Let Your Light Shine - Salt, Light, and a Deeper Righteousness  - Matthew 5:13–20

In our passage today, Jesus says these words: ‘I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ What could he have meant by those words? 

I mentioned before that my Mom grew up in the Salvation Army in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Salvation Army did/and does immense good, especially among the poor and marginalised, but like many churches of that era, it also held a very narrow understanding of what it meant to be righteous.

Righteousness was defined largely in terms of rule-keeping and visible respectability. Smoking and drinking were forbidden, and to be fair there are real benefits from living a clean life-style. But so were dancing and going to the cinema. Faithfulness and holiness were measured by avoiding certain behaviours. And while this produced a strong sense of moral seriousness, it also reduced righteousness to something external, measurable, and socially approved.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been reflecting on how Matthew presents Jesus not as a break from Israel’s story, but as the one who brings that story to its true fulfilment. Matthew wants us to see continuity rather than contradiction with Jesus standing firmly within Israel’s Scriptures, hopes, and vocation, even as he radically re-interprets and refocuses them.

And one of the key areas in which Jesus brings clarity to the Jewish religious tradition and story of Israel is with regard to the word ‘righteousness’ and what it means to be righteous. 

In Matthew, variations of the word righteousness, righteous and unrighteous occur at least 23 times.  In doing so Matthew uses the language of righteousness more than any other Gospel writer, and he does so at decisive moments in the story. This is not accidental. Matthew is deliberately reshaping what righteousness means, moving it away from highly personalised rule-based respectability and moving it towards the combined Christ-like qualities of  being just and merciful,  fair and compassionate and having inner integrity,

Early on in Matthew’s Gospel, before Jesus has spoken a word, we’re given a quiet but profound redefinition of righteousness.

Joseph, Matthew’s Gospel tells us, is a righteous/just man. And when he discovers that Mary is pregnant, he faces a dilemma. According to the law, righteousness could mean protecting his own honour, exposing Mary, and ending the relationship publicly. That would have been the outwardly correct, socially acceptable response. He chooses a slightly modified version of that, planning to dismiss Mary quietly, but she would have still been left wide open to public scrutiny and condemnation with no-one to protect her.  It is only when prompted by an angelic messenger in a dream that Joseph chooses to walk a path of deeper integrity and deeper righteousness – a righteousness of the heart - when he chooses faithfully and compassionately to open himself to public scandal by taking Mary has his wife. 

And so early on Matthew is already making his point: righteousness is not simply about legal correctness, following the letter of the law or public appearance. It is about inner integrity expressed through compassion – a transformed heart. Joseph’s righteousness looks merciful, faithful and compassionate rather than simply looking respectable.

This sets the trajectory for the whole Gospel.

When Jesus appears, Matthew is careful to present him not as abolishing Israel’s law and prophets, but as fulfilling them.  That’s why, in today’s reading, Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come, not to abolish, but to fulfil.”

Fulfilment does not mean reinforcement of the law in its most rigid form. It means revealing its true intent, its deepest purpose.

As we have seen in recent weeks, Matthew repeatedly frames Jesus as the fulfilment of Isaiah’s Servant of God, the one called to embody Israel’s vocation: to live for God’s justice, to bear suffering faithfully, and to be a light to the nations.

Jesus is not replacing Israel; he is re-forming Israel around himself, creating a renewed servant community shaped by the heart of God rather than mere rule based observance and outward righteousness, he is is reshaping his followers, from the inside out, so that they make a real difference in the world.

That’s why Jesus immediately tells his disciples:  “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.”  Salt does not work by remaining pure in a container. It works by being mixed into the dough or mixed into food. Light does not protect itself from darkness; it shines into the darkness.

This echoes Isaiah’s servant imagery  “I have given you as a light to the nations”. The servant’s task is not separation but transformation. Not withdrawal, but faithful presence. Jesus is forming a servant people who do not escape the world, but who embed themselves within it, transforming it from the inside out as salt and light.  

