5th Sunday after Pentecost

I’d like to start this morning by taking a moment and turning to the person who is next to you, and share with them something that they don’t know about you. Try to do this with someone who doesn’t know you so well. So, if you’re sitting next to a family member, try sharing with the person on the other side of you, or the person who’s ahead of you or behind you.

OK. Now it’s my turn. Some of you will know this, but others of you might not. I love to cook. In fact, I love to cook so much that, at one point, I was considering it as a possible career. But then Jesus came along and said, “Uh-uh. I need you to do this pastor-thing for me, instead.” And so I was like, “Oh… well, ok. Are you sure? Because I really enjoy this cooking thing.” And Jesus was just like, “Trust me on this one, bubby.”

When I say that I love to cook, I mean that I looooove to cook. A couple of years ago I realized that food and its preparations is actually one of my love languages.

I come by this love of food and cooking honestly, because my mother is the same way. The New York Times cookbook was her bible. And I remember how excited she was to get her subscription to the Time-Life International Cookbook series. I mean, there we were in the middle of Central Pennsylvania… The middle of Meat and Potatoes Pennsylvania. And she’s getting books on Japanese food, Chinese food, Spanish food… The closest Chinese restaurant was probably 50 miles away in Harrisburg, PA. If you wanted Japanese or something more exotic, that necessitated a trip to Philadelphia or New York.

It was about five years into our marriage that Anke pointed out to me that if my parents had been travelling and you asked them about the trip? The first thing my mom would talk about would be the food they ate. The restaurants they went to. The new things they were able to try.

It was my mother who not only taught me to love food in all of its possible permutations. She was also the one who taught me how to cook. It was never an overt thing. She never said to me, “Now I’m going to teach you how to cook.” It was more of an invitation.

“Eric, why don’t you give me a hand, here?” Maybe it was just to get me and my hyperactivity under control. Maybe she recognized my nascent fascination with kitchen alchemy. Most likely it was a combination of the two. It was from her that I learned that the first time you try a new recipe, you follow it to the letter. You want to get a baseline, so to speak. And then, after that, you can begin improvising and improving upon it. So I would ask her, “How much of this do I put in?” Or “How much of that goes in?” And she’d say, “Well, check the recipe.” Or she might say, “Half a teaspoon”, if she knew the recipe.

I’m not sure when, exactly, the shift occurred, but at some point she stopped telling me amounts. Instead, when I asked her how much of this, that, or the other thing to put in her response was, “Oh, enough.” I can’t remember the first time it happened, but I’m sure that I was absolutely flummoxed by that answer.

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“Put some in and taste it; see if it’s enough. If it’s not, put in more. But don’t put in too much. Start with just a little bit at a time.”

She was teaching me two very important things. How to improvise and how to pursue a flavor profile. You have to keep tasting, at every step of the way. You have to understand how the flavors of what you’re putting together will grow and develop. And the last thing that goes in? Salt.

(By the way, the way my mother taught me to cook is a perfect example of an effective personal evangelism and discipling ministry.)

Nowadays, we still use salt for more than just cooking. Salt melts ice and softens water. It soothes sore throats, rinses sinuses, eases swelling, and cleanses wounds. In some contexts, salt has more than a flavor; it has an edge. It stings, burns, abrades, and irritates. If we don’t have enough salt in our bodies, we die. But if we have too much?  We also die.

I’m not sure what exactly the magic is that happens when a Sodium ion hooks up with a Chloride ion, but it makes all the difference. Somehow it manages to release and accentuate all the other flavors that are going on. You have to be careful. Too little salt, and the dish just doesn’t come together. It remains bland and one-dimensional. Too much salt, and the dish loses its depth and complexity to a sharp, unbearable bitterness.  

No single metaphor from Scripture can fully capture what it means to live as lovers and followers of Jesus. When Jesus calls his listeners “the salt of the earth,” he’s saying something profound that we tend to miss in our 21st century context unless we stop, unplug ourselves for a bit, and pay attention.

