When
my wife Kathy and I were first dating, we would often argue in a playful way
about figures of speech we didn’t quite understand. (Not, perhaps these days, a thrilling hookup
strategy, but it worked for us then. Washington’s
perfect power couple: a priest and a
librarian.)
Anyway,
each of us had a cliché we just couldn’t figure out. For Kathy it was “It is an ill wind that
blows nobody good”. Does that mean that an ill wind does no good for
anybody? Or does it mean that even an
ill wind does good for somebody? We
would go round and round about these questions late into the night, in
conversations fueled by cigarettes and Gallo Hearty Burgundy. My cliché was the term, “salt of the
earth”. When my relatives used this
phrase they usually meant by it someone who was solid and totally
unremarkable. I never heard it used to
describe someone who might be, well, interesting. But when I would come upon it
in Matthew’s Gospel, “salt of the earth” seemed to mean something entirely
different.
Though
Kathy and I still battle about figures of speech we do so during daylight hours
and over decaf coffee. Kathy still expresses dismay about ill winds that blow
nobody good, and I still throw up my hands when I hear someone described as
salt of the earth. And don’t get me
started on “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth”.
Today’s
Gospel is from Matthew, and it gives us part of the Sermon on the Mount just
after the Beatitudes. Our passage begins
with this inscrutable observation from Jesus:
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste,
how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is
thrown out and trampled under foot. [Matthew 5:13]
Now when you hear this, forget for
a moment what your grandmother meant when she called someone the “salt of the
earth”. What, here, can Jesus actually
mean? It’s easier to answer this
question if you’re at all familiar with Mark Kurlansky’s fascinating 2003 book,
Salt:
A World History. Salt
(formally known as sodium chloride) does several things. It preserves.
It adds flavor. And it has other, less obvious, uses. Salt is necessary for the life of our animal
cells. In pre-modern cultures salt was used as currency. More than that, salt
has religious significance. According to
Kurlansky,
Salt was to
the ancient Hebrews, and still is to modern Jews, the symbol of the eternal
nature of God’s covenant with Israel. In
the Torah, the Book of Numbers, is written, “it is a covenant of salt forever,
before the Lord,” and later in Chronicles, “The Lord God of Israel gave the
kingdom over Israel to David forever, even to him, and to his sons, by a
covenant of salt.” [Mark Kurlansky, Salt, “Introduction”]
When
we hear Jesus tell his followers, “you are the salt of the earth,” we need to
understand the many associations that salt has for them. Salt is at once a preservative, a spice, a
life-giving mineral, and a sign of the holy.
To call someone “salt of the earth” is to say something much more
powerful than merely to call them reliable if rather dull. To call someone “salt of the earth” is to
remind them just how important in the scheme of things they really are.
The
Sermon on the Mount has always been a challenge for Christians. In it Jesus says so many things that go
against our conventional wisdom: blessed
are the poor, turn the other cheek, love your enemy. It is in the context of this sermon that
Jesus tells us we are the salt of the earth.
If we are to hear this saying as more than a backhanded compliment, what
can he possibly mean? Let’s listen again:
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste,
how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is
thrown out and trampled under foot. [Matthew 5:13]
One
way to get at this inscrutable phrase is to ask whether Jesus is speaking to us
as individuals or as a community. Does
he mean that you, personally, are the salt of the earth? Or does he mean that we, together, are?
Let’s
start with the idea that he might be speaking to us as a group. After all, he does use the plural pronoun “you”
here. We, Jesus’s followers, are the
salt of the earth. Translation: we, together, are necessary for the world’s
life. We are its preservative. And more than that: as the salt of the earth, we are the ones who
seal the covenant between God and the world.
The church—not the institutional church necessarily, but the company of
those who follow Jesus—is necessary to the world’s flourishing and survival on God’s
terms. And “saltiness”—our taste, our
zest—is central to who we are. We bring
a perspective, an attitude that enlivens the human community. Without us, everything would spoil.
When we hear
“salt of the earth” applied to the Christian community, we get a fresh
understanding of what we’re here for.
Many people think that the church exists to bless and reinforce the
status quo. We’re the ones who are
supposed to tell you to eat your vegetables, pay your taxes, and floss. Many people want to confine religion to the
realm of ethics and appoint us the hall monitors of human behavior.
But when
Jesus calls us the salt of the earth he is reminding us of what religious
communities actually do. Just as salt
flavors your food, so we bring out the deep essential meaning of life. Just as salt keeps things from spoiling, so
through our prayers and witness we keep the world from turning solely to its
own devices and desires. Just as salt
seals covenants, so we remind both God and the world of why we need each
other. When we hear Jesus call us,
collectively, the salt of the earth we remember why we’re here: to show the
world what it means to be fully human and fully alive on God’s terms.
But there is
another, personal, aspect to being called the salt of the earth. When Jesus addresses us together, he also
addresses us as individual people. You are the salt of the earth. I am the salt
of the earth. Hear that in all its power and depth.
You are the
salt of the earth. You are salty in the
sense that you have a flavor, a taste, a point of view, a perspective that is
unique. Part of your job as a human being, as a
follower of Jesus, is to bring the fullness of yourself into all you do. Human beings sin both through arrogance and
through self-doubt. We all know what it
is to make too much of ourselves—you can’t live in Washington for five minutes
without seeing multiple examples of inflated self-regard. But we forget that we can also make too little
of ourselves. The world needs your
saltiness. As Jesus says, “If salt has
lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for
anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” [Matthew 5:13]
But your saltiness consists
of more than the gift of your individuality. You are salt of the earth in other
ways. You are vital to the life and
preservation of the world. You are a sign of God’s covenant with us. When we hear Jesus call us salt, we should
take in the holy and precious essence of who we are. God has become one of us in Jesus. Human life—your life—is endowed with a
meaning and purpose beyond what you can see on its surface. As a follower of Jesus, you are a sign of
what God is doing in the world.
As nice as that is to
hear, we should remember that Christianity is not merely a self-esteem
workshop. Christianity is about the
ongoing redemption and blessing and transformation of the world. Each of us is unique and precious not only
for our own sake. We have been given
gifts—symbolized by salt and light in Jesus’s language—so that we may bring
God’s life and healing to each other and the human community.
You are the salt of the
earth. You are unique. You are precious. You are a walking sign of God’s covenant with
the world. Your job—my job—is to bring
all that you are—your saltiness, your zest,
your unique perspective-- into your life with others so that God’s purpose can
be worked out in and through everything you do.
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste,
how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is
thrown out and trampled under foot. [Matthew 5:13]
I’m not sure that I will
ever completely understand this phrase, but I do know this. The great gift of following Jesus is the
opportunity to try and live life on God’s terms. Of course we don’t always make it and usually
fall short. But there is a beautiful and
crazy nobility in the attempt. Don’t sell yourself short. Live into the fullness
of God’s vision of who you can be. That
is a high calling. But it’s a calling we
are up to, because before we were Jesus is, and he is the true salt for us all.
Amen.
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