Matthew 5 13-20

Pentecost 16

Luke 14: 25-35

September 19, 2004

“Poured Out Like Salt”

Intro.  “You are the Salt of the earth."  These words of Christ directly follow the Beatitudes that we meditated on last week.  Jesus gives us a figurative name for the people that he has blessed – Salt.  Why would he call us salt?  Most of us know what the common uses of salt are.  It is apart of our daily lives.  We use it on our food to make it taste better.  Without it our bodies will die.  It is also used to preserve foods like bacon.  In the past it has been used as an antiseptic to cleanse wounds from infection.  In some northern states it is used to melt ice off of frozen roads, thereby saving the lives of people driving on them.  These are some of its common uses.  How do these things relate to us as the living breathing people of God?  More than this, how does our saltiness affects the world in which we live?

I.       The Nature of Salt

                   I.Created by God, not chosen by man.

Salt does not choose to be salt.  It is created by God, and He created it with a purpose.  So too, you were created and chosen by God.  You are not your own creation and you did not choose Him.  You were not created by Him on a whimsy.  You are Christians by nature of God’s in-dwelling Spirit.  He created you and has given you faith in His Son Jesus Christ for a wonderful purpose.  The tastelessness of your sinful flesh has been washed away in Baptism.  He has made you into the salt of the earth, God’s salt.

 II.       The Purposes of Salt

A.    Salt as a Preservative.

As Salt has a purpose and many uses God is using you for His purpose.  Just as salt has the ability to preserve, you serve God as His preservative on earth.  It is for your sake that God does not pour out his wrath on the wicked people of the earth.  Your existence sustains life on this planet.  Remember Sodom and Gomorrah?  God told Abraham that he was going to destroy them because of the evil that they were doing.  Abraham interceded for the cities asking God if He would destroy the righteous with the wicked.  Then Abraham asked God if righteous people lived there would he hold back their destruction.  God said that he would.  In the end God sent his angels to see how wicked the cities were.  Only Lot, Abraham’s brother-in-law, and his family were found to be righteous by faith, believing in the Lord.  The men of the town came against the angels and Lot.  Then the angels took them out of the city and God destroyed it with fire.  Sodom and Gomorrah were left without the preserving power of God through the presence of His faithful people.  If the Church of God was not present on this earth God’s wrath would be poured out.  Because of His great love and His mercy He waits and calls out to the people of the world, that through His Church and the message of the Gospel, they might be saved. 

B.     Salt’s Healing and Cleansing power.

Just as salt has the ability to cleanse and heal, through you, God cleanses and heals the people of this world.  The prophet Elisha was approached by the men of the city of Jericho.  They were concerned because though it was a great place to live its water was putrid and not good for drinking.  They wanted Elisha’s help.  He told them to bring a new container with salt in it.  He threw salt into the waters and by the power of God the waters were healed and became good to drink.  God has made you into new vessels containing salt and he throws you into the world so that it may be healed also.  He does this through your witness.  Your lives point to the only source of healing and life – the cross of Jesus Christ.  It is written, “Through his stripes we are healed.”  Through Him alone healing comes to the world.  This healing comes through his suffering and death, and His satisfaction of God’s wrath at the cross.  His healing is poured out in the forgiveness of sins offered to all people.  Not only are we healed, we are cleansed, made perfect.  This is punctuated in his resurrection.  Because he rose, we too will rise from the dead with perfect bodies.  You are members of the body of Christ and are his reflection.  The people of the world can only see Christ through you, his salt, as you are poured out into the world with the good news of the Gospel.

III.      Tasteless Salt

A.    Dilution.

Christ warns his disciples about loosing their saltiness, becoming tasteless salt.  How can this happen?  One way is dilution.  Some Christians will fall away and become part of the world again.  They become more and more consumed with themselves and not with God.  They chase after what the world can give them.  They reject what God has given and replaced it with what they can give themselves.  They fall into living sinful lifestyles as they do what their friends think is cool but not what is right in the eyes of God.  As they do they loose their saltiness and the purpose that God had planned for them.  They loose their usefulness.

B.     Lack of Use.

Another way that salt looses its purpose is through lack of use.  What good is salt that stays in its container?  If it is not poured out how can it be used to preserve, heal or season.  If we Christians don’t witness to Christ through our words and actions, God cannot use us as His salt in the world.

III.       The Price of Salt- and the Cost of Discipleship.

         Before Jesus compares His disciple to salt He talks to them about counting the cost of being His disciples.  His words are hard for us to hear and even harder to apply to our lives.  Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sister, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Who ever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  He goes on to say, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.  In other words we most love Him above everything else and we must be cross bearers in this world.  We must count everything we own as nothing.  Who is able to do such things, certainly not you or I, on our own.  By nature we are self centered, we avoid pain and we appreciate the things in our lives more than we appreciate God himself.  Yet Jesus not only calls us to be His disciples He calls us His friends.  While we cannot pay the cost, He has paid it for us, walking faithfully in our place and bearing our cross.  As we confess our inability and unworthiness to God we are forgiven for the sake of Jesus.  Jesus Christ has sent us His Spirit through which we begin to do what is humanly impossible…to love Jesus more than ourselves, to bear our crosses as His witnesses in the world and to count our very lives as nothing compared to what we have in our Savior Jesus.  Through Him we are made into His disciples, His salt in the world.     

IV.             How’s Your Salt?

            What about us?  Is there any evidence of saltiness among us? How does God use us and how might He use us in the future?  You are salt to each other in your homes. You are salt at school and at work as you bear witnesses to Christ by your actions and words.  You are salt when you come here to worship God and receive His gifts of word and sacrament.  You are salt to your pastor as I witness your faith as a congregation and as individual members of Christ’s Church.  You are salt as you reach out in mission, even as you are sending Linda and me to Thailand to proclaim the Gospel there.  We are God’s salt as we are rallying together behind our school and our children today so they too can be poured out like salt into the world with the good news of Jesus Christ.  God has called us to be his salt.  This church is like a giant salt shaker and the front door is its opening from which we are poured.  May God use you for His purpose and to the Glory of Jesus Christ.              

                                                                        Amen.