Stay Salty and Bright — Sermon by Rev. Canon Bryan Biba

Lord, may my speech and my message not

be plausible words of human wisdom, but

a demonstration of the spirit and of

power, so that our faith may not rest in

the wisdom of men, but in the power of

the living God, Jesus Christ the Lord.

Amen. You may be seated.

Church, did you hear what Jesus said?

You are the salt of the earth.

You

are the light of the world.

Just as salt preserves and cures meat,

we are called to cure and preserve this

world.

Just as light shines into the darkness

and scatters darkness, we are called to

shine the light of Christ into the dark

places of this world. Friends, this is

our calling. This is our mission. This

is why Christ Church was founded in

1733.

We cannot put our light under a basket.

The world desperately needs our salt and

our light.

One of my favorite early Christian texts

is the 2 century epistle to Diagnus.

It's an anonymous text written to a

fellow Christian. And there the author

says, "Christians are the soul of the

world.

Just as the body cannot live without the

soul, so the world cannot live without

Christians. If you take Christians out

of the world, the body dies.

And so, friends, what was true in the

second century is true today. We cannot

withdraw from the world. We must give

life to the world, preserve the world,

cure the world, shine our light into the

world,

or else it will be plunged into darkness

and subjected to further decay.

We do this work of curing and

enlightening by preaching the gospel of

Jesus Christ. That's what we're here to

do. From this pulpit in our homes, in

our study of God's word, in our lives

with our neighbors and our co-workers,

we proclaim that Jesus is Lord, that

Christ has died, Christ is risen, and

Christ will come again. This message is

the world's salvation.

And we the church are called to shine

the light of the gospel before others so

they might see our good works and

glorify our father who is in heaven.

So the key question for us this morning

is on World Mission Sunday on our

founders day, how do we stay salty and

bright?

And I think there's three answers to

that question for us this morning. We

must hold fast to God's word. We must

contextualize the gospel. And we must

proclaim and practice reconciliation.

Let's start with our reading from 2

2 Kings 22 · chapter mention

Kings chapter 22.

This friends is a cautionary tale for

the church today. It's one of the

saddest moments in the Old Testament.

King Josiah

has come to the throne. He's a young

man. In the 18th year of his reign, he

launches a project of reform and

renewal. He wants to revitalize his

nation by returning it back to the

worship of Yahweh. Judah has strayed far

from the law. They have worshiped other

gods, built other altars. And so, King

Josiah sends Chaon, his secretary, and

Hilkaya, his high priest, to the temple

to begin the renovation work. And I mean

that literally. The temple needs to be

renovated because it has fallen into

disuse.

There hasn't been sacrifices and worship

there for years.

They go into the temple and begin to

clear out cobwebs and and put things

that were on the side up straight. And

as they're doing this work,

Hilkaya the high priest and Chaon the

secretary find the book of the law

dusty off to the side on the ground

somewhere.

God's law, his very word has been

neglected.

No one has opened the book, read it and

studied it. And so they go to King

Josiah. They report to the king that the

work has begun. The servants have begun

the work of renewal. And king, we found

this book, the book of the law.

And they read it for King Josiah. And

Josiah, one of the good kings of Israel,

we see his heart. When he hears the

words of the law, he tears his clothes

in mourning and lamentation. Because now

he understands why his fathers have

failed to be faithful. Now he

understands why his nation is under

threat. It's because they have failed to

hold fast to God's word.

He laments and orders the book of the

law to be read to the peoples.

Like the church, Judah was called to be

the salt of the earth, to be the light

to the nations. But their mission was

only possible to the degree that they

held fast to God's word. Because they

had forgotten God's word, they had lost

their purpose. They'd lost their

mission. They were good for nothing

except to be thrown in the street.

And the same is true for us, friends. If

we do not hold fast to God's word, if we

don't make God's word our primary focus,

our primary occupation, to all the

exclusion of all other things, we will

lose our mission. We will lose our

saltiness. We will lose our light and

we'll be good for nothing.

As we hold fast to God's precious word,

as we wrestle with it together in

community and prayer, we see the second

need for us, the second way that we stay

salty and bright, and that's through the

work of contextualization.

