Salt, light and works

Matthew 5:3-16

Salt, Light and Good Works

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 hidden. 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.

Salt

We are according to Jesus, Salt, Light and Works; we will look at them one at a time and seek what Jesus meant when He taught these principles to His disciples. It goes without saying this is a very important passage of scripture because it reveals the: identity, practices and relationships of the disciple. We live our lives through so many different personas and identities. Our roles in life can be so varied from being a parent and also at the same time a child; from being a teacher to being learner and often, again, both at the same time. It is not the purpose of Jesus to get us to abandon all these very legitimate roles we have in life, which would be impossible unless we became monks or nuns and that would mean the Sermon on the Mount was only for the clergy and not for every disciple. Our understanding is that the words of Jesus have to be taken seriously by every follower of Jesus and that difficulty and challenge in application is not an excuse for disregarding His words when we find it inconvenient or costly to obey them. If we look to the Hebrew Scriptures for the references to salt and what it is symbolically or metaphorically associated with we get a wide range of characteristics: purity, loyalty, part of a sacrifice and others. However, perhaps we are making things too difficult for ourselves. Instead of stopping reading at ‘you are the salt of the earth’, keep on reading and the text makes it plain what Jesus meant without putting any other words or concepts in the mouth of Jesus. If salt loses its taste how can it be restored? Salt ‘loses its taste’ when it’s not just salt but has been corrupted by some other element or compounds. Jesus and His disciples are close to the Dead Sea which is very salty but the salt contains contaminants and was not therefore of much use. The identity of a product ‘Dead Sea salt’ would indicate that the salt was useless. Surely Jesus is teaching His disciples they have to have an identity that makes them useful, practical contributors and participants in the Kingdom Jesus has inaugurated. Don’t get contaminated by the way the culture does things. The politics, economics, sociology and psychology of the times are not to be the character of disciples. The disciples of Jesus are to remain true to the teachings and practices of the Kingdom; not the teachings and practices of the empire of Greco Roman culture and not to the religious system of the Pharisees, Sadducees or Essenes. Jesus is teaching us to live out our own identity as those God has called into His Kingdom; be distinctive, be counter cultural. Are our communities of disciples counter cultural? Do we live out our identities as followers of Jesus? How do we get our identity back? Hear the words of Jesus and put them into practice.