My mom was not a mean person at all, but she had a few phrases that she would use whenever she saw something in this world that really irritated her, and what often irritated her was people who put themselves forward in what she thought was a big-headed or pushy way. And when that happened, the phrase you’d hear was, “Who does he (or she) think he is?” I grew up in the Midwest, where traditionally people who put on airs are regarded with great suspicion, but I don’t think this is just a midwestern thing. I suspect that many of us have grown up with this phrase or something like it in our heads. We all have a little alarm that goes off when we see someone who thinks he or she is more important than they are, or seems to imagine that their solution is exactly what’s needed in any situation. We want to put them in their place, or we wish we could.
But the question for today isn’t really whether we use that phrase “who do they think they are?” about other people. It’s noticing when we say it to ourselves, and how we see ourselves as a result. Jesus tells a large crowd today that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and he’s saying that today to us, and what do we think exactly about whether that’s true? Did he mean us? Is that what we really are, or are supposed to be?
These verses come right at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which we can often hear as a long series of life assignments that seem almost impossible for ordinary people. You know them all: forgive endlessly, don’t judge, care nothing about money, love your enemies, only honor the meek and the hungry and the peacemakers in this world. We could be forgiven for thinking that of course this is a great homily but also a pretty high standard not really intended for day-to-day life for what we think of as the average person. And yet here we’re told by Jesus, no, everyone hearing me is the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The problem is, he says, is that you have just forgotten that is what you are. Your mistake is that you have counted yourself out and are living under a basket, you have sat still for so long that your flavor has gone weak. So if, out of some sort of modesty, we have told ourselves for years that when Jesus laid out this exceptional way of life dedicated to others, he was not really talking about someone like me, someone like you, then clearly he wants a fresh look from us at how we see ourselves.
We might see our reticence about what kind of Christian people we are as a very appropriate modesty, our way of saying to ourselves, who do you think you are? But it can also be a sign of how over time, we have allowed false humility to turn into a sense of withdrawal, and a way not to do the work meant for us. St. Ignatius Loyola, the great spiritual master, was very aware of all the enemy forces that operate in this world to keep us from a closer relationship with Christ, and he said the enemy’s most powerful tool was teaching us to exaggerate, sometimes to exaggerate the importance of things in our lives that shouldn’t have as much power over us as they do, but more often, this enemy teaches us to exaggerate our own imperfections and failings and ordinariness. We tell ourselves, sometimes without even realizing it, we tell ourselves that we can’t possibly be the sort of people God wants. We all remember the ways we’ve failed people or let them down or let ourselves down, and we tend to have a much better memory for those moments, than the moments when we had a sense that really, God was present with us, and loves us as we are.
And as a result, over time, as a result we gradually stop seeing ourselves as people that God sees as the beloved equal of everyone else. We take ourselves off of the front lines, we don’t put ourselves forward, because we’re only who we are, we think, we can’t live up to Jesus’ standard of perfection or courage, we’re not the kind of people Jesus is looking for to be marching under his flag.
And yet, this whole Sermon on the Mount is offering a correction to that way of thinking. Without salt and light, this church isn’t doing what it is supposed to do, without lives lived in ordinary genuine good work, the world won’t see the light of the world shining. That is what the world needs to see, not great accomplishments or great people, but the world moving slowly towards justice for the outcast, giving practical help to the unfortunate and the old and the sick and the excluded.
And that’s where we come in. We are the people who can offer hope to someone. We are the people whose words or whose simple presence are exactly what someone needs when they’re sick, or in prison, or suffering in a miserable relationship. We are the people who can be persistent in whatever small or large way to get something in our world fixed. We all have flavor, even if you have traditionally thought of yourself as kind of an ordinary pretty flavorless person. We all can give off light, because after all it’s not our light we would be giving off but the light God gave us to give away.
So Jesus didn’t exactly come out and ask us “Who do you think you are?” in the sermon on the mount. But it’s a good question, and the answer is not that we’re worse than we always thought. Instead the answer is that if we move out from under where we are hidden, we are all capable of moments of amazing light.