Dissolving into Love
CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher speaks of how we can become agents of transformation and healing by giving of ourselves like salt and light:
We human beings are forgetful. We need reminders of important things, including the gospel that feeds the soul and illuminates the divine loving self within. Mindful of the world’s beauty and violence, let’s steep for a moment in these encouraging and inspiring words:
You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has become insipid, how will it be made salt again? It’s no longer good for anything then, except being thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill can’t be hidden and people don’t hide an oil lamp under a two-gallon basket. They put it on a lampstand where it gives light for everybody in the house. Give light for other people. Live so they see your compassionate acts and praise your divine Father (Matthew 5:13–16).
We all need the nourishment of the gospel’s good news so that a dire news overload of despotism, division, and moral outrage doesn’t glut and dictate our inner lives and our outer kind actions. In our screen-heavy days, it’s so easy to forget how potent salt and light are. So let’s remember together.
Salt ultimately comes from the ocean by the action of light. So, in this Gospel, Jesus is saying poetically, you all are, in essence, the ocean, one made by and of love. May we remember our shared, stable, divine center and that, when by deep listening, we honor the sacred worth of our own and of another’s life, our empathy dissolves into transformative compassion. Salt has power to disinfect wounds. May we remember that accepting ourselves and each other—both—as imperfect and “unshakably good,” as Father Greg Boyle reminds, is strong medicine that creates a community of cherished belonging. Small kind acts are never small. Salt can also melt snow and ice from roads and walkways, making clear passage. May we remember our kind divine parent, and may this awareness melt the iciness of perfectionism, the illusion of separation and anxiety, steadying our steps together.
Obviously salt and light look different on the surface, but they both fulfill their powerful natures by giving away or losing themselves. “You are salt and light” is a counter-cultural revolutionary statement, rich with psychological and embodied, empowering wisdom. May we remember that like the wise self-emptying of kenosis, being salt and light reminds us that no matter how broken or broken-hearted by the world’s suffering, we are love and are most ourselves when giving ourselves away, embracing grief’s salty tears.
May we remember we are God’s children. As Howard Thurman writes: “[Whoever] knows this is able to transcend the vicissitudes of life, however terrifying and look out on the world with quiet eyes.” [1]
May you and I see the world and everyone in it with quiet eyes and may we act in the world with kind hearts, being salt and light. Amen.
| DEC 30, 2025. Skye Jethani Many Shepherds, One Lord |
| There are many challenges facing the modern church, but some of these are self-inflicted. A case could be made that a fair number are the result of church leaders taking upon themselves responsibilities that rightfully belong to Christ alone. This tendency for leaders to overstep their calling is nothing new. In fact, we see it with the very first leader of the church, Peter. After the resurrection, Jesus restores Peter and calls him to shepherd his flock. Three times, Jesus calls him to “feed” or “tend” his sheep and concludes with an allusion to Peter’s eventual martyrdom. Perhaps Peter was less than thrilled with this assignment, because he immediately noticed another disciple, John, and asked Jesus about his calling. The Lord swiftly rebukes him, “If is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22).In this story, we see Peter’s temptation to overstep his role. He wants to know, and perhaps influence John’s calling. But Jesus makes it clear that calling is not one of Peter’s responsibilities. Essentially, Jesus says, “You feed. You tend. You do not call. That is my prerogative. You are the servant; I am the Master.”This has always been the temptation for the church’s shepherds. Knowing how helpless and stupid sheep can be, some shepherds come to believe that without their guidance, Christ’s people can do nothing. So beyond feeding and tending, they assume it is also their responsibility to call—to tell Christ’s sheep what they are to do. It’s an easy mistake to make because it is partially true. Feeding and tending include teaching. Church leaders are called to instruct God’s flock from Scripture and teach them to obey all he has commanded. The general commands from the Bible that apply to all disciples are sometimes known as our corporate or common callings.Church leaders overstep as shepherds when they assume the responsibility for our specific callings. This is what Peter attempted to do with John, and it’s a tendency often encouraged by our culture’s understanding of leadership. In corporate America, the leader is the person with the vision. She then calls others to a single task and sets forth to accomplish it. We’ve accepted this view of leadership within the church too. We often believe the pastor’s role is to articulate a vision from God and then call all people to that single work without any thought to the possibility that Christ might call his sheep to works outside the church or apart from the pastor’s involvement.In some communities, church leaders spend an incredible amount of energy calling people to their mission, to advance their church, to be evangelists, or even better to be missionaries, and they do this with the best of intentions. They want to see God’s work accomplished. What pastors can sometimes forget, however, is that Christ has called them to be shepherds who feed and tend, not masters who call. That is his job; they are, after all, his sheep.Even in Matthew 9 when Jesus recognizes “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” he does not tell his disciples to find, call, and send out more laborers. He instructs them to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.” Jesus never outsources his authority to call his people to the work he has for them. Remembering that would not only encourage church members to foster their own, unmediated communion with Christ, it would also keep pastors from overstepping their roles by reminding them that God’s sheep need shepherds, but they already have a Lord. DAILY SCRIPTURE JOHN 21:15-22 MATTHEW 9:35-37 WEEKLY PRAYER. From John Knox (1513 – 1572) O God of all power, you called from death the great pastor of the sheep, our Lord Jesus: comfort and defend the flock which he has redeemed through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Increase the number of true preachers; enlighten the hearts of the ignorant; relieve the pain of the afflicted, especially of those who suffer for the testimony of the truth; by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. |
