Sermon on Being Salt and Light - February 2nd, 2020
According to the Salt Association, Roman soldiers were partly paid in salt. It is said to be from this that we get the word soldier – ‘sal dare’, meaning to give salt. From the same source we get the word salary, ‘salarium’.
Other sources disagree with this and call it a myth.
Whether it is true or not, Jesus, in today’s gospel puts a LOT of emphasis upon the importance of salt.
Salt is used for many purposes:
Preservative. Adding taste. Cleansing.
Rosemond Anaba says:
Salt, no matter how small in quantity,
has the ability to change the taste of food
just as light, no matter how small the flicker is,
has the ability to overcome darkness.
Sam Korankye Ankrah:
The prophet healed the bitter waters of Jericho with a token of salt.
You represent the salt which God wants to use
to change your family, your society and situation.
In Matthew 5:13 Jesus said, You are the salt of the earth.
You must be an agent of change, taste and influence wherever you find yourself.
John R. W. Stott:
“God intends us to penetrate the world.
Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars;
our place is to be rubbed into the secular community,
as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad.
And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world;
but should we not rather reproach ourselves?
One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad.
It cannot do anything else.
The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?”
How to be a salty Christian.
Not right to say, especially in today’s world and in the United States:
I don’t like this person. They are bad. That is not really going to help the situation.
Rather, I don’t like this policy. Yes, the person is the one advocating the policy, but better to work toward the change.
The problem with our world so often, and I must say, ESPECIALLY with the introduction of things like Twitter, and Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat – we begin to tear down the person – much like our national “tearing down and trashing person in chief in Washington.”
I told you why I got off Facebook over a year ago.
Political vitriol – often from some of my colleagues.
When I called one of my retired colleagues out on it, saying that as a pastor he STILL had a responsibility to the community, even though retired, as folk looked up to him and followed his example, his response was:
WELL, HE STARTED IT!
To which I responded, That is the response of a 3 year old.
My Mom always said, Two wrongs don’t make a right.
It seems so easy, when we don’t like the direction of the way the world is going to tear down the people. That is the easy way.
Trash the person, and that is an end to it.
They are bad. Thus their actions and policies are bad.
As Christians, called to follow the Crucified and Risen One, we must understand that to be salt, to bring taste into the world –
We are called to seek justice, mercy, kindness, compassion, advocacy for those who are powerless and voiceless.
The Holy Spirit NEVER EVER inspires us to tear down another of God’s creations –
EVEN IF WE VEHMENTLY DISAGREE WITH THEM.
To be salt in this day and age is to call out things which we disagree with – and to seek to make change.
Perhaps, in some cases, yes to put our feet with our voices and protest.
But not to tear down another person,
EVEN IF THAT PERSON SHOWS NO RESPECT
to those who are powerless or voiceless.
The world watches what we say and do.
St. Paul was ALWAYS advocating love. His letter to the First Corinthians is filled with advice for this congregation he founded, because they fought with each other over many many things – including not sharing of their food and resources with the less fortunate in their own congregation.
But remember the most famous passage in that letter:
If I have faith so that I can move mountains, but have not love – I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.
So abide these three: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
Following in the footsteps of the prophets, and our Lord Jesus – we are called to be salt; called to seek God’s vision for our world.
And I must confess to you – in many ways, we are not there yet.
Salty Christians challenge. Salty Christians inspire. Salty Christians seek to bring good out of the bad.
Salty Christians – lead people to the Light of the World, Jesus. Who died on the Cross for all.
Andrew Spencer, a Navy Veteran and Christian, writes in his blog:
Stay salty, Christians
The use of the term salt refers to a distinctiveness of the salty person of the salty language.
When the authors of Scripture use the term salt, they are also getting at distinctiveness.
In Christian contexts, though, the distinctiveness of saltiness is viewed as a positive contrast to the sin of the world.
According to Robert Stein, in the New Testament, "salt" refers to the characteristics of Christians as disciples.
He affirms that in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:13-14, that is clearly the meaning of the term.
Christians are to be distinct from the world.
We need to look no farther than Paul’s oft quoted command to the Roman church in Romans 12:2,
“Do not be conformed to this world.”
Being distinct is a good thing.
There is a paradox in being Christian in this world.
We are to be in the world, but not of it.
We are citizens of our nations, but ultimately owe a higher allegiance to God.
We will use the accepted professional techniques in our work, but remain distinctly Christian in our motivation.
We are to participate in the work of the world without succumbing to its temptations.
We are to utilize our regular lives to illuminate the distinctiveness of the gospel.
This is what salt does.
When you add salt to your food it doesn’t become a different sort of food, but it sure tastes better.
Salt is useful when it is salty, but when it isn’t salty it is worthless. That’s what Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount.
Christians risk so much of importance when they lose their distinction from the world.
That’s part of the reason I reject the idea of America as a Christian nation.
There are certainly strong Judeo-Christian influences in the culture in which our nation was founded,
but it never has been a Christian nation.
To argue that it has been a Christian nation
is to accuse Christianity of the massacre of Native Americans
and the sustenance of racially based chattel slavery.
These are distinctly anti-Christian practices.
Obviously, some Christians got sucked into them and even defended them.
However, these violate the very principals of Christianity.
They are evidences of occasions that people that claim Christ, sacrificed their saltiness for political or material gain.
We are over-proud when we make the assumption that we are not swimming in a cultural sea of temptation to lose our saltiness.
Those gross violations of Scripture may be in the past, but we face new errors today.
Faithful Christians must fight to retain their saltiness.
We must work to avoid conformity to the incorrect practices of this world.
A failure to do so may cost us, and the Church, a great deal more than we should be willing to risk.
It may cost us the ability to freely proclaim the gospel.
It may result in an environment in which the gospel is so buried with baggage
that we have to debunk Christian-created myths
before we can ever share the wonder of redemption with someone.
We need to fight to be salty.