Readings:
- Isaiah 58.7-10
Psalm 112.4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Response: “The just [person] is a light in darkness to the upright” - 1 Corinthians 2.1-5
- Matthew 5.13-16
Reflections on the Gospel Reading
In today’s gospel reading Jesus continues to heap honor on his followers, just as he did in the beatitudes. “You are the salt of the earth . . . You are the light of the world.” Like every preceding generation of Christians, God challenges us to show everybody what we are by God’s favor. We do this, not to win praise or reap rewards, but so that people will acknowledge God.
Fire
Although the metaphors of salt and light must have been clear to Jesus’ and Matthew’s audiences, they are not self-evident to us. This is especially true of the metaphor of salt. What does it mean to say “if salt becomes foolish” as the Greek of Matthew’s text puts it? There have been many translations and explanations of this verb: loses its taste, loses its savor, becomes insipid, goes flat, becomes tasteless, loses its saltiness, etc. Commentators have puzzled over how it is possible for salt to lose its saltiness and why Matthew (as well as Luke) used the peculiar expression “becomes foolish.”
Considerable light has been thrown on this salt metaphor by recent studies in cultural anthropology. John J. Pilch explains that in biblical times each small village or cluster of families had a common earthen oven. Women would knead the bread dough before going to bed and allow it to rise over night. They would get up very early and take the risen dough to the common oven to be baked, so that the bread would be ready by the time the rest of the family rose from sleep.
The ordinary fuel for the communal oven was camel or donkey dung, mixed with salt, and dried in the sun. The oven also had a base made out of a slab of salt. The salt in the dung patties and in the oven acted as a catalyst that caused the dung to burn better. Eventually, the slab of salt lost its catalytic properties and became useless or “foolish.” About all it was good for, then, was to serve as a stepping stone (to be “trampled underfoot”).
Couple this with the fact that in Aramaic and Hebrew there is one word for both “earth” and “clay oven,” and the saying of Jesus becomes: You are the catalyst for the earth-oven. “To be salt for the earth-oven is to start fires and make things burn.” (Pilch 1995, 32)
This is dynamic, perhaps even divisive, language. Fire bakes bread, but it also destroys buildings and burns chaff. Matthew’s Jesus seems to be referring back to the beatitudes. The kind of behavior recommended there is bound to cause divisions and set people apart.
For example, the beatitude “Blessed are the peace-makers” was divisive in many respects. Jesus was probably referring to family feuds that were so common in his day. In the male-dominated culture of the time, if a man’s honor was challenged by an insult, his whole family was honor bound to avenge the slight. This had a way of escalating into counter insults and feuds. The only way to stop the spiral of violence was for one of the individuals or families to swallow their pride and back off. Either the one who was aggrieved had to ignore the latest provocation, or the aggressor had to retract his challenge. Neither action was considered honorable or manly. In the eyes of the general populace the peacemaker was acting shamefully. He and his family would be disgraced.
In that cultural setting a forgiving person was bound to cause division because the behavior was so countercultural and jarring to the common conceptions of manhood. Being a peacemaker did not mean that a person would be spared violence.
It reminds one of a later passage in Matthew’s Gospel:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have not come to bring peace but the sword. For I have come to set
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in law;
and one’s enemies will be those of his household.
(Matthew 1.34-36 NAB)
Light
The metaphor of light is easier for us to understand, even though the experience of darkness and its power as a metaphor were much greater before the advent of electrical lighting. We understand metaphors such as “light at the end of the tunnel” or “throwing light on the subject” or “a beacon of hope.”
Thus, we understand that it would have been silly for someone living in a windowless one-room home to snuff out the oil lamp with a bushel basket before the light had served its purpose. Rather, the lamp should have been placed on a lamp stand as high as possible so that its light would have reached to every corner of the room.
This saying about light might well have been a fiery saying, too. It might have been a thinly veiled insult to the scribes and religious leaders who considered themselves to be the light of Israel. Jesus is declaring that, to the contrary, this rag-tag, no-account group of unlearned peasants is truly the light of the world.
Today’s first reading (Isaiah 58.7-10) and the responsorial Psalm (Psalm 112) help flesh out the context of the light metaphor: Share your bread with the hungry (mentioned twice); shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked; remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; be gracious and lend; conduct your business affairs with justice; and lavishly give to the poor. “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…” (Isaiah 58:8)
Today’s gospel reading, then, is a call to action. As followers of Jesus, God is calling us to be fire and light; to be catalysts for the kind of change that gives hope to the world; and to convince people – especially the wretched of the earth – that there really is a loving God.
In preparing these reflections, in addition to the biblical texts, I consulted the following works:
Fuller 1984 – Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary. The Word of God for the Church Today (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1984), p. 119.
Harrington 1991 – Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., The Gospel of Matthew , Sacra Pagina Series Volume 1, A Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 77-83.
Malina & Rohrbaugh 1992 – Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), pp. 50-51.
Meier 1990 – John P. Meier, Matthew , A Michael Glazier Book [1980] (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990), pp. 43-45.
Moore 2002 – Bill Moore, Commentary on the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time in Sunday by Sunday , Vol. 11, No. 19 (February 10, 2002), pp. 1-4.
Neyrey 1998 – Jerome H. Neyrey, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 183-185.
Pilch 1995 – John J. Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday, Cycle A. A Liturgical Press Book (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995), pp. 31-33.