Salt and Saltiness (Sermon 2-13-11)

Matthew 5:13-20


Who else is grateful for the recent turn in the weather? I know we live in Indiana and we ought, by now, to be used to the often dramatic swings in temperature from one day to the next. But I am so glad to be able to be here today, I missed you all last week. And I’m trying to keep myself from becoming too excited about predictions of 50 degree weather for the coming week and the possibility of little to no snow left in our Winter; I’m afraid I might jinx it all if I allow myself to adjust to the idea.

Now, technically speaking, if we were following the lectionary to the T, we would’ve skipped this particular passage from last week and moved on to the next section of the Sermon. However, I simply like this passage too much to do that. Plus, I think last weeks storm gives us at least one useful mental image to think on with today’s passage.

On an average Sunday your typical pastor called to preach upon this passage for the week might get up and ask “what do you think of when you think of salt?” And there could be several potential responses: everything from “McDonalds French Fries” to “my water softner.” We have a lot of uses for salt. But, after recent events, one particular use is probably at the front of our minds: rock salt.



And I think that image is particularly useful for our passage today, though I’m sure it wasn’t the one intended by the Scriptures. I like the idea of looking at this passage and thinking of salt as that which melts away the ice of the world.

In addition to having a lot of physical uses, though, salt also has a lot metaphorical uses. The one which comes most readily to my mind is the use of the word “salty” or “saltiness.” My Uncle Kevin, whom I love dearly, has been an aspiring author for most of my life. He’s been working on the same book for years; it’s gone through several revisions, from a novel, to a screenplay, to non-fiction research book, all based around the same subject.

I remember reading the first edition, the novel, when I was a teenager. And I remember talking to my mom after the fact and noting the fact that my Uncle, one of the most clean-cut, pleasant relatives I have, had used a few four-letter words in his book. Mom told me that Uncle Kevin occasionally liked to use “salty language” to grab peoples attention, because they don’t expect it from him. It goes against the nature most people assume him to have.

And that gets me to thinking about character and nature. And so I want to ask you another, just as frequently asked, question.

I want you to think about this for a minute, while I’m up here talking: If you had to describe yourself in one sentence, how would you do it? What sort of adjectives would make it into that sentence? Christian, perhaps; father or mother; husband or wife; maybe your job title; perhaps some of your hobbies or interests would be included.

Of course, as some of you know, when I was in college my major was Religion and Philosophy. In fact, I probably took more Philosophy courses than I did Theology and Religion courses. And one of the top-ten “problems” of philosophy, one of the top philosophical questions that get asked and pondered frequently, is the question of “what makes a (thing) a (thing)?”

The most common way of putting the question is “what makes a chair a chair?” Is it because you sit on it, in which case a table could be a chair, and likewise a chair a table, thus nullifying the rule I often broke as a child: “don’t sit on the table.” Because, I wouldn’t sit on a table; by the act of sitting on it, it becomes a chair. Conversely, is a chair no longer a chair if no-one sits in it? This, if my philosophy isn’t too rusty at this point, would be the existentialist view. Is it because a chair has a certain look? Is there an idea of a chair which floats around in the ethereal above which all chairs are either a good or poor attempt at replicating in the material world? This would be the view of the Platonists. Is it a chair because we call it a chair, and likewise a table a table simply because we call it a table? This would be the nominalist and, again I may be wrong, but, also the analytical view. And, of course, there is the solipsist view, often trotted out to make fun of philosophers, which asks if there really is a chair at all, or whether the chair isn’t just a construct of our own consciousness.

In fact, there’s a story I’ve heard before of a Philosophy professor who, for his final exam, placed his chair upon his desk and told his students “using what you have learned this semester, prove this chair doesn’t exist. You have an hour.” In that hour treatises were written on the correspondence between perception and reality, names, uses, and reliability. One student, however, finished in less than a minute, receiving an “A” to boot. His simple answer: “what chair?”

There are, of course, as many philosophical answers to the problem of what makes a chair as there are philosophers. And ultimately it doesn’t matter so much so long as I know where the chair is, where the table is, and most importantly, where the food is. But, some of these questions come to mind as I look at our passage for today: salt and saltiness. What is the essence of salt, it’s saltiness, which if the salt loses, it is no longer salt?

To use philosophical parlance: what are some of the ways we could ask this question? Or, how can we find out what makes salt salt?

First, we could look at salt and it’s history, particularly in Jesus’ time.

Salt, like fire, is often given a great deal of credit in human history. It has been said that civilization would not have been possible if not for the discovery of the preserving capabilities of salt. Salt’s ability to slow the decay of meat insured that food could be stored and transported, so that human beings did not have to live a nomadic lifestyle, following their food sources. Salt preserved things.

Salt also had medicinal uses, as it still does today. Salt was used to help with digestive problems, to clean wounds, hence the old “salt in the wound” phrase, to help clear up respiratory infections, and a thousand other things which it would take to long to list. In short, salt helped to heal.

Salt was also an economic standard, given that it was such a valuable commodity. In fact, there is some indication that Roman soldiers may have occasionally been paid in salt, or that it was at least believed that one of the chief things they would buy was salt, hence the use of the world “salary,” as well as the phrase “worth his salt.”

This is all concurrent with the use which we continue to think of primarily today, and that is simply as a seasoning, something which makes things taste better.

So, salt is that which cleanses, preserves, heals, is valuable, and makes things generally better.

Second, we can look at the context of this passage.

