Sermon: Being salt and light (Feb. 8, 2026)

Epiphany 5A
February 8, 2026 – Emily’s Installation
Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 5:13-20

INTRODUCTION

Today’s lectionary drops us into what is called “Third Isaiah,” the part of Isaiah that is speaking to the Israelites as they are returning from being in exile for the past 70 years. After the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonian Army, the Israelites had been sent away to live in Babylon, away from all that they knew about faith. Now, they are back, and they’re trying to figure out how to live lives of faith in their drastically changed circumstances. They are fasting, which is a good faith practice, but even as they fast (and wonder why God isn’t impressed by this), they are still oppressing their workers, and doing all kinds of things that are the opposite of what their faith calls them to. Isaiah calls them back to the essence of their faith: share bread with the hungry, free the oppressed, clothe the naked, restore the breach, repair the streets. Do these things, and you will see God working among you. Do these things, he says, and your light will shine.

That light bit ties us right into the Gospel reading, as Jesus tells us we are the light of the world. Today’s reading continues the Sermon on the Mount. Last week we heard the Beatitudes, in which Jesus speaks to a crowd of broken and hurting people and calls them blessed. Today he tells those same people that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Salt and light: two precious things that are essential for life! And Jesus says we are like that, too!

As you listen, hear not only the instructions of Isaiah, but the affirmations in Matthew. So often we hear in the Bible things that we should do or be. In Matthew, Jesus will tell us how God already sees us. Let’s listen. 

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” 

I think, in a world which so often places demands on us, we might be tempted to hear these exhortations from Jesus as commands. “You ought to be the salt of the earth. You should be more like the light of the world.” But no – right here at the beginning of his sermon, Jesus starts by telling people not what they should be, but what they already are. It is not so much command as it is promise, an identity we already possess as baptized and beloved children of God. You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. That is how God sees us. And when we know that about ourselves, it becomes easier to live into that identity, right? 

Maybe you don’t believe me. Good people of St. Paul’s, I will prove this to you. 

A couple years ago, when St. Paul’s received a large bequest, the very first thing you did was give away 10% of it, a tithe. Then you decided we should give away another 20% more of it, and to put another quarter of it in an endowment fund so that we can continue to give away large sums of money every year to people in need. Per our vision statement, you are “making the world a better place.” You are the light of the world. 

You have donated a crazy amount of food and goods over the years to Loop Ministries, Pittsford Food Cupboard, ESWA, Rochester Hope, and many more local organizations. You serve on boards for these and other organizations that are doing such good work toward helping those in our community who are in need. You use your connections and passions to make our larger community a great place to live. You are “building a strong community.” You are the salt of the earth.

You use your unique and abundant gifts to help this congregation and its ministries to run smoothly – whether that is making food, decorating, organizing things or information, working with technology, supporting our staff, making decisions about our finances or our building, making quilts, teaching children, making music, creating and polishing healthy policies… the list of skills and gifts put to work here is endless! And you share them joyfully, and generously. You are the salt of the earth!

You also care for one another, giving rides to members who can’t drive, sending cards and delivering meals, checking in on each other, going grocery shopping, or simply spending the time to go visit one another. You sing in the choir, or sit on the council, or make the coffee and treats or order the cake, or help lead worship, or plan fellowship events or service opportunities. You care about justice, and work toward it in your free time, writing letters, making calls, showing up. You pray for one another and the world God made. You are the light of the world!

With a diversity of people and gifts in this place, you manage to serve a diversity of needs in the world. You, my dear people, are already the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Of course, how it looks to be salt and light in the world is always changing as the world around us changes, and as different needs arise. And sometimes our diversity of gifts also extends to a diversity of opinions, and thus different ideas of how being salt and light should look. We all care deeply about different things, and want our energy as a congregation to go in different directions. While our diversity of gifts and opinions can certainly be an advantage, sometimes those differences can make it hard to focus our saltiness and light in the same direction at the same time! We have different priorities.

In a moment, we will formally install Deacon Emily as our new Minister of Community Connections and Outreach. The role of a deacon is to serve as a bridge between church and world, and to equip the saints (that’s you!) to lead a living, active, and caring Christian life. To that end, one of the main things she will be doing with us is helping us know how we, in all our diversity of skills and opinions, are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world in this time and place. She will help us discover our passions, and the needs of the world, and to see where those things overlap. She will listen deeply to us, and help us listen deeply to each other and to the Word of God, to determine where our passions, both collective and unique, might align with the world’s need for salt and light, and help us discover how to meet that need sustainably and joyfully. Having spent the past weeks getting to know Deacon Emily, I know she will do a faithful job of this, and I hope that we will all be open to hearing how God and our community are calling us to be salt and light in this time and place.

We may very well discover what we didn’t even know we had in common, and we may also find a lot of things about which we still differ. But there is, of course, one very important thing that holds us all together in this work, and that is our belief that our loving God not only made each of us so beautifully unique, but also understands our brokenness; that this God loves us so much as to send us Jesus, to first proclaim to us our belovedness, our blessedness, to promise us we are already salt and light, to teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and finally to take all of our brokenness with him to the cross, bury it deep in a tomb, and rise again to bring us new life, new hope, new opportunity. We are all held together by a love that could do that for this here bunch of sinners, and by a love that then motivates and empowers us to be the salt and the light, to share that message with the world in word and in deed. 

I’m so excited to see what God will do here at St. Paul’s in the coming years, through us, through Deacon Emily, and through our work together with our various community partners. Will we do more of what Isaiah implores – “Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to clothe them”? Will we work toward being, as Isaiah says, a “repairer of the breach, a restorer of streets to live in”? Will we build new relationships with new communities, or deepen existing ones? There’s no end to the possibilities of ways to be salt and light in this world. I can’t wait to see!

Whatever happens, I know that God will use our gifts and our passions, our differences, and our similarities in a way that lets us spread God’s love further than we could have alone. Thanks be to God for making us salt and light, so that together we might bring God’s own life and brightness to a world in need. 

Let us pray… God of life, we thank you for the assurance that we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. Embolden us to live out this God-given identity in ways that bring life and hope to our community. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.