Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
April 13, 2008

Rev. L. John Gable

A SEASON FOR GROWING: SALT AND LIGHT

Isaiah 42:1-9    Matthew 5:13-16

Although we’ve only just begun our series on Jesus’ teaching called the Sermon on the Mount, we have already seen that this teaching is, at times, going to be confrontational and challenging, radical and even revolutionary, or as John Stott put it “counter cultural”, and, folks, we haven’t even gotten to the hard stuff yet.  I got several comments from you going out the door last week.  One of you said, “You are really challenging us to think about what we’re doing!”  I laughed and said, “Don’t blame me, blame Jesus.”  However, another of you, after hearing the Beatitudes, said, “After hearing these words I realize, this is someone I want to spend more time with.  I want to get to know Him better.”  Ah, if only that were our response every time we read Scripture.

What we have seen though, and will continue to see, is that Jesus is indeed calling us to live our lives according to the new values and standards of the Kingdom of Heaven, which admittedly stand in stark contrast to the values and standards of the kingdoms of this world.  Using the language of Oswald Chambers, we are starting to get a glimpse of “life as it will be when God finally has His way with us.”

Last week, as we looked at the Beatitudes, the blessings which open the Sermon on the Mount, we discovered the essential qualities or characteristics of a follower of Jesus Christ.  So strikingly different than what the world tries to shape us into being, this is what God calls us to be, individually as disciples and collectively as the church, “poor in spirit, humble, merciful, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, pure in heart” and the like.  While we may confess to being well off the mark in any number of these, this is an apt description of what Christ has called us, and so we should aspire, to be.

We may wonder though, how can the meek, the humble, the poor in spirit really affect much change in this “hard core” kind of world we live in?  How can the “little people” of the Beatitudes really be of much influence?  Jesus answers by saying, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”  Now before we start to unpack what He means by this we should first notice that He doesn’t say, “This is what I want you to be” or “what you ought to be” or even “what you one day will be”; instead He says, “This is what you ARE.”  You ARE salt.  You ARE light.  Curiously, Jesus tells us what we ARE before He even tells us what to DO.  How unlike our world is that?  The world says, “If you do this and that, if you produce, if you earn, if you show yourself worthy, then you will one day become, you will one day be recognized and awarded….maybe.”  But Jesus says, “You ARE, already, the salt of the earth and the light of the world”, and surely, disciples, then and now, must have wondered what He means by that.

Salt was as much a part of life for them in Palestine 2000 years ago as it is for us today, perhaps even more.  Simply put, salt is necessary for life.  As we think of its various uses, we think immediately that it is used for seasoning.  Salt adds flavor to the foods we eat.  Kristin and I try to eat a salt-free diet.  One evening several years ago we called our favorite Chinese restaurant to order carry-out and Kris said, “No MSC and no salt, please.”  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, then the woman said, “Not taste very good!”  Just as salt adds flavoring and seasoning to our foods, so Jesus is telling us that we are designed to add flavor and seasoning to life.  Our relationship with God through Christ adds joy and meaning and without it, life would be bland and insipid.  So, you are the salt of the earth- add zest and zeal to all that you do!

In the ancient world, salt was also used primarily as a preservative.  In an age before refrigeration, they would pack meat in salt and as long as it really penetrated the meat it could last indefinitely.  Periodically we will refer to someone as being a “salt of the earth” kind of person.  By this we mean, they are honest, trustworthy, one on whom we can depend, particularly in times of trouble.  “Salt of the earth” kind of people are those who will remain stable in the midst of conflict and change.  In the same way, as Christians we are called to be preservers, even savers, of the earth because we are representatives of the one who is the “true” salt of the earth.  But in order to do this, we must penetrate the world in which we live, such that we can have enough influence to prevent the natural decay and corruption of sin. 

It is worth noting that salt only adds flavor and has the capacity to preserve when it actually gets in and permeates the mix; however, Jesus adds a necessary word of caution here.  He says, “But if salt has lost its flavor, how can its saltiness be restored?  It is not good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”  As I understand it, salt, sodium chloride, is a very stable chemical compound that is resistant to nearly every attack.  So how can salt lose its saltiness?  It does so by becoming contaminated when mixed with other impurities.  Herein lies the tension, in order for salt to do what salt is intended to do, it must both be engaged and penetrate AND it must remain distinct and uncompromised.  We might liken this to the Apostle Paul’s instruction that we must be “in the world, but not of the world.” 

In the ancient world they harvested salt from the sea using the process of evaporation, yet in the process the salt would often become diluted and flow away, leaving only a white powdery substance that looked like salt, but really wasn’t.  As a result, it was not good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot.

The warning in all of this to us is that the pressures are great around us not to be salt, or at least not to be too salty, not to be too Christian, not to take our faith too seriously.  The temptation is great for us to become flavorless and insipid salt, not really making any difference in the world around us, not really adding any flavor to life, not offering any seasoning or preserving power.  Early on in this essential teaching our Lord warns us not to become too normal, too enculturated, too casual, too bland, too indistinct, too much like everyone else.  If we lose our zeal, our devotion, our distinctiveness we become worthless to the work God is intending to do through us.  Archibald Hunter puts it this way, “the corruption of the best is ever the worst.  There is no remedy for it when God’s salt goes bad.  If the church fails the world, then what?  If Christ’s people lose their characteristic tang, their fidelity to the Gospel, their loyalty to their Lord, then the world is on the road to spiritual decay.”

