She was training to be a hospital chaplain.  She had been a teacher in an inner-city school and saw hospital work as a better way of helping people in trouble.

On her first day she met the mother of a teenager, Sean, who’d been shot in the back of the head and was unconscious.  The mother asked the inexperienced chaplain if she had children of her own.  No, she said, feeling a little ashamed.

She sat with the mother for what seemed like an eternity.  She remembers:

“I started to wonder what I could do for the mother.  I could’ve stayed and tried to fix things, telling her that God was working a purpose out.  Or something cheesy like, God needs Sean up there.  I didn’t know Sean.

“I could have left the room, giving the mother time to be alone with her son.  That would’ve been easy.  I could have left the image of tubes, breathing machines, and loss behind.

“There was a third option: staying and being.  This meant I needed to sit with my own fears of losing a family member, and sit with the fear that as a childless chaplain I was inadequate.

“So I stayed with the mother and said, ‘This has to be so hard.’  She looked to her son and she cried and I did not leave.  I did not leave, and I was uncomfortable.

“There was nothing I could do but be with the uncomfortable feelings and believe God was present in that space.  In a space that was very close to the ground, very unadorned.”

“An unadorned space” . . . and the temptation always is, as the chaplain admits, to “adorn” it with cheerfulness or hope.  But healing depends on truth.  To be “salt” and “light” for such “unadorned spaces” means putting aside our unease at being in situations we cannot control and taking on what makes us uncomfortable and facing what is difficult and painful.  Being salt and light often means just being there for someone else in those dark times and terrifying places.  Despite our fear of saying something wrong or making matters worse, our quiet presence assures them that they are not alone.

Ordinary people challenged to extraordinary things – that’s what Jesus calls his followers – and us – to do in today’s Gospel.  When Jesus tells us that we are to be “salt for the earth,” he calls us to bring his compassion, justice and forgiveness into our homes, workplaces, schools and communities; our simplest acts of charity can be a “light” for our world and unmistakable evidence of the presence of God among us.  That’s why we’re here, in this church, part of this community: to be “salt” for the earth, to make God’s presence and grace realities in our own time and place; to be “light” for the world, illuminating the dark, hopeless corners of society with hope and peace.

As this chaplain comes to realize, God is present in our simplest, quietest, most “unadorned” efforts to be the “salt” and “light” of the Gospel.