Matthew 5: 13-16
People don't like corn or potatoes; they like salt and butter. You know it's true. How many of us like potatoes or popcorn? With neither butter nor salt? Forget it! It's not unfair to say that corn, potatoes, and probably other foods are only valued insofar as they serve as effective delivery systems for salt and butter.
Salt is wonderful, but not by itself. Think of putting a nice big tablespoon of salt in your mouth and trying to enjoy it (some of you are shuddering). But even though it is not good all by itself, it improves everything it touches. Salt has the Midas touch of taste. Some folks even salt things like watermelon and cantaloupe because, they say, it "makes it taste sweeter."
When Jesus says we are the salt of the earth, what exactly does it mean?
•Salt can season, preserve, or purify; so which meaning do we pursue?
•Salt is seasoning, enhancing the flavor of whatever it is sprinkled on.
•Salt prevents corruption, without it, good meat can quickly go bad. Salt inhibits bacteria. When meat is salt-cured, the salt around the outside of the food draws water molecules out and replaces them with salt molecules until the amount of salt is equal inside and out.
•Salt was used as a disinfectant! Did you know newborns were rubbed in salt?
•Salt kills certain forms of life--snails and slugs to name two, but bacteria as well.
• In the Old Testament, land was often salted against the enemies of Israel.
•Salt melts ice, which can be slick, slippery, deceptive, and dangerous.
With very little imagination, we could devise moral analogies for each of these uses for salt, but I'll leave that to others. It seems a bit too easy to say, "You ought to be more like salt." But that's not the message.
Jesus does not say, "You should be like salt," he says, "You ARE the salt." Who you are and what you are doing here constitutes salt and saltiness.
Until the last few hundred years, pure salt was hard to come by. In Jesus' time, salt was gathered by pouring seawater (usually from the Dead Sea) into pits and left until the water evaporated; then the salt was gathered and sold. As you can imagine, because salt was precious, unscrupulous vendors would cut other stuff in to extend it, usually gypsum, which is plentiful in the middle east.
The mineral gypsum is approved by the FDA as an additive in foods such as ice cream, blue cheese, and flour. You've been eating it for years, right along with salt.
So how does salt lose its flavor? Pure salt, the actual crystal in its unadulterated form, never does,
PURE SALT NEVER LOSES ITS FLAVOR but salt loses its flavor when other stuff is cut into it. Once a portion had been cut or diluted beyond its threshold, it had "lost its flavor" and was worthless in any of the ways that salt is good or useful. There was nothing to do with it but throw it out into the streets.
We ARE the salt because we have been made and redeemed to be salt.
We are holy, set apart, a nation of priests. We, the Church, like the original hearers are the new Israel.
Remember Jesus' audience. They were not elites and had little-to-no hopes for upward mobility. They were humble, who would tend to feel unimportant, like they didn't matter, or at least didn't matter much. To them and us, Jesus says:You are the salt of the earth which means you are tremendously more important than you ever dared imagine. Don't think that being common or ordinary in this world means that you are common or ordinary in God's eyes! Jesus tells us just the opposite: WAKE UP! YOU DO MATTER! This is the blessing that follows and builds on the Beatitudes.
In effect, Jesus says:You are my A-Team, my starting 5, my precious beloved, my pride, and joy! So don't lose your saltiness; don' t let yourself get cut or diluted by the world. You are in the world to make it better; be who I made you be!
We are called to represent the kingdom of God untainted. To be in the world representing God's truth. When we let the world around us negotiate us into compromise, we lose flavor, becoming like the ground around us, without taste, without distinctive character. When salt becomes indistinguishable from the ground, it is only fit for the ground.
We sometimes hear about a celebrity, an actor or athlete, who is purportedly a Christian. We may think, "Yay! Support!" but would we have known they were followers otherwise? Other than by their say-so? If we look and act and think exactly like everyone else, then we are salt that has become indistinguishable from the ground around us. Let us rather seek the purity of our faith, let us pursue a Christianity that is uncut by the many popular forms of gypsum in our culture. Let us not be defined by their terms, but defined by Christ and His gospel alone.
That is how salt holds its flavor, its usefulness, and its value.
Question: Why didn't Jesus say, "You are the STEAK"? Or "You are the meat or the grilled fish" of the world? Why just the salt? Are we merely seasoning? There is an overtone here that supports the theme that we are not of this world. This world is meat on the verge of going bad. Jesus charges us to preserve and season the world, which means we are here to help make everything better. Let us be not only salt, but we should find a way to be salt and butter.
[Text 5:14-16]
Again, this text is a pronouncement.We are not told to "become like a city on a hill," but rather “you are the light" That light, which is Christ in us, cannot be hidden. One way or another, the world will find us out. Followers of Jesus cannot remain anonymous for long!
This is both an encouragement and a warning: again, we are not the nobodies we may think we are, for to God we are light the light in an otherwise dark universe. But clearly, He is the light, not us! Mustn't it be that whatever light we have has not been generated independently out of our well-meaning hearts, good intentions, and good deeds, but must come from THE light?