And then comes the line that would have stunned Jesus’ listeners:

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (And Jesus is not talking about getting into heaven by and by when you die… he is talking about becoming citizens of heaven in the here and now… living the way of heaven, the way of God already in this world.)  The scribes and Pharisees were deeply serious about the law. If righteousness meant stricter rule-keeping, they would have been unbeatable.

But Matthew’s Gospel steadily exposes the limits of rule-keeping. Later, in Matthew 23,  Jesus criticises the Pharisees for appearing righteous outwardly while being inwardly disconnected from mercy, justice, and faithfulness. Matthew 23:28 “…you appear righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy…” like pots that have been cleaned on the outside, but on the inside they are still dirty.  Their righteousness has become performative, defensive, and self-protective.

The problem is not their commitment, it is the thinness of their vision. Their righteousness is skin deep - about outward show.  And this is a trap that Christians fall into even today.  

A sobering and very close-to-home example of this is the recent case of Colin Howell, the Northern Ireland dentist who for years maintained the appearance of righteousness as a respected member and even a preacher within a Baptist church. Outwardly, he embodied everything that looked like religious respectability. Yet beneath that surface, Howell and his accomplice plotted and carried out the murders of their spouses, and he later confessed to sexually assaulting patients while they were under anaesthetic. This is an extreme and deeply disturbing case, but it exposes something Matthew’s Gospel repeatedly warns against: the terrifying human capacity to sustain an outward righteousness while the inner reality remains profoundly untransformed. Jesus’ critique of righteousness that is only skin-deep is not only directed to the Pharisees of his day, but equally applicable to us as Christians today.   (And before we get too self-righteous, we should remember that according to our Christian faith, despite everything, Colin Howell is also a beloved child of God and his journey towards wholeness and redemption began on the day when he made the decision to come clean and confess even if he may still have a long, long journey of growth, and honesty  ahead of him… as indeed we all do.)

Importantly, the Greek word Matthew uses, dikaiosynē, means both righteousness and justice. It speaks of right and just relationship, not mere compliance. It names a life lived from the inside out in just, fair, honest and compassionate relationship with others, as well as a life aligned with God’s restorative and reconciling purposes for the world.

This deeper meaning becomes crystal clear nearer the end of the Gospel in Matthew 25. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, the righteous are those who feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, cloth the naked, and visit the imprisoned. And strikingly, they are surprised to be called righteous. The are completely unconscious of the fact that they are doing good – as Jesus says earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, their right hand is not aware of what their left hand is doing – unselfconscious goodness and generosity.  Their righteousness flows from their inner being. They were not trying to be righteous. They were simply living with open hearts allowing uncalculated love to spontaneously flow through them towards others and especially those in need.

And then, near the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in Matthew’s Passion narrative, Pilate’s wife warns him: “Have nothing to do with that righteous man.”

Here righteousness is fully focused in Jesus himself. Righteousness looks like faithful love under pressure. Like truth without violence. Like compassion that refuses to save itself at the expense of others. Righteousness, in Matthew’s Gospel, is ultimately Christ-shaped.

And so when Matthew’s Jesus calls his disciples to be salt and light, and to live a righteousness that goes beyond rule-keeping, he is inviting them, and us, into Israel’s true servant vocation, now revealed in him.  This is not a call to moral laxity, nor to anxious perfectionism. It is a call to lives of depth, integrity, compassion, and courage - lives that reflect the character of God and the Way of Heaven in the world.

Not righteousness as avoidance. Not righteousness as appearance. But righteousness as open heartedness, just and compassionate relationship, and faithful presence.

And as Jesus promises, when that kind of light shines, it does not draw attention to itself, and yet like a light on a hill, it cannot be hidden -  it points beyond itself, giving glory to God, and so Jesus says: don’t hold back, let your light shine among people that it may give glory to God in heaven. 

May we be given grace to live into that deeper righteousness – to let our lights shine in the world - for the sake of the world God so loves.