As any cross-cultural missionary will

tell you, contextualization is a

faithful part of gospel witness. This

church is blessed to be connected to so

many missionaries around the world. Many

who come here and share the work that

God is doing.

Contextualization

is the work of faithfully communicating

the gospel to an unevangelized culture.

And there are two necessary steps in

contextualization. The first one is

translation.

God's word, in order for new Christians

to hold fast to it, it must be

translated into the language of the

people. This was one of the key insights

of the Protestant Reformation, the

English Reformation in particular. This

is why Protestants have so for so long,

for 500 years, emphasize the work of

Bible translation as central to mission.

We must be able to read and understand

God's word in our own language so we can

hold fast to it.

But that's just the first step.

After we translate God's word, we must

also inculturate it. The gospel must be

explained in a way that the culture we

are seeking to reach can understand.

And this work is hard work. This is good

work but very challenging work.

I love the example of the great British

missionary Hudson Taylor 19th century

mission to uh missionary to mainland

China. He felt called to the Chinese

people but at that time there was not a

New Testament in the Chinese language.

And so he studied and he learned and he

went to China and he was one of the key

translators of the Bible into Chinese.

And then once he did that work, he

continued the work of inculturation.

He adopted Chinese dress and Chinese

customs which was very rare for a

British person at that time. All to

reach the Chinese people. And his

mission was very fruitful.

But this work of contextualization,

it's not just for overseas missionaries.

It's for us today. Because whether you

know it or not, we are living in a

cross-cultural environment.

Many of our friends and neighbors

outside this church live in a completely

different world than we do. We may share

the same language, but it's a very

different culture.

We friends need to do the hard work in

our own day of contextualization so that

we can reach out to our friends and

neighbors with the gospel of Jesus

Christ. This is especially important if

we want to reach the next generation for

Christ. We need to learn how to speak to

the needs and the concerns of every

particular time and place.

If you study the history of Christian

mission, I hope you do. Maybe you've

taken the AIM course Anglicans and

Mission that's put out by the new wines

missionary network. It's been taught

here. um you'll see that there is there

are two equal and opposite errors that

Christians have a tendency to fall into

as they do this important work of

contextualization. And we have to be

aware of these errors today as we seek

to reach the world around us. The first

error is the error of domination.

When Christian mission becomes

imperialistic conquest of other peoples,

when we dominate, we try to force people

to change to make them more like us.

A great example of this, of course, was

the Roman Catholic mission effort in the

New World led by the Franciscans where

many native peoples were forcibly

baptized on threat of death.

That's not faithful contextualization.

That's domination.

But there's an equal and opposite error

and that's the error of assimilation.

When Christian mission becomes adopting

and conforming to the culture around us,

when we assimilate, we change ourselves,

our convictions, our values in order to

become more like the world. That's the

mission strategy of mainline

Christianity.

That's what the Episcopal Church is

continuing to do. And our church

rightfully took a stand against that

kind of assim assimilation.

But both domination and assimilation,

both these errors are not faithful

gospel witness. Both of these are not

faithful contextualization. They are not

salt and light.

Churches that dominate others and

assimilate others, they're good for

nothing except for being thrown in the

street, trampled underfoot.

If we want to be salty and bright today,

first we must hold fast to God's world.

And as we hold fast to his word and

wrestle with it together in prayer, we

contextualize the gospel, neither

dominating nor assimilating. Only then

will we be able to fulfill our mission

to speak to the felt needs of our

neighbors.

Craig and I are missionaries. I don't

know if you think about us that way, but

we are. That's what we're here to do.

We're here to be missionaries in this

culture, and you are, too. You're part

of that mission here in Savannah.

And as I've been thinking about the work

of mission, as I've been reading God's

word and seeking to faithfully

contextualize,

I think there's one essential aspect of

the gospel that our world desperately

needs to hear. And that's the ministry

of reconciliation.

We hear it in our reading from uh St.

Paul 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Let me

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

read it again. Trying to figure out what

the key word is here for St. Paul.

All this is from God who through Christ

reconciled us to himself and gave us the

ministry of reconciliation.

That is in Christ. God was reconciling

the world to himself, not counting their

trespasses against them and entrusting

to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for

Christ. God making his appeal through

us. We implore you on behalf of Christ,

be reconciled to God.

