“Let there be light.” These are the first words of God recorded in the Bible.  We all know how important light is to us; just stub your toe in the darkness in an unfamiliar room and you remember how important it is.  Every major religion extols light and identifies God with the light.  The ancient Egyptians worshiped Ra, the god of the sun.  Jewish people use the menorah to celebrate the Hanukah miracle of faith triumphing over evil and they declare in psalm 27 that “The Lord is my light and my salvation”.  When someone is in trouble, rather than assuring them with “I’ll pray for you,” the Quakers respond with “I’ll hold you in the light.”  At the Easter Vigil, the priest blesses the Easter fire, lights the Easter candle from it, and then, carrying the candle up the aisle, proclaims: “The light of Christ.”

 

The prophet Isaiah makes crystal clear in today’s first reading that, as God’s chosen people, sharing his light, we are to be a people of light.  As he challenges us with his instruction to “share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked” he assures us that “light shall rise for you in the darkness.”  In a world where we enjoy comfort and ease the likes of which most of the world could never imagine, so many live in the darkness of self-centeredness and isolation.  So much so, we have come to embrace darkness – the darkness of bullying, of pornography, of drugs, of violence, of lies, of abortion.

 

Our ever-loving God wants us to live in his light and this happens when we rejoice in the great gifts God has given us in abundance and then let our “light shine before others,” as we hear our Lord, Jesus, admonish us in today’s gospel.

 

Many people these days speak of our culture of depression and anxiety.  In the midst of possessing so much, so many live in darkness.  Jesus challenges us to embrace the ultimate antidote to all of this darkness.  He calls us to develop lives of gratitude, selflessness and generosity.  He shines a beacon of hope in the midst of this negativity that surrounds us, and tells us, “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”  And so, we love and respect everyone, and promote peace and justice for all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus goes on to challenge us even further.  We are also to be salt – the “salt of the earth.”  It’s difficult for us today to understand how critically essential salt was to the people of the ancient world.  The great early civilizations first developed not only close to water, but also to salt resources.  The ability of salt to preserve food was a requirement for people of that time before refrigeration.

 

But beyond this, salt gives flavor to food.  And that’s what Jesus emphasizes.  We are to become people who bring a whole new taste to the world in which we live.  We are to bring “the flavor of God” to all that we do and say.  Light and salt are closely connected.  From Jesus’ point of view, the more we create a “God flavor” to life, the more we become light.  We dispel the darkness we find around us.  That new taste, that new “God flavor” becomes contagious.  It spreads.  It multiplies.

 

When you were baptized, a candle was lit from the Easter candle.  As I mentioned earlier, this candle represents Christ, the light of the world.  And the priest prayed over you: “This light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly. …May you walk always as a child of the light.”  God has passed the light of the heavens on to you and to me.  Let each of us hold our lives “in the light” and illumine the world we live in by flavoring it with the taste of God.