SERMON FOR FEBRUARY 9, 2020 FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY TEXT: MATTHEW 5:13-20

On my father’s side I am descended from generations of musicians. In the 19th-century there was a Strohl Family Band, which traveled around Pennsylvania giving concerts. In our home we had framed posters that once advertised their performances. My favorite is a drawing of my dad’s great-uncle Charle, that’s right Charle without an “s,” playing two trumpets at once, his particular claim to fame. My grandfather would bring various brass instruments with him when he came to visit and play duets with my father. We had a trumpet and a French horn in the house as well as a piano. Dad played all three. He could sight read just about any piece you put in front of him. When my uncle came to visit, he would always delight me by sitting down at the piano and pounding out some boogie woogie with no music whatsoever. My brother played a Mozart horn concerto in his high school’s solo recital. And I was like the little girl in the current TV ad who keeps wondering aloud, “How do they do that?”

There are two ways of engaging music — you can listen to it and you can perform it. I regularly do the former; I have worked at the latter. “You have good hands,” my piano teachers would tell me, and I practiced long and hard, but I was clearly not the heir apparent to the musical elements of the Strohl Family gene pool. Still, I move my piano with me everywhere I go, and from time to time, either for the sheer delight of it or to settle my troubled spirit, I find my way slowly and carefully through a Bach invention or fugue. But I don’t play in front of other people, and if somebody asked me, “Can you play the piano?” I would say, “No, not really.”

“You are the light of the world,” Jesus says. If asked if that were so, who of us would fire back, “You got that right”? Yet he isn’t telling us what we could be or what we should be, he is telling us what we are. Once Jesus calls you, you are a disciple. Of course you will work at it and grow with it, just like a pianist reflects and interprets and practices the piece before her, but she is a musician from the get go. And we are the light of the world, because Jesus has chosen us to be, claiming us as his followers and blessing us with his mercy and love.

There is a famous saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” Its origin is unclear. None of his disciples, none of his biographers has attributed these words to him. There is no record of the saying In any of his writings. The closest thing appears in one of the rules he designed for his order: “No brother should preach contrary to the form and regulations of the holy Church . . . All the Friars . . . should preach by their deeds.” In other words, their actions should accord with their preaching, not replace it as the preferred form of Gospel proclamation. It is curious how this saying ever got attached to St. Francis in the first place, since he founded his order explicitly as a preaching order. The fierce discipline of absolute poverty that he required of his brothers was to exemplify and undergird their proclamation of the poor Christ, who sacrificed all. They had to put his name to their practice to make its meaning clear.

Yet this support for a kind of anonymous discipleship — “Preach the Gospel at all times; use words if necessary” — makes sense. It is easy to talk a good game but often hard to deliver the goods. Christians aren’t the only people doing good works; we don’t have an exclusive lease on the moral high ground. We need allies in the cause of justice and healing. And just “gettin’ ‘er done” is challenge enough without dividing over our various motivations. For example, when I work at the Haven’s warming shelter, I never hide the cross I wear around my neck, but I don’t make a point of discussing what kind of work I do. As Jesus tells his disciples, when the Son of Man comes in his glory he will say to those placed at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me,” because “in that you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” I know Jesus’ strong love; I hear his call. I join others in keeping the Haven’s clients safe and warm and fed. For them my being there and doing my job is enough. A lot of discipleship is like that. “Use words if necessary,” and they aren’t.

But then suddenly they are. For those times the hymn O God, My Faithful God (ELW 806) offers this prayer: “[W]hen, within my place, I must and ought to speak, then to my words give grace . . .” There were two men who certainly took that risk on the national stage this week.

“We have arrived at different judgments, but I hope we respect each other’s good faith,” Senator Mitt Romney said early in his speech and continued, knowing full well that would not be the case. “As a senator-juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. . . . I’m aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters I will be vehemently denounced. . . . Does anyone seriously believe that I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?” Peter and the Apostles insisted, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29). Liberty of conscience is something we owe one another not just as fellow citizens, but as children of God. To claim it, to respect it, to exercise it is to be light in the world.

Then came Dr. Arthur Brooks, the keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast the next day, venturing boldly into the lion’s den by quoting Jesus: “You have heard that it was said, ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” He asked his audience, “How many of you love somebody with whom you disagree politically?” He told them, “Moral courage is standing up to the people with whom you agree on behalf of those with whom you disagree. Can you do it? Are you up for It?” Acknowledging how hard a struggle that is, Brooks urged those present to join him in asking God to grant “the strength to do this hard thing . . . to love your enemies, to take political contempt from your heart.” To pursue justice and champion mercy without backing off or backing down. And to fight the good fight without despising your opponents. That is to be light in the world.

The response to these two men was not encouraging. Yet a gracious word may fall on a multitude of deaf ears and still not disappear into silence. A good work may be roundly dismissed by many and still light the way to faith.

Recently I have begun playing the piano again. I translate the printed pages into sound painstakingly, missing notes and fumbling with the fingering on the keyboard. But I can read music; I recognize a wrong note; I know how to correct it. I persevere through my errors and Bach’s surprises. I am determined to play the piece all the way through. And when I sound the final chord, the resolution of all the harmonic twists and turns, I feel the power of reconciliation echoing through me. I am not an accomplished pianist, but I am a musician.

You and I, we recognize the darkness of deceit and contempt and self-serving that both threatens and entices us. We know how to counter it with acts of kindness and generosity. We dispel it by forgiving and seeking forgiveness. We shine through it by naming evil and turning from it. Ours is not the splendor of perfection; it is the radiance of hope. You and I are not angels of light, but we are the light of the world. Amen.