Sermon Sunday, February 8, 2026
Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
This very well-known gospel reading we hear today, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. This gospel given in the fifth chapter of Matthew follows right after the bialtitudes preaching of Jesus where Jesus in many ways is flipping
everything upside down.
He is elevating those who are suffering. He is telling those who have no power or authority or even religious significance in their time that they are blessed and that they will be the ones who will carry God’s message forward. The surprise of the message of Jesus is that he chooses the ones that we would not choose and he sees things in our lives that we would see as insignificant as the most significant. Jesus is the one who preaches them message of surprise and we should all be surprised. This is not a typical message. And yet as we continue to listen to Jesus, it’s very, very difficult for us to pick a side. Who is Jesus? On whose
side is Jesus?
Because initially it’s so easy for us to say, well, Jesus has come to overthrow the old system. So you don’t have to worry about those
Pharisees and Sadducees, those religious leaders and the rituals and the teachings and the laws that had to be followed. Just be free. And yes, Jesus does speak about that kind of freedom that goes beyond just the legalism of following the rules. But lest we get ahead of ourselves, notice how Jesus ends his teaching for us today. Jesus says, “Those who follow the law will be greater in the kingdom of heaven.” And not only that, unless you are as good or even better at keeping the law as the Pharisees and Sadducees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
In other words, Jesus is saying, “Yes, I have come to go even beyond the law and the rituals, but I still want you to follow the law and the rituals perfectly, even more perfectly than the religious leaders of the day. So, which is it?” We can say, “Which is it? Am I to be free from the shackles of religiosity or am I to follow the religious prescriptions more faithfully even more faithfully than the religious leaders of the day?
Which is it? And the answer that Jesus offers is it’s both because one leads to the other. Jesus, in other words, is presenting us with the middle way. Remember that phrase, the middle way, where we don’t have to choose sides. It’s not the kind of middle way where we sit on the fence and we say, “Well, we don’t want to choose a side because we don’t want to get in trouble. We don’t want to commit to anything, so we do nothing.” No, it’s the kind of middle way where we say it’s both end.
Rituals, sacraments, church buildings, institutional religious life, all of that when practiced well actually leads to the kind of freedom that Jesus is talking about. And how do we know that? Simply by looking at the Old Testament. Even in the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah reveals God’s will even before Jesus came by saying what kind of fasting that God does that God desire not necessarily from food and from drink but from doing evil things by freeing the shackles of the oppressed by reaching out with social justice for those for whom no one speaks up.
So we don’t have to choose. You see, even in the Old Testament, the tragedy of the Jewish people over the centuries of the Old Testament is not that they didn’t receive the right message. It’s that they failed to fully live the right message, that they continued to keep unto themselves what was received rather than recognize what the prophets told them that this is a message for everyone. And not only is it a message, it’s also to make a difference in how we treat those who are around us, especially the poor and the needy.
So which is it? What is our role as Christians? What is my role as follower of Jesus? Is it to read the scripture or is it to go out and feed the hungry? It’s both. It has to be both. And I think that’s where we get into so much trouble is that it’s easier for us to pick a side than to say it’s both. It’s easier for us. It’s safer to say, “I’ll just do this. I’ll feed the hungry.” Or, “I’ll just do this. I’ll read the scriptures and draw closer in my spiritual relationship with Jesus.”
But one needs the other. And that’s why Jesus is such a difficult preacher because he doesn’t give us an easy answer that gets up gets us off the hook and tells us, “Well, just stay in your lane and you’ll be fine.” In my family, we’ve been fascinated with a new show that’s
that’s on the learning channel. It’s called Suddenly Amish. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this show, but it’s a show about this Amish community that’s growing smaller and smaller. And so in order to continue to repopulate and grow and pass on the faith that they decide to bring in outsiders and give them an opportunity to become members of their Amish community. They call them the English.
Amish called themselves Amish and everyone else is called English. So, so they bring in these English young people and try to
introduce them to their faith. And it’s fascinating from many perspectives, sociological, psychological, religious. But for me, what’s fascinating, one of the things that’s fascinating that connects to this is that there is something beautiful about the Amish way of life. They really take the scripture seriously. They believe it. They live it. They practice it. But the way they chose to live their life is by segregating themselves in a very real way from the rest of the world. by saying the rest of culture and society is dangerous. So dangerous that we will not allow it in our community. That’s one extreme way of living the Christian message is by saying the world is too dangerous so I don’t want to engage in it at all I will just separate myself.
The other extreme way is to say the world is so holy and wonderful that I will invest myself in the world so much that I will become infected you could say or I will begin to live the values of the world which will then slowly take away what I know from God, what I know from scripture, what I know from revelation and the middle way which is I believe what Jesus proposes and we as Anglicans try to live the middle way is to say it’s both. There’s an element of our Christian life that has to be protected that has to be so sacred that nothing can influence it. But there is also a
responsibility for us to live in the world and to allow what Jesus offered us to shape the culture around us. Not to be shaped by the culture, but for us to shape the culture, by the goodness, by the mercy, by the service that we are compelled to offer and hopefully inspire others to come to some kind of peace.
Here’s what I want to offer for my ending thoughts. I remember sitting with a very successful business person one day and he was coming to see me for spiritual direction and he was struggling with a number of different things. But I asked him I said who are you? Because you struggle with worries about losing your job, losing your money, losing your prestige, losing all kinds of things in your life. But I want you to imagine, is there something in you that you can never lose? That no one has the ability to take away? Because that is the question, isn’t it? Who are we at the end of the day? Who am I? Am I my job? Am I my career? Am I my relationships? Because all of those could disappear for one reason or another. All of those can be taken away. My job, my prestige, my money, my fame, my good looks, that goes away too.
You know, is there something about us that can never be taken away by anyone? And if there is, that’s who I am at the core of my being. And notice what Jesus says to his followers. You are
salt of the earth, light of the world. You are what sustains life. You are the image of the living God. Not you will be or you could be or you might be. You are at the core of your being. You already are what the early Christians would name so boldly saints of God. They all called each other saints even though they were imperfect.
But they knew that deep within they had the light of God made in his image and the purity of God defined by salt. Something that no one can take away and nothing can destroy in this world. Do we believe that? Do I believe that within me I am already what I hope to be? Do I believe that I am that great husband that I hope to be? That it’s already within me. I don’t have to look elsewhere. I just have to continue to reach deep within and seek what God has already given me. Who are you? Who am I? With the rise of artificial intelligence, they tell us the biggest risk in artificial intelligence will be what? Will be a loss of meaning. What will we do if we have no jobs, no need for jobs? If everything is plentiful, there’s no need to struggle, no need to work, no need to be creative, what will we do? Where will our meaning come from? If it’s only based on what we do and who we are professionally and in this world, yes, there will be a crisis. But if we return to what God desires for us to be, who we already are as children of God, salt of the earth, and light of the world, there will be no such crisis.
Everyone returning to God and God’s holy revelation is the answer to these kinds of tragedies that people are foreseeing.
And I really hope and believe that we will trust in God. to trust his word who says you already are what you hope to become.
Amen.
Father Wojtek Kuzma