Shining as lights in the world

‘Let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and glorify your God which is in heaven’.

The relationship between the Law and Faith within Christianity is complicated; Protestant thinking with its emphasis on by faith alone has a particular tendency to make a narrow judgment which in summary, says: faith, good; law, bad.

I’ll give you an example, a couple of weeks back I gave a presentation at a meeting about the environment and Eco-Church. Most people were enthusiastic and keen to respond in action. However, one person approached me and expressed doubt about it all - she said ‘we should be saving souls’ and that to her mind excluded thinking about Eco-Church. And here is an example of someone who has over-emphasised the Protestant teaching by faith alone and in so doing reduced and narrowed the Christian understanding of salvation. 

Salvation isn’t just about my personal relationship with Jesus and therefore my salvation. Far from it. Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel are a helpful reminder that we need to resist a narrow understanding of salvation. Jesus says:

‘Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of the letter, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished’. 

After Jesus has told the crowd that their righteousness must exceed that of the pharisees he continues by explaining what that looks like: not only: do not murder, but do not get angry; not only, do not commit adultery, but don’t look lustfully at another person; not only, don’t divorce a woman for any small reason, but you can only divorce if there has been adultery; he rejects the teaching of ‘an eye for an eye’ and rather says- do not retaliate against an evil-doer; and finally he says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. In each case Jesus takes one of the laws and expands it, deepens it and in so doing describes a new holiness. Faith in Jesus isn’t about faith alone, it’s about faith and holiness. Faith leads us to be holy, and Jesus describes and enacts what the full revelation of God’s holiness looks like. 

Which is why St Paul tells the Corinthian Christians to have the mind of Christ. Ethical teaching is more (not less than) adhering to the Law; it is also to have our hearts and minds enlightened by Jesus Christ. To live in him and he in us. To have the mind of Christ  is to have been given a new window into the mind of God; into the heart and depth and breadth of God’s love:

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’. 1 Cor 2.9.

And that takes us back to the imagery that started the Gospel passage set for Sunday 9th Feb: the images of salt and light. In our world of competition, constant work, disregard of the poor and vulnerable, exploitation of nature and misuse of power how can we, as God’s salt and light, nurture and nourish faith in our communities? 

I have a vision of Chelmsford Cathedral as a light shining in the city – and one of the most visible ways that we can be a light is through the way that we inhabit the land that God has given to us. God’s promise of blessing to his people is not just about personal or individual salvation; it is about both corporate salvation and restoration of the whole created order. We have assets here that include not only our body corporate but the land we inhabit: a beautiful cathedral building set in generous grounds, a large Chapter House, our Cathedral offices, Guy Harlings garden and the Cathedral Close with its properties and garden. These have been given to us not just for our use, but as part of how God can show us his blessings.

St Francis stands in Guy Harlings as a symbol of holiness; in his canticle St Francis praises God through all that has been made: ‘Praise God for brother sun and sister moon’……. In so doing he reveals creation to be our brother and sister, part of us; if it suffers, we suffer.

So, how we can we show our care for God’s world and in so doing draw others to the light of Jesus Christ? We can do this through encouraging wildlife, through the management of the land, through our care not to use disposables, through the energy that we buy and the quality of the insulation we provide, through enjoyment of the trees and the flowers. We can do this through seeking to reduce our carbon footprint, through promoting different ways of shopping and alternative lifestyles. In this way we will enjoy what we have been given more, and show people that we should not fear, but look forward to the blessings that come from our careful and loving stewardship of nature.

The whole environmental crisis can seem to overwhelm with the negative stories and the apocalyptic pronouncements. But nature has an inbuilt ability to re-generate; we just need to give it a chance. In the Gospels there is the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, that if we repent and change our ways and follow God’s laws we will be blessed.

The vision of God’s blessing of us here in Chelmsford is a vision that we take to our homes, our gardens, the area in which we live, the places that we work. We can be disciples of hope and messengers of light. We can choose to act differently: to take the train, to walk, to buy local food, to reduce our consumption, to buy green energy, to have a compost, to recycle as much as we can. We can give money to charities that protect the environment, we can plant trees, we can campaign for change. There are so many changes that we can make and in that there is hope.

This Lent the Church of England has produced some booklets to help us pray, read scripture and make simple changes in our lives, to help the environment. There is one for adults and one for children- and you can buy them in our bookshop or download the app for free. Let’s encourage one another in love and hope to do all that we can to restore and renew all that has been given to us to enjoy.