"Please Pass The Salt"

"Please Pass The Salt"
Matthew 5:13


How many of you are trying to be on a low salt, or no salt, diet?  It’s a little hard for some of us.  I can tolerate, and probably enjoy, more salty foods than I do sweet foods.  Sugar, I can a little easier, stay away from.  Salt is another matter.

I understand that our taste buds only detect saltiness and sweetness.  All other “tasting” of flavors actually comes through our sense of smell.  So the flavors we are tasting, we are actually smelling.  Our brains get the smelling and the tasting mixed together so we can enjoy what we call flavor.

That’s one of the reasons for salting foods, either while food is being cooked or after it’s put on the table.  It enhances flavor.  It helps our taste buds catch the flavor better.  If you are on a low salt, or salt free diet, the main complaint is always, “Everything is so flavorless and bland.”  I’ve tried enhancing flavor with different spices instead of salt.  It helps for a while, and then I find myself reaching for the salt shaker again.

Another use for salt, that refrigerators and freezers have virtually eliminated, is for preservation for food.  Back in the good old days, and even in some countries today, salt was rubbed into meat and fish to keep it from rotting and decaying.  By drying meat with salt, it would still be edible for a long period of time.  Some foods are soaked in a salty brine water to keep them preserved as well.

One further use of salt, that we don’t hear about at all anymore, is its use in worship.  In the Jewish religion, and in other religions, salt was used in sacrifices and offerings to God.  It’s pure whiteness expressed a sense of holiness, and it would be sprinkled over the flame on the altar.  Or it would be sprinkled on an animal sacrifice on the altar of ancient religions as an expression and symbol of the holiness and purity of the offering.

Jesus said, “You are like salt for everyone on earth.”  I like how The Message Bible has this saying of Jesus:
Let me tell you why you are here.  You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.

I would like to think that Jesus, by making that statement, had the three uses of salt in mind:  purity; preservative; and, flavor enhancement.  Maybe Jesus only had one, or a couple of those meanings in mind.  I am going to, for our purposes this morning, assume Jesus intended all three of the uses of salt in his imagery.  What I’d like to do is develop how we can understand why we are here, as Christians--to be like salt for everyone on earth.

First, there is the use of salt as a symbol of purity.  Actress Carol Channing is best known for her role in the stage production of “Hello Dolly.”  She did over 1800 performances of that play.  She said she kept her performances fresh by imagining her father in the audience, even though he had been dead for 20 years.  To explain what she meant, she said, “It’s just the thought of his presence, of someone who knows and loves and understands me, and will not tolerate anything second-rate from me.”

That’s part of the quality of purity from saltiness that I think Jesus was talking about.  One of the things we do for each other, as Christians, is expect each other to be first-rate.  To bring that desire out of each other.  To not allow each other to slip in to second-rate beliefs or behaviors.  We, as salt, bring out the best from each other.  We are not allowing our faith and beliefs to sink to low levels.  We need other Christians around us, like Carol Channing needed the image of her father in the audience, who push us and motivate us to do and be our best in the name of Christ.

There is the story of a prophet who came to a town to preach to the people about their mediocrity.  Some people listened to his message.  Most turned away.  One afternoon a child came up to the man while he was preaching in the streets.  The child asked, “Why do you keep on shouting?  Don’t you see it’s hopeless?”
The prophet replied, “In the beginning I thought I could change people.  If I still shout, it is only to prevent the people from changing me.”

We cannot be salt, in terms of purity, for others if we are not keeping ourselves as pure as possible.  Even if we can’t affect others, then we can look after ourselves, and our individual purity.  If we are allowing ourselves to be smudged by flavorless mediocrity, then how can we hope to make an impact for purity, and for our Lord?

Sometimes we do fail.  Sometimes we become smudged and spotty.  Impure in some way.  Stained by our mistakes.  Everyone knows where our spots are.  Then, our task as salt takes on a different purpose--to restore purity.  As Christians, our actions toward those who have fallen in some way, who wish to be clean again, who wish to be forgiven, is to be salt shakers--to salt those people with the flavors of forgiveness.  Only then will they feel empowered to get back up and be salt themselves.

There was a rite in Jewish synagogues in Jesus’ time, that the one who repented of some sin had to perform.  Some later Christian churches picked up this practice as well.  If a person sinned, and repented, and wanted back into the fellowship, he/she had to lay down across the doorstep of the synagogue or church, and allow the people coming in to step on them as they entered.  Each time the repentant person was stepped on, they had to shout, “Trample upon me who am the salt which has lost its savor.”

How humiliating.  I don’t think it’s a practice Jesus would have allowed.  My idea would be to have a salt shaker on the communion table.  When someone is seeking repentance, they would come forward and have salt sprinkled on their head, and the words spoken, “You are forgiven and made pure, in the name of Christ.”  Then that person would be embraced in caring fellowship.  Forgiveness is the salt that creates purity in the church.

Remember Jesus said, “You are like salt for everyone...”  Thus, you, we together, create that character of purity.  We need each other to do that.  And one of the ways we do that is through forgiving each other--instilling a new state of purity for each other so all of us can go on.


Secondly, salt is used as preservative.  Salt kept the process of decay in check.  Thinking of that image, we ask ourselves, What is it that creates decay in my life?  What are the areas of my life that need to be salted, to be preserved, to keep the corruption in check?

