5th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2020
Isaiah 58:7-10; 1Cor 2:1-5; Matt 5:13-16
This week’s readings follow neatly from last Sunday’s feast of the Presentation of the Lord, of Candlemas. Then, if you recall, the infant Jesus was proclaimed by Simeon to be “a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of [God’s] people Israel”: effectively, as the light of the world. Today, the adult Jesus tells His disciples, who include us, that they are the light of the world.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t say “You ARE TO BE the light of the world,” He says “You ARE the light of the world”. Whether we like it or not, the world sees us here and now, looks at us, and expects something from us, both as individuals and as the Church. And, let us add, as often as not it is looking for us to mess up, to get things wrong, to say or do things on which it can pounce.
We are, as the Church, the city built on a hilltop. Nothing that we do goes unnoticed. And to be fair to ourselves, the Church has always striven to be a light to the world, to cause the world to give glory to God; though, of course, it hasn’t always succeeded.
Isaiah spells out how we are to be the light. “Share your bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless poor. Clothe the man you see to be naked, and do not turn from your own kin. Then will your light shine like the dawn, and your wound be quickly healed over.”
These words of the prophet were echoed by Our Lord, and made strictly personal in His parable of the Last Judgement: “I was hungry, and you gave me food.....”. Let’s abandon the cynicism to which our age is prone, and state clearly that, for centuries, the Church was the main, if not the only, provider of practical care for the needy, of healthcare, of education, of provision for orphans and for unmarried mothers. Of course it made mistakes, sometimes treating these mothers harshly by today’s standards, sometimes compelling them to have their children adopted, in the belief that this was in the best interests of the child—but who else was doing anything to [FK1] help?
And if the state has now taken over many of the Church’s functions in these areas, it has built upon foundations laid by the Church. That is illustrated vividly in the health service, where the nurse in charge of a ward is still known as a sister, as a reminder tht her predecessors were nuns.
Yet we cannot and must not rest on our laurels, otherwise we will become that tasteless salt which can only be discarded and disregarded. There are, perhaps, more people than ever in need of care of one kind or another—or perhaps it is simply that we are more aware of them. There are hungry people, homeless people, people who are stressed and distressed in this country and throughout the world; people who need our light, both as individuals and as the Church; people who need us to bring them the light of Christ in many different ways.
To our other responsibilities in this area has been added one of which the prophets were blissfully unaware. I remember studying science as a subsidiary subject in Sixth Form in the mid-60s, and being introduced to two words which none of us had heard before, and which had to be carefully explained. These words were “environment” and “ecology”. Who would have thought, fifty years ago, that the contents of our dustbins might be a moral issue, might relate to our life in Christ? Yet as Benedict XVI declared, and as Francis has reiterated, particularly in his encyclical Laudato si, care for the environment relates very firmly to the Gospel.
There can, of course, be overkill. Twice, in the current series of Dr. Who, I have been irritated by preachy environmental messages. I watch Dr. Who for good escapist hokum, not for sermons, but the prevalence of the latter does at least remind us of the urgency of the problem.
We are the light of the world: we are the city built on a hilltop. Today, no less than in the past, we must lead the world in serving Christ in our neighbour, and now in protecting the world in which we and that neighbour live.