Who is Jesus speaking too when He gives the Sermon on the Mount? Two weeks ago, when we looked at the Beatitudes, I left it pretty open as far as who was being addressed. Matthew’s Gospel, though, is actually pretty specific.

Matthew says it was “His disciples” who came to Him when He went up the mountain to speak. The term “His disciples,” when used in Matthew’s Gospel, doesn’t mean everyone who follows Jesus, but specifically the Twelve, the ones whom we usually refer to as “The Apostles.” There’s seems to be an indication that others are listening in as well, but the intended audience is those through whom Jesus would start His Church.

More to the point though, is the fact that this passage falls right on the heels of the only use of the “2nd person” in the Beatitudes. Throughout the blessings, it is “blessed are they, blessed are they,” 3rd person, someone out there, a generalization. However, the final statement of the Beatitudes is “blessed are YOU when YOU are persecuted for MY sake.”

So, Jesus is speaking to His disciples, His Church. But that connection between YOU and MY reinforces the idea that He is speaking specifically about people who are in relationship with Him. He then follows up saying “YOU are salt, YOU are light.” To say it in reverse highlights the point I’m trying to make: being salt and light means being in relationship with Christ. Now, a good philosophy professor would probably say I’m being equivocal here and that statements aren’t always true in reverse; but I’m going to side-step that issue for now. Being salt is defined by our being in a relationship with Christ.

To refine that, let me say this: our being salt is not defined by what we do as salt. In other words, it is not because we do “salty things” that we “are salt.” Rather, it is because we “are salt” that we do “salty things.”

For an example, let’s look back at the Beatitudes: poor, meek, peacemaker, mourning, etc. Add to that list other Christian virtues and practices: feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and other acts of kindness, fasting, meditation, even prayer, as well as other spiritual practices. If someone were to excel in all these things, would that inevitably make them a Christian? Or to put it in another way, is it possible that an “evil” person could do these things?

I’d like to suggest that it is possible. In fact, I’d like to suggest that this is what many people try to do. They look at the results of saltiness and try to have the appearance of saltiness themselves. Some to a greater, some to a lesser extent.

One cannot make oneself salt simply by doing salty sorts of things. Eating carrots doesn’t make you a rabbit, sitting in a garage doesn’t make you a car, and doing nice things doesn’t make you a Christian. Rather, it is because one is in a relationship with Christ. It is from that relationship that we derive our saltiness. Another way of putting it is this: it is Christ in us, His saltiness, which makes us salty.

Third, we can look at what Jesus is doing in this passage.

We know the general context, the cultural clues about the uses of salt. We know the specific context, the audience whom Jesus is directly speaking to, His Church, those in a relationship with Him. Next, we need some idea of what Jesus is trying to accomplish in this passage.

There we are helped by the second analogy, the analogy of light. He tells us we are to “let our light shine,” to let others see our good works, our saltiness, so that they too might give praise to God the Father. Salt and light are two things, which, essentially do not exist for their own good, but for the good of others. He is giving us an essence.

It is by participating in Christ’s saltiness that we are salt; because He is preserving, cleansing, and healing the world. He does so through us. By shining His light through us, others can see.  He is the one who defines what it means to be salt and light. In other words, it is because Christ names us as salt that we are salt. He speaks it, and it becomes reality. One of the most important points about this passage is the fact that Christ does not tell us to “be salt,” but that we “are salt;” not to “be light” but that we “are the light.”

And we whom He has named as salt and light take part in His mission in the world, that is, we participate in the Kingdom of God. And if we lose the salt, if we lose that connection to Christ, we lose the saltiness. When Christ says:

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You could just as easily put that as “without the saltiness, what’s the point?” If we aren’t defined and named and used by Christ, what good is it? That’s a key question for us as individuals, but even more so for the Church.

A couple years ago a group up on the east coast started stirring up some controversy when they posted around their city billboards telling everyone that they could be “good without God.” A lot of Christians got pretty riled up about that whole campaign. But what bothers me, though, is not that a group of atheists think they can be moral without being spiritual. Instead, what causes me to worry is that it seems, today, that there are a number of churches so-called which seem to agree with them.

There are churches which seem to try to practice a goodness without God, or a goodness which is just as good without God. They seem to want a Christianity without Christ, a Christianity without the Cross, a Christianity without the divine intervention into human history and human lives. They want a Christianity where Jesus is a good example, perhaps the very definition of goodness, but not the one who does the defining. They want the Christian name, but aren’t concerned with being named by Christ.

You see, the mission of the Church cannot be separated from the One who gives it that mission, the One who’s mission it participates in. We as individuals cannot be a part of the Kingdom unless we are a part of the Kingdom-giver. Unless we have a righteousness greater than the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus says at the end of the passage, we cannot be a part of the Kingdom. But we cannot have a righteousness greater than theirs unless He gives it too us.

Kingdom, salt, and light, all derive their nature from the definition which Jesus gives them. It is only because He has called us salt that we can go out and be salty for others, because He has named us as light that we can shine for others, because He fulfilled the law for us that we can be in the Kingdom; as John puts it in his first epistle: we love because He first loved us.

Now, I know two weeks ago I made a bit of a joke about preachers preaching the beatitudes and encouraging their congregations to “get out there and get your meekness on.” But, with today’s passage, having been called light, having been made a part of the Kingdom, having been called salt, let me extend an encouragement perhaps not often uttered from the pulpit: let’s get