Restoring Salt and Light

Today we hear the continuing passages from Matthew after the Beatitudes.  If you read a red letter bible that highlights the words of Jesus, you’ll see chapters 5, 6 and 7 are the Sermon on the Mount.  They are the longest block of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels.  They are addressed to the disciples and the crowd and they focus on how to live a righteous life. 

Today’s lectionary choice continues from chapter 5, verse 13 through verse 20, where Jesus declares he’s here to fulfill the Law (unlike the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees).  Unless his listeners go above and beyond that behavior, they will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  The rest of his sermon gives instruction for living together with God and with others and  for travelling the difficult road and entering through the narrow gate to find life (Matt 7:13-14).

I want to know a loving, merciful God.  But I’m still reacting like my rebellious adolescent self who walked away from church.  What I hear, in “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” is not inspiration and affirmation, but exhortation and warning.  “Let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”  “If salt has lost its taste…It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out..”  

It’s hard for me to imagine salt losing its taste.  It has a long stable shelf life, thanks to anticlumping agents.  All you need to do is avoid excess humidity.  That was harder in Jesus’ time. 

There were salt industries along the northern Mediterranean Sea in Galilee not far from Nazareth and around the Dead Sea.  Evaporated sea salt was the purest and most flavorful.  It was harvested only during the hot dry season.  Other forms came from quarries and mines, and were combined with other minerals in solid form.  Jesus’ listeners would recognize salt for flavoring and preserving food, for religious offerings and a “Salt Covenant” of loyalty and permanence.  Salt could be used in trade or as currency, as fertilizer or to make the enemy's land barren.     

Referring to people as ‘salt of the earth’ appears only in this passage in the bible.  We don’t know if it was in common usage, though salt is mentioned several times in the bible.  In general use today these folk are considered helpful,  reliable, honest, good natured, hard working, down-to-earth, humble.  I imagine we’d all like to aspire to that.  But we are complicated, life is complicated.  Our everyday awareness of salt is simplistic and needs expansion.  I find science can help with that.  Asking simple questions can enlighten us from biology, chemistry, geology, archeology, wikipedia, AI.  

Moving on in today’s reading, Jesus calls his listeners “the light of the world.”  In chapter 6, verse 22, he tells us “The eye is the lamp of the body.  If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.”  Often our vision of our own worth and purpose is limited.  Though for some people it may be exaggerated.  Both are distortions of our true nature.  Our scope of ourselves and humanity and even other-than-human nature can grow rigid and dull and dim over time.  If there’s no restoring us, how much use can we be?  If lucky, we look to wisdom voices and models within and beyond our own traditions to light our way.  For me these glimmers often come unexpectedly.   

I was cleaning my emails when I came on Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation Summary for the week ending Jan 3rd.  I’d lost sight that all through 2025, the entries were about “Being Salt and Light.”  I especially liked Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s message on 12-30-25 about what we need to remember.   

She says people are forgetful and need reminders of what feeds the soul and illuminates the divine, loving self within.  In this passage about salt and light, she thinks of salt coming from the ocean by the action of light.  She reminds us we share a stable, divine center found through deep listening, which dissolves empathy into transformative compassion.  She reminds us salt disinfects wounds, and as we accept our own and others’ imperfections and goodness, we enhance the community of cherished belonging.  Small, kind acts are never small.

   

Salt melts ice, clearing passages.  May we remember our kind, divine parent, melting our ice of perfectionism, our illusion of separation and our anxiety.  She sees salt and light fulfill their nature by giving away and losing themselves.  Likewise, we are most ourselves when giving ourselves away.  She reminds us to remember we are all God’s children, and that Howard Thurman said ‘Whoever knows this is able to transcend life’s hardships and look out on the world with quiet eyes.’

  

Jesus modeled this for us, spending time in daily quiet presence with his kind, divine parent so that he could be salt and light in a hurting world.  The more often we do this, the more we remember Whose we are, and the more our salt and light can be restored and shared.  So my intention is to follow this practice.  I’m glad I wrestled with this passage.  I expect I’ll still be a wrestler for the rest of this good imperfect life.     

Thank you for listening and keeping me company.