Sermon Tone Analysis

Summer is coming.

That means lots of picnics which means grilled animal flesh and potato salad.

And if you are going to eat grilled animal flesh and potato salad, you had better not forget the salt.

We know what happens on a picnic if you forget the salt and Jesus tells us what happens when the world doesn’t have its salt.

1.

You are the salt of the earth.

(Barclay mentioned three qualities of salt in the NT world.)

a. Purity

i.

The Romans said salt was the purest of all things because it came from the purest of all things: the sun and the sea.

ii.

Salt was one of the earliest sacrifices to the pagan gods.

iii.

Even in Judaism, salt was offered with the sacrifices.

v.

This is more than an untainted morality; it is an untainted spirituality (Christian Christianity).

b.

Preservative

i.

In a pre-refrigeration world, salt kept meat from rotting and fit to eat.

ii.

Those who grew up in the day of smokehouses and salt-curing understand this use of salt.

iii.

Christians with an untainted spirituality are the ONLY way to keep moral and spiritual pollution at bay.

c.

Flavor

i. Anyone who has ever been on a salt-free diet knows how important this attribute of salt is.

ii.

See the relationship between flavor and how people see Christianity.

(Barclay, 1169-117)

1. “Have you looked at these Christians closely?

Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition: the sun shines for them, but they do not see it: the earth offers them its fullness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die.” (Julian on why he wanted to undo Constantine’s making Christianity the religion of the Empire)

2. “Thou hast conquered, O pale Galileean; the world has grown gray from thy breath.”

(Swinburne)

3. “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I know had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”

(Oliver Wendell Holmes)

4. “I have been to Church to-day, and am not depressed.”

(Robert Louis Stevenson)

iv.

Flavored churches need to flavor the world.

2. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?

It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

a. Salt does not typically lose its saltiness, but Jesus could have had a couple of things in mind.

i.

In some ancient ovens, a layer of salt was placed under the cooking service to help hold the heat.

Every so often, the salt was replaced and the old thrown into the street since it had no more value as salt.

ii.

Most of Jesus’ hearers had tasted Dead Sea salt which was often mixed with other minerals which robbed it of its saltiness, its flavor.

b.

A Christian who abandons purity, refuses to be a preservative, and loses its flavor might be saved, but is useless saved.

Our world is in desperate need of a good salting.

Are we ready for the task?