Third Sunday after Pentecost
Open & Affirming Sunday
First Reading (Isaiah 43:1-3/NRSVUE, adapted)
Gospel Reading (Matthew 5:13-16/NRSVUE, adapted)
At last weekend’s Rocky Mountain Conference Annual Celebration I decided to participate in a workshop entitled “Creation Justice and Congregational Care.” We had a wide variety of workshop offerings from which to choose but, since we at HUCC have covenanted with one another to be a Creation Justice Church, and since you’ve all been out there working on re-landscaping the parking strip, I kinda figured this would be a way for me to step up and do something too. I’m just kidding — I went because it sounded interesting.
The presenter was a colleague of mine from a tiny town in Northern Colorado, located somewhere between Steamboat Springs to the East and Dinosaur National Monument to the West along the Yanpa River, which, I learned, is one of the last remaining free-flowing rivers in the American West.
The Yanpa’s lack of constraint makes it wildly wonderful, but it also creates some challenges. You see, when a heavy snowpack suddenly melts, or when the area gets a lot of rain in a short amount of time in the spring and summer, the land along the river’s banks tends to flood and then not drain quickly, creating a perfect breeding ground for mosquitos. This doesn’t sound a terrific thing for us humans, but it is great for bats, who can each eat something like a thousand mosquitos per hour.
Sadly, though, bats aren’t as abundant as they used to be there (and in a lot of other places too). Ever-encroaching development and a disease known as “White Nose Syndrome” have severely diminished the bat population. My colleague’s church members and their fellow townsfolk first learned about their bat neighbor’s challenges the hard way.
With a lack of viable natural housing options available to them, the aforementioned bats decided to take up residence in less-than-ideal places like the church sanctuary, which led to a lot of dead bats which, in turn, led to a lot of live mosquitos, which, in turn, led to a lot of bug bites, which, in turn, led to a lot of fear about mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis.
One solution to this problem that’s created a whole bunch of other problems is pesticides. And so the area’s many farmers and ranchers were concerned (and rightfully so) about what such chemicals would do to their crops and their herds, and, more broadly, to the precious river water that everyone and everything needs to survive there. What the people of this town were ultimately learning was that, in God’s creation, everything matters and everything is connected.
And so, the people of this little church out in the middle of nowhere in Colorado decided to try something a little different; they set out to learn about, build and install bat houses — human-made wooden structures that mimicked the natural living conditions for these flying mammals.
But their pastor also wanted to orient this endeavor theologically (which makes sense because that’s what us pastors do with everything). He took every opportunity he could find to remind them of the three words we heard over and over again way back at the beginning in Genesis whenever God created something — those three words being: “It was good.”
They began with the easy stuff in this particular ecosystem: you know, God created the water and it is good; God created the land and it is good; God created cows and cows are good; God created the plants we eat and the plants we eat are good.
Then they moved to the more difficult stuff: God created bats and bats are good; God created mosquitos and mosquitos are good, both of which, as you might imagine, elicited some squirming and shrieks (from kids and adults alike). But they soon dug deeper, put the various pieces together, and learned that it really was true: the bats needed the mosquitos and the mosquitos needed the water, and the cows and the crops needed the water and the land and they needed the bats who kept down the mosquito population and fertilized the land, which meant that the cows and the crops needed the mosquitos in a roundabout way too. The point, of course, is that all of these things God had created are, in fact, good; that all of these things God created do, in fact, enrich and depend upon one another; that all of these things God had created do, in fact, matter.
Then they found themselves moving towards the really complicated stuff because, you see, God also created people and people were good too. And the people needed the cows and the crops and the land and the water and, in a roundabout way, they needed the bats and the mosquitos too. As it turns out, the people eventually figured out that they also needed each other.
The folks in this church had always worked together on the kinds of stuff that folks in churches typically work on together, but they soon realized that people beyond the church would have to be involved in this project in order to make it happen — people who had expertise and supplies that they did not have: carpenters and crane operators and wildlife experts and town officials; they had to build a lot of bat houses and mount them atop high places; they had to learn about the best places to put said bat houses; they had to educate the winder community about the virtues of this whole endeavor; and they had disabuse some folks of their unfounded fears about bats. And while all of these people didn’t necessarily agree with each other about everything, at least they came to understand that they all had something to contribute, that they all mattered.
Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to get these bat houses in place before the prospective occupants came out of hibernation this past April, but they’re definitely ready to go for next year. In the meantime, though, something kind of unexpected happened: this small church in a small town in the middle of Colorado decided to explore the possibility of becoming an Open and Affirming congregation. Was this a coincidence? I don’t think so (and their pastor didn’t think so either).
You see, when you take a look at the richness of the world around you (the world that God made); when you consider how everything in it (that God also made) is necessary to the whole and matters in and of itself; when you proceed from the baseline assumption that if God made it, it is good (whatever “it” might be), it’s really tough to conceive of a community that gathers to worship that very same God, that professes to heed the call of that very same God, but that doesn’t welcome and affirm and celebrate all people simply because God made them, simply because they are.
In today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel, which is part of the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus tells his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples, “You could be the salt of the earth if you just say the right words and do the right things.” He doesn’t tell his disciples, “You will be the light of the world if you just conform to all of society’s norms and expectations regarding who you should be.”
I read some interesting things about salt over the past week (I had a lot of time to kill in the Denver airport on the way home) and one of those things is that salt, left to its own devices, will always be salty. It’s only when salt comes into contact with other stuff, with influences beyond itself, that it’s at risk of losing its inherent saltiness.
I can’t help but wonder whether churches and the people in them are similar in that sense. How often do the powers that be in this world seek to diminish our identity? How often are we derided for what we believe to be true about ourselves and about what really matters? How often does society try to make us feel inadequate because of who we are or what we stand for or whom we love? And how often do we find ourselves giving up or giving in to these forces?
Look, I’m not saying that it’s easy to stand up to them, because it’s not; indeed, they can be both overwhelming and insidious. But unlike actual salt or an actual lamp, we, as humans, have agency; we have the power to discern right from wrong, the capacity to resist evil, the ability to stand up and say enough is enough, the responsibility to proclaim and to do what we in our hearts believe to be right and true — even when it’s difficult or unpopular or risky to do these things — because these are the things that God created us to do.
You are salt and light because that’s what God made you. That’s the first premise, the baseline assumption, the way God intended for it to be.
You are God’s beloved. You are an integral and treasured part of God’s creation. You matter simply because you are. And whoever you are or wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. And don’t ever let anyone convince you that you’re not.
Be who you are. Be who God created you to be. Be salty and be light.
Make sure that your light shines before others, helping them to see and to understand and to celebrate the fact they are salt and light too.