Salt & Light

Salt and Light are both incredibly commonplace things. Salt is abundant, especially in the nearby Mediterranean and Dead Sea — salt is everywhere. So for these people to be called “salt” it is to say they are common, normal, earthy people.

Jesus has just laid out this picture of the Kingdom of God and what it would be like, culturally, ethically, personally. We have heard the blessed’s, the repetitive reminder that in God’s way, the poor and the hurting, the downtrodden and the oppressed — they are the ones who God calls blessed.

Think about this — these people Jesus calls blessed, are the remarkable? Are they the ones who have figured it out, the ones who have stored up enough goods and standing in the world to be secure? By no means! Jesus calls blessed the ones the world looks at and says, “poor thing.”

We keep this in mind as we head deeper into this Blessed Life that Jesus is sharing with his followers and inviting us into. What is the Kingdom of Heaven like, we ask? What does God’s liberation and freedom look like, here and now? Poor called blessed and inheriting God’s riches, broken people receiving healing that no doctor or drug can provide.

And so Jesus continues on, saying, “You are the salt of the earth.”

Salt

As I’ve mentioned, salt is so common. We have it on every dinner table. We use it in all kinds of foods to preserve them and enhance their flavor. Salt is common, standard, necessary, but not all that exciting.

So when Jesus looks out at his hearers and speaks to them, and to us, he says we are salt.

Now, do we like that description? So and so, you’re a real salty fella. We say that “anyone who is worth their salt” will get the job done — meaning that it’s the most basic expectation of who we are, nothing fancy, nothing unique.

But we like to be unique, don’t we? We want to be special. And of course we want God to call us special, not just plain salt.

We want to hear that we are Himalayan Pink Salt. Celtic Sea Salt. Black Lava Salt. Premium Authentic Truffle Salt.

And maybe we are…maybe we are all these fancy and varying flavors of salt. But down to the grain of it all, salt is a simple, earthy, common element. Sodium Chloride. Two chemical elements, bound together into one important, yet common substance. And Jesus calls his followers that.

But when we start to follow Jesus, when we start to model our lives after his teaching, aren’t we also tempted to think that it somehow separates us from the other, from the one who is not in the Kingdom of Heaven? This was and is still a problem that faces the Church. We want to follow Jesus and yet we are also tempted to believe that by following Jesus we are to extract ourselves from the world and be set apart.

But Jesus warns about this — he says if salt has lost its taste…it is no longer good for anything, but thrown out.

I looked up how salt loses its flavor. Typically, it comes from chemical impurities in the compound OR that the salt starts to interact with water or air and evaporates, breaking down and running off.

What is Jesus getting at here?

What if our following Jesus leads us to separate out and begin to focus on flying away to somewhere else, away from the realities of the world, instead of staying and bringing flavor and life to them? Can you think of times when people have started to get religion and ultimately, it leads them to disengage with life and focus only on getting into heaven and the beyond? “So heavenly minded you’re no earthly good”?

Friends, we are to remain salty. And by that, it means we are meant to stay in it, be that preserving and sustaining flavor to and in the world.

If we stay at the table, we can be the ones who say, of course, when someone asks for the salt. We are the salt of the earth — we can be the flavor bringers, the preservers of all that is sustaining and good, the added spice that brings the whole meal of life together.

When we feel pulled to detach ourselves from the world, we must remember that we are called to be salt.

Are you salty? By that, I mean, are you engaged in the world and adding life to it? Are you someone that people know they can count on to bring flavor and life? Or have you lost your saltiness, content in your own way?

Can some please pass the salt?

May we be salt.

And this, then, brings us to light.

Light

Light, we might also recognize, is so incredibly common, ubiquitous. Everything we see is seen in reference to light. I mean that we could not experience reality without light. Everything that we see is light bouncing off of our eye’s retina and being translated by our brains into forms and meaning.

This week, we had a chance to take a little family vacation to Disneyland. We were excited to go on the Space Mountain ride, one of our favorites. If you haven’t been on it, it’s basically a rollercoaster ride in the dark. The whole room you’re in is pitch black, you can’t see the track or the direction of the coaster. And that is pretty intense and scary! But what makes it fun is the light! There are flashing lights everywhere, making visual space scapes everywhere you look. I think it was on the 3rd time on the ride this week that I noticed a simple disco ball placed in the center of the room which was sending out all kinds of rays of light into the dark space. A simple play of light opened up that whole ride to a new kind of experience. Light shines on it and changes the deep dark of space into a magnificent show of color and sharp rays.

