Light is characteristic of the people of Jesus in its total brightness and warmth. The old life, consumed, turns into life-giving strength. Shameful things can live only in the dark. Brightness leads to clarity and frankness, simplicity and purity, genuineness and truth. Where Jesus’ influence makes people real, their life becomes genuine and pure. It shines into the darkness of the world around, unmasking everything that is spurious and untrue, everything that tries to hide.
The light Jesus kindles is never exhausted in making a situation clear. Cold light has no part in the kingdom of God. Intelligent recognitions, systematic clarity of thought, and sharp discernment – this is not what Jesus is talking about. We cannot try to think as God might through our power of reason. What matters is to live in and from God’s heart. Like the sun, quickening warmth belongs to the brightness of his being. The light he gives creates community and draws people together in joy, with love flowing from the depths of their souls and finding expression in constructive deeds – deeds that build up and never destroy.
Sunlight sparkles with life and generates life on the earth, making it germinate and bear fruit everywhere. Those who live in the light belong to life and find their way in the sunlight. Night is dead because it is cold and dark. Yet even in the life of the light and sun there is a dying. Because our life moves between day and night, we can gain the life of resurrection only by dying.
No light can radiate brightness and warmth without consuming itself. The greatest Man, in giving light, suffered this most violently. The light of the world went forth from the cross of Jesus. Those who experience the world’s suffering and guilt with the crucified Christ – and their own sin and forgiveness – are able to serve the world with the light and strength of the risen Lord. For after Christ rose from the grave, he sent his disciples to bear his light to the ends of the earth.
Christ himself is this light. It is the fire of judgment that comes over us to consume the old, rotten life, to lead us who are crucified with him into a radiant life of resurrection. For there is only one who is the light of the world and who shines on all who come into this world. He himself was all light. He was not entangled in untruthfulness or impurity, lovelessness or greed. It is an illusion to push the false light of our own life into the foreground, trying to shine without being consumed in Christ. No human being can teach us what light is. To give oneself, as the sun gives of itself to the earth, can never be our own doing.
Even the sun directs our gaze away from itself and to the life illumined by it. We speak of “sun” when we see the hills, woods, and fields glowing in the light. A city on the hill shines out for all to see; but no one would notice it unless the sun shone on it. Where the sun casts light and warmth, life is awakened and becomes an organic union of individual living beings. Where there is life there is fellowship.
Just as a light on a candlestick gathers the household, so the city on the hill is the shining image of community – an organic unity in its economy and management, community of work, and faith and joy. The towers of a city on the hill can be seen far and wide – signs of civic freedom, tokens of the city communality, and symbols of fellowship in faith. Such a city is not built to be hidden, to have an isolated life for itself. Its open gates show the joy of hearts open to everyone.
There is nothing hidden about Jesus – he wants nothing furtive. His light is an all-inclusive life force that affects all relationships in life, in the same way that the sun shines upon the just and the unjust. God does good to enemy and friend alike; he is there for everyone and everything. The task of his salt and his light, the task of the city on the hill, is to serve all.
Not a single area of life should remain unaffected by this salt and this light. There is no responsibility in public life, including economics and politics, from which the city on the hill may remain aloof. Nowhere should the poison of decay be allowed to set in without being counteracted by salt. No wickedness must be allowed to lurk in the dark. The light must scare away the horrors of night. The icy, deadly breath of hate or coldness of heart cannot take full possession of this earth so long as the warm love of Christ’s light is not taken from it.
The secret of salt and radiating light lies in their unadulterated truthfulness and clarity. God’s city on the hill has a concern and responsibility for all aspects of life, and for people in the most distant places. This responsibility, however, is quite different from that borne by the people themselves. The city on the hill has a freedom, an essential quality of fellowship, which it cannot forfeit to any kingdom of this world, any government, any church, any political party, or any other organization of this age. It serves the whole of life without letting itself be enslaved. It fights against all suffering and injustice without succumbing to the suffering and becoming unjust itself. It has to remain salt and light, for the seed of the future age lies hidden in it.
■ Published as “Licht und Salz” in the periodical Das neue Werk, 1920.
Happiness
Chapter Four
Jesus showed his friends and all who listened to him the nature of the coming world order and its people. At that time – as today – people were waiting for the new order to come to each heart, as well as into the political and economic structures of nations. People longed for the new kingdom of justice which the prophets had spoken of. They were convinced that the new justice had to be a social justice, set up on the laws of love and grace. In God’s heart, justice and grace dwell so close to each other that both move the heart as though they were one.
Then Jesus came, and he disclosed the nature and practical consequences of this justice. He showed people that the justice of the future state must be completely different from the moralistic justice of the pious and holy, who felt that only they represented justice. He made it clear through his own nature and his words that God’s justice is a living, growing power which develops organically within us, a process that conforms to sacred laws of life.
Therefore Jesus could not simply give the people commands about moral conduct. He came to them quite differently. He discerned the nature of those who possessed his righteousness. He told them how they would appear to others: blessed, happy are those who have this nature, for they see God; to them belongs the kingdom of the future; they shall inherit the earth; they shall be comforted and satisfied; as those born of God, they shall obtain mercy.
Jesus himself radiated the unity of all the characteristics of this spirit of the future. It is impossible to take any one sentence out of its context and set it up as a law on its own. If anyone places nonviolence or purity of heart or any other moral or political demand by itself and uses this to set up something new, he is on the wrong track. Certainly it is not possible to take part in God’s kingdom without purity of heart, without vigorous work for peace; but unless the good tree is planted, the good fruit cannot be harvested. The change extends to all areas. It is a lost cause to try to follow Christ in only one sphere of life.
The Beatitudes cannot be taken apart. They portray the heart of the people of the kingdom – a heart whose veins cannot be dissected and pulled to pieces. Because of this the Beatitudes begin and end with the same promise of possessing the kingdom of heaven. Those who are blessed are characterized by their poverty and neediness, longing, hunger, and thirst. At the same time they possess wealth in love, energy for peace, and victory over all resistance. Their nature is purity and single-heartedness, in which they see God. These are people of inner vision, who see the essential. They bear the world’s suffering. They know that they are beggars in the face of the Spirit. Knowing they have no righteousness within themselves, they look to righteousness, and they hunger and thirst for the Spirit. Theirs is not the happiness of satiety; it is not the pleasure of gratified desire. A deeper happiness is disclosed here to eyes and hearts that are open. Only where people feel poor, empty, hungry, and thirsty will there be an openness to God and his riches.
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