Rev. Deacon Allen Batchelder

Trinity Church
Waltham, Massachusetts
February 9, 2014 – Epiphany V

Isaiah 58:1-9a, Psalm 112:1-9, 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20

From the Prophet Isaiah:
Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteous and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

From St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians:
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.

And from the Gospel of St. Matthew:
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.”

Let us pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer, our Strength and our Salvation.
Amen!

There was this Peanuts cartoon which showed Peppermint Patty talking to Charlie Brown. She said, “Guess what, Chuck. The first day of school and I got sent to the principal’s office. It was your fault, Chuck,” He said, “My fault? How could it be my fault? Why do you say everything is my fault?” She said, “You’re my friend, aren’t you, Chuck? You should have been a better influence on me.”

While Peppermint Patty was seeking to pass the buck and not take responsibility for her actions, she does raise an important issue and in a sense she could be correct. We should be a good influence on our friends, our co-workers and our families. We can have an influence on others, for good or bad.

Our Gospel reading today starts out by saying, “You are the salt of the earth.” This is a continuation of last week’s sermon on “The Sermon on the Mount.” The theme of that great sermon was how people of the kingdom of heaven are to live; to achieve true righteousness. That true and vital righteousness begins internally, in the heart. It reflects a person’s true character and the influence or witness we have on others.
At this section of “The Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus says that, “You are the salt of the earth.” He is comparing you to salt. In fact, salt that has infinite value. When we think of salt today, it is very inexpensive. We use it to flavor our foods; many recipes call for salt to be included. We are also cautioned by our doctors, not to use too much of it, because it might be harmful to our health (according to some studies). So, when Jesus says that we are the “salt of the earth”; is that a compliment?

We have to look at what this phrase meant back in Jesus’ time. Because salt was a necessity of life in ancient times and thus great value was attached to it. Salt was so important that it was sometimes used in place of money. The Roman soldiers of Jesus’ day were at times paid with it. In fact, our word “salary” comes from the Latin word salarium which referred to the payments to the soldiers with salt. We still use the phrase saying that someone either is, or is not, “worth their salt.” We don’t think much about salt today because we can get as much of it in pure form as we want. It is just that little bottle with holes in the top on the table. But when you are completely dependent on salt to preserve your food, and when it is so valuable that it is used in the place of money, you get a completely different perspective on salt.

Because we live in a part of the world where we have an abundance of food, we don’t understand the monotony of the diet of those who live in Jesus’ day and for most of those who live in third world countries even today. In a great portion of the world rice is the common food, three times a day. In part of Africa today the subsistence food is corn meal, at every meal. In fact the Swahili word for corn meal is “posha” meaning daily ration.

Salt in Jesus’ day was important for survival, because it was the only way they had to preserve meat. Obviously, they did not have refrigerators back in Jesus’ time, so salt became very important in their ability to preserve their food. The salt was rubbed into the meat before it was stored. Salt was to arrest or at least slow the process of decay, so too Christians are given the task of arresting the decay of our world.

Christianity has in fact had a profound positive effect on the world. The most dramatic impact of Christianity on the world is that it has attached new value to human life. Christianity stopped human sacrifice. Prior to Christianity infanticide, and abandonment of children was a common practice. Hospitals as we now know them began through the influence of Christianity. The Red Cross was started by an evangelical Christian. Almost every one of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States has Christian origins, founded by Christians for Christian purposes. The same could be said of orphanages, adoption agencies, humane treatment of the insane, and the list goes on and on of dramatic impact of Christianity around the world.

But we have our work cut out for us; many of these same colleges and universities have abandoned their Christian roots in favor of secular and humanistic diversity. Instead of orphanages and adoption agencies, there has been an explosion in the number of abortions.

Christians, however, continue to have a positive benefit on our world. As a moral antiseptic, Christians keep the corruption of society at bay by opposing moral decay by their lives and their words. Do you believe this? I do believe that if we were to remove Christianity and God completely out of our society, then literally “all hell would break loose.” But the reality is, Christianity and God are under attack in our country and around the world. God is being removed from our society by nonbelievers and even our courts! And we are letting it happen.

We also need to ask ourselves: are we as Christians any different from non-Christians? Do our friends, co-workers and family know we are Christian? They might know that we go to church on Sundays, but do they know we are Christians by the way we live; by our character? Or have we assimilated into the secular world where society can’t tell the difference?

The fundamental moral and ethical difference that Christ can make in how we live is fast disappearing. When our teens claim to be saved, but then get pregnant or do drugs at the same rate as the rest of society – when Christians cheat in business, or lie, steal, or cheat on their spouses, at the same rate as non-Christians – something is horribly wrong. Where is our witness?

If we as Christians lose the qualities of Christ that make us distinct and become like the rest of society around us, we no longer have a positive impact. We become a hindrance instead of a preservative.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:7 we read, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way.” One day prior to our Lord’s return the Church will be removed from this world, and when Christians are finally removed from the world scene, all Hell literally breaks loose.

The other thing about salt, is that is makes you thirsty. In an arid climate or athletic competition, salt is used to promote thirst. Christians are to make Christ attractive and desirable. In Titus 2:9 the Apostle Paul tells Christian servants that they must act in such a way “that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.” The idea here is that Christian servants have the power through their exemplary behavior to make Christian life and faith beautiful to those outside.

Whenever we as Christians are introduced into a setting, whether it is social or work related, the unbelievers should see evidence of the difference that Jesus Christ makes in our lives. They should be able to look at us and say, “I don’t know what you have, but I want it.”

What happens when salt loses its flavor? According to our scripture reading, “it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” Technically speaking, salt cannot lose its saltiness; sodium chloride is a stable compound. But in the part of the world where Jesus lived, salt was collected from around the Dead Sea where the crystals were often contaminated with other minerals.
These crystallized formations were full of impurities, and since the actual salt was more soluble than the impurities, the rain could wash out the salt, which made what was left of little worth since it lost its saltiness. When this happened, the salt was thrown out, since it was no longer of any value either as a preservative or for flavoring. When the salt was leached out it still looked like salt, but it lost its taste. The essential difference can be leached out of a Christian’s life by the constant flow of the world’s values through our lives.

When Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual leader of India, he was asked by some missionaries, “What is the greatest hindrance to Christianity in India?” His reply was, “Christians.” It wasn’t the message, it was the witness.

The peculiar property of salt is that even though it may have lost its pungency, it still retains a very devastating potency. This rare and remarkable material can still…destroy plant life on the land…the same principle applies in the case of the Christian. Either our lives are counting for God and for good or our lives are counting for evil and the enemy. The way we live, the things we say, the attitudes we have, the lifestyle we adopt… are continuously producing either positive or negative results in our society; in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, we either count for God or against Him.

Lastly, you need to use salt for it to have any benefit. As we have already noted, the Christian is to be a preserving force in the world wherever God has placed them. But the salt never did any good when it was sitting on a shelf and the meat was somewhere else. To be effective, the salt had to be rubbed into the meat. In a similar way Christians are to allow God to use them wherever He has placed them. It does the Christian or a church no good, if their salt is stored in a warehouse or on a shelf, you must use it and make contact in order for it to have an effect.

Jesus did not say, everyone is the salt of the earth. Jesus said to His followers, “YOU are the salt of the earth.” As a Christian, you and you alone are the salt of the earth! To be salt, we do not have to be spectacular; to be salt, we do not have to be sensational; to be salt, we do not have to be successful (at least by the world’s standards); to be salt, we just have to affect our little corner of the world; To be a witness for Christ to those around us; to have that extra ingredient that sets us apart for God.

Let us pray:
Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!