Jesus said to his disciples, “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.”
Our modern ears here this with something of an attitude: “O. K., that was then, this is now.” We have been told as recently as last week that dietary guidelines for keeping ourselves healthy mean eating less salt than ever, especially hidden salt in prepared foods. Complimenting someone as being the “salt of the earth” may be an expression whose time has passed.
We know, of course, that salt was and is an important preservative, used from ancient times to keep meat from going rancid. It even became valuable as a tool to finance the French monarchy. In the 18th century the hated salt tax in France was one of the causes of the French Revolution. The sale of salt was controlled by the government of the king, who obliged every individual above the age of eight years to purchase weekly a minimum amount of salt at a fixed price. I wonder how they enforced that?
But there is another way to view the importance of salt from the Hebrew Scriptures that can give us a deeper perspective on what Jesus was teaching. I'm not talking about Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt when she disregarded the command of the Lord's messengers and looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. What I am referring to comes from chapter eighteen of the book of Numbers. This passage recounts the Lord's instructions to Aaron, Moses' brother and the Israelites' religious leader, on how he should deal with holy offering. The passage begins with this divine instruction: “I have given you charge of the offerings [both produce and animals] made to me, all the holy gifts of the Israelites; I have given them to you and your sons as a priestly portion due in perpetuity.” Then we come to the part about salt, which extends the use of the offerings to Aaron's daughters as well. The use of these offerings to the Lord “is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord for you and your descendants as well.” Before you think it unfair that only Aaron and his descendants get all these offerings, remember that they got no land as part of the covenant between the Lord and the Israelites.
So salt became a symbol of this covenant—was it a covenant to be preserved forever? Perhaps, but there is even more. In the second chapter of the book of Leviticus this statement concerning offerings to the Lord appears: “You shall not omit from your grain offerings the salt of the covenant with your God; with all your offerings, you shall offer salt.” I don't think Jesus' teaching reported by Matthew about the reign of God in the Beatitudes just precedes the salt-of-the earth teaching by chance. Nor, just by chance, does his teaching about not changing even a small part of the Law follows the salt-of-the-earth teaching.
In the Beatitudes Jesus taught about the gifts to humanity when God's righteousness reigns over all the earth. Now he moves to what our response should be. To paraphrase and expand his teaching a bit: you, my disciples, are the salt of the earth. Remember that salt was to be included in the offerings presented to the Lord. Remember the salt is a sign of the covenant God made with God's people. You, yourselves, are now that offering. You are now a sign of the covenant. Live in a way that is worthy of God's choosing and God’s blessing God's people.
Jesus taught the disciples about the Law’s importance in guiding their intentions as well as their actions. He wanted the disciples to understand how important their responses were to God's gifts, God's blessing. As the Hebrew prophets and later the rabbis have interpreted the guidance of the Torah, the Law, to be meaningful in their times, Jesus did as well. The gospel of Matthew, written to those who believed the end of the world was near, reported Jesus as saying our intentions and our actions should grow out of a critically important right relationship with the Lord. Our righteousness in response to God's righteousness toward us, you might say.
Jesus was saying, I think, that our righteousness needs to be expressed in a deeper way than keeping the rules. Righteousness expressed, perhaps, in the sense of the prophet Micah's words we heard a few weeks ago: “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?” Righteousness in the sense of the prophet Isaiah's words we heard this morning: “Is not this the fast [following the Law] that I [God] choose: to loose the bonds of injustice . . . to let the oppressed go free . . . to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house . . . [and] when you see the naked, to cover them . . .”
This is the saltiness that Jesus called his disciples to, and calls us to, as well—the saltiness of offering ourselves, our intentions, our actions to the Lord. So each day, the people with whom we live and work and worship can “taste” the love of God, the righteousness of God, through us—as Psalm 34 suggests, “O, taste and see that the Lord is good.” Yes, through our saltiness, we can lead others to know God's goodness.
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