Salt

¹³ "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. ¹⁴　"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵ No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

[Matthew 5.13-16]

Today’s reading holds a special place in my heart.  It was the basis of one of three sermons that I can remember as a child. I remember the other two because in one a vicar got something really wrong, and in the other a curate told a rude joke about Tarzan and some elephants.

This particular sermon was memorable because of something the vicar said.  It was at St. John’s in the Vale and I was there with a group of Scouts from Harrington, and I think this vicar was trying to be cool. So, he was telling us about the importance of salt and all its amazing uses, as a preservative, a cleaning agent, a flavour enhancer, and then he said “And by, it hurts like a bugger when you get it in a cut!”

That was more than twenty years ago, and I still remember it clearly, so I guess there is some preservative quality to salt.

But something I never understood was this business about salt losing its taste. If salt stops being salty surely it loses its very essence, the thing that makes it—it.  It would be like a dog losing its dogginess.  It would be like an unfishy fish, or an un-girly girl. It would cease to be.

It bothered me, but not a lot: at age fourteen I had more pressing things to think about than the theology of salt.  Her name was Dawn.

But now I’m older, wiser, and married, so I have the time to find out what Jesus meant.

You see, the thing about salt is that it hasn’t always come in bags from shops, about 2,000 years ago if you wanted salt you would likely get it from someone who’d brought it straight from the ground, maybe from the Dead Sea.  They’d shovel it up, fetch it round on a cart and give you the measure that you paid for. 

And not everyone was very honest in those days. Not like now. Some would ‘adulterate’ the salt. They’d pad it out with ‘fillers’, like gypsum, which looked like salt but were useless as a preservative.

I think that’s what Jesus was getting at: he wanted the disciples to see saltiness—like light in the next few verses—as representing their actions, their belief, the very essence of their faith.  He wanted them to realise that if they padded out their faith and belief with fillers that they would be useless as witnesses to the truth.  They had to stay salty, they had to stay faithful, and visibly faithful.  Salt works best when it’s mixed with other foods, not kept in the cupboard.  We will work best as Christians if we mix with other people, and not stay in our church.