Salt and Light

Salt and Light

Matthew 5:13-16

“You are the salt of the earth.”  “You are the light of the world.” 

Last week, we listened as Jesus told us who he stands with in this life: the poor in spirit, the humble, the brokenhearted, the oppressed.  The message was that I stand with them—no matter what anyone else thinks, no matter what some authority may tell us about who is worth our time and care.  I stand with the overlooked and the ignored, the judged and the “losers” in this world’s eyes.

With all that talk about Jesus and “them,” you pretty much have to figure that some fully human being in that crowd was wondering, “Hey, Jesus… I get what you are saying about you and them but, hey…what about me?”  At which point, in my mind’s eye, I like to imagine Jesus standing there with a wry smile on his face and, as if he could read that person’s mind, saying, “You?  You want to know about you?  You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.”

Now, in order to even begin to absorb what Jesus is saying here, we have to make a couple of points.  So, lets talk about dogs —that’s right, dogs.  Dogs have one skill that has been generated through centuries of relationships with human beings.  If you have a good dog, (Everyone say it with me now… “Who’s a good dog?”), you can point to something and the dog will look at what you are pointing out.  In other words, instead of staring at your finger, the dog will understand that you want to go in that direction or that you want them to see the bird up in that tree.  (I have to be honest and say that only one of the four dogs that I’ve lived with would have passed this test.  The others would have stood before me, panting and staring at my finger and likely drooling, too.)

One of the major problems, I think, for Christians is Jesus points things out to us and we stand and stare at the one who points.  In fact, in a lot of Christian theology, Jesus is thought of as the one who points to himself.  While it is true that Jesus makes some “I” statements in the Gospel of John, in the other three Gospels, Jesus’ focus is on trying to get us to see things about our world and its connections to our faith. Jesus points out the poor, the hungry, the sick and the needy and asks what we are going to do.  We just stand there, mouths open, staring at the one who is pointing.

In our lesson for this morning, Jesus is pointing at us:  “You are the salt of the earth;” “You are the light of the world.”  Instead of staring at Jesus, I think we should feel challenged to take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “What is Jesus telling us about who we are?”  When Jesus looks at us, what does he see?

What he doesn’t see is someone who is worthless or someone who is worth less than some designated holy person, like a rabbi or a priest or a Pharisee (or in our world, a pastor.)  Jesus doesn’t say that the religious authorities are the salt of the earth or that the law or the temple are the light of the world.  Remember, this is the continuing theme of Jesus’ teachings.  Almost nothing takes place in a temple or synagogue.  Almost no one in the story is a professional religious person. The faith that Jesus is trying to teach us, the faithful life that he is trying to inspire us to live, is lived in the real world with real people.  God can be found anywhere, any time, in any place.  Everyone as a child of God can be a part of revealing God’s presence through the choices that we make.  

Again, we have to pause a moment and feel how revolutionary this position would have been.  In the earliest days of our ancestors in faith, there was no temple.  Instead, the people wandered in the wilderness.  There were no holy people other than maybe Moses who almost as soon as he saw what a piece of work the people were really didn’t want to have all that much to do with that job.  The people had the ten commandments to guide their choices and the Ark of the Covenant to remind them that wherever they went, God went with them.  God fed them and led them on a daily basis.  God and the people were in relationship.

In the unfolding history of the people, God became less and less present in everyday life because God’s home was now a temple.  There were people whose full-time job was to make sure that the relationship with God was maintained.  For the people who didn’t live and work at the temple, checking in with God was something one did on an “as needed” basis.  When you went to the temple, the holy people told you what you needed to do.  For the most part, God was “over there” and the rest of our lives were lived “over here.”  Over time, this not only meant that a lot of people felt pretty disconnected from God.  It also meant that since there were “holy people” most people looked in the mirror and saw themselves as someone who just didn’t measure up.  That faith stuff was someone else’s job.  At most, we were occasional spectators.

Jesus’ words in our text are meant to fundamentally challenge such an understanding.  He is not telling us to go to the temple and get right with God.  He’s not telling us how to be more holy like the holy people.  He’s telling us who we are.  He’s telling us that we have a job to do.  Faith is actually something that we are supposed to live.

