Sermon:  “Precious Salt, Bright Light”

“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus says.  And we think of that as a good thing, right? When people say someone is “the salt of the earth,” they mean it as a compliment, you know, for an honest and humble person – a good person, a righteous man, in the best sense of the word.  But do we really value “the salt of the earth” as much as we should?  I think it sometimes sounds kind of patronizing to describe people as “the salt of the earth” – as if we’re saying they’re nice enough, but we don’t expect much of them, and we sure don’t want to BE them.  Salt is too common.  We don’t value it very highly.  Americans use 85 million tons of salt a year.  An average box of cooking salt costs less than a dollar, only about 50 cents per pound.  Road salt is even cheaper, less than a penny a pound. 

But in the ancient world, salt was very precious.  People really depended on salt to survive – because it was needed to preserve food in a hot climate, for dried meat and fish.  But it was also used to clean wounds and wash newborn babies. With no refrigeration or antibiotics, salt was so valuable that Roman soldiers were often paid in salt.  The Latin salarium is where we get our modern word “salary.”  And today, when you stop to think about it, salt is still essential to life – it’s a building block of the human body.  Salt still is used in medicine, even if some people with high blood pressure have to give it up.  Doctors still irrigate wounds with a sterile saline solution – they hydrate patients with a saltwater IV.  Some recipes taste awful if you forget that one little pinch of salt.  This is the kind of useful salt, precious salt, that Jesus wants us to be – he wants us to share a bit of our best selves wherever we go, to bless and heal the world.

And really, that’s what the prophet Isaiah was also calling us to do.  He sounds like he could be Jesus, or a preacher today: He says God wants us to “loose the bonds of injustice…to let the oppressed go free…to share [our] bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor” into our homes and clothe the naked.  The problem is, we know what it is to be a good person – it’s just we usually think it’s a job best done by someone else.

In his book, Preaching the Parables, John Brokhoff tells this great story about a church school play where a little girl is supposed to get up and say, "I am the light of the world."  But when the time comes for her to stand in front of the whole church and say it, she freezes up – like a deer in the headlights.  But as you might expect, her adoring mother is there watching on the front row.  So she gives her best stage whisper to her daughter, "I am the light of the world." Not loud enough.  So she tries again: "I am the light of the world." Still no response.  So then, in a whisper loud enough for practically everyone to hear, her mom says again, "I am the light of the world!"  So then the little girl finally wakes up, and she shouts, "Oh yeah!  My mommy is the light of the world!"

It’s much easier to imagine some other person – some greater, more saintly person – being that precious salt, that bright light that Jesus tells his disciples to be.  But no, Jesus doesn’t let us off so easily.  He says.  “YOU are the salt of the earth!  YOU are the light of the world!”  The Good News is we’re just called to be a little light shining on a lamp stand somewhere, a little pinch of salt – we’re not called to shine with all the glory of the sun; we’re not called to be ALL the salt in the world.  We’re just called to do our share.  As disciples, we are just called to do what we can whenever and wherever we can. 

All this week, I have been collecting stories about how you take the salt and light of Christ out of this meetinghouse with you during the week and share it with the world.  I wanted to find your ordinary, everyday examples of Christianity – so that we can better appreciate the value of common, table salt Christianity.  The first step, I think, in our Stewardship Campaign, is to imagine how bland, and unhealthy, the world would be without the faith that we have to share with the world.  If we did that, I expect many of us might place a higher dollar value on what we receive here and what the church has to offer.  And here’s a few examples, starting with some that are maybe the most obvious.

People in the so-called “caring professions” – nurses and teachers, even ministers – we are expected to help people – we clearly are called to enlighten people with wisdom, bind up people’s wounds, wipe away their tears.  How many of you are teachers?  There are a lot of you – Church School teachers count too! How many of you are in health care?  We have nurses, physical therapists, EMTs.  Diane Morrison was my nurse at Danbury Hospital.  Sherrie Ruschmeyer is a doula.  You offer the world healing salt every day.

