Sermon for February 8, 2026, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Matthew 5:13-20 (Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany—Series A)

“Your Light Shines to Reveal Jesus to Others”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

February 8, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text today is the Gospel Reading from Matthew 5:

[Jesus said,] ¹³You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt should become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is good for nothing except to be thrown outside and trampled on by people. ¹⁴You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, ¹⁵nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶In this way let your light shine before people so that they might see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. ¹⁷Do not think that I came to do away with the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to do away with them, but to fulfill them. ¹⁸For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, one letter or one stroke will surely not pass away from the Law, until all things take place. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever loosens one of the least of these commandments and in this way teaches people will be called least in the reign of heaven. But whoever does and teaches [these commandments], this one will be called great in the reign of heaven. ²⁰For I say to you that unless your righteousness abounds more greatly than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will surely not enter into the reign of heaven.

          The Season after the Epiphany of our Lord gives the Church the opportunity to have Jesus, true Man, be revealed to us as True God through His holy Word—Jesus, God in man made manifest. Jesus was made known to the Magi by the leading of a star. In the Jordan River at His baptism, God the Father revealed Jesus, “This is My beloved Son.” John the Baptist pointed to Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus reveals Himself to be God and Man in His preaching, teaching, and healing miracles, bringing the light of the Gospel into the darkness of the sinful world. Jesus is the God-Man who declares sinners “blessed” by God’s mercy and grace: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the reign of heaven.”

          We are winding down the Epiphany Season this week and next. As we consider our Gospel text this morning, continuing Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we come to know that the Epiphany shining of Jesus to the world is through us! As people see you, Jesus’ followers, they should be able to see Jesus revealed, shining upon them, through you. We are the epiphanies of Jesus to the world!

          Maybe a little self-examination would be good. How’s it going in your “shining” Jesus to others? Still salting the earth in the circles where you live and move? Still giving off light? Or has your salt lost some of its taste? Is your light a little dim, partially shaded by a basket?

          In today’s Introit, the Psalmist asks, “How can a young man keep his way pure?” In other words, “What does a life of light look like? He prays, “Let me not wander from your commandments.” A life of light looks like following the Lord and His Word. It’s allowing our lives of faith to produce the good works that are pleasing to the Lord. To be human as God created us to be means to be a newborn child of God by His saving actions in Jesus, and to be a responsible neighbor to other people and to the whole of God’s world. Claiming to love God but disregarding one’s neighbor is a failure to keep and do the Word of God’s Commandments.

          Israel at the time of Isaiah had become tasteless and dark. God wasn’t taking notice of the people’s worship—their fasting. Why? Because they were doing it for their own pleasure while they were working and oppressing their workers (Is. 58:3). It was for show. It was hypocritical. It was for their own glorification and not God’s. It can be easy to say all the right things and, at the same time, try to use God to achieve our own personal goals. Prayer, worship, and acts of service become devices, not to glorify God and serve our neighbor, but to serve our own ends. If this happens, we are in the center; God is not. We would no longer be able to season the world with the joy of Christ because we would have become tasteless. We would no longer be able to enlighten the world with the very light of Christ because His light would have grown so dim within us.

          Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth.” Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” As our Lord spoke to the crowd while He was on the mountain, He was stating a fact just as He had declared the people to be “blessed” in the Beatitudes. Believers in Jesus Christ—Christians—ARE salt and light because Jesus declares us to be so. It is an identity that comes from outside of our nature. Jesus, who said twice in John’s Gospel, “I am the light of the world,” is saying that His disciples, His followers, are what He is! (John 8:12; 9:5). And being salt and light are characteristics that come from Him as a gift to us.

          We know that because of our sinful nature we are indeed tasteless. Our thoughts, words, desires, and actions are often very tasteless, off color, hurtful, and hateful. Using the imagery of light, Paul writes that according to our sinful nature, we are downright “darkness” (Eph. 5:8). We were those dwelling in darkness and in the region and shadow of death (Matt. 4:16 ESV). So if we are to be salt and light in the world, it will be only because we have been recreated to be salt and light.

          What an epiphany! The Lord Jesus has made us to be new creations—salt and light—because He did everything that the Psalmist and the prophet Isaiah (as well as Jesus Himself) would call light. Jesus is the perfect “young man” who did “keep His way pure.” Jesus fulfilled the fast God prescribed by freeing the oppressed and feeding the hungry. Jesus is the One who, according to the “hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages,” became the “crucified Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2).

          Jesus’ righteousness has now been credited to you and me by grace through faith by the working of the Holy Spirit. Our failures to always be the salt of the earth and the light of the world stand forgiven. Our lack of fear, love, and trust in God above all things is forgiven. Our hurtful words, hate-filled attitudes, and lack of mercy toward others are forgiven. The blood of the Crucified Lord Jesus Christ covers our sins and removes them from us. As Christians baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His righteousness is declared to be ours. Through baptismal waters we are made new so that we “may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life” (Phil. 2:15-16 ESV).

          Jesus, the light of the world, declares you to be the light of the world also because when your lights shine, Jesus is shining through you. By the power of the Spirit working through Word, Baptism, and Lord’s Supper, you are empowered as new creations to live lives of obedience to God’s commandments, caring for the hungry and homeless, dealing generously and lending. By faith you know that you’ve been reconciled to God by the cross of Christ, meaning that you have all of God’s good blessings so that the light you shine by your Spirit-empowered obedience is a light that reveal Christ as the One who in God’s wisdom went to the cross for you and for all people.

          Martin Luther, the Great Reformer, stressed that the righteousness of Christ that people receive by faith is not something that simply remains in heaven with Jesus. Rather, it comes down to earth in and through Christians, the Church, and contributes to the pursuit of righteousness in this world. Saving aith revitalizes and renews our life in the world so that others may for the first time see how God intended people to live for one another and in relationship to the whole creation. On earth, we who live by faith in Jesus as His Church actively now pursue a life of works and virtues according to God’s will for creation and His reclaiming that creation by the saving blood of Christ.

          All this is to say that you are the salt of the earth and the light of world because Jesus has recreated you to be so. That means we, the Church, continue to preach boldly Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen for the forgiveness of sins. It means that we, with real-life opportunities for our lights to shine Jesus and His love to others, care for the weak, the unborn and those unable to defend themselves, the hungry, the homeless, and the naked. Today, the Christian Church is often reviled in the media and public opinion as being unloving, judgmental, bigoted, sexist. In the Church there are unbelievers and hypocrites who do not remain faithful to the revealed Word of God in Holy Scripture, and so we can understand where people see false Christianity as the real thing. But the Church, believers in Jesus Christ by faith, at the same time sinners and saints, continue to be the salt and light Jesus makes us to be. Caring for the needy with real and tangible acts of mercy—as we are doing in support of the Enfield Food Shelf—is the perhaps the best way Christians can dispel the slander. When the Church is seen providing for people’s physical needs, she will shine the love we have in Christ Jesus.

          This you also do in your everyday callings as moms and dads, children, grandparents, employers and employees. In word and action, you shine the light of Christ. You speak of Jesus, the One who died and rose again to win forgiveness and eternal life for you and for all. You help and support others in their real needs including prayer for them. And in the end, you don’t seek recognition because the glory goes to your Father in heaven. He gave His Son to enlighten you so that you shine and reflect Jesus in what you say and do. The Lord continue to give you lips and tongues, throats and mouths to shout the hope that fills you as you shine the light of Christ for others to see. Amen.