For access to an audio recording of this sermon, click on this sentence.
Is there someone in your life who understands things? This is a person you can trust to hear anything you say, and know what they are hearing. You can admit something embarrassing to them, or something that makes you feel vulnerable. You can tell them about a complicated situation, or a vexing dilemma, and they are able to hear what you are saying, and respond without judgment. If you messed up, they can offer you wisdom and insight without asking unnecessary, awkward questions. They are simply there for you.
They may also challenge you, but you can hear and respond to that challenge.
I have a few people like this in my life, but I also met one in a work of fiction. For many years now I have read the detective stories written by Italian author Andrea Camilleri. These are police procedurals, standard mystery novels, but they are set in Sicily, and so the local color is vivid, and dazzling, and—this being Sicily—also lonely, dry, quiet, and sad. Italians use colors to evoke emotions, and these novels are … I would say amber, or a dusky yellow.
Our hero is police inspector Salvo Montalbano, a disillusioned, depressive, but honorable Sicilian who does not suffer fools, and loves an excellent meal at his favorite local trattoria. He prefers to eat alone. He is irritated by idle talk, particularly at meals. He hates crowds and conversation, and breaks out in a cold sweat when giving press conferences. Chefs love Salvo because he never orders off the menu: he trusts them to prepare whatever they think is best that day, usually freshly caught seafood cooked simply with olive oil, lemon, and salt.
One day, a leader in one of the local mafia families approaches Salvo to ask him for a favor. This guy is well known to cops in the region, and Salvo himself has investigated his crime family. But he goes right ahead and confides important personal information to the police inspector, exposing himself to law enforcement in a way that poses a serious risk for his whole crime family. Salvo (whose name, by the way, means safe or saved) … Salvo asks him why he, a mafioso, is taking his problem to a cop, of all people. He replies:
“Because you are a man who understands things.”
Salvo Montalbano understands things. He is … salt, or he has saltiness; he is filled with salt. Most days after lunch, he walks along a jetty and stares out to sea, lost in his thoughts. If you approached him with a problem, he would understand what you are saying. He would know and accept who you are. (Even if he didn’t like you.) His name means safe, and yes, that fits: Salvo is safe, a safe person, a person you can trust, and count on, even if he is not always a pleasant or easy person … even if he sometimes challenges you powerfully.
Perhaps this personal quality is what draws so many people to Jesus of Nazareth, another salty person, or perhaps, for us Christians, Salt itself. Jesus is Salt. Or maybe Jesus is Light. What metaphor opens up the identity of Jesus for you? What image helps you express what you mean by Jesus, the One whose name means savior?
Today we see our savior ascending a mountain (a hillside, really), above the Sea of Galilee (a lake, really). Jesus needs to see his listeners, and they need to hear him. So he climbs the hill and delivers what we know as the Sermon on the Mount, a discourse that spans three chapters in Matthew, the Gospel in our holy book that has Jesus delivering speeches on mountains five times, one for each of the five books of the Torah. Jesus, Matthew wants us to see, is the New Moses.
In seminary two years ago, for the first time, I read the Sermon on the Mount all the way through, not broken up the way we usually read it, Sunday by Sunday. I read it all at once, you know, as if it were a sermon. And I can tell you: it’s pretty good! It’s a good sermon. But it is not an easy sermon. It is delivered by someone who understands things, and so Jesus says some sharp things, some of which we may not always like:
He challenges us with a wildly different understanding of the world not just as it should be, but as it is.
He doubles down on his people’s beliefs about what good behavior is, about how we are supposed to treat each other.
He sends us into the world as salt and light, as people who understand things.
The sermon begins with a ludicrous description of the world, and who enjoys God’s favor. Who in this world is happy? The poor (and in Matthew, the poor in spirit), that’s who. Also those who are meek, and those who mourn. Those who are merciful. Those who are "pure in heart." We know his opening lines of the sermon as the Beatitudes, and it seems to me that Jesus here seems simply absurd. By most standards we know about, these people are not very happy, or “blessed,” as our usual translations have it. But they are: Jesus says so. God blesses the poor, those who mourn, and all the rest—God blesses them with happiness, with God’s own presence. This is true whether we stand with them or not, whether we help them or not, whether we befriend them or not. It is true whether or not we are people who understand things, people who can be present to, and present alongside, those whom God blesses with happiness. So this means that if we want to be close to God, and if we want to enjoy that same happiness, we should stand with the poor, and help those who mourn, and befriend the merciful and the pure in heart. Because that’s where God is.
But Jesus packs more punch in his sermon, after this strange opening. He goes on to demand quite a lot from us. He calls us “the salt of the earth,” and “the light of the world.” As salt and light, we are to respect each other, to not lie or cheat, to pray with humility, to forgive; we even must overcome anger and worry. This is daunting. At one point in his sermon he even tells us we should be perfect. But “perfect” here does not mean flawless. It means that we are to do all these good things thoroughly. We are to do our best, and to acknowledge our mistakes when we make them.
So … back to that mafioso, approaching a police inspector who “understands things.” Salvo Montalbano is a “salt of the earth” person. Salvo, then, is not a self-righteous prude or the kind of holier-than-thou church person we’ve all met (and can’t stand.) He takes his own integrity and decency seriously, but he also understands human frailty and human fear. He understands how good people sometimes do bad things, and how bad people sometimes do good things. He responds helpfully to the person in front of him, even a man known to be a dangerous criminal. He sees the humanity in that person.
He understands.
And so, finally, we are sent into the world to be that way. We are sent to be salt and light, to be people who understand things. And “the world” we are sent into begins right here, in this community. God wants this community to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world. God wants people who come here to encounter a Sermon on the Mount kind of place, where happiness, or being “blessed,” is always about companionship with God’s beloveds: the poor and the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the merciful, the meek, those who are pure in heart and hunger for righteousness, the peacemakers.
I opened all this with a question: do you know someone in your life who understands things? But maybe there is a better question, asked not by me but by that great preacher himself, Jesus of Nazareth. He wants to know if you and I will be that someone in our lives. He asks us even now: Are you a person who understands things?
***
Preached on Epiphany 5A at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington, February 9, 2020.
Isaiah 58:1-9a
Psalm 112:1-9
1 Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20