Well, class of 2005, looks like you made it. To your parents, it seems as though we just saw you off to kindergarten and now look at you. Adults! How did it happen so quickly?
You will be taking divergent paths in the next several years. Most of you off to college. Many of you, no doubt, will be married and have children before another ten years is up – how’s that for a scary thought! But whatever path you take, I pray that you will remember
what the Lord Jesus said to His followers in tonight’s Gospel: “You are the salt of the world…. You are the light of the world… So let your light shine before people that they may see the good you do and praise your Father in heaven.”
You are the salt of the world. Salt is a preservative. It holds back the rot. And the world you are going out into has rot in abundance. Sin, death (which is just sin made visible), sorrow - they will surround you on every side. The world will try to convince you that the rot is normal and that its stench is just life. You know better. You know that this wonderful world that we live in has been marred and damaged; it is not yet what God would have it be.
You know the power of sin and evil. But even more, you know the power of Him who carried all your rot on His cross and answered for it entirely. You know the power of His Spirit to overcome the evil of this world with forgiveness, love, and mercy – the greatest power of all. You know that in the end, this world will not be full of rottenness, but made new and whole, as we sing each week: “heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.” That’s a glimpse of this world from the age to come, and we live in hope of that joyful day when the
Crucified and Risen Lord will shine in glory and make all things new – including us.
To be salt for the world is to give this world a sneak preview of the world that is coming. To be salt is fight the corruption and despair, and the fight begins right in your own heart. To be salt is live your life without fear – at peace in knowing who you are (a baptized child of God!) and what your destiny will be (life forever, singing the praises of the Trinity!). And being such salt, you’ll hold back the rot by witnessing to others the hope you have in Jesus
Christ and inviting them to share with you right now the joys of the Age that is coming when Christ returns.
Salt, but also light. You are the light of the world. The thing about light is that it illumines, but it doesn’t illumine itself. Think of the sun. It illumines other things so that you can see them as they really are. Walk into an unknown room in the pitch dark and expect to bump your shin and probably land on your keester. But let the light shine in the room, and all of a sudden you can see everything for what it is.
So to be the light of the world is not to stand in the spotlight and have folks looking at you, admiring you. To be the light is let others see things as they really are. And you are that light as you are faithful in serving the purpose of God for you in this generation. You are that light when folks seeing the good you do will find out what all of life is really all about: praising the Father of Jesus Christ. Anyone who makes it to the grave without discovering that has sadly missed the whole point of both time and eternity. And that’s a tragedy of immense proportions.
Today the Church remembers a humble man who died one thousand, two hundred and seventy years ago this very evening. He never wandered far from home and he spent almost his whole life explaining God’s Word and translating portions of it into the language of his people. He certainly never thought of himself as a famous man, and I think he’d be absolutely shocked to realize that people half a world away and all these centuries later still remembered him and still thanked God for his faithfulness.
He recorded a wise man counseling a King about whether or not to adopt the Christian faith. These are the words he wrote:
“Your majesty, when we compare the present time of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thanes and counselors. In the midst, there’s a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. The sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what came before this life or what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.”
So recorded the Venerable Bede – a monk in Jarrow, England. He spent His whole life just being faithful to God, doing the work he found at hand to do, and God blessed him and his work unbelievably. For centuries, if anyone wanted to get the hang of a Bible passage, they
knew whose work to pull out and read. Bede. And everywhere Bede testifies to the certainty and joy that came into the world when God took on flesh in Jesus Christ, when He atoned for sin and punched down the door of death, and opened up for us the promise of
eternity. Everywhere Bede encouraged people that to live their lives NOW in conformity with the future that will be THEN – and told everyone that such a life of praise is the only life worth living at all.
Why bring up some dusty old monk on the day of your Baccalaureate? Because it is the hope and prayer and dream of the Church and of the faculty staff of Metro East Lutheran High School, that each of you will be salt and light, just like the Venerable Bede was in his
generation, doing the work into which God will guide and lead you, blessing others by your service to them, testifying always to all people of the hope that is yours in Christ Jesus. It’s our prayer and dream for each one of you that you will live your life as salt and light, witnessing by your words and works, to the life that is to come, and singing the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Amen.
