Isaiah 58: 1-9; Matthew 5: 13,14

The properties of salt

Dear friends,

We are talking about salt today, what the properties and characteristics of salt are and about how Christians are supposed to be “salt” to the world.  This is what Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5.  So we have done some reflecting about that.  We have talked about the verse in question and we talked about the Old Testament lectionary reading in Isaiah for today.  Isaiah does not mention salt at all or any other ingredient for that matter, but he does talk about food or rather the withholding of food for religious reasons, namely fasting.  Isaiah questions the sincerity of those who do the fasting.  He thinks it’s just for show. It is an act of blandness.  These people fasting are not the “salt of the earth.” Isaiah says :” Is not this the fast that I choose:  to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them…?”  In other words, Isaiah is accusing the people of not connecting to life and the suffering of the people around them.  It’s almost as if they going through the motions of the ritual of the fast, floating above the world in a way and not connecting with it.  They are detached from the suffering world in which they live.  This is unacceptable to God.

Friends, could the same be said of us, that we are disconnected, detached from the world, that we go through the rituals of our faith and do not connect with the blood and guts of the people around us.  Is it because we are so desensitized by tv and film, by news shows on all the different news networks, when we are told on a daily basis that “some of the images presented will be disturbing to some viewers.”  Are you and I really engaged with the world around us?

Sacramento born Richard Rodriguez (Darling) quotes William Saroyan, the Fresno Armenian American writer who has kind of been forgotten. Saroyan calls all of us human beings to an engaged life. This is what he said:” Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” It as Saroyan’s advice to a young writer.

Friends, I think Saroyan as Isaiah gives us a clue about how to be salt to the world.  We have talked about the properties of salt and about desalinization, about the vital nature of salt in the human body, about Gandhi’s long walk to the coast to make salt to tell the British that his people were alive.  And there are a number of things about salt that speak to how we should live.  First, salt gives taste. It fights the blandness of food.  To a lot of people today life is bland, it has no taste. They live lives without meaning, focused only on themselves and how to meet their every day needs and wants. They are bored and they feel irrelevant.  They feel no one needs them or that they don’t have the skills to help someone who needs them. Or they don’t want to do anything unless they get paid for it.  Jesus, Isaiah, and yes William Saroyan want to shake us out of that, stick our nose into the mud and the manure of everyday life and let us smell it.  This is what Jesus did beyond compare, completely enter into the suffering of others and taking it on as His burden.  When we taste it we may get angry, but it will be real, justified anger, not the fake anger our preferred news channel is trying to make us feel.

This also has to do with traction. On icy freeways, salt can give traction.  Even when we are not detached from the lives of others, we do not feel we have much traction.  It’s as if we cannot firmly plant our feet on this world, make a difference, or change where it is going. Even Presidents seem to be able to do so little.  But as a larger Church that we are a part of, we can start making a difference.  I know we could never have worked overseas if there had been no Church.  But as a congregation, this means we have a responsibility to get traction and to move in this world with purpose and compassion.

Then we get to preservation. This is another way salt contributes to our lives. Salt helps preserve.  When we are salt in the world, we preserve the tradition of thousands of years that proclaims God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.  Leaders of the Church face enormous criticism these days for bad behavior and so they should.  Nevertheless much of the blessings of culture have come through the church: from printing, to music, to philosophy, to literature, to compassionate service.  It is a tradition of engagement and involvement. Without this tradition, the message of God’s love will disappear.

Finally, salt purifies. It cleans.  We gargle with salt, we ease sore throats with salt water.  We chemically rebalance ourselves with salt. Sometimes we need to put salt in the wounds.  As the Church we must touch the wounds of people, acknowledge they are there, name them.  So all of us will be more fully alive and healthier.

Two T’s and two P’s, friends, tell us how to be salt to the world, salt of the earth. May God help us to give taste to, to find traction on, to preserve the faith in and to touch the wounds of our earth.