Staying Salty
““You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” - Matthew 5:13 NRSV
These past three weeks of Winter have been a constant barrage of snow and ice in waves just far enough apart to let us catch our breath. Every time one manages to get a clear path shoveled it starts snowing all over again. My family has thrown down more salt in the last three weeks than we needed to use in the past three years combined. It was that need for salt that prompted thoughts of today’s text from Matthew 5.
Now I realize that snow was not an issue in Jesus’ part of the world. They were not out throwing salt on the beaten paths to keep the donkeys from sliding on their way to Jerusalem. Still, I think Jesus chose salt for his simile here because salt is so versatile in positive and productive ways.
Salt was a preservative that kept food edible for long periods in the days before modern refrigeration. Salt was also used as a disinfectant in much the same way we use saline solution today. Of course, salt was and is also a great way to make food taste better. In fact that idea of making things better seems to be consistent. Food that last longer is better. Disinfected items or wounds are better. French fries with salt are better. Icy sidewalks treated with salt are better. When Jesus calls his people the salt of the earth I believe he is saying we have the capacity to make life better.
This capacity to make life better is grounded in the fact that as Christians we carry Christ with us. We are a people guided by his wisdom, infused by his love, empowered by his Holy Spirit, and being daily transformed more into his likeness as we walk with him as our Lord. This creates in us the capacity to bring him into everything we experience in life and offer what we have found to others.
To the sick we can bring the Great Physician. To the lost we can bring the Light of the World. To the confused we can bring the Way, the Truth and the Life. To the broken-hearted and “undesirable” we can bring true Love. To the poor we can offer the Bread of Life as well as physical food and help. To the lonely and outcast we can offer community and belonging. In every difficult and draining aspect of life we have in Jesus all we need to make things better. In this broken life we cannot make things perfect, but we can make them better until Jesus provides perfection in the life to come.
That said, Jesus warns us in the text not to lose our saltiness. Here is where I think we can find an extra encouragement and challenge for us in this season we are living in. For salt to be effective -in all of its uses - it must be in contact. Salt on the table does not make the French fries taste better. Only when the salt contacts the fries does it do any good. Salt cannot preserve meat without contacting it. It cannot disinfect anything without contacting it.
As we have been living socially-distanced for going on a year now, people are more isolated than ever. To see twenty people in a store can make it seem fearfully overcrowded. Somehow, however, we must find ways to still be in quality contact with the people around us. Salt cannot impact what it does not come in close contact with. We must find ways to make contact with people in order to maintain our saltiness. A random phone call or text, an old-fashioned handwritten letter or card, a small gift purchased and delivered on a front doorstep, a video call or zoom meeting -all ways that we can make meaningful contact with others even now. Let us not lose contact so we can stay salty.
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Community Calendar
My father was a pastor and Navy Chaplain during my childhood and teenage years. As a result we moved around a lot.
The furthest place we ever called home was my father’s last duty station on the small island of Okinawa, a prefecture of Japan. While there I attended and graduated from Kubasaki High School, a military supplied Department of Defense School. All of the students there had the common experience of being uprooted from the United States and dropped down in an island paradise where we learned and adapted to the Okinawan/Japanese cultural practices around us. It became as easy for us to say hello with “Konichi wa” as it was to say, “what’s up?”
We also shared the difficulties of missing the United States and friends we left behind while trying to spend our high school years making new friends. The trials and the wonders of life on Okinawa created a tight community because we knew that we were sharing experiences that most people we would meet in life would never have. On occasion since returning to the United States going on thirty plus years ago I run across someone who spent time on Okinawa. There is an immediate kinship that arises even though we are strangers because we have experienced the ebb and flow of life on Okinawa and find shared phrases and memories.
This week the Christian calendar takes us through Ash Wednesday and into the season of Lent. Many Christian churches have long since drifted away from celebrating the seasons and high days of the Christian calendar year. For most, Christmas and Easter are about all that remain. An event like Ash Wednesday seems like a strange forgotten ritual from a bygone era. I understand how easily we can drift from our traditional roots and I have worshiped in many churches that did not follow along. However, the older I get and the more scattered Christian churches get the more I find a certain comfort and beauty in a rhythm of life that can be shared by the Christian community.
In the letter to Titus in the New Testament Paul shared these words: “ “To Titus, my loyal child in the faith we share...” - Titus 1:4 NRSV. “My loyal child in the faith we share...” The words seem so simple. They are easy to pass over without a thought. Yet, there is a deep well of meaning. Other translations render “the faith we share” as “our common faith.” The society around us has its rhythms of life; but as Christians we do life together and share experiences that uniquely bond us together. Like the deeply uniting effects of those Okinawa experiences, the Christian calendar with its seasons and high holy celebrations has the capacity to bring a common journey and shared life to the Christian community.
As we gather on Ash Wednesday to be marked with the sign of the cross on our foreheads and hear the words “from the dust you came and to dust you shall return” we are all reminded of our weakness and finite mortality. However, we are also reminded that Jesus has provided salvation from our sin and weakness and brought us all new and eternal life in Him. When I happen across a total stranger in a store on that day and see the tell tale sign of an ash smudge on their forehead I know I am with family. These days and practices draw us together in a shared life that belongs to the community of Christ followers.
Whether you participate in an Ash Wednesday service this year or not (Covid guidelines have made a traditional service difficult), we can all join together in the season of Lent. From Ash Wednesday, February 17 until Easter the church will be celebrating Lent. It is a time of reflection upon our devotion to God and a desire to draw closer in relationship with Him. Based on Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness, Lent is a time when people choose to fast from certain kinds of food, or give up television or social media - laying down something that we enjoy for the sake of taking up something to draw closer to God. Perhaps we spend extra time in prayer or Bible reading or we share the love of God through acts of kindness to those around us. This is done as a testimony that we wish to separate ourselves more from the worldly pleasures around us and give ourselves to finding pleasure in following God and offering our love to Him. Sisters and Brothers in Christ, I hope we can all join together in making the season of Lent 2021 a grand and fruitful one.