I loved getting to hear from one of our nurses, Anita Volpe, about her Ph.D. project.  Her study showed how just keeping patients warm before surgery actually improves their recovery.  So simple, right?  A small thing that makes a big difference.  Like a dash of salt.  Another nurse I see walking the halls of Bethel Healthcare when I go to visit is Cindy Field – and the joy she shares with the patients there is like a bright light she takes with her everywhere she goes.  She doesn’t mind telling people at work how much she loves her church either – and many of them have come here because of it.  Her husband Dom works there too, in the maintenance department, and he literally brings the light to the world as he changes light bulbs in the place.  He was out for a while recently, while he was in chemotherapy, and when he came back to work – with everyone else in maintenance outside shoveling snow all day every day – he said there were 29 rooms with light bulbs out.  But he says he always tries to speak and be friendly with patients when he goes in to change a bulb, even if they’re complaining, because he knows they’re sick and just need someone to be kind, to give them a little hope.  He brings the light of his faith to work.

But sometimes I think it’s tough to go out and do battle on the front lines of Caesar’s world.  In some settings, like in the average high school or business place or the world of the disciples under Roman occupation, practicing Christianity gets to be very hard, and unpopular.  A lot has been said lately about bullying in the schools – but it’s no small thing.  I’m so proud of youth who learn here at church how to bring the light of their faith to school.  Sometimes just one kind word has the power to save a life – like offering a salt pill to a heat stroke victim.  But speaking that word often takes courage.

Many of you in the business world have long been suffering in the climate of fear that pervades in this economy, with all the outsourcing and downsizing.  Some people feel as if their human lives and jobs were simply commodities to be bought and traded on the world market.  How can you be salt in an environment where people live in fear losing a job (and maybe health insurance or a home)? Under those conditions, how would anyone dare to speak up against something they know is unfair or dishonest in the work place?

 It may not be entirely obvious how to do it, or whether your small grain of salt makes any difference.  It’s for you, though, that Jesus offers this parable.  This week’s reading comes right after last week’s lesson, the Beatitudes.  It goes together:  ¹¹“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely …. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. ¹³“You are the salt of the earth…”

We have to keep believing that what we do does matter.  Christians make a huge difference just by modeling ethical conduct in the world.  How refreshing it is to find an honest person, right?  The one Diogenes was searching for?  But I meet people like that every day in church – people who care about more than just making money, who wouldn’t dream of trying to cheat anyone.  You know that whatever you do, you can do it with kindness. You can show Christian compassion for a neighbor or co-worker – lend them a hand, or share a listening ear.  One of our Deacons, Walt Fisher, says that when he worked in the corporate world, he was known as “the Deacon of the office,” because people knew he could be counted on to care.  Jesus says all those little things we do matter.  They become the small grains of salt that might not mean a lot on their own, but together over time, or with the efforts of others, can add up to something very powerful. 

I want to close with the words of one of the great abolitionists of the 19^th century, Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe (who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin).  He preached on today’s text, this call from Jesus for us to be salt and light, at Plymouth Congregational Church in New York City in 1861, and I think what he said is as true now as it was back then.  He says,  “And now, ye …Christians that seem to have but a small sphere, remember that every single …vital and God-inspired Christian experience that is wrought out in you, no matter when or where, becomes a part of the riches of God in the world. …  Do not think that you must be in some public position. Fulfill in secret the will of Christ Jesus. … Let the spirit of Christ dwell in you richly in all things; and thus you will be preachers of Christ, and faithful witnesses.”

Thanks be to God for every opportunity we have to share the Good News – sometimes even with words.  Amen.

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Isaiah 58:1-9a

58Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. ²Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

³“Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. ⁴Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. ⁵Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? ⁶Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

⁸Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. ⁹Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

Matthew 5:13-20

¹³“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. ¹⁴“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

¹⁷“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.