Sermon Mt. 5:13-16
Overseas Partnerships Celebration, Diocese of Rochester
24 September 2023,
Church of All Saints, Snodland, England
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Mt. 5:13-16)
It is my great pleasure to greet all the participants of the Overseas Partnerships Celebration of the Diocese of Rochester. I am particularly gladdened by the fact that this Partnerships Celebration centres around Estonia and the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church on behalf of which I, as the leader of that church, would like to extend you all my salutations. I would also like to thank our host, the Diocese of Rochester, the Rt Revd Jonathan Gibbs and all the brothers and sisters from the local Anglican community, for welcoming us with such warmth and hospitality.
As the basis of today’s sermon, I have chosen a familiar gospel passage that has been preached on numerous times. There, Jesus speaks to his disciples about the need to be the light of the world, so that the proclamation of Christ as the Light could reach as many people as possible through his followers. Living in the Northern Hemisphere of an increasingly secular world, we are, time and again, faced with the question of whether, in the present time, the church and Christians can gain any traction in the public sphere with their message by contributing to a secular discourse. I have the feeling that the tendency is to exclude the church from the public sphere because, allegedly, religion is something very personal and we should not bother anyone else with it.
During the Soviet occupation, it was not permitted to cut down the trees and shrubs that had grown, over time, around rural churches in Estonia. In the same vein, many cemeteries transformed into forests. The underlying reason was ideological – church buildings were not supposed to be visible and even cemetery crosses had to be hidden behind coppices. The word of God that was preached in the church was like a light, which the authorities wanted to hide and smother. What actually happened, however, was that the society ruled by the Soviet atheistic, materialist regime became dominated by a spiritual blindness. Those who remained true to their faith and continued to attend the church lived in the light. It was a strange time, where the Soviet regime voluntarily opted for darkness over light, for stupidity over wisdom, for falsehood over truth.
As members of society, we all come together in a common public sphere where we spend much of our time, including by consuming or producing media content, especially in the social media. This is the sphere where we encounter others because everybody has a right to be there. Today, social media is the most immediate location for practicing love for your neighbour; it is a venue where we need to advocate for protection of the personal space and privacy of each member of society. Operating in a common space, the church comes into contact and finds shared elements with politics, economy, culture, sciences, environment and many other areas of life. Unfortunately, we also encounter violence, injustice and unfairness.
As Europe is becoming vigorously more and more secular and partially even post-Christian, with a number of countries where Christians constitute less than half of the population, Christ has to remain the model and focal point of the church’s work and proclamation. Indeed, Christ is the both the reason and goal for the church, We should not forget that this is the society that Christ died for, and we have no right to be selective based on our prejudices as we share this common space with others. This is why the church’s presence should not be limited to the hub of society where it can expect the loudest applause and praise; instead, the church should reach out to the outskirts of society where nobody else is keen to operate.
A growing challenge for the church is to avoid becoming an accuser and mudslinger against members of society who have different ideas and beliefs, while being itself constantly criticised by those who have grown apart from the church and religion. This is why the task of the church and Christians in the common space, including the media sphere and social media in particular, is to nurture trust, build bridges, stand up against injustice and for justice, proclaim hope in time and eternity, and act with love towards everyone.
Having been named the light of the world by Christ in the gospel, we need to try and add an invisible, but perceptible, quality to the public discourse through our work in society. Standing up for truth and justice, both in an evangelical and social sense, is a better way for the church to address and serve all social groups. The use of the prophetic voice requires a good understanding of society. The moral duty and responsibility of the church is to give voice even to those whose values or principles we do not share but who have nobody else to fight for their rights and life. This is perhaps the most complicated task for the church – to amplify the voice of those who, at the same time, highlight the hidden weaknesses of the church itself.
In an era where everyone is able to produce media content, where everyone can freely express their opinion about everything and nobody can hold a monopoly of truth, it falls to the church to advocate for a civil debate culture. Unfortunately, it is often in the social media where representatives of the church start to undermine the respectful debate culture. A balance between the law and the gospel, between truth and love, has been dislodged.
The people of our time expect the church to come to them. We in the church, on the other hand, tend to hope that people will come to us. In this way, we are likely to remain waiting for each other at a distance. If we want to affect change, we cannot sit expectantly inside the church, but we must step outside – to meet people. We are familiar with Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened“ (Mt. 7:7-8). Sometimes, when I try to observe the workings of the church with an outsider’s look, I feel that Jesus is knocking on the church’s door from the inside. We have confined the gospel behind church walls; we have let Christ and love for our neighbour become something that belongs only to us. Like Israelites who confined Yahweh’s temple in the holiest room, not letting it out and allowing nobody to come in.
We must make sure that our Christian life can be heard and seen by others. For even the best speech or sermon about earthly or heavenly things remains nothing but a flicker of air if it is not converted into acts of love. Thus, the presence of the church in the public must be manifested in tangible acts, proceeding from our faith. Jesus said, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Mt. 5:13-16)
Amen.