forgive me for not spending any time re-treading countless sermons we’ve already heard for years that attempted to creatively unpack metaphorical mystery by explaining the obvious.  Salt and light.  We get it, don’t we? 

If anything, we miss the present tense of the verbs.  Maybe it’s a third grade grammar problem we’re having.  "‘You are . . . salt (and) light . . ..’”  Jesus isn’t setting a goal for us to reach.  This isn’t about a mission statement for our church to adopt.  This isn’t about something we should become.  It’s about something he’s already gifted us to be.  We’re there now.  By the grace work of God in our souls, the Light of the world has made us his light in this world now!  By his gift in us, we have the power to actually influence our world for what is eternally good.

God’s blessing in us means that we are not now and never will be anything but the victims of someone else’s choices for us.  Todd Beamer was one of the heroes aboard United Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that crashed into a Pennsylvania coalfield week before last.  He tried to call his wife from the phone in the plane.  When he couldn’t get through he asked the operator to say the Lord’s Prayer with him.  Then, having prayed, he acted.  He believed that he could make a difference and believed he had a responsibility to do so.  He also had a profound sense of the presence of God with him even though someone else had pulled him, without his permission, into the valley of the shadow of death. 

What the terrorists didn’t know was that, in Todd Beamer, they had pulled salt and light with them into the valley of the shadow.  Salt and light people know that God never sends them or allows them to go into the darkness without going with them into it to give them light.  They also measure their world more in terms of their potential for influencing it than being overwhelmed by it.  We’ll never know how many people weren’t later victimized because Todd Beamer, by faith, chose to be more than just a victim.  But, that is only part of what salt and light means.  Jesus didn’t leave it there, just at the point of blessing.  There is much more. 

He asks us to think about the consequences of sodium chloride losing its sodium or its chloride, if salt is no longer salty because it loses its unique character.  He also asks us to consider the logic of someone hiding their light away so that it is of no value to those in darkness.  “‘A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.’”

Evalina Garcia, a 2001 graduate of Adamson high school, is one of our newest secretaries.  Petite, quiet and shy, you hardly know she’s around.  We know she’s here now.  At eighteen, she has served as a Nathan-like prophet to our staff.  We were discussing ways in which we could build a bridge to Adamson High School.  Evalina asked, “Why don’t you have an open house and invite the community in?  We’ve walked by this building for four years,” she said, “and we would ask each other, ‘What goes on in there?  Is that a church or something?’”

Sobering, isn’t it?  The other day when the World Trade Center was destroyed was there anyone in your world of contacts who didn’t know about it by the time you first talked with them?  Within just a few hours, there couldn’t have been more than a handful of people in the civilized world who hadn’t seen the pictures.  But, this church has been here for over 100 years and people less than two blocks away are asking, “What goes on in there?  Is that a church?”  It doesn’t make sense, Jesus said, to “‘light a lamp and put it under a bowl.’”

Unless you’re an ostrich with your head buried neck deep in the sand you have to know that our church is under financial strain right now.  It’s really an interesting phenomenon.  Last year we had one of the brightest financial years we’ve ever had in the church’s history.  One Sunday last November we received over $157,000, making it the largest Thank Offering in our church’s history.  Just a few weeks ago, we retired the church’s debt.  First time in two decades we haven’t owed someone something.  But, last January, as if on cue, the Stock Market got the flu and so did our budget.  Though we are out of debt and had a great year last year, our budget this year has not shared in the bounty.  We need $27,000 a week to support this year’s budget yet we have received an average $21,000 per week.  Thirty-seven weeks into the year, you can do the math.  Right now, we’re actually struggling just to pay our basic no-frills bills.

We’ve had special Finance Committee meetings to study the issue.  We’ve sent out requests to you and made pleas from the pulpit.  People have responded.  But, we have a long way to go to get back to zero.  Then, two weeks ago our world changed.  When the World Trade Center Towers melted before our eyes it was as if someone had pushed over a 110-story domino in what may yet proveto be a long string of financial woes for our nation. 

Despite all that, I’ve been wondering.  What would happen if, one Sunday, we gathered for worship and we passed the offering plate and no one gave even one dollar?  Can you imagine?  Before that next week was out I’d be spending more time than I care to imagine fielding anxiety-filled phone calls.  We’d probably even appoint a special committee to study the issue, the “We didn’t get even one dollar in the plate finance sub-committee.”  Meetings would go on for hours.  Hands would wring.  Yet, when was the last time even one of us wrung our hands over the dust growing in the bottom of our unused baptistery? 

