The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
In the world of Biblical criticism and scholarship, there is a constant tension between two ways of approaching scripture.
These are Exegesis v. eisegesis.
Exegesis (from the Greek meaning “to lead out”) is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The goal of Biblical exegesis is to explore the meaning of the text which then leads to discovering its significance or relevance.
Exegesis includes a wide range of critical disciplines: textual criticism is the investigation into the history and origins of the text, but exegesis may include the study of the historical and cultural backgrounds for the author, the text, and the original audience. Other analysis includes classification of the type of literary genres present in the text, and an analysis of grammatical and syntactical features in the text itself. Most modern, or post-modern, commentaries on the Bible take exactly this approach, and you will find endless footnotes telling you the subtleties of the translation or giving you historical context so that one can better wrap one’s mind around the words on the page.
Eisegesis (from the Greek meaning “into”) is the process of misinterpreting a text in such a way that it introduces one's own ideas, reading into the text. While exegesis draws out the meaning from the text, eisegesis occurs when a reader reads his/her interpretation into the text. As a result, exegesis tends to be objective when employed effectively while eisegesis is regarded as highly subjective.
This sounds pretty black and white- but anyone who has ever translated something from one language to another knows that it is very much a grey area, words in one do not have exact correlatives in the other, choices are made that result in one shade of meaning over another, and the end result is always somewhat subjective, which is exactly why we have the practice of exegesis in the first place.
I mention all of this because the Gospel passage we heard today is probably one of the most exegeted, and most eisegeted, in our canon. We’ve read this passage as a formula for getting into God’s grace, a set of instructions for how to become a child of God, instead of an affirmation of our belovedness from before we were formed in the womb.
The phrase “salt of the earth” has come to mean something quite different than what it would have meant to the Gospel writers- where we hear it as meaning good, simple, and honest, two thousand years ago, when salt was the only spice widely available and was used not only for preserving foods but also for enhancing their flavors, it would have meant something special, something that made common things greater.
In the same way, the strength of light in a world before electricity is perhaps something we can’t wrap our minds around- it is hard now to get away from light, one must go far from populated areas to see the night sky without ambient brightness from streetlights, cars, humanity. So the power and promise of a single lamp doesn’t quite impact us, I think, with the weight it is meant to have.
Fred Craddock, writing in the Christian Century, says this about today’s Gospel: “For the first context, Jesus offers affirmation, warning and instruction. The affirmation is in two vivid images, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world.” Notice “You are” not “You ought to be or should try to be.” Both salt and light are so basic and essential to human life that Jesus felt no need to spell out what this meant. However, having introduced the existence of hostility toward the gospel, Jesus does elaborate on what can happen to God’s people under persecution and sustained opposition. Salt can lose its integrity, its identifying quality as salt. This does not occur suddenly, of course, but so gradually that those to whom it happens do not perceive themselves as changing and cannot identify later a single time or place when their faith ceased. Certainly the loss was not intentional; it was more a matter of drifting away…
“Or, says Jesus, how easy it is to lose initiative in mission and take up a posture of protection and defense after one suffers verbal, physical, social or economic abuse for one’s faith. For example, building a city on a hill is sound strategy for self-defense, but the increased visibility attracts even more hostility. Or again, putting a lamp under a bushel certainly reduces the chance of having it blown out, but the price for such protection is darkness. In other words, the way of Christ is mission: witnessing and benevolent intrusion into the life of the world.
There is no way that Christ’s cause can be converted into an individual or community lifestyle of self-interest, self-protection and defense against vulnerability. To do so is not to interpret Christ differently, but to abandon him. The way of Christ is to take the initiative and rather than hide from the world, let the light shine in the hopeful trust that the praise of God will be increased.
This is perhaps easy to hear but more difficult to live. We are constantly assailed by messages that we could be better, do more, work harder. Instead, Jesus is telling us, we should strive to be faithful above all else.
This is a tough message to hear, particularly for us, right? As Americans, as a country of folks founded on the notion that, like a character out of a Horatio Alger story, anyone being able to pull themselves up by the boot straps and become wildly successful with enough hard work, and for us as Protestant, Reformation Christians, who have heard these passages used for generations to reinforce the notion of righteousness by works, that if we just work hard enough, pray correctly, God will admit us to his love.
The message today is radical- our place in the kingdom is assured, has been since our creation, and our responsibility is to live out the power of that assurance, the confidence that is only possible through God's wide embrace. This isn’t something we can do. This is something we have to be.
Jesus said he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, to complete it- and by living into the spirit of the covenant God made with us In our births, into the gifts that God has given us, we spread the light of God’s love in the dark places we encounter, we spread our saltiness in all that we undertake, and finally we rest in the knowledge that if all that we do is grounded in Christ, it will have been well done.