The Forgotten People of the Holocaust - and the Servant Way -  Matthew 5:1-12

This past Tuesday was international Holocaust Memorial Day.  I know some churches like All Souls held an annual Holocaust Memorial Day Service last week on Sunday. 

Now when we think of the Holocaust, our minds rightly turn to the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were murdered, many in death camps and gas chambers. Any act of remembrance that forgets them would be a betrayal of truth and history. And yet, what many people do not realise is that the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust represent just over half of all holocaust victims murdered by the Nazi regime.  If one includes the mass murders and starvation of Soviet Prisoners of War, as some Holocaust scholars do, the Jewish component would be closer to a third of all deaths. 

Considering the more conservative figure of 11 million (held my the majority of scholars) , alongside the 6 million Jewish victims there were at least 5 million others whose lives were deemed unworthy, sub-human and extinguishable by the Nazi regime:  

These included up to half a million Roma and Sinti people (often labaled Gypsies in older sources); 
-roughly a quarter of a million people including children with physical, intellectual or mental disabilities; 
-about 2 million Polish non-Jewish civilians as well as 1-1.5 million Soviet civilians killed through executions, forced labour, and policies of starvation and terrorisation – killed to make room for Germany’s policy of creating Lebensraum (living room) for the German people;
-up to 5000 Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused loyalty oaths and military service; 
-between 5000 and 15000  mostly gay men and others persecuted for their sexuality dying in camps or from brutal treatment;  
-several thousand people of colour living in Europe whose numbers are uncertain due to poor documentation; 
and lastly  up to 100 000 political dissidents and trade unionists; those who resisted or refused to conform.

They are the roughly 5 million, sometimes called, the forgotten victims of the Holocaust - not because their suffering mattered less, but because memory itself can be selective, and injustice is often layered.

To remember them is not to dilute the horror of the Holocaust, but to understand it more deeply. It is also to understand that the Holocaust was not just about anti-semitism even though Jews made up just over half of the 11 million victims normally recognised by museums and memorials.  Some believe that the 3-3.5 million Soviet Prisoners of War killed by the Nazi’s  through starvation, exposure and neglect should also be included because their deaths were also racially and ideologically motivated. 

What these five to eight million ‘forgotten’ victims remind us is that the Holocaust was not driven by antisemitism alone, but by a deeper sickness, a world-view that ranked human lives by worth, some superior than others.

The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with ideas and with values that quietly shaped a society’s imagination.

The Nazi world-view exalted:

-strength over compassion
-racial and ethnic purity over shared humanity
-blind obedience over conscience
-power over mercy
-conformity over dignity
-usefulness over inherent worth

Some lives were declared strong, productive, pure, and valuable, while other lives were labelled weak, burdensome, degenerate, less than human, and dispensable.  Once that logic takes hold, cruelty no longer needs to be justified, it becomes a duty.

This is why remembrance matters. Not only so that we remember what happened, but so that we recognise how it happens.  And it is precisely here that today’s Gospel reading speaks with unsettling and profound clarity.

As we have been seeing, Matthew is very deliberate about how he tells the story of Jesus.

Matthew 5 opens with Jesus going up a mountain to teach.  This is not and incidental detail for Matthew.  As Moses once went up the mountain to receive the law, so now Jesus ascends the mountain. But this time, the law is not handed down on tablets of stone. It is spoken into human hearts and lives.

Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is not abolishing Israel’s story, he is fulfilling it. He is reliving Israel’s vocation, and bringing it to its true purpose.

The rhythm of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:1-12 echoes the rhythm of Sinai. Where Israel received the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Words, Jesus speaks a series of blessings. Not commands, but invitations. Not laws to enforce, but a way of being to embody.

And as Matthew understands Jesus, this way of being, expressed in these blessings or Beatitudes is drawn directly from the vision of Isaiah’s Servant of God passages. 