I mentioned at Men’s Bible Study a couple of weeks ago about how we just get used to stuff.  We think, this is just the way things are, so we might as well get used to it.  But that’s not what Jesus wanted when he said we are the salt for all the people in the world.  Instead of just getting used to the rottenness in the world, or in our own lives, we need a saltiness that will preserve us against that decay.

After 17 months in office, President Harry Truman wrote a letter to his adult daughter.  Part of that letter said,

To be a good President I fear a man...can’t live the Sermon on the Mount.  He must be a Machiavelli, a Caesar, a Napoleon, a liar, double-crosser, and an unctuous religio, (oily, greasy religious person)  and a what-not to be successful.  So I probably won’t be, thanks be to God.  But I’m having a lot of fun trying the opposite approach.

One of the people Truman looked up to was Robert E. Lee.  Truman kept a copy of a letter that General Lee had written to his son.  Part of that letter said,

You must be frank with the world.  Frankness is the child of honesty and courage.  Just say what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted you mean to do right.  Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one.  Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.

Both excerpts from these letters are excellent advice.  It is advice that is salt, preserving a person from becoming corrupted by the world.  Like some fruit that rots from the inside out, decay is something that starts in the heart of a person.  It works its way from the inside out, not the other way around.

Honesty with oneself, telling the truth no matter what--even if it makes you look bad--is the salt that keeps decay of the heart in check.  The world teaches us that you get what you want by lying, or hiding in shades of the truth.  But the day we start that tactic is the day we start decaying.  Sprinkle yourselves with the salt of truth, and so preserve your lives.

And since Jesus said, “You are salt for everyone on earth,” that means that we have the responsibility to help others move towards being truth tellers.  We have a responsibility to preserve each other, and to keep decay away from our fellowship.


The last function of salt that I want to mention is that of flavor enhancement.  That’s what The Message Bible is emphasizing by saying that our purpose is to bring out all the God-flavors in life.  Jesus is saying we need to be people who add flavor to the world, not take it away.  All too often, Christians and Christianity, have become associated with the opposite:  kill joys, pale, humorless, and overly serious about everything.

There was one Roman Emperor, Julian, who had a big complaint about all the Christians in the empire.  He once said,

Have you looked at these Christians closely?  Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-chested 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 fulness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and suffer.

I would hope that’s not the way anyone would describe Christians today.  I’m so glad that none of you fit that description.

There was a woman who was nursing a bed of feeble flowers.  The flowers never seemed to reach their full blooming potential.  But there was one enormous weed that sprung up almost overnight in the back of her garden.  “Pull the thing out,” ranted the husband.
“No way,” protested the wife.  “I’m relying on that weed to set an example for the flowers.”

It’s too bad that Christians sometimes have to take lessons from some “weeds” about what it means to be joyful, fun-loving, and interesting people--people of flavor.

I’ve only been snow skiing once in my life.  I’ve sent a lot of youth groups happily on their way, having organized most of the ski trips myself, but never skiing.  One winter, when we lived in Colby, my kids talked me into it.  I really don’t like outdoor, winter sports; I’m afraid of heights; and I don’t like speed, especially falling down after going too fast.  So snow skiing seemed like a natural sport for me to avoid.

Well, I took the half day lesson, learning to do all the things I don’t like doing.  And being grumpy about it.  A couple who were taking lessons in our group were having similar “fun.”  The husband kept making his wife repeat something over and over, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

Later in the day, after I had made a couple of runs, snowplowing down the hill, my legs aching, I was trying a third run.  My daughter, Kristin, who was a natural, started skiing circles around me as I went down.  I had just fallen getting off the ski lift and all these people just kept coming, skiing over me; it was like a bad Lucy show routine.  I was feeling bad about the whole experience, and now my daughter was taunting me.  She said, “Go parallel, dad!”
I said, “What the heck does that mean?”
She said, “Just put your skis together and go straight down the hill.”

My thighs were burning from doing the snow plow down the side of the mountain, and I figured, if that was the quickest way down the hill, what the heck.  It was getting warmer, so I unzipped my coat, and went parallel.  I’m telling you, because I have such a high center of gravity, I was quickly out of control.  I had on a black parka, flying loosely behind me like a cape.  I had on a black stocking cap, and black goggles.  Black ski pants.  At 6’9” I looked like Darth Vader going parallel down the mountain.  People literally caught a glimpse of me coming out of the corner of their eye, and jumped out of the way.

(It just so happens I found a picture of a guy skiing in a Darth Vader outfit.  I was going to project it up on the screen, but I want you to get a mental picture of me, flailing down the mountain, trying to keep my balance, all 6’9” of me, going parallel.)

It just so happened I noticed I was coming up on the lady who was in my lesson group earlier in the day, who was being told to say something to herself by her husband.  And as I flew by, I heard her saying to herself, out loud, “I’m having fun; I’m having fun; I’m having fun.”  Oh, man, was I with her on that one.

Sometimes we Christians need to remind ourselves, “I’m having fun; I’m having fun.”  God gave us life to enjoy, not to grump through.  God wants us to notice the sun shinning, and the beauty of the world around us, even if it’s sub-zero cold and the wind is blowing 40 miles an hour.  God wants us to feel alive, and be joyful about being alive.  It is that enjoyment of life that is the salt that we need to shake over each other daily.  At least every Sunday, so that we are always flavor-full, and not flavor-less.  We live in a depressed world, people.  That world needs US to be the reminders of joy and flavor.



Jesus said, “You are like salt for everyone on earth.”  Don’t keep it in the shaker.  Shake some around.