You Are Already Salt and Light

Jesus sees the crowd and sits down to teach – this is what it means to follow me. The life of discipleship isn’t an easy walk, and it’s not one to set out on alone. In fact, he begins with a list of circumstances that help us see life from God’s perspectives – being poor in spirit, mourning, obeying God’s Will, peacemaking, being persecuted for righteousness – switchbacks in life that are so hard to climb we must climb them together, but that lead us to a view of life from the perspective of eternity. Those who make the climb know a fellowship with God that gives them an inner joy that isn’t strained by the strains of life. They have experienced God’s covenantal promise that “I shall be their God, and they shall be my people.”

“Ya’ll are the salt of the earth,” says Jesus, “Ya’ll are the light of the world.”

Remember that Matthew is writing to Christians with a Jewish heritage, and he is trying to connect the dots for them between the prophecies about a Messiah and the life and teaching of Jesus. In the Old Testament, salt is used in offering sacrifices and in making covenants because salt is used to preserve and covenants are to be perpetual. In Leviticus, the instructions for making grain offerings include that every offering must be seasoned with salt, and that the “salt of the covenant of your God” should not be lacking. Numbers mentions salt of the covenant as Aaron and the Levite priests are given their roles in the Temple. And in 2 Chronicles, God’s covenant with the Davidic kings of Israel is described as a covenant of salt. They would have heard Jesus’ words and remembered their hope for God to raise up a new King of the line of David. That everlasting covenant with King David is still unbroken on God’s side, Jesus is saying. Now, you are the salt. You are the preservers of the covenant.

Salt also has healing properties, and in 2 Kings, Elisha was in Jericho and the spring that provided water for the town was bad – Elisha took a bowl of salt and poured on it and declared it healed, never again to cause death or destroy crops.

Salt preserves. Salt heals. Salt also symbolizes judgment in the Old Testament. Lot’s wife looked back instead of forward where God was leading and turned into a pillar of salt. As Moses prepared the Israelites to move out of their wilderness wandering and into the Promised Land, he warned them, if you think you can ignore the covenant of the 10 Commandments, saying to yourself “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” you will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. The Lord’s wrath and zeal will burn. Your children who follow you in later generations and foreigners who come from distant lands will see the calamities that have fallen on the land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it. The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it.”

The psalmist laments, “God turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there.”

Salt preserves, salt heals, and salt keeps things that cause decay from growing.

Just as the prophets were persecuted when they stood up for what was right and when they spoke God’s judgement, you will be too, says Jesus. “Rejoice and be glad and don’t try to hide who you are.”

You are salt. Does anyone here know what salt tastes like? Has anyone here ever had salt that didn’t have the flavor of salt. No. Salt doesn’t lose its flavor. You already are light. Does anyone here know what light looks like? Has anyone here ever seen light that didn’t have the property of illumination?

What did Jesus mean, then? Why did he say that if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? That it is no longer good for anything? Perhaps that is the point. Salt cannot lose its taste. In the face of persecution, Jesus is saying, don’t lose who you are. You are people of the salt of the covenant. Don’t lose that.

What does light symbolize in the Old Testament? In the beginning, there was no light. God called the light into being. The Israelites in the wilderness, Job, the psalms sing of the light of God’s face and walking by God’s light through darkness in a way that light is a metaphor for God’s presence. Then, the Prophet Isaiah speaks hope: The people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. Arise, shine, for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. I will make My justice rest as a light of the peoples. I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light.

So, in the Old Testament, God creates light, God guides by light, God promises a great light, and God calls us to be a light. Do you hear what the crowd would have heard as Jesus told them that they are light? Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, and ya’ll are God’s light in the darkness of this world.

Why, though, would Jesus choose these symbols together? Salt and light don’t seem to have a lot in common. They both spread – salt distributes throughout whatever you are cooking and light distributes throughout a space. When they lit a lamp, like this one, they didn’t put it under a bowl. They set it on its stand, a little arched niche in the wall of the cave so that it would refract the light and that way the whole house had light.

They have something else in common. If you put food and put it in a damp, dark place, what do you expect will grow? But if you put it in the sunlight? Or you cover it in salt? We are mold and decay prevention in the world. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God…. Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”

Instead, in the words of Jesus, “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
For you are salt of the covenant. You belong to God. And you are light. You shine God’s light in the world. You are bearers of God’s promise and hope.