Here is what Evalina’s words have done to me.  They have made me realize that we can no longer afford, literally, to keep this community in the dark about what happens in this building and continue to legitimately call ourselves a community of salt and light.  It’s an odd thing, really.  The more we hold back, the more it costs.  When Jesus called us salt and light, he blessed us.  He also charged us.  We are blessed with whatever it takes to make eternal footprints wherever we step.  We are also now responsible for making those eternal footprints. 

In one of my first churches, one of the men told me about his brother-in-law.  A 5’6” and 215 pound West Texas deputy sheriff.  One day he was talking with some folks when a man began cussing about something.  He asked the man to clean up his language as ladies were in the crowd.  The cussing continued.  The deputy then told the man that, as a Christian, he’d really appreciate it if he’d quit cussing.  The cussing continued.  Finally, the deputy knocked the cusser to ground, planted himself in the middle of the man’s chest and said, “It’s time you learned about Jesus!”  Country gospel version:  “I gave you my heart and you stomped that sucker flat!”  Surely there is a better way to make eternal footprints for the sake of the gospel that changes peoples’ hearts without stomping out of them what little life they have left. 

When I first came here, one of our men said to me, “We need to turn the lights on around this place.”  What he literally meant was that we need more parking lot lights and lights around the building, not only make it safer but to accentuate its beauty.  But, his words have been bouncing around prophetic-like in my soul for over two years now.  Jesus actually said something of the very same thing.  “‘Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’”  My guess is that if we would concern ourselves more with opening the shutters to let loose the light that is already here we would never again have to worry about paying the light bill.

When Tony Campolo climbs into this pulpit I don’t know what he’s going to say for sure.  But, this is what he says nearly everywhere he goes.  Don’t be surprised if you hear him repeat his own words to other pastors.  “Tell your congregation to quit hanging around the church.  So much of the teaching today leads people to think that their Christianity is best lived out by volunteering all their spare hours to church functions.  In fact, we have become very sophisticated in our ability to convince people that God will be especially pleased with them if they would just get with the church program.  Teach Sunday School, help in the nursery, clean the sanctuary, sit on this board or that committee, pour punch, hand out leaflets, attend this seminar, join the prayer group and attend regular services.  Each of them, by themselves, may hold value for the churchgoer and may be a genuine service.  But with so many demands and expectations, the message is that good Christians pour all of their nonworking hours into programs that take them away from their neighborhoods and communities.  And the more haggard they are, the more spiritual they are.  This is heresy.  Jesus said, ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation (Mark 16:15).’  Clearly, he meant for us to mingle among those outside the faith and be a light amidst the darkness.”  (Tony Campolo, 101 Ways Your Church Can Change the World)

I’ve been looking forward to Tony Campolo’s coming for fifteen months.  Among other things, professor, author, social ministries innovator, trail blazer and counselor to Presidents, he is an awesome preacher.  I’ve also been dreading his coming.  He is an awesome preacher!  This next Sunday I have to climb back in this pulpit after Tony Campolo preached from it twice.  How do I do that?  Why can’t I preach like Campolo?!  Jesus’ answer:  "‘You are . . . salt (and) light . . ..’”  To borrow a phrase from our good friend Kenny Wood and turn it just a tad, when I stand before God someday to give account, he won’t ask me, “Why weren’t you Campolo?”  He will ask me, “Why weren’t you Glen?”  Salt and light.  You are and me too.  Blessings all around.  I have, you have, we all have all we need, right now, to make footprints for eternity everywhere we step.

Someone is going to come up to me after this sermon and say that we need to have one of them there old fashioned reeevivals.  You know, the kind where you bring in an outside eeevangelist-music man tag team to hold a meetin’ with a pie-eating-preacher-dunkin’-booth church-wide fellowship afterwards.  But, if you are so inclined, please know that I am going to tell you that if that is your only response then you have not been listening.  For one thing, I don’t do dunking booths anymore.  That’s why we have youth ministers.  But, whether or not we ought to hold a special meetin’ someday is a discussion we can have later.  This is what I want you to hear for now.  Bringing in an evangelist to do this for us won’t do us a bit of good unless we first understand that the Evangelist has already come.  He is the Light of the world and he has come to us.  He has made us his light in this world.  We have been blessed.  We are responsible.