We are not independent light sources; at best, we are reflectors of God's light. We are like dirty mirrors, dirty from sin, separation, and self-absorption, one effect of our being saved by God's love is that we get a good cleaning as well. Once clean, we should be able to reflect His light. Yes, we can dirty ourselves up again, but the good news of Grace is that dirt is never our permanent condition. We have access to God's automatic cleansing mechanism which is faith.
To be the light of the world is to be God's blessing within a dark world. We are called to point our host culture to the light: to Christ, to justice, to peace, to love, faith, hope, and all the virtues which make the world better and, like salt, preserve God's world against corruption. We are in the world but not living for this world; we live for the Light of the world.
Again, we are not sources of the light, lest we think in our righteousness we can do some kind of good in the world. We are not to set ourselves up as models or examples to the rest of the world, because this throws us into a pretense of superiority; it can't work.
[no good examples, please]
To set oneself up as a good example for others is to assume moral superiority. This is the formula for self-righteousness. It is the basis of all hypocrisy. Rather, it must always be only the goodness of Christ somehow reflecting off us, albeit imperfectly, working through us, and among us that brings light to the darkness.
Imagine an immense, dark, underground cavern filled with thousands of small mirrors. Now the least bit of light, rightly aligned, can bounce around from mirror to mirror and effectively light up the whole cave. That's what we're called to be. The Church is a myriad of well-aligned mirrors reflecting the light of Christ throughout this dark cavern we call the world.
Mt. 5:16 READ
This verse has launched many well-intentioned people into superiority and condescending outreach, as well as promoted works-based righteousness, which is always self-righteousness.
The problem is that this isn't the best translation. In the Greek, the "your" is emphatic,"YOUR good works",which means something like “your kind of good works." Remember too that the "you" is plural, which means Christ expects us to live and act concerning his esteem for us and with his kingdom in mind such that we have a style that the world recognizes as our own. Our life should look distinctively different. Again, we're not to be like salt that has been so cut (by the influences of the world) that it is no longer identifiable as salt. That we are children of the light, a massive array of aligned reflectors, means we ought to appear as distinctive, something other than just a few more rats running the Rat Race.
Our kind of good works is the kind that reflects Christ and points to a kingdom beyond what this world can reveal. That means living lives of unreasonable Grace, irrational Love, unmerited Mercy, and otherworldly Peace. Together, coordinated and aligned toward the Lord we serve, we too may be useful in God's mission to light up this place.
We must not be preached at by the violent.
They presume to hold the moral high ground, but as Jesus says, "You will know them by their fruits." What are their fruits? Rebellion, violence, extreme rudeness, ears closed to reason, and a hatred for peace, despite whatever they may be yelling.
Christian brothers and sisters, we must not allow the ground around us to define our flavor. We must not let worldly notions of righteousness get cut into our thinking. We do not need the world to tell us what right or wrong is, because the world does not know.
Morally speaking, the world is the blind leading the blind. Popular righteousness is defined in worldly terms: anti-racism, anti-LGBTQ-ism, anti-Trumpism, and these things aren't all bad, but none of these movements have anything to teach those of us sitting humbly and obediently at the feet of Christ.
We do not allow their terms to define righteousness for us, though they try.
We must not allow our salt to be tainted by their dirt.
Though they parade as light, they are not light, but darkness, blind leading the blind.
If you are in doubt, return to your Source. Repent this day of your sin, your stains and your love of darkness, and return to Your Lord.
Turn again to Jesus, draw close to His light, for there is no other.
Study your gospels, pray for the Spirit to bring you understanding, and refuse to be defined by the noise, the fury, and the arrogance of the ground around us.
It is Father's Day. We, we all, have but one Father. Not Mother. One Heavenly Father, before whom we take a knee. Before whom we take both knees. In our hearts and souls, we kneel to no one else, even at the cost of our lives.
God,God alone, is good. We are sinners whom He saves through Jesus Christ.
This is the gospel of God.
QUESTIONS
- What are the main functions of salt and how do they relate to discipleship?
Consider how salt flavors, preserves, prevents corruption, etc.
- How does salt lose it taste?
Consider: the pure mineral never loses its taste.
- What is the significance of Jesus saying, “You are the salt” rather than, “You ought to be more like salt”?
Consider how Jesus blesses us as we are rather than merely blessing our potential.
- How is our saltiness made known in the world?
Other than one saying, “Hey, look at me—I’m salt!”.
- When Jesus says, “You are the light of the world,” who is the you?
Consider: the You is plural.
- Why is it better to think of ourselves reflecting light rather than generating light by our own strength?
Remember the saying, The road to Hell is paved with good intentions..
- How does sharing light contribute to the unity of Christ’s body, the Church?
Hint: one little light doesn’t light very much in the darkness.
- How does our light differ from the “lights” of this world?
Answer the question: Who leads whom?