01/11 - Salt and Light and Reductionism

Matthew 5:13-26

Jesus paid his listeners a great compliment.

He thought they, ordinary people, could be salt-like preserving power and guiding light in the culture and by this power and light in their everyday lives, they could lead people to praise God.

Jesus knew that just as salt can mix with other minerals and lose its power and lanterns can be hidden, his listeners could lose or hide their good influence. He hoped this would not happen so they could join him in changing the world.

Naturally, many of them thought, “How does what he says fit into the Law and the Prophets?” To many of them, he seemed to be straying from their current religious system.

Jesus, knowing their question, said he did not intend to abolish any parts of the Law and Prophets, but instead, he wanted “to fulfill them.” By “fulfill,” Jesus certainly meant to obey them, which he did perfectly. But “fulfill” can have another meaning.

By Jesus’ time the Law and the Prophets had been transformed into an intricate system of religious rules and traditions. This reductionism (the dividing of a complex system into component parts) dominated their theology, and people spent considerable time and effort trying to follow the rules and traditions.

Jesus knew parts of the Law and the Prophets were shadows of great principles that were lost in reductionism, and he refused to be bound by it. Instead, he intended to “fulfill” the Law and Prophets, that is, to bring them to completion by showing everyone those great principles. For the rest of his teaching in this section of the sermon, the remainder of chapter five, he takes teachings from the Law and the Prophets and shows the principles they shadow.

Consider Jesus’ teaching about the command, Do not murder. Rather than reduce it to a group of rules and traditions, he does the opposite and shows that the command is a shadow of higher principles: think well of your brother and seek peace with him (by the way, principles related to several of the Beatitudes).

Reductionism is an innate human tendency. People in Jesus’ time did it to Moses’ Law; we tend to do it to Jesus and his teachings. If we are to have the full advantage from what he did and taught and to be salt and light in our world, we will have to fight this tendency, and we will have to let him transform our hearts and minds so we can think like he did.