Jesus tells us that we have two jobs:  to spice things up and to shine.  Let’s tease the two jobs apart.  First, he tells us that we are salt, the salt of the earth.  Now, the truth about salt in our world is that most of us spend a lot of time trying to avoid eating too much salt, right?  Salty and sweet are the two tastes that people who make processed foods have addicted us to since we were little.  (Then, one day, they came up with dark chocolate with sea salt in it and the whole game was over!) None of this was true in Jesus’ day.  People needed salt to survive.  In Jesus day, salt wasn’t always easy to get. People were grateful for salt when they had it.  At the same time, salt, in Jesus’ time was a terrific preservative.  (Remember, refrigerators were still a couple thousand years away!)  In a desert climate, having salt was the difference between being able to safely preserve meat and being poisoned by your dinner.  So, salt was precious.  To say that you are salt was to say that you are essential to everyday life.

What’s fascinating is that Jesus doesn’t talk about salt either as an essential mineral or as preservative.  Instead, he talks about salt and its taste:  “If salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?”  The truth, though, is that salt can’t lose its taste.  It doesn’t spoil.  The only thing that can happen to salt is that it can absorb the taste of something pungent nearby—for example, garlic—but then its garlic flavored salt.  Or, if that salt isn’t pure it can be contaminated which was the case with much of the salt near Jesus’ home.  I think all of these questions would have been in the minds of Jesus’ audience who spent a lot more time thinking about salt than we do. 

(As a little aside, Roman soldiers were paid part of their salaries in salt.  The original roots of the word “salary” literally meant “to give salt.”  This is thought to be the origins of the saying, “To be worth one’s salt.”) 

I think Jesus’ audience would have been left asking themselves, “What is Jesus really saying about us here?” For me, with Jesus’ focus on taste, I think he is not only saying that we have value but that our function is to make life more “savory,” to make things better, to make life more rich and complete, just like the right amount of salt can make something that’s bland taste so much better.  Life would not be complete without us. Like the dish that is seasoned perfectly, we have the chance to bring the “something more” of God’s presence to life by being intentional about what we add to the moment, by deciding how to spice things up.

I think we all know this truth when we think about the people whom we describe as the “salt of the earth.”  These are good, honest people who do what they do with integrity.  Whatever they do, they do it with care and without any pretense.  They are the people who seal a deal with a handshake (back when we shook hands) and you know that their word is good.  They are not out to impress or manipulate anyone.  They are simply about the business of being who they are.  When we become one of the “salt of the earth,” then we are bringing faith to life.

The other thing Jesus says as he points to us is, “You are the light of the world.”  Now, again, I think we need to remind ourselves that in our world, we take light for granted.  Even living on East Prospect Avenue in Lake Bluff where all it takes is a puff of wind to shut down our electricity, we have power so much of the time that it remains a shock when we turn on the switch and there is no light.  In fact, we live in a world in which so many lights are on timers—from street lights to the lights in our homes—that darkness is almost a foreign concept.  

Of course, we are not immune to darkness.  As we begin our movement through fall into winter, we will approach that time when the days become very short, when we fondly think back to the days when it was light after five o’clock in the afternoon.  Some of us will order a special natural light to help us with our seasonal affective disorder.  At the same time, there will be people who work in certain circumstances where they may go for days without seeing the sun.  There will be people who live in extreme climates for whom the sun will literally not rise for months.   And then, there will be those of us living in Chicago who just feel like the sun hasn’t risen because it has have been so darn cloudy for so long.

So, it’s not that we can’t relate at all to Jesus’ world, but none of us light lamps every evening.  None of us are forced to an early bedtime because the sun has set.  Honestly, at first glance, it didn’t feel all that special to be called salt.  Honestly, being told we’re light might feel similar…until we stop and give the notion a little extra thought.

If we think about it, there is a darkness that has nothing to do with light switches and electricity or the sun setting and rising.  It has to do with the darkness that can be present in this life.  That darkness can be the dull gray of plain old ignorance.  Someone may cling to a wrong headed belief. Maybe if I can shine a little light, they might see things differently.  That darkness can be the sudden blackness of running into someone’s hate or bigotry or hypocrisy.  Perhaps I can’t change such things.  Maybe the only thing that I can do is shine and make sure that the darkness does not win.  What we all know is that a single candle can be all the light that we need or that someone else may need to see, if we allow our eyes to adjust.

There is a faith to be lived—not by some holy person but by you.  There is a faith to be lived—not in some holy place but wherever you may go.  Don’t forget… you are salt.  How can you make this moment a time to be savored?  Don’t give up…you are light.  There is no darkness that can overcome the power that you have to allow God’s presence to shine through you.