First, he is telling us who we are. We are salt. We are not “supposed to be” salt, or “encouraged to become” salt, or promised that “if we become” salt, God will love us more. The language Jesus uses is 100% descriptive; it’s a statement of our identity. We are the salt of the earth. We are that which will enhance or embitter, soothe or irritate, melt or sting, preserve or ruin. For better or for worse, we are the salt of the earth, and what we do with our saltiness matters a lot. Whether we want to or not, we spiritually impact the world we live in.   

Second, we are precious. In Jesus’ day, salt was incredibly valuable, which we forget in our age when salt is cheap. So, imagine what Jesus’s first followers would have felt when he called them salt. Remember the people Jesus addressed in the Sermon on the Mount. The poor, the mournful, the meek, the persecuted. The hungry, the sick, the crippled, the frightened. The outcast, the misfit, the disreputable, the demon-possessed. “You,” he told them all, “are the salt of the earth.” You who are not wealthy and fabulous, you who’ve been rejected, wounded, unloved, and forgotten — you are essential, worthwhile, and treasured. And I am commissioning you.  

Third, salt does its best work when it’s poured out.  When it’s scattered.  When it dissolves into what is around it. I wouldn’t be the cook I am today if my mother had kept her salt shaker locked in a kitchen cabinet. Salt isn’t meant to cluster. It’s meant to give of itself. It’s meant to share its unique flavor in order to bring out the best in all that surrounds it. If we want to enliven, enhance, deepen, and preserve the world we live in, we can’t hide in here. We can’t afford to gather and congregate simply for our own comfort. We can’t afford to retreat into our religious bubble out of fear, cynicism, shame, or self-righteousness. Salt doesn’t exist to preserve itself. Salt exists to preserve the other. There’s another metaphor for this, which Jesus used all the time:  Dying. Jesus calls us to die to ourselves. Jesus calls us to die in order to live. Remember — we are salt. It’s not a question of striving to become what we are not. It’s a question of living into the precious fullness of what we already are.

Lastly, salt is meant to enhance, not dominate. Christian saltiness heals; it doesn’t wound. It purifies; it doesn’t desiccate. It softens; it doesn’t destroy. Even when Christian saltiness has an edge, even when, for example, it incites thirst, it only draws the thirsty towards the Living Water of God. It doesn’t leave the already thirsty parched, dehydrated, and embittered. Salt fails when it dominates. Instead of eliciting goodness, it destroys the rich potential all around it. Salt poured out without discretion leaves a burnt, bitter sensation in its wake. It ruins what it tries to enhance. It exacerbates wounds, irritates souls, and ruins goodness. It comes across as arrogant, domineering, obnoxious, and uninterested in enhancing anything but ourselves. That’s not what Jesus intended when he called us the salt of the earth. Our preciousness was never meant to make us proud and self-righteous; it was meant to humble and awe us.

So, what do we do? Our calling at this time and in this place is not to lose our saltiness. That’s the temptation — to retreat. To hide. To choose blandness instead of boldness. To keep our love for Jesus a hushed and embarrassing secret. But that kind of salt, Jesus told his listeners, is useless. It’s untrue to its very essence. 

And so, we are called to live wisely, creatively, and in balance. To learn how to make the world a tastier, more palatable place. Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out with discretion so that God’s kingdom might be known on the earth — a kingdom of spice and zest, a kingdom of health and wholeness, a kingdom of varied depth, flavor, and complexity. 

Jesus and his life make concrete the work of love, compassion, healing, and justice. It’s not enough to simply believe. It’s not enough to bask in our blessedness while all around us God’s creation burns. To be blessed, to be salt, to be lovers and followers of Jesus, is to take seriously what our identity signifies.   

We are the salt of the earth. That is what we are, for better or for worse. It’s up to us and how we use ourselves to make it be for the better. May your pouring out — and mine — be for the life of the world. AMEN