Blessed: 5 Days With the Sermon on the MountMuestra

Salt of the Earth

I once spoke with an accomplished chef who said that the only thing that truly sets great cooks apart is their ability to work with fat, citrus, and sodium. “Just use way more of each than you think and you’ll be a top-tier cook,” she explained. In laymen’s terms, I think this means more butter, lemons, and salt. Salt makes just about every dish more inspiring.

But for this first-century audience in our reading today, salt was used for more than seasoning. It was a medicinal agent before the discovery of antibiotics. It was essential for preservation. Rubbing it into raw fish, chicken, or beef cured it for future consumption. Perhaps this slowing down of decay was one of salt’s most essential uses in the ancient world.

When Jesus calls His followers to be the salt of the earth, He means we’re to be a flavorful people, known by our love for others, our humility, our moral goodness, and sometimes for speaking the truth with lovingkindness. We are to be healing people, pressing Christ’s cleansing power into the deep wounds of those around us in a way that momentarily stings but eternally heals. And perhaps most significantly, we are to be people of preservation. Our deeds should be salty enough to slow down the evil in this world, arresting the decay caused by cruelty, greed, oppression, poverty, and so many other forms of depravation.

It also means that the church is His agent of redemption for this world, and there is no Plan B. We’re not meant to operate in isolation, doing our own thing, rather we’re to make up a flavorful, healing, and preserving community under the name of Christ. Being the salt of the earth means there is nothing more relevant to this world than His people, the church, joined in unity, and working for the common good.

I wonder what resources you have to share that might slow down the decay in someone’s life. Perhaps you have wisdom that can be rubbed into the deep wounds of a soul who has lost his or her way. Maybe God has given you the gift of helping, teaching, organizing, counseling, or leading, and it’s time to use those gifts to flavor a bland society weary of doing the same self-centered activities over and over with the same disappointing results.

Who can you be salt for today? Someone needs the healing, flavor, and preservation that only a heaping spoon of Christian salt can bring.