Jesus says we are the light of the world. A quick reminder here: he doesn’t say “You must be the light or salt.” Or “if you get this all figured out, you will be the salt and the light.” No, he says you ARE the salt of the earth and you ARE the light of the world.”

As we follow Jesus and adopt this culture and way that he teaches, what are we to do?

I’m fascinated by light. For being a humanities person, studying history, theology, and ministry all my academic career, I have to admit that I really also love Physics. Specifically, Quantum Physics and all its theory about light.

Jesus says you are the light of the world. Well, light is common, we know that. And light, as much as we think it might just be a singular beam from point to point, is so much more than this. Physicists wrestle with this observable reality: Light acts like both waves, moving through space in a continuous band; and light acts like particles, somehow jumping from space to space. Light is unruly, and yet predictable. Light is observable, but how it is observed and what instruments we use greatly impacts how that light manifests itself.

Let’s talk about quantum physics after church, ok? :)

For now, I want to return to the disco ball in the Space Mountain ride and, more specifically, to the idea of how light interacts with a prism. I’m sure we all have seen a little clear prism, hanging in a window, and how light passes through it.

We think that a ray of light should maintain its direct course from point to point, like a flashlight beam. But what we know happens is that light hits a prism and refracts, going in many different directions. Sometimes, it’s just a couple, but in other cases, like in a prism that is turning (much like a disco ball) the light shoots out in all kinds of directions. And sometimes it even changes color!

Again, not to get to far into this and into territory where I really don’t know what I’m talking about…but what we hear from Jesus is that we are the light of the world! We are the ones who light up the world and stand upon a hill and send light out for all to see.

Space Mountain is scary when its pitch black. But it is brilliant and so fun when the light shines and refracts and fills the vacuum.

Jesus’ teaching here is not all that complicated. Let the light that is in you shine.

Friends, the world needs light. Can we agree? The world needs good light to shine out and brighten up the darkness we so often feel and see around us.

In the same way that salt must not lose its saltiness, light has to keep shining. Hide it under a bushel, NO! I’m gonna let it shine!

So what does it look like to let our light shine?

Well, here is a remarkable opportunity to explore and champion the ways the light of Christ refracts through us and into the world in so many ways.

I’ll jump to the teaching I think we need from this: Each of us is meant to be a beacon of light and hope in a world that so desparately needs it. Christ’s way, Jesus’ loving Kingdom, refracts through us, if we will open ourselves to it. And it refracts in how we go into our daily lives and live out that love. Are we people that others look to as a beacon of hope? Is there light in us that we let others see when they need to have their path lit up?

Or do we hide it? I’ve sadly known many folks who claim to follow Jesus’ way who also seem to want to throw a wet blanket or a basket over the light of others. We see this when we try to stamp out someone’s expression of their light because it doesn’t look like what we expect it to.

Once again, I’ll use an example from my Doctoral course this term — many Christians have tried to stamp out the light of other faithful followers of Jesus through the years: specifically women, queer folk, people of color, the disabled, the unhoused. Because their light does not look like Rich White Happy Jesus’ light, they tell us it falls outside of God’s family.

This is a lie and it is what Jesus is talking about when he warns against hiding the light.

Sadly, we don’t just do this TO others, but we do it to ourselves. We think that the way Jesus’ light is to be expressed in us doesn’t line up with what the powerful or the elite it should be, so we hide it.

Friends, again, the teaching is simple: We need your light. Hear this: You have the light of Christ in you. Christ shines through you. Please, please, please, let us see it. And please, please, please, call this light out in those around you. We all need to see the light of Christ as it refracts through you.

How are we doing? Are you going to go be salty and light up the world? I hope so.

Let’s close with the second part of Jesus’ teaching for this morning.

All of these teachings, these blessed’s, this salt and light business, all of it is a fulfillment of what God is doing in God’s people through all history.

So what is this about the law being abolished or fulfilled?

The Law of God is all designed and built upon an idea that God wants humanity to flourish and be the fullness of who they are meant to be. We fulfill the law (and Jesus fulfills the law) when we live from this Image that God has placed in us, this salt and light.

We break this law and these commandments when we deny this light and this salt, both in ourselves and in others.

If I could distill down the whole teaching of the Gospel of Jesus into a simple phrase, something that would both affirm the law and help us see it here and now, it would be what my friend Scott Erickson says: “Call out the light.”

That’s it, friends: Call out the light. Do it for each other. And do it, in community, for yourself.

This is righteous living. This is fulfilling the law and the prophets.

What is the light you so uniquely have to share for us? Why are you hiding it? Why are you trying to get others to step away and lose their flavor?

Call out the light.

Be salt. Be light. And be blessed in the good way of Jesus as you do so. Amen and Amen.