In short, salt is made to be salty, and if it is not, then it is worthless, without effect or influence.  As a follower of Jesus I don’t want to be like that, and I don’t want the church to be like that, for our sakes, for the world’s sake, for God’s sake.  Jesus here is taking His followers, then and now, by the collar and saying to us, “Now, be what I made you to be…salt of the earth.”

He then goes on to say, “You are the light of the world.”  That must have been pretty heady stuff for the disciples to hear.  Jesus is blowing the doors off of their circle of influence.  First, He tells them they are salt for the entire earth and now He tells them “You are the light for the whole cosmos.”  Clearly He is giving His marching orders and laying before them the scope of their, and our, responsibility.  It is not bound by our neighborhood or the city, the state, or the country in which we live.  We are called to shine the light of Christ in the whole world.  The whole world is our mission field.
Light, we know, is the source of all of life.  In the opening verses of Genesis we read that before anything else, God created light.  Jesus then comes saying, “I am the light of the world.”  Spiritually, Jesus is the source of all of life and of our relationship with God.  But then He takes that a step further and says, “You are the light of the world.”
The purpose of light is to reveal, it is revelation.  Turn on a light and it casts out the darkness, it reveals what is present.  Jesus came to reveal the Father to us, in that, HE is the light of the world.  In the same way, however, He has now given that responsibility to us, His followers, to be reflectors of His light, to be revealers of God, to be bearers of the light of Christ to every darkened corner of our own lives and of our world.

Whereas before He gave a warning about salt losing its saltiness, here He gives no such warning, only encouragement.  He is really making a pronouncement when He says, “A city built on a hill cannot be hid.”  As followers of Christ, as recipients of His love and witnesses to His truth, we cannot be useless; it is an impossibility.  The light of our witness is going to shine whether we think it is, or even want it to, or not.  The saying is true, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
What Jesus is saying is this: what we wouldn’t think of doing with a lamp, that is lighting it and hiding it under a bushel basket, neither would He consider doing with His disciples.  You and I are intended to shine, so shine we must.  Shine right where we are and shine as brightly as we can.  This is what God made us to do.  This is who we are, reflectors and bearers of God’s light in a darkened world.

John Rankin lived in a small town in Ohio in the middle 1800’s.  His house just happened to be located at the highest point in that town.  So every night John Rankin would place a lantern in the highest window in his house and that lantern would burn all night long.  To the townspeople it was nothing more than a peculiar habit, but to runaway slaves who were trying to find their way north to freedom, it was a lighthouse, a refuge, a signal for safe passage and much needed hospitality.

Jesus says, “In 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.”  There is a purposefulness to our being God’s salt and light.  Just as we would never taste a dish and say, “Oh, what wonderful salt!” or look at a painting and say, “I love the light you’ve cast on it!”, so our good works are intended not to give glory to us, but through us to God.  While we know that we cannot be saved by our good works, neither can we be saved without them.  Good works are what we were created to do.  Our good works, however, are intended to be so transparent that others will look through them, even through us, to see our Father in heaven and give Him the glory.  We want people to see not the light, but the shining.  The purpose of our lives, as salt and light to the world, is to remove the veil from the Father’s face and to display something of His glory to the world. 

You know, Tab has been doing that in this community for over 150 years.  This desire is woven in to the very fabric of our mission statement: “to know Christ, to grow in Christ, to show Christ and to sow Christ.”  Decades ago when other churches made the decision to follow their congregations out to the suburbs, we made the decision to stay right here, because we believed then, and I know we believe still, that God has called us to be His “salt and light” at the corner of 34th and Central – so this is what we are and this is what we must be.

There is a small lighthouse that stands at the mouth of New York Harbor, on a sunken shoal, called Robbins Reef.  For many years the keeper of the lighthouse was an elderly widow who one day told her story to a local reporter who in turn gave it to the world.
She said, “I was a young girl from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, when I first met my husband.  He was the keeper of the Sandy Hook Light, and took me as his bride.  I was happy there, for the lighthouse was on land and I could have a garden and raise flowers.  Then one day we were transferred here to Robbins Reef.  As soon as we arrived I said to my husband, ‘I can’t stay here!  The sight of water everywhere I look makes me too lonesome.  I won’t unpack!’  But somehow all the trunks got unpacked.”
“Four years later my husband caught a cold while tending the light.  The cold turned to pneumonia and he died.  We buried him on a hillside in Staten Island.  Every morning when the sun comes up I stand and look out a porthole across the water toward his grave.  Sometimes the hill is green, sometimes it is brown, sometimes it is white with snow.  But is always brings a message from him – something I heard him say more often than anything else.  Just three words – “Mind the light!”

Friends, this is what we have been called to do.  In season and out, in times of plenty and in times of want, every morning when the sun comes up, our highest calling, our reason for being, is to “mind the light of Christ!”  Jesus has called us to be the salt of the earth and light of the world and this is what we ARE.  This is the way we will be blessed.  This is the way the world will be served.  And this is the way God will be glorified.  Amen.

Let us pray.

O Lord, may it never be said of us that having come to an open door we closed it; that having come to a lighted candle we quenched it; that having heard the pitiful ones of earth begging for food we made denial.  Rather, may we become for Jesus’ sake, Your faithful servants, carrying a light to guide others traveling in the dark.  May we, as recipients of Christ’s love and life, allow it to live through us, making us nourishers of life and sharers of the abundant life offered to us through Christ our Lord. Hear now our prayers as we offer them in the silence of our hearts, in His dear name.