Friends, reconciliation

is at the very heart of the gospel. We

sinners who were far off from God have

been brought near by the blood of

Christ.

God has done the work to reconcile us to

himself.

And now Christ has given us that very

same work, the ministry of

reconciliation.

We are called to do for others what God

has done for us. to reconcile with every

tribe, every tongue, every language,

with our enemies

so that they might be reconciled to God

in our polarized world where dividing is

easy, where conflict is normal, where

the hatred of enemies is praised, there

is perhaps nothing more countercultural

than proclaiming ing and practicing

reconciliation.

And that is what our world desperately

needs to hear from the church.

Reconciliation

respects the differences of others and

seeks to unite where there is division.

Reconciliation seeks common ground and

shows hospitality.

Reconciliation requires us to speak the

truth in love.

And we must do this work of

reconciliation the way Christ has

reconciled us with great humility. As

Paul writes in Philippians 2,

Christ emptied himself. He considered

equality with God not a thing to be

grasped. He gave himself humbly for us.

The mission of reconciliation that the

church is called to is only necessary if

we follow in the way of Jesus. The way

of crucififor suffering.

We cannot be proud of this work thinking

of ourselves better than others as if we

are going to save others. We must be

humble seeking only to be faithful to

the truth of the gospel. A gospel that

has saved us and that can save everyone

around us.

I believe friends that if we keep the

doctrine of reconciliation central to

our proclamation and our practice, our

witness in this dark world will be salty

and bright. It will be beautiful and

attractive.

People will see

another way of being human, a way that

looks like Jesus.

And if we focus on reconciliation,

we will avoid both of those errors of

contextualization. We'll avoid

dominating others and assimilating to

others.

But if we miss the fact, hear me

clearly, the gospel of Jesus Christ is

about the reconciliation of all things

and all peoples.

If we miss this fact, we will lose our

saltiness and our light.

Let me close then by touching on a major

threat to our gospel mission of

reconciliation.

And that's the threat of the Antichrist.

It's not what you think it is. I know

when I said that word Antichrist, a lot

of you went straight to the end times,

the rapture, the beasts, 666, right?

That's not what I mean. In fact, that's

not really what the Bible means.

The main place where this phrase

Antichrist occurs is in the letters of

John. 1 John 2 18-22 and then in 1 John

1 John 4:3

4:3

and John means something very specific

by it. In fact, if we focus on the

esqueological left behind stuff, we miss

this key insight that's central to the

New Testament.

John is warning us against those things

that appear Christian, that appear

Christlike,

but in truth are actually opposed to

Christ and his kingdom.

They are wolves in sheep's clothing.

They appear to be speaking truth, but in

fact they only care about lies. They are

literally antirist. That's what the

phrase means.

As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:14,

2 Corinthians 11:14

Satan disguises himself as an angel of

light.

This is tricky, friends, because you

know it' be much easier if the evil in

this world presented itself very clearly

so you could see it. Oh, there's the

evil, right? That's how Hollywood does

good and evil, right? You got the good

guy, the bad guy. It's very clean.

Satan is way smarter than Hollywood,

guys. Satan knows the easiest way to

deceive Christians, is to sell them on

something, an ideology, a political

movement, a leader that appears

Christian, but is actually against the

kingdom of God. And friends, there are

many antichrists around us today.

How do you know?

Let me give you a test.

One of the best ways to test whether

something or someone is Antichrist is to

ask, does this idea, movement, or person

foster the ministry of reconciliation?

Or do they foster something else?

That's what Jesus is here for.

That's what the gospel message is.

That's what we read in holy scripture.

God has reconciled us to himself and has

given us the ministry of reconciliation.

Someone is saying something different

than that. It's not Jesus.

Our world desperately needs a salty and

bright church. A church who holds fast

to God's word. who faithfully

contextualizes without domination,

without assimilation, who proclaims and

practices the good news of

reconciliation.

This is what we were founded to be.

And only by God's grace can we continue

to be salty and bright.

So, Christ Church Anglican, as we

celebrate our founding, as we celebrate

World Mission Sunday with some salty

oysters,

may God strengthen our mission and

witness today

and keep us salty and bright.

In the name of the Father and the Son

and the Holy Spirit. Amen.