January 28, 2009 + “Ye Are the Salt of the Earth “ (Matthew 5:13) + Hayward Fong

“In one of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts cartoons, Peppermint Patty is talking to Charlie Brown. She said, “Guess what, Chuck. The first day of school, and I got sent to the principal’s office. It was your fault, Chuck.” He said, “My fault? How could it be my fault? Why do you say everything is my fault?” She said, “You’re my friend, aren’t you, Chuck? You should have been a better influence on me.” While Peppermint Patty was seeking to pass the buck, she was in a very real sense right. We should be a good influence on our friends. We certainly have an influence, for good or for bad.

This morning I want to continue from our study last week of The Beatitudes by looking at the next passage, the passage on believers being the Salt of the Earth. The underlying theme of the Sermon on the Mount is how people of the kingdom of heaven are to live. Jesus was saying, “Those who are my disciples should affect the world in a positive way by the way in which they live.”

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” Jesus doesn’t give any explanation of the word pictures of salt. The readers are left to come to an understanding of these images on the basis of how these things are used in the world around them. We must then seek to understand “What is it that we are to understand about salt and how are Christians like salt?”

First, Christians like “salt” are of infinite value. Jesus said to his followers, “You are the salt of the earth.” In the King James Version, this verse is translated, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” According to Merriam-Webster’s American English Dictionary, “ye” is a plural second person pronoun. In our South, that would translate into “ya’ll”, that is “you all.” So what Jesus is saying is, “You, all of you, are the salt of the earth.”

Jesus refers to his handful of basically uneducated disciples and referred to them as the salt of the earth. What great dignity Jesus bestows on his followers! What a great compliment! But why? Because salt was a necessity of life in ancient times and thus great value was attached to it. Salt was so important that it was sometimes used for money. The Roman soldiers in Jesus’ day were at times paid with it. In fact, our word “salary” comes from the Latin word salarium which referred to the payments to the soldiers with salt. We still use the phrase saying that a person either is, or is not, “worth his salt.” We don’t think much about salt because we can get as much of it in pure form as we want. It is just that little bottle with holes in the top on the table. But when you are completely dependent on salt to preserve your food, and when it is so valuable that it is used in place of money, you get a completely different perspective on salt.

Because we live in a part of the world where we have an abundance of food we don’t understand the monotony of the diet of those who lived in Jesus’ day and for most of those who live in third world countries even today. In a great portion of the world rice is the common food, three times a day. I remember as a child during the Great Depression eating rice accompanied with a dipping sauce of salt mixed with peanut oil, minced ginger and green onions because meat and vegetables, being expensive, were prepared as side dishes, if at all, and to be eaten sparingly. I recall my father telling me that the diet of peasants and laborers back in the villages consisted for the most part of rice and the salt mixture.

For this one reason alone salt is indispensable and Christians like salt are of infinite value.

Second, Christians like salt act as a preservative.
Salt was important for survival, because it was the only way they had to preserve meat. Obviously, they were not as privileged as we are with refrigeration, so salt became very important in their ability to preserve their food. The salt was rubbed into the meat before it was stored. Salt arrested or slowed up the process of delay, so too Christians are given the task of arresting the decay of our world.

“Christianity has in fact had a profound effect on the world. The most dramatic impact of Christianity on the world is that it has attached new value to human life. Prior to Christianity infanticide and abandonment of children was a common practice. Hospitals as we now know them began through influence of Christianity. The Red Cross was started by an evangelical Christian. Almost everyone of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States had Christian origins, founded by Christians for Christians purposes. The same could be said of orphanages, adoption agencies, humane treatment of the insane, the list goes on and on of dramatic impact of Christianity in our world.” (D. J. Kennedy, “What If Jesus Had Never Been Born”)

Christians continue to have a positive benefit on our world. As a moral antiseptic, Christians keep the corruption of society at bay by opposing moral decay by their lives and their words. However, those who say they are not Christians because the fundamental moral and ethical difference that Christ can make in how we live, is missing. If we as Christians lose the qualities of Christ likeness that make us distinct and become like the society around us, we no longer have a positive impact. We become a hindrance instead of a preservative.

Third, Christians like salt are to promote thirst. In arid climates and athletic competition it is used to promote thirst. Christians are to make Christ attractive and desirable. In Titus 2:9, the Apostle Paul tells Christian servants that they must act in such a way “...so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.” “Adorn” is the Greek word used to describe the arrangements of jewels in a manner to set off their full beauty. The idea here is that Christian servants (any Christian for that matter) have the power through their exemplary behavior to make the Christian life and faith beautiful to those outside.

Whenever we as Christians are introduced into a setting, whether it is social or work related, non-Christians should see evidence of the difference that Jesus Christ makes in our lives. They should be able to look at us and say, I don’t know what they have but I want it.”

Fourth, Christians like salt can lose their usefulness. Jesus says that if the salt loses its flavor it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

Technically speaking, salt cannot lose its saltiness; sodium chloride is a stable compound. But in the part of the world where Jesus lived, salt was collected around the Dead Sea where the crystals were often contaminated with other minerals. These crystallized formations were full of impurities, and since the actual salt was more soluble than the impurities, the rain could wash out the salt, which made what was left of little worth since it had lost its saltiness. When this happened, the salt was thrown out, since it was no longer of any value either as a preservative or for flavoring.

When the salt was leached out it still looked like salt, but it had lost its taste. The essential difference can be leached out of a Christian’s life by the constant flow of the world’s values through our lives. When Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual leader in India, he was asked by some missionaries, “What is the greatest hindrance to Christianity in India?” His reply was, “Christians.”

“The peculiar property of salt is that even though it may have lost its pungency, it still retains one very devastating potency. This rare and remarkable material can still destroy plant life on the land. The same principle applies in the case of a Christian. Either our lives are counting for good and for God or they are making an impact for evil and the enemy. The way we live, the things we say, the attitudes we entertain, the life style we adopt...are continuously producing either positive or negative results in society. Our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, either count for God or against Him. There simply is no middle ground.”(W. P. Keller, “Salt for Society”)

Fifth, Christians like salt must have contact to have an influence! As we have already noted, the Christian is to be a preserving force in the world wherever God has placed them. But salt never did any good when it was sitting on a shelf some place and the meat was somewhere else. To be effective, the salt had to be rubbed into the meat. In a similar way Christians are to allow God use them wherever He has placed them. Whenever the church becomes a salt warehouse, it has missed out on the lesson that salt must make contact to have an effect.

Notice what Jesus says and does not say to those who answer his call. He does not say, “You all can be the salt of the earth.” Nor does he say, “You all should be the salt of the earth.” Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth.”

To be salt, we do not have to be spectacular.
To be salt, we do not have to be sensational.
To be salt, we do not have to be successful. (by the world’s standards)
To be salt, we just have to affect our little corner of the world.

Reference: Adapted J. Hamby, “Called to Be the Salt of the Earth”; Charles Schultz, “Classic Peanuts”.