Salt and light — for the world

A pavlova gone wrong

I've been thinking a bit about salt lately. I'll get to why in a moment, but salt is really important. It's something we take for granted. It's just always there.

When I get the first tickle of a sore throat, I grab for the salt container. A couple of teaspoons of salt in a warm glass of water, gargle a few times, and it seems to get rid of it. Salt cleanses. You use it when you've got a wound. Hospitals are full of it — saline solution, 0.9% salt in water. The body needs it. It's used in IV drips, to rehydrate people, all sorts of things. It's a valuable resource. It's still used in preservation. I've made sauerkraut using salt, rubbing it into cabbage, adding some spices, leaving it to ferment. It draws the water out and creates a really nice food.

I learned the importance of balancing salt when I was a kid. I liked cooking, particularly cakes, and one of the things I made was pavlova. You separate the egg whites and yolks, whip up the whites, add sugar and vanilla and a pinch of salt. Whip it all up and bake it. One day I was making a pavlova and we'd run out of caster sugar. So I called out to Mum, who was busy doing something. She said, "Just use ordinary sugar. It's fine. It's in the cupboard." So I reached into the cupboard, grabbed what I thought was sugar, put in a cup or so, whipped it all up, added a pinch of salt from the container on the table.

Then I tasted it before I put it in the oven. It was horrible. Bitter and horrible. Because I'd used salt instead of sugar. I'd reached for the wrong container. It looked the same to my young eyes.

Too much salt ruins. Just enough salt enhances the flavour.

Tasting for salt

I read a story about a woman with an Indian background whose mother, when she was a child, taught her how to cook curry. The most important lesson, she said, was learning to taste the salt. If all the other ingredients were in there in the right proportions, that was great. But too little salt and it would remain bland. Too much salt and it would become bitter and horrible. The right amount of salt balanced everything, brought out the right flavours. She learned to taste for salt.

Up until maybe a hundred years ago, salt was a vital commodity. People traded in it. It was precious, even priceless in some parts of the world. It was used for medicinal purposes — cleaning wounds, treating skin diseases, stopping bleeding. It was used to preserve food before refrigeration. Still is.

Roman soldiers were often paid in salt. That's where we get the word salary. Romans salted their vegetables. We get the word salad. Salt was really important.

You are the salt of the earth

In this week's reading from Matthew, Jesus continues what we call the Sermon on the Mount. And there's this group of diverse, strange, ordinary, common people. The people he's just described as blessed. People who are poor in spirit. People who are mourning — their own lives, the life of the world. People who are meek and humble, bowed down by life. People who are pure in heart. People who are merciful. People who are making peace. People who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And those who are persecuted for living this way.

He blesses them and says, "You are the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13, NIV).

That often runs past me. But what he's saying is: you are valuable. You are vital. You are precious. Salt in his world was precious. You are precious.

But if the salt loses its saltiness, it's useless. It gets trampled underfoot. Salt must be used, dispersed. It goes into food to enhance flavour.

And it's interesting — too much salt will be noticed. Too little salt will be noticed. But just the right amount of salt? We don't notice it at all. It enhances the flavour. It's a healing thing. Too much salt in saline will draw out the water and hurt. Too little will be ineffective. But the right amount cleanses.

He's saying: you are the salt of the earth. When you live in these ways I've just described as blessed — being poor in spirit, recognising your need of grace, mourning the pain of life, hungering and thirsting for justice, making peace, being merciful, being pure in heart — when you're like this, you're enhancing the life of the world. Because these qualities reach out to other people. It's about relationships. It's about being together. It's about holding one another. It's about enhancing and healing life and the world. And God is in the midst.

You are the light of the world

He goes on to say, "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14, NIV).

Light is something we take for granted too, because in a world of electricity there's light twenty-four hours a day. In the cities there's ambient light the whole time — street lights, lights in homes, lights in buildings. Light everywhere, all the time.

But if you go onto a country road at night, you soon realise your need for headlights and high beam. Because you can't see your way on a dark night.

Light shows us the way. It reveals what's there in the world. It lights things up so we can see. Too much light and we cringe back. It blinds us. Too little light and it's too dim. We can't see what's there. We stumble and fall. We don't know where we're going.

Jesus says, "You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl" (Matthew 5:14-15, NIV). You don't put a light on in the house and cover it over. You let it shine for all to see. A light on the hill is a beacon, a guide. It shows the way.

You are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world. You're precious. You enhance life. You bring healing. And you reveal the way — his way, the way of God in the world.

What Isaiah says too

In another reading this week from Isaiah, the prophet talks about being light, the light coming. And to live as light is to live justly, with justice and mercy and kindness and love. To act for peace and hope. To reach out to those who are hungry and give them food. To give those who have nowhere to stay — the homeless, the refugee, the stranger in the land — somewhere to live, to rest.

"If you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday" (Isaiah 58:10, NIV).

Those who are sick — bring healing. Hold them. Those who are distressed and sad and mourning — bring comfort. This is what the Beatitudes say. This is what Isaiah says. And Jesus is inviting us to be the salt and the light.

You are

Here's the thing that stops me every time. He doesn't say you should be salt. He doesn't say you could be salt. He doesn't say you will be salt, or you would be salt if only you tried harder. He says you are.

You are precious. You are loved. And when you live with that love, that kindness, that mercy, that justice in the world, the world becomes a better place. It becomes what it can be. Communities grow. People relate together. Everyone has enough and shares and is generous. And the earth itself is cared for. This is the vision of God that we're hearing and reading about, and we're invited into it.

People who have been salt and light

There are people in my life who have been light and salt to me, who have led and shown the way. One is Vladimir, a friend and colleague who just died this week. He showed me the way in so many different ways. He helped me to understand something of myself, something of faith and following Jesus. What it meant to reach out and care for people. He saw the poor and the outcasts and those on the edges, and he reached out to them and brought them in. He saw them and cared for them and loved them.

Vladimir, and so many others, have helped me to see the way. They have enhanced my life.

This is what we're invited to be and do. Salt and light. And when we are, God is with us, and the world is a better place.

A question to sit with

Who has been salt and light in your life? Whose quiet, steady presence has enhanced the flavour of your days, or shown you the way when things were dark?

And where might you already be that for someone else — not because you're trying to be, but because you are?