Salt, Light, and Courage (Epiphany 5A)

 

Salt, Light, and Courage

8 February 2026

Fifth Sunday After Epiphany Year A

Homily preached at 11:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist

Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Sutherlin, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP. Ph.D.

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12); Psalm 112:1-9, (10); 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16); Matthew 5:13-20

 

God, give us the great infallible sign of your presences, Joy. Amen

 

Jesus in today’s Gospel says we are “salt for the earth.”  He says we, just by being who we are, can spice up this bland and sometimes rotten-tasting world we live in.  He says we can be light in this dark place, so obvious that no one will mistake us for part of the darkness.  He is not giving us a commandment that we must obey, a goal that we must work on.  He is saying that that is just who and what we are if we are his disciples.  

 

In recent years, I have seen too often hatred and condemnation in the faces of others.  I have seen it in the faces of pious “religious” people taking issue with those of us they condemn as departing from God’s pure ways.  I have seen it in true practitioners of faith who have suffered hurt from “righteous” people, reacting in anger.  We all have seen it, more and more, in the faces of our compatriots in this sad broken country of ours that has lost its way so badly. We see it in the face of agents of a police state who kill innocent protestors.  We see it in the face of us people who mourn those deaths and the loss of our democracy.  Sometimes, the more justified the anger, the more bitter the contempt.     

 

Such barely contained anger and resentment contrast with my memories of a former mentor and spiritual director of mine:  a Buddhist nun in a small temple in the mountains north of Taipei Taiwan.  She was joyous.  I can’t think of a time when I did not see her smiling.  She clearly expressed her beliefs and opinions, but always as an affirmation, never a contradiction to others.  She had more than anyone else I have met cause to be resentful and angry over horrible abuse she and her family had suffered at the hands of others.  Her family had fled from Mainland China to escape persecution from Chinese Communists.  But there was never even a whiff of anger or resentment in her.  All she did was done with joy, gratitude, and empathy for others, especially those who disagreed with her. She always talked about cultivating the “Buddha nature” within each of our hearts, of being more compassionate, less judgmental, and kinder to every sentient being.  

 

I also had a Christian spiritual director like this in Hong Kong when I was preparing for ordination, an Australian Anglican priest, an out gay man.  He too was joyous and almost always wore a genuine smile.  

  

We are called to be Jesus’ disciples.  That means following him, and emulating him.  He had his enemies, to be sure.  And he said that in following him, we would have enemies also.  But he taught clearly: love your enemies.  Now at times, Jesus Jesus got angry or impatient with those who used religion and political authority to brtalize and oppress others.  But I think that tells us how bad things were, not about Jesus' heart.  

 

When I was a grad student at the Catholic University of America, I prayed regularly in the nearby National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The main nave is cavernous. On the ceiling above the high altar is an immense mosaic of Christ on the Day of Judgment. As you look up, he peers down at you accusingly, eyes ablaze in anger.  Looking up at that mosaic, I always felt condemned, and bound for hell. I always retreated to the crypt church in the basement for prayer. Te icons of Jesus there are loving and kind.  That mosaic upstairs was just too threatening. I just couldn’t pray to Jesus in the nave.

So when I think of Jesus, I think of him with that gentle smile of deep joy of my Buddhist and Christian masters, not with the condemning grimace of barely concealed contempt we see so often in others and ourselves.  That grimace tells us we have lost hope that others might actually turn from their abusive ways.  I don’t think Jesus ever lost that hope, and God knows, he had plenty of reason to. 

    

Jesus invites us all into metanoia, often translated as “repentance,” but better understood as “a change of the mind” or “a turning of the heart.”  Jesus invites us to close relationship with God, who in his mind was not a warring tribal leader or dour judge or policeman, but rather an intimate and loving parent.   Gratitude should be our default position.  Gratitude drives out fear, alienation, and contempt.  It encourages empathy and forgiveness.  That is why he asks us to pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts owed us.”   

 

The fruits of the spirit according to Galatians are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (5:22).   If we think we are being touched by the spirit or spoken to by God, but what we get is anger, resentment, fear, and contention, we are  most certainly mistaken.  Joy and peace are what the spirit give, what God inspires in our hearts, not partisan posturing or manipulation of others so that they give us what we want in a constant struggle for dominance of submission.  

 

Perhaps as a check on ourselves and the lies we tell ourself, we should ask ourselves, throughout the day, “Am I smiling?”  “Am I trying to understand this person so different from me?”  “Am I thankful?”  When angry, we should ask, “What is it about me that makes me react in this way? What fears and insecurities?”  and not “why can’t that creep over there just change?”

 

But what about grief?  How can we be joyful when we are mourning?  When we have lost those we love, or those we care about?  Isn’t resentment okay then?  Isn’t anger and hatred justified just a little?  Grief is an emotion we must go through and not suppress or stifle.   

