Matthew 5.14-16.
5.14
The following previously appeared on my religion blog, More Christ.
Elsewhere, Jesus says that He is the light of the world. (Jn 8.12) If that confuses you, that’s because you’re thinking of parables as secret codes: “seeds = messages,” or “birds = devils” or “light of the world = Jesus.” That’s not how they work. Parables aren’t codes; they’re metaphors. They mean what they mean at the time Jesus says them. Later, they’ll have a different meaning. In one parable “birds” refers to devils; in another, followers; in many others, they literally are birds. Every parable is interpreted independently. And in this one, Jesus starts, “You are the light of the world.” We should have no trouble interpreting that. “I am the light of the world” is an entirely different lesson.
Nowadays we don’t create cities on hills; a city on a hill is much harder to build. But in ancient times, every city needed to defend itself from invaders, so they put them on hills, where they could best see their enemies, and fire down upon them. This made them very visible—especially at night when all the torches were burning—and that’s the sort of thing Jesus’s followers are: nice and obvious. (Targets, even; but let’s not focus on the negative.)
Since we’re light—like being salt of the earth, that’s just what we are, and we shouldn’t concentrate on whether we’re being light enough, or whether we might lose that light—we ought to live up to our function. Lights aren’t lit in order to be hidden. In Jesus’s day—as He said—nobody lights a lamp, then sticks it under a basket. (Especially since baskets were usually made of dry sticks or dry grasses, and were more flammable than the oil in the lamps!) Lamps went on stands, the better to light a room.
Since we Christians are lamps—since we’re visible, no matter what we might do—we need to take advantage of our visibility. We need to do things that bring honor to God. We need to concentrate on giving Jesus a good name.
To some degree, we need to make up for all the sloppy, poorly-behaved Christians there are. There are a lot of Christians who don’t realize they’re the light of the world. Either they think their Christianity isn’t obvious to everyone, or they don’t believe Christians need to be religious. (To remind you: We don’t need to be religious in order to be saved, but we do need to be religious if our relationship with Jesus is going to grow.) Irreligious Christians just don’t understand what being the light of the world means. So they’ve been practicing some very jerk-like behavior, and have been giving Christianity and Jesus a bad name as a result. Thanks to them, there are a lot of people who firmly believe that Christians are jerks. We have to correct that idea, and talk is cheap: We have to prove it with actions. “Let your good deeds shine out,” as Jesus put it.
It’s regularly pointed out that Jesus seems to contradict this verse, later in the very same sermon, when He says, “Don’t do your good deeds publicly.” (Mt 6.1) He actually doesn’t; and I’ll explain next week.
Mt 5.14: ὑμεῖς ἐστε τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου. you all are the light of the cosmos. οὐ δύναται πόλις κρυβῆναι ἐπάνω ὄρους κειμένη· not it’s able, city, to hide over a hill, lying down; 5.15: οὐδὲ καίουσιν λύχνον & neither they burn a lamp, καὶ τιθέασιν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τὸν μόδιον and they put it under a grain-basket, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ τὴν λυχνίαν, but on the lampstand, καὶ λάμπει πᾶσιν τοῖς ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ. and it illuminates all the [things] in the house. 5.16: οὕτως λαμψάτω τὸ φῶς ὑμῶν ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, thus it illuminates! the light of you all, before the humans, ὅπως ἴδωσιν ὑμῶν τὰ καλὰ ἔργα so that they may see of you all the good works, καὶ δοξάσωσιν τὸν πατέρα ὑμῶν τὸν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. and they may make mighty the father of you, the [one] in the universe.
