Jesus says “You are the salt of the earth... you are the light of the
world.” I think it is important to note that Jesus didn’t say, You are like the salt of the earth or like the light of the world. Nor, you should be the salt or the light. Jesus says “you are.....you are salt... you are light.”

Jesus is there with a gospel that only the Son of God can offer. Jesus sees a world full of sickness and poverty and oppression, but he also sees forward to a new age called the Kingdom of God, where things are profoundly different. Jesus knows something that they don’t know.

We don't create community ourselves; it is a gift of Grace.
Christian community is not being the same, all of us in the same uniform professing identical thoughts; rather it is when we are able, regardless of our differences and divergent views, to come together as one in Christ and recognize the mission of the church as calling all persons into a union with God and one another.

I was thinking earlier this week of what that moment must have been like for the parents of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m sure they were pleased that he was an ordained pastor, that he had pursued graduate studies beyond seminary and was a doctor of philosophy, nice to have a professor, pastor in the family. But you know that at some point they saw more than just that. They realized that their Martin was more than just a teacher or a preacher.

“So, baptism, whether it’s Jesus’ or your own, I can’t say you’re going to understand it, but you can experience it.”

Today is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which doesn’t get a great deal of attention in normal Church life because, well, it does fall on January 1st, New Year’s Day when even good Christian people may be recovering from the night before or busy making preparations for football bowl games.

In that familiar passage from Luke’s Gospel that you’ve heard many times, we are told that because of a census, because the Emperor required that everyone return to their hometown
and register, that Joseph packs up his pregnant bride and they journey from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea, known as the city of David, because Joseph had descended from the house of David. But, because everyone is really excited to get home and get registered so they can start paying taxes to the Emperor Augustine, consequently all the inns are booked up. So, this young family is forced to stay in a stable.

Today is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the last Sunday after the feast day of Pentecost, the Sunday also known as Christ the King Sunday, although in more politically correct circles it has been renamed the Reign of Christ Sunday because no one wants to use a term considered imperialistic or even as mildly sexist as the word “ King.”