Isaiah, in chapters 40-55, speaks of a servant who is called by God not to dominate the nations, but to heal them (Isaiah 42:1–9; Isaiah 49:1–6; Isaiah 50:4–11; Isaiah 52:13–53:12)

This servant:

-does not cry out or force obedience
-does not break the bruised reed
-is faithful in suffering
-bears grief and carries sorrow
-brings justice without violence
-restores the broken and gathers the lost
-is a light to the nations

Strikingly, Isaiah sometimes calls this servant Israel, and at other times speaks of the servant as one who must restore Israel. Matthew sees this tension resolved in Jesus.

For Matthew Jesus is the embodiment of faithful Israel where Israel had faltered and failed. Jesus is Israel renewed in human form. Jesus is the Servant not only announced, but embodied. And then, astonishingly, Jesus turns to his disciples and speaks these blessings over them inviting them to share in his servant vocation. 

Now it must be remembered that the Beatitudes are not random virtues. They are the inner meaning of the commandments, revealed through the Servant’s life. (What intrigues me is that there are 10 Commandments in the OT and nine blessings spoken by Jesus – there are also 9 spaces in between the 10 commandments, a space for each of the Beatitudes… symbolising the fact that the 9 Beatitudes express the true inner meaning of the 10 Commandments. … they are also the manifesto and blue-print for Jesus life as the Servant of God. 

What the Jewish religious law sought to shape from the outside through commands and prohibitions, Jesus now forms and embodies from within.

    • The Servant’s humility becomes:  Blessed are the poor in spirit.

    • The Servant’s grief over suffering becomes: Blessed are those who mourn.

    • The Servant’s refusal of violence becomes:  Blessed are the meek.

    • The Servant’s longing for justice becomes:  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice.

    • The Servant’s costly compassion becomes: Blessed are the merciful.

    • The Servant’s integrity becomes:  Blessed are the pure in heart.

    • The Servant’s reconciling work becomes:  Blessed are the peacemakers.

    • The Servant’s faithfulness under persecution becomes: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness or justice’s sake.

For Matthew, Jesus is not only Isaiah’s Servant of God, he is forming a Servant people – a renewed Servant Israel.

Discipleship is learning the Servant way of Jesus by walking behind him.

And it is here that the contrast with the values that produced the Holocaust could not be starker.

The Nazi movement had its own unspoken beatitudes, its own vision of who was “blessed”:

Blessed are the strong, for they shall dominate.
Blessed are the racially pure, for they shall exclude.
Blessed are the blindly obedient, for they shall belong.
Blessed are the ruthless, for they shall prevail.
Blessed are the useful, for they shall be spared.

History shows us where such blessings lead.

Against every ideology that worships strength, purity, and power, (which seem to be on the rise across the world today), Matthew’s Jesus stands on the mountain and speaks a radically different truth:

Blessed are the vulnerable, tender-hearted those free of ego.
Blessed are those who grieve, feeling the pain of the world rather than harden.
Blessed are the gentle who refuse to crush.
Blessed are those who ache for justice and fairness not just for themselves but for others.
Blessed are those who show mercy when vengeance would be easier.
Blessed are those who make peace rather than enemies.
Blessed are those who suffer rather than surrender their humanity.

What is the call for us today?  The Holocaust reminds us that evil does not necessarily come from anarchists and degenerates, but dressed up in national pride, waving flags and banners, clothed in order, efficiency, in military discipline and in seemingly moral certainty.

The Beatitudes however remind us that God’s Kingdom comes quietly, through lives shaped by compassion, humility, and courage.

Matthew’s Jesus does not merely ask us to admire the Servant. He calls us to become the servant Israel, the servant people of God.  To stand with the forgotten. To resist every system of superiority and domination that declares that some lives more worthy or valuable than others. To embody a different set of blessings in a fractured world.

And perhaps that is the most faithful act of remembrance we can offer in the light of Holocaust Memorial Day, not only to remember the victims of the past, but to live in such a way that the values of power, authority, and superiority which destroyed them never find a home in us and in our hearts again.

If one were to add a 10th concluding Beatitude that sums them up, perhaps it would be: Blessed are those who walk the Servant way.