Epiphany 05: The Salt of the Earth
Community Group Questions
1. In his sermon, Tim talked about the difficulty Americans can have understanding the metaphors about salt and light. Because of the individualism of our culture and the way we’ve been taught to think of religion as something separate from politics, we often struggle to really grasp what Jesus is communicating.
He pointed out that the lines in the Lord’s prayer, which talk about God’s kingdom coming and his will being done on earth as is it as it is in heaven are not lines about personal piety. Rather, Jesus instructions his listeners to pray a prayer that is really about regime change. Tim said, “Christ’s mission is always both: social and personal.”
To what extent do you think of religion as something that is inherently apolitical? Do politics and religion feel like separate spheres? Are they separate spheres in your own life? In what ways do they intersect and interact?
What influences have shaped your sense of the relationship between religion and politics? Is that dynamic one that has changed over time? Share about the influences that you think helped seed your sense of the nature of politics and religion in relationship to one another. Are they influences in which you still desire to put your trust?
2. Salt, Tim said, works in service to something else. Similarly, in the ancient world, light was simply fire in small contained amounts. Neither overtakes the thing of which they are a part; they simply transform by virtue of being added to whatever existed without them.
People who are salt and light, Tim said, are subversive agents of transformation. They don’t conquer or overtake. They come alongside - from within, and make a lot of things better.
They represent the way in which the community following Jesus, as they discover a new way to be human, will organize common life around wisdom, grace, inclusion, & justice. And that, by doing so, they are the way that the Kingdom of God comes to fruition amidst kingdoms of earth.
Are there places within you that resist the idea of a grace filled, quieter revolution? How often do you wish you could discard the gentle path of salt and light to instead overtake with raging fire and consuming conquest?
How do you respond to those places within? When do they seem loudest? When does it seem easier to believe in a subversive transformation of our reality by virtue of lamps & seasoning? What part of yourself has to be surrendered in order to fully embrace Jesus’s vision for the community of Christ?
3. Tim reminded us that one of the core claims of empire is that it can eliminate lack, contradiction, and alienation from within us. This is usually done by way of blame and exclusion, or simply promising to fulfill our every need.
Jesus, on the other hand, doesn’t promise the eradication of these inevitable human realities. Instead in Jesus‘s paradigm, all we can do is confess them, and then watch God drawn near and transform our aching places into places where we make contact with the divine.
Empires, Tim said, run on a fantasy that they can fix the human condition. The kingdom of God runs on a people who’ve learned to live honestly and truthfully, embracing radical hospitality and inclusion.
What does it look like to name the place inside you that longs to believe that the world can just be “solved?” How do you engage with that place? How do you feel in doing so? What resistance do you encounter?
If the contrast to the way of empire is built on radical hospitality, self honesty, inclusion, and community, what does it look like - in your everyday life - to embrace, embody, and enact these things of the Kingdom? What comes to mind when you think of doing so even just a little more intentionally than you do today?
What emotions do you feel in your body as you contemplate the possibility of taking that action?
