Mack's Minute February 15, 2020

This past Sunday we looked at Matthew 5:13-20, the well known passage on salt and light. I want to take a closer look on what Jesus says about being the light of the world. Jesus reminds his disciples that when they light a lamp, they don’t cover it with a bushel, they put it on a nightstand so that it can illuminate the room. As modern readers who can illuminate a whole room with the flip of a switch, we sometimes forget the importance of light. With our apparent control over light, we don’t have to rely on where the sun is. This makes it hard to imagine what life was like when all people had at night was a small lamp or candle. And this one small light would light up the entire room. Jesus tells us that we are light; each one of us is a lamp. When we let our light shine, we can collectively light up the whole world.
                                                                                                                      
Yet, when our lights are covered by a bushel (covered, not snuffed out), they cease to be useful. What are things that may be a bushel in your life, that keeps your light from shining? Dr. Amy Oden, professor of early church history and spirituality, gives several suggestions of what bushels may be covering a congregation’s light. She writes,
 
Maybe the bushel is an inferiority complex, a lack of confidence that comes from chronically comparing ourselves to the big church across town or to the good, old days when our church was full of children and youth. The inferiority bushel blocks out God’s light.

Or perhaps the bushel is the self-absorption of internal conflicts. While conflict is an expected part of any human organization, when conflict becomes an excuse for unproductive institutional self-absorption, then it is a bushel that prevents our light from shining.

Or perhaps the bushel is the fantasy church in our minds. This sort of bushel is seductive because it seems so positive and feels so good. Such holy longing for an imagined future can indeed fuel us. However, it is equally likely that we indulge in lots of incantational speech without any concrete action or effort in the present. Our church fantasies can leave us unable to build a common life with the real people around us. Magical thinking covers our light.