“You Are the Salt of the Earth”

Matthew 5:13

INTRODUCTION

One day Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot.”

What an odd saying! We know that salt is necessary, but it is also cheap. Doctors keep telling us to eat less salt. Salt causes high blood pressure. We need to avoid it.

But in ancient times people looked at salt in a different way. For one thing salt was expensive.

We get our salt out of salt mines. In our home state of Kansas we have salt mines, and it’s easy and cheap to just dig it out of the ground. Salt is one of the cheapest things at the store—35 cents for a box that will last months.

When we say someone’s not worth his salt, we mean he’s not worth much.

 But in ancient times people made salt from seawater. The Dead Sea, in Palestine, is a good place to get salt. They run salt into shallow pools around the Dead Sea, then let it dry out in the sun, and what was left was salt, which they could scoop up and sell.

Salt is still scarce in some parts of the world. I remember seeing pictures in The National Geographic of camel caravans carrying salt over the desert. Great slabs of salt were strapped to the sides of the camels and transported to places where it was needed.

In some parts of the world, salt has been used for money.

Roman soldiers received part of their salary in salt—in fact the word “salary” comes from the word salarium, which is the Latin word for salt.

So when Jesus compared his disciples to salt he was comparing them to something very important, and valuable, and necessary.

There’s one other thing that might puzzle us about this verse. How could salt lose its savor? Actually, salt will always be salty. But the salt made out of the salty water of the Dead Sea had many minerals in it besides sodium chloride. There are calcium compounds and potassium compounds and manganese compounds and other minerals. And if the “salt” got damp maybe the real salt would disappear and only the other minerals would remain. And they wouldn’t taste salty at all. So it seemed that the “salt” had lost its savor.

I. Here are some reasons why salt was so important in the ancient world.

A. First of all, salt was necessary for preservation of food.

Before canning and freezing humans had no way to preserve perishable food.

Fish or other meat will spoil quickly and become dangerous and uneatable. But if the meat is soaked in brine, it will keep a long time.

So ancient people—and even until recent times—people ate lots of salted meat.

B. Salt is also necessary for bringing out the taste of food.

It’s even in the Bible. In the Book of Job (6:6), Job says, “Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt.”

You might know that the tongue can only detect four flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. All the rest of what we call “flavor” comes to us from our sense of smell.

If you cook oatmeal and leave out that pinch of salt, you can hardly believe how bad it tastes. It tastes like the pan.

At our house we eat lots of bread. We have a breadmaker, and we make about four loaves of bread each week. It only takes a teaspoon of salt for a loaf of bread—not enough to make the bread taste salty. But a few times I have left out the salt out of the bread, and it tastes bad.

Do you remember those advertisements for Morton’s salt: “Every watermelon worth its salt is worth Mortons”? I don’t put salt on my watermelon, but it’s true that a few grains of salt do make the watermelon taste sweeter.

C. In ancient times salt also had a sort of mystical meaning.

I suppose that because salt kills germs and pathogens, salt became a symbol for purity. The Old Testament rules specified that all sacrifices offered at the Tabernacle of Temple were to be seasoned with salt.

In Bible times salt was used to seal covenants. Still in the Arab countries, I understand that to eat salt with someone is to commit oneself to faithful friendship.

II. So when Jesus told his followers that they were “the salt of the earth,” it was a metaphor that would have had deep meaning for them. It also has deep meaning for us.

A. Christian believers, if they are living for Jesus, are a good influence in an evil world.

There are a lot of evil things going on in the world, but we who are followers of Jesus are a good influence—at least we should be. Godly people create goodness in the world.

Salt isn’t noisy. It doesn’t bubble up in our food, or change its color. In fact—unless we use too much—we can’t usually even taste it.

We Christians aren’t supposed to be noisy or obnoxious. We do our best work when we do it quietly.

It doesn’t take a multitude of Christians to change a conversation—

…just one person not laughing at an off-color joke.

…just one person sticking up for a person being criticized.

…just one person with a word of faith.

Many books have been published recently about evils of religion.