 

But we must never let grief overwhelm us so that we lose hope and turn to hatred.   The Chinese have a proverb for this, one taught me by my Zen master,:  节哀顺变  [節哀順變] jié'āishùnbiàn, “bind up your grief so you bring about change.” 

 

C.S. Lewis, in his magnificent but painful “A Grief Observed,” writes that no one ever explained to him how much grief as an emotion feels like fear.  Part of our “binding up grief” in fact is an act of courage in the face of the unimaginable. And courage it is that Jesus calls us to! Courage is Martin Luther King Jr.'s  struggling against racists precisely because he never gave up on them.  It's like Alex Pretti still trying to help those attacked by ICE and CBP and holding up a mirror of conscience to the brown shirts. Courage.  Binding up our grief to promote change.    

 

When the French want to tell you to be strong, find joy or at least calm in the face of trouble, and deal with what life dishes out, they say “du courage!”  It’s like saying “buck up!” or “hang in there.” 

 

 

 

One of the pivotal moments in my life, and one of the greatest bits of counsel I ever received, took place in Beijing China on June 6, 1989.  I was working at the U.S. Embassy there.  In the closing days of May, things in Beijing had gotten more and more chaotic as the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tian’anmen Square dragged on.  The evening of Saturday June 3, the army moved in to recapture the Square, re-exert control over the city, and terrorize the people back into compliance with the Communist Party’s leadership.   Many of you saw the picture of the single protester standing his ground before a column of tanks.  That scene was unusual.  Generally people who stood in the way were simply run over by the armored personnel carriers, crushed and chewed up by the treads.  I know, because I saw it.  For days the army used random shooting toward crowds as a way of cowing people to get off the streets.  More than a thousand lay dead, murdered by “the People’s Liberation Army,” and rumors of dissenting Army units firing on each other raised the specter of Civil War.  

 

In all this, the U.S. Embassy granted refuge to two of the leading dissidents in the country, marked for summary execution by those who wanted to make their country great again.  Those two came in through my office.  The next day, the army opened fire at U.S. diplomatic apartments—some with children in them—in an hour-long shooting spree in which, fortunately, no one was killed.   

 

 

The Hon. James R. Lilley and Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping

 

Ambassador James R. Lilley called us all together to announce that our dependents were being evacuated from the country and that we would mount a full-scale evacuation effort to take stranded Americans in remote parts of the city to the airport.  As we were meeting, automatic weapons fire opened up just outside the Embassy compound where we were meeting.  People crouched beneath the window levels as the cement walls around us were chipped and shattered by bullets.  Finally, silence returned.  

 

Ambassador Lilley, a former marine and CIA officer, called us back to order.  What he said then is deeply etched in my memory.  Calmly, with emotion, he said, “We are not often called upon to show courage.  Courage is grace under fire, keeping your head and your heart focused on what you need to do, and why, and then doing it regardless of all the things you cannot control going on around you.  As you go out to help evacuate  Americans, you must keep your cool and stay focused. Bring them reassurance and calm.  As we send off our spouses and children, not knowing when or if we might see them again, we must give them confidence and hope.  Stay on task, remember our values and the oath to the Constitution we took when we entered into Federal service.  Though things might not turn out how we wish, we will have the calm of knowing we’ve done everything in our power.  It’s a matter of faith, both having faith, and keeping faith.  It’s called courage, and that is what we must step up to now, so we can make the best of this bad, bad situation.” 

 

The words had particular impact on me as we drove the next two days in convoys across the barricades all over the city, facing the muzzles of AK-47s held by PLA teenage recruits from the provinces shaky with amphetamines to keep them awake.   

 

I have always thanked God that Jim Lilley knew exactly what to say to us and then modeled courage for us.  He taught where courage comes from: remembering the joy of times past, then focusing on what we need to do, and sharing our calm with others.  As African American Spirituals say, “Keep your eyes on the prize! Keep your hand on the plough!  Hold on, hold on!”  This lesson has stayed with me from then until now.  

What Jim Lilley knew was this:  if we keep our minds on the goal and stay on task regardless of how bad things are, if we are true to the better angels in our hearts, grace under fire just happens.  We are no longer overwhelmed by the things over which we have no control.  And we find we can even find humor, satisfaction, and yes, even joy in pursuing our course, come hell or high water.  We find that we can spice up this life, and be a light, not a judge. 

 

Siblings in Christ: Du courage!  Let us go forth from this Eucharist today, this Great Thanksgiving, renewed and recommitted to joy, to love, to caring for each other, to supporting and healing the ill and reconciling hurt, and to forgiveness.  Let us mourn with those who mourn, but always be ready to find joy and hope and share that with others.  For Joy and hope are there.  We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  We are in God’s hands.  

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.