Salty
Matthew 5:13-20
Emmanuel Baptist Church
February 16, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley
Over the last several months, I have had a number of conversations with people, inside and outside this church, who are discouraged. A lot of them say the same thing. They say they feel powerless. Powerless in the face of an addiction or other disease, powerless to communicate meaningfully with an estranged loved one, powerless to get what they need for their children, powerless in a political system where the voices of those with money and status carry more weight than the votes of citizens. Some of us in this room have always recognized our relative lack of power. For others, it has been a rude awakening.
The good news I share today is that Jesus has something to say to the powerless, or at least to those who believe themselves to be powerless.
Last Sunday, we heard the beatitudes. I suggested that in that list of blessings, Jesus was bestowing honor on the kinds of people that never got any honor in first century Palestine, namely the poor, the downtrodden, the ridiculed. Today’s reading comes right after the beatitudes. Jesus is still addressing the same crowd, the same people who followed him from Capernaum, the crowd that seeks his healing and hangs on his teaching.
This crowd represents the people of Israel under occupation. The land has been under Gentile control since the return from Babylon generations earlier, with Rome being the latest and current enemy in charge. As Jesus launches his ministry, the political tension is increasing. By the time Matthew writes his gospel a few decades later, Jerusalem and the Temple will have been destroyed after a 7-month siege of the city. Without the Temple, Judaism as it had been for centuries will cease to exist. Within the crowd around Jesus, and among Matthew’s first readers, there is an acute sense of an impending end to everything.
On a daily basis, we hear warnings about the coming end of democracy in America and about the threat of climate change to end human existence on this planet. Most of us are very aware that institutional Christianity is undergoing massive upheaval. The structures that have become normal over the last 500 years may soon go the way of Temple-based Judaism. And so, it seems that our context has much in common with the context of Jesus’ first audience, more than we might expect.
In last week’s reading, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek.” In those beatitudes, he was not suggesting that people should become poor or meek or in mourning. He was not setting some goal for them to achieve, but he was blessing them for who they already were. Similarly, when he says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world,” he is describing who they already are. In this foundational sermon, Jesus is challenging the people of Israel to be who they are, the people of Israel – God’s covenant people.[1]
Way, way back, when God first made covenant with Abraham, it was said that Israel was blessed to be a blessing to the rest of the world. Generations later, the language evolved so that Isaiah spoke of Israel as the servant in whom God’s glory is seen, the light to which other nations will be drawn. When Jesus says “you are the light of the world” he is drawing on that tradition, that identity.
The most important function of light is to illuminate what is. It is not for the light to be seen, but to allow other things to be seen. In a positive sense, the light brings good things into view. Jesus says to let your light shine so that people will glorify God because of your actions. What he doesn’t mention directly here is that light also shines on the bad. It brings evil out of the shadows so that it can be recognized for what it is.
To the people of Israel and to us, Jesus is saying “Be who you are. Be God’s people. Be the light that you are. Shine to bring glory to God. Shine to expose evil.”
He also says that we are the salt of the earth. Salt is associated with seasoning and preserving. In Biblical times, it was also often connected to sacrifice. It is a small thing of great value. Salt is essential for life. If added correctly as a seasoning, it enhances flavor, bringing out what is already there, only more so. Salty people, then, add zest and make the world more savory.
It sounds peculiar when Jesus speaks about salt losing its taste. Salt in antiquity was not as pure as what is in our saltshakers. It’s taste could be lost by being overwhelmed or mixed with large quantities of other materials. In English, we read verse 13 “if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” But in Greek it literally says “If salt becomes foolish, then how can its saltiness be restored?” It is a warning against being so overwhelmed, so compromised, so unfaithful, that no transforming work is done.[2]
I’m hearing it today as a warning to those of us who are feeling outnumbered, overpowered and over- looked. We cannot become foolish about our mission. Our mission is to be faithful, not to be powerful. We cannot let discouragement dim our light or rob us of our saltiness.
