Nita has been coming to mass in our parish for a couple of months—sometimes on Wednesday night or Friday noon, often on Saturday night or Sunday. She comes with either Dolores or Agnes. Both are new widows. Nita cared for both their husbands before they died. “I’m so glad you are here!” I told her last week. “I’m glad I’m here, too,” she said with a big smile.
I remembered a conversation Nita and I had had some months ago when I was taking communion to one of the men. “They are such good people,” she said of the family. “They are genuinely good all the time. They treat me well all the time. They care for each other all the time.” Nita didn’t use the words, but what she meant was that she experienced these families as salt and light.
In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all the house.”
In the midst of serious illness and afterwards Dolores and Agnes were lamplights to Nita—as she was to them. Now she continues her caring as she sits with them in church; they continue their caring as they invite her to come.
It is God’s economy: people sharing love, giving of self to each other.
It was God’s economy that worked for Elijah and the widow of Zaraphath in today’s first reading. This is the same widow as in Sunday’s story. Because the people of Israel were worshipping Baal, the god of Queen Jezebel’s people, God had imposed a drought through Elijah’s prophecy. This had angered Jezebel and she was searching for Elijah to kill him. God sent him first to the Wadi Cherith (yesterday’s reading), and then to Zaraphath to stay with a widow there. She was about to die of starvation, but, in God’s economy, she was able to live because Elijah’s presence enabled her to “eat for a year, and Elijah and her son as well; the jar of flour did not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry…” On Sunday we heard how Elijah did even more. When her son died, Elijah breathed him back to life. God’s economy.
Who was this widow? She has no name in scripture. But she must have been a “city set on a hill” for God to choose her to shelter Elijah. Think of today’s story from I Kings. She is gathering a few twigs to use her last flour and oil to make a bit of bread. “When we have eaten it we shall die,” she tells Elijah. She is not even an Israelite. She recognizes Elijah as one, though. HE must have been a city set on a hill too. “As the Lord your God lives…” the widow says to him. When she saw Elijah, she connected him with his God. But what generosity to be willing to share the LAST food you have!
It reminds me of a Mother Teresa story. As Mother told it: “One night a man came to our house and told me, ‘There is a family with eight children. They have not eaten for days.’ I took some food with me and went.
When I came to the family, I saw the faces of those little children disfigured by hunger. There was no sorrow or sadness in their faces, just the deep pain of hunger.
I gave the rice to the mother. She divided the rice in two, and went out, carrying half the rice. When she came back, I asked her, ‘Where did you go?’ She gave me this simple answer, ‘To my neighbors—they are hungry also!’
Her neighbors were Muslims. I was not surprised that she gave, because poor people are really very generous. But I was surprised that she knew they were hungry. As a rule, when we are suffering, we are so focused on ourselves we have no time for others. This woman showed something of the truly generous love of Christ.” (From Loving Jesus, by Mother Teresa, edited by Jose Luiz Gonzelez-Balado, Servant Books, 1991, p 9.)
The man who came to Mother Teresa, Mother herself, and the woman who shared were all cities set on a hill.
Because they were cities of light, God used them to spread His Light to others. God’s Economy.
God’s light is about Truth as well as Compassion. We are called to be cities set on a hill in our communities by proclaiming what faith, scripture, and Church tell us is right. In the United States, the current government administration has created affordable health care for the poor—a very good thing. But, in the process, regulations have required organizations who provide health care to include provision of services (contraceptives, medications that are abortifacients) which are against the teaching of the Church and their consciences. Recently the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor and other organizations who, as cities set on a hill and salt of the earth, respectfully objected.
God’s economy. He was able to influence government through the salt-of-the-earth-city-on-a-hill action of the Little Sisters.
For whatever reason, when I think of “salt of the earth” I think of our call to speak Truth.
Jesus tells us today, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
Salt is a chemical term. Salt is a stable compound formed by mixing an acid and a base in such a way that it becomes electrically neutral. Often an ion of hydrogen is replaced by a metal ion. Hydrogen reacts to other chemicals readily. Metals do not.
For salt to lose its flavor, it would have to lose its stability to return to acid or base. When it is unstable, it is useless.
Jesus calls me today to be light and salt. Light spends itself for others. Salt remains stable, itself. As I apply this scripture to myself today it reminds me to recognize the importance of being solid, stable, unmoved in Truth while I witness Christ by loving others.
Sometimes it is very hard to do that. So much of life is like the US Affordable Health Care Act. It is a mixture of what is of God and what is not of God. I must discern how to remain solid. I must discern how to be both salt and light.
Light is formed when something burns. When salt burns, it makes a variety of colors of light—depending on the compound of the salt. All salt need not be alike. The colors of my faith may be different from someone else’s. But I must be solid in the teachings of Jesus and the Church.
My heart is soft. It can get pulled to one point of view or another sometimes in political debates or in the ordinary conversations and dilemmas of the day. But to remain light and salt, I must be solid. I must use my conscience and continually inform my conscience. I must also use the opportunities I have to be a light of caring, of concern, of service–in small things like inviting someone to church or big ones like giving til it hurts. God’s economy.
Prayer:
Lord, when I get disturbed or swayed by political rhetoric, the opinions of friends or foes, or my own desires and needs, remind me I must be salt and light. I must be solid in my knowledge of my faith. I must be visible and a witness to others. Christians doing that is how we change the world. Lord, give me the wisdom and the courage to do that today better than I did it yesterday or the day before. Walk with me, talk with me today. Be in my mind, in my awareness of others, in my generosity, and in my naming Truth. As I remain salt, let me also be light, an active agent of Your economy. I ask in the name and mercy of Jesus. Amen.
Today’s Readings: 1 Kings 17:7-16; from Psalm 4; Matthew 5:13-16.