People have done terrible things in the name of Christianity—persecutions, wars, bigotry, hypocrisy, self-righteous judging—and it a shame such things happen.

But at the same time, much good has been done in the name of Jesus.

In our city both hospitals were founded by Christian people—Catholics founded Mercy, and Methodists founded St. Luke’s

Our two colleges were also founded by Christians.

Food pantries and homeless shelters are mostly run by Christians.

I read an article by an atheist praising the good work of various Christian missions in Africa—healing the sick, caring for orphans, educating children, combating evil customs…

We should be constantly looking for ways that we can express the love of Jesus to needy people—and, as you know, there are plenty of needy people in this building.

Some people say they have quit going to church because they don’t get anything out of it.

Those people don’t understand the real reason why people go to church. We don’t go to church for ourselves but for others. I am sure that in days gone by in your churches you found many ways to serve your fellow believers—teaching, cooking, cleaning, singing, encouraging—sometimes “rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep.”

We Christians should be the nicest people in the world. We should be constantly thinking about how we can cheer other people—by courtesy and consideration, honest compliments, a listening ear, kind words…

But it’s not enough to be only “nice.” Someone observed that Jesus didn’t say, “You are the honey of the earth” but “You are the salt of the earth.”

Sometimes telling the truth hurts. Sometimes faithfulness means correction—but if we ever think we need to correct someone let us be sure that we do it with gentleness, with consideration for the other person’s feelings.

In Ephesians (4:15) we read that we are to speak the truth in love. If we can’t speak the truth in love, we’d better keep quiet until we can.

In Colossians 4:6 St. Paul writes, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.”

Speech that is “seasoned with salt” is speech that is gracious, considerate, compassionate, helpful.

We can’t all be clever, but we can all be gracious.

Some of us talk too much. And when we do our speech becomes insipid, dull, tasteless.

B. But if salt loses its savor it is useless. And there’s nothing so useless as a useless religious person. (I won’t say “useless Christian” because “useless Christian” is a contradiction of terms.)

Useless religious people actually do more harm in the world than unbelievers because people look at them and say, “If that’s what Christians are, I don’t want to be one.”

A so-called “Christian” who has no savor of Christ about him or her is doing the devil’s work of turning people away from God.

To be no influence for good is to be an influence for evil.

When Jesus tells us that savorless salt is no good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot he is warning us about the dreadful consequences of uselessness.

In another passage Jesus compared his followers to branches of a grape vine. He said, “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (John 15:6).

CONCLUSION

You and I have no idea how many people have influenced us for good. Sometimes it was simply a word of encouragement or a kind action. The kind actions have been long forgotten, but they have changed us.

Children copy the people they admire unconsciously. Did you ever notice how children adopt the mannerisms and attitudes of their parents? If you have lived for God you have influenced many people for good whether you know it or not. I believe that when you get to heaven you may be surprised at how much good you have done in the world without knowing it.

That is why salt is such a good metaphor for what Jesus is talking about. Salt is subtle. It is usually not noticed. But when it is absent—in the oatmeal or in the bread—it is noticed. A schoolboy said, “Salt is the stuff that when you don’t put it in the oatmeal, it makes it taste nasty.”

Did you ever receive a compliment or a kind word that just made your day?

I’ve heard people say, when they received a compliment or a kind word: “Thanks, I needed that.” That’s what we all need from one another—some indication that we are important to them.

We want other people to know that we care about them—because that’s what we all want, for people to care about us.

Too many people go through life looking for what they can get out of it. But useful people go through life looking for what they can give to others.

And that’s what we’re here for, to serve God by serving others.

Some of us may become discouraged because we look back and see no great things that we’ve done for God. I remember the saying of Mother Teresa: “We can do no great things for God; we can only do little things with great love.”

I’ve been told of short film entitled Packy. In it God talks with Packy Rowe, a gruff, good-hearted man who has died thinking he didn’t amount to much spiritually. God tells him otherwise. “You spread me around like butter,” God says. “You might have been happier with yourself if you had known how happy I was with you.”