As Frederick Buechner wrote, “Be the light of the world, [Jesus] says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. . . that’s what loving each other means.” [3]
Some of us are discouraged because we feel powerless. It is a new, uncomfortable feeling for some of us. For others, it is not necessarily new, but we are worn down by it anyway. How do you suppose these Galilean peasants felt? How much power could they exert? They couldn’t vote or influence the government in any way. To Rome, they were just labor, human capital, to be exploited for Rome’s purposes. They weren’t educated. Most of them couldn’t read. They didn’t have the credentials to engage the religious leaders, the movers and shakers of the day. And yet, Jesus told them just to be who they were – salt and light.
Here's the thing I don’t like – the metaphors of salt and light suggest slow, incremental change. That is not what I want. I have a list of things that need fixing now, right now. You probably do too. When I felt more in control, more powerful, I thought that I could affect change quickly. But now I see that slow change and small transformations were the things Jesus talked about most of the time. Things like almost invisible yeast making the bread rise, one loaf at a time, or seeds hidden in the earth, growing to harvest over a season. That was how he encouraged the powerless ones in his day. By any objective measure, you and I still have more power than the folks he was speaking to. Whether we feel powerful or not, we can still be who we are – God’s people in this place. We can still be who we are, the light of the world called to shine in glory to God, to cast a spotlight on evil. We can still be salty, adding zest to the lives of those God calls us to love.
For more than 30 years, the Rev. Fuad Bahnan served a small Presbyterian congregation in the overwhelmingly Muslim area of West Beirut. In 1983, during Arab-Israeli fighting, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon. No one knew how far they would go, but the members of Bahnan’s church believed that the Israelis would take Beirut and then try to starve out any Palestinian fighters still in the city. So, the church leadership decided to stockpile food for the siege to come. Then it happened. The Israeli army cut off West Beirut, and no one could enter or leave and no food was allowed in.
The church leaders met to make arrangements for distributing the food they had gathered and stored. At the meeting, the elders weighed two very different proposals. Proposal #1: the food would be distributed first to members of the congregation, then, as supplies permitted, to other Christians in West Beirut, and if any was left, to Muslims. Proposal #2: the food would be distributed to Muslims first, then to non-member Christians, and lastly, if there was any remaining, to members of their church. “It was extravagantly kind and altogether counter-intuitive,” someone said later.
Reverend Bahnan said that the meeting lasted six hours. It finally ended when an older, deeply respected and usually quiet member of the governing board stood up. She said, ‘If we don’t demonstrate the love of Christ in this place, who will?’ The second motion passed. The food was distributed first to Muslims, then to other Christians, and then to members of their own church. When the Lebanese pastor told the story some twenty years later, he added two footnotes. First, he said that the Muslim community of Beirut was still talking about what their church did. Second, he said that there was actually enough food for everyone. He described it as a modern day “loaves and fishes.”[4]
Keep on shining, you light of the world, to demonstrate the love of Christ in this place and wherever you are. Oh yeah, and pass the salt to season those loaves and fishes.
Let me leave you today with some words from the Rev. Shannon Kershner. She’s the pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. She preached on this text just last Sunday. She said:
“It is past time to stop flying under the radar, mainline church. Rather, it is time to be loudly kind, to be obnoxiously compassionate, to be irritatingly loving. To say no to the corrosive power of contempt and to answer hatred with the strength of love. To stand up for each other. To refuse to return evil for evil and to say why that is. To have good courage and to proclaim that often. To be the strongly flavored salt we are and the beautifully bright light we are, not only on Sundays when we are all together, but even more importantly in all of those other quiet, normal times and places in our lives during the week. For being salt and light is not just what we are called to do. It is who we are.” [5]
Being salt and light is not just what we are called to do. It is who we are. Thanks be to God!
[1] Edwin Chr. Van Driel quoting N.T. Wright, in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010) p. 335.
[2] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Obis Books, 2000), p. 138
[3] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), p. 150.
[4] Michael Lindvall in his sermon “Kind or Right?” preached at Brick Presbyterian Church on June 12 2016.
[5] The Rev. Shannon Kershner, in her sermon “Adding and Shining” https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2020/020920.html