Shake Shake Shake…Shine Shine Shine

Salt of the Earth. Light for the World. This Sunday’s Gospel has Jesus following up his blockbuster Beatitudes that beats Mapquest for a certain, simple route to the beautiful life:  Be salt.  Be light.

On Tuesday mornings I enjoy what is in many ways the lynchpin of my retired life, the commitment around which my other-than-Kathy life revolves.  I drive three miles to Immaculate Conception Church to meet with a small group of men to look at the following Sunday’s Gospel together, to seek in it some guidance for us as men wanting to live beautiful lives as heads of families. We gather in early morning darkness, into a warm circle of light in a room adjoining the church.   For decades I had enjoyed something similar in Detroit.  It was men only too, but it started because the women we knew were way ahead of us, getting to know each other more easily than we more individualistic males.  So here I am again, sitting in a warm circle of increasingly candid and trusting men as we look for guidance from God in scripture and each other.

This Traverse City gathering concerned me when I first heard about it, because it specifically called out to men who were heads of families.  The Men of St. Joseph it is called, from a group that started in the South.  I was afraid of this man thing, men taking and holding the lead in their families, their communities, their church.  I long for a Church that opens all doors to women.  To have them follow a step behind so that men can remain out front is repulsive to me.  But last Tuesday was an example of how the group is freeing me from that concern about male supremacy.

Steven had agreed to play the weekly role of reading and studying the week’s gospel, and preparing for us some introductory remarks to help us discuss it together.  He is among the quieter of us, less likely to speak up, and when he does speak, he speaks quietly, gently, modestly, with gestures that soften, rather than harden, his words.  And when he prepares remarks, they are thorough, and carry their own authority.  He writes like a theologian, with carefully crafted sentences that build logically, that end not in a conclusion, but a call to us to provide our own. 

This week’s Gospel, Matthew 5:13-16 is about salt and light.  We are called to be salt of the earth, light to the world.  And Steven did not disappoint.  Salt preserves, he said.  Salt preserves.  His study provided us with all kinds of insights about salt, about light, about the small windows in the houses of the time, and the way lights had to be raised high for the light to spread.  We listened in rapt attention as he spun his story, and then it was finished, and he was smiling shyly at us in his spent silence…and it hit me.

Steven was the salt.  He was the light.  Nothing about his message was about him.  It was all about the Scripture, about the message.  Nothing was about the messenger.  Salt does not serve itself.  It preserves the thing salted; it flavors the food on which it is used.  It dissolves and becomes part of that thing on which it is used.  We can’t see light; we see only what light shines on.  Light serves us by showing us what is.  It does not show us itself.  So here we were, Men of St. Joseph, heads of families, learning from the words of Jesus by the effective teaching of one of his messengers, who was teaching us by well crafted words and uncrafted example, by being salt of the earth for us, by being the light of Christ to the big world in our little circle.