Matthew 5:13-20
Epiphany 5 / Year A
Jesus said, “You are the salt of the
earth. You are the light of the
world.” In 2020 we think of salt as
something abundant and to be avoided.
You can purchase a 25-pound bag of Morton’s Table Salt at Amazon for $21
and pretty much be set for life. Light
is available with the flick of a switch or a simple voice command to
Alexa. In our day and age, you have to
work hard to lower your salt intake and travel great distances to be in total
darkness.
However, at the time Jesus said you are
salt and light, each image conveyed something very different than it does
today. Salt was a rare and precious
commodity. Extensive trade routes were
set up to import it and traders made fortunes for their efforts. It was even used as a currency. Roman soldiers were paid with salt, a
practice from which we derive our word ‘salary’. In Jesus’ day, salt was as prized as gold.
It was primarily
used to season and preserve foods and the Law of Moses required Temple meat and
grain offerings to be salted. It had
literally thousands of other uses from creating chemical reactions in fires to treating
wounds (on which you would rub salt!).
But once salt lost is properties, like oyster shells today, it was
thrown into the streets and used for little more than creating a path.
Over time salt came
to be associated with friendship, hospitality, and good fortune. Spilling salt accidently was thought to bring
bad luck while sprinkling it on the floor of a new home was said to ward off
evil spirits. There is a little-known
detail in Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. If you look closely, you will notice Judas
has knocked over a cellar of salt; a sign of his eminent broken bond with Jesus
and sinister intention.
Houses in Jesus day were lit with oil
lamps. Most often made of clay pottery,
they typically had an open end in which one would pour olive oil and smaller
opening at the other end to hold a wick made of flax or cotton. A typical lamp gave off about as much light
as a 20-watt bulb. There were no matches
at the time so the wick was lit either by rubbing sticks or striking stones to
create a spark. Because olive oil was
plentiful and inexpensive, most homes kept a lamp burning at all times.
When Jesus says, “You are the salt of the
earth” he does not dwell on what it is good for but moves immediately to what
happens if it becomes good for nothing.
The Greek word translated here as “lost its taste” or “tasteless” is moraino, which literally means “foolish”,
“dull”, “flat”, or “deficient”. Jesus
tells his followers, “You are the salt of the earth, but if, as a disciple, you
become foolish, dull, flat, deficient, or tasteless, than you have nothing to
offer to the world.”
It is tragic when a person throws away his
or her life by making foolish decisions – sometimes just one act is all it
takes. But more insipid and less
noticeable is the process that makes a person dull or flat. If Jesus was sitting at table with John
Rector enjoying one of his grilling masterpieces, he might say, “Never become a
knife so dull you cannot carve meat! How
then would you be useful?”
Life has a way of wearing us down and
wearing us out and according to Jesus we must be on guard against losing our
edge, our focus, our hope, our sense of possibility and the role we can play in
nurturing it to fruition. Kierkegaard
held boredom is the root of all evil. He
said it is the result of the “despairing refusal to be oneself.” The cure for boredom, according to the
American poet Dorothy Parker, is curiosity.
Somewhere in this is wisdom about how to avoid losing your saltiness which,
in Jesus’ mind, is a primary pursuit in the spiritual life.
If Jesus uses salt to illustrate what
happens to a person who becomes good for nothing, than he uses the image of
light as a way of exhorting his followers to be good for something. When you set a lamp on a table it provides
light for the entire room. Don’t hide who
you are! That little 20-watt light bulb
that is you… let it shine! You can light
up a room!
As Jesus teaches this beside the Sea of
Galilee, perhaps he directs the audience’s attention toward the northwest where
the city of Safed is located. It sits on
top of a high hill and functions as a signaling station. From its prominent location it sights the new
moon well before those at lower elevations can see it. But they can all see the city of Safed. Once the people of Safed see the new moon,
they light a large fire visible to everyone living in the region. This light alerts people to prepare for the
ritual requirements of this time of the month.
Safed literally is a city that cannot be hid. Let your life be like Safed, Jesus says. Live your life in a way everyone can see who
you are and the good you do and know this is what God intends for every person
to be like.
While both salt and light are abundant
today, it is getting more and more challenging to be salty and bright. Over the centuries our country has faced many
great challenges, some external, some internal.
We have fought great wars against great evil and we have fought one
horrific war against ourselves. We
stared down the soulless state that is the Soviet Union while confronting the
hypocrisy of McCarthyism in our own society.
We expressed our worst in Jim Crow and aspired to our best through the
Civil Rights Movement. Maybe there were
darker times than our time right now, I can’t say.
What I can say is February 9, 2020 feels like
the darkest and most dire time in our country during my lifetime. In these days foolishness abounds and is
often praised. Policies once
inconceivable are enacted with cavalier nonchalance. Words and gestures I never thought I would
see from American leaders, sadly, is the new norm. How bad is it? When the Speaker of the House of
Representatives is so fed up she rips apart her copy of the President’s State
of the Union speech, well that says to me we are close to tearing ourselves
apart. I want to be optimistic, I try to
be hopeful, but whoever first coined the proverb about the silver lining must
never have been through a storm like we had last Thursday or lived in a
political environment such as ours.
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I aspire for
our civic life to reflect justice, exhibit mercy, and be marked by
civility. This, according to Micah 6:8,
is the baseline for what God’s dream of a “Christian” society looks like. Disturbingly, our nation is turning more and
more from this dream and pursuing a nightmare.
Please do not think I am pointing a finger at one person or political
party. We are in this together and if we
move forward or if we move backward, we all share in some aspect of the praise
or the blame.
If Jesus stood in our midst this morning,
this is the sad context in which he would say to us, “You are the salt of the
earth. You are the light of the
world.” In a world as dark as ours, we
must live our lives radiant with Christ’s love.
God’s light, lived out by God’s faithful people, is the only way to
vanquish the darkness of our time. As
salt, this is no time to be dull because we are worn down and worn out. Now is the time for Jesus’ followers to be
sharp and on point. The stakes are too
serious for us to be foolish. We must
live with intention – the intention of allowing God to use us in a way similar
to how salt prevents decay.
Ultimately we hope all people will find
salvation by living rightly in this world and being worthy of it in the
next. It humbles me, but sharpens me, to
think how I live my life might just point the way for others to live. It gladdens me to think my single light can
banish a significant amount of darkness.
And then I think about our collective life, what we have here at St.
Paul’s as each of us lives as salt and light.
We are a precious, Godly presence in our community, a Safed-like place
upon which all can look and join in order to get a sense of God’s dream for
this world.
