Salt and Light

Day 3

Salt and Light

 

For just under a decade, our family lived in a small rural community on a hillside, overlooking the constantly buzzing city of Kingston, Jamaica. The brown boards of our rustic home were faintly visible from the city, but whenever we left the small one-bulb verandah light on at night, we could see it shining bravely, clearly visible from way down in the city. Light travels. Far and fast.

One of Jamaica’s long-time national dishes is Ackee and Salt fish, which emerged years before refrigeration was available when salting fish was the only way to keep it from rotting in the warm tropical climate.

Jesus, on this Galilean hillside, after turning our human notions of ‘blessing’ upside down with the beatitudes, with His next breath now calls His blessed people to join in His mission to bless the whole world.

‘You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.’

‘You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5: 13-16

God’s original ‘blessed to be a blessing’ promise and calling for Abraham in Genesis chapter twelve is reimagined by Jesus with His twin declarations of ‘You are the Salt of the Earth’ and ‘You are the light of the world’.

When God called Abraham He called Him into a mission, a story. He called him out of a comfortable existence in wealthy lands, rich with resource where multiple empires (such as Assyria, Persia and Babylon) would spring from, into a land where he would be a nomad all the days of his life, into a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’ enough to provide for a small nation, but not enough to support a world dominating empire*.

God’s promise to Abraham to make him into a great nation was not a promise to make him into a great empire. Just as God’s definition of blessing is so unlike our human notion of blessing, God’s definition of a ‘great nation’ was very different to human definitions. This was clear in God’s explanation of His blessing in Genesis chapter 12…

“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Genesis 12: 2-3

Blessing is always on the move. You cannot be blessed by God and not become a vehicle of blessing to others… Abraham was blessed so that he would “be a blessing” and so that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through” him.

God’s intention for Abraham to be a vehicle of blessing to all nations was built into the very geography of the land God was calling him into. The land God chose for Abraham and for His chosen people (later called Israel) lacked the rich and readily available natural resource of the great empire producing lands that lay to the north and south of its borders in this region now call ‘the fertile crescent’. But one thing it did not lack was roads. All the major trade routes, the roads between these other lands, passed through this promised land*. Ancient peoples would funnel through the land God called Abraham’s people to inhabit like sand through the thinnest point of an hour glass.

Abraham’s descendants would, by virtue of their location, become visible to all the surrounding nations of the world. A light on a hill top. A lamp on a stand. A blessing to all nations as they role modelled a different way of life: the way of the Lord, the way of mercy, righteousness, justice and lovingkindness.

Salt flavours, but also preserves against rot. Light sends darkness fleeing. Israel was called by God, chosen by God, planted in the promised land by God to be a blessing, to enhance, preserve and illuminate the world around them.

But years after Abraham, the ancient nation of Israel was behaving like all other people: political factions, dissensions, violence, greed, half-heartedness and double mindedness. They didn’t look at all like a people God had blessed, and even less like a people blessing others. Israel’s vocation to be salt and light had grown flavourless and dim.

Into this world arrives Jesus. He doesn’t just talk about light. He becomes the light. Just as Jerusalem was a city on a hill, Jesus would become that light of the world set upon a hilltop for the whole world to see. He would become the salt that flavours the world with the values of His Kingdom and preserves the world from rotting death, keeping the whole human project from going bad.

On this breezy Galilean hillside early in His mission, Jesus calls His hearers (then and now) to join Him. He calls us all to become a people blessed to be a blessing, bringing the flavour and illumination of the Kingdom of God into every sphere that He calls us to inhabit.

Jesus’ declaration in the book of John ‘I am the light of the world’ John 8:12, 9:5 in the book of Matthew becomes, ‘You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.’ Matthew 5:13-16.

The life of Christ’s own presence living in us, the life of His Kingdom manifest in our life and actions, shining out through us, is Jesus’ central strategy for the reaching of this world and the establishing of His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.

We are His plan. We are His strategy.

Jesus frames His Sermon on the Mount first with the Beatitudes- the compass for His Kingdom, and then with this challenge live in His Kingdom visibly in this world… “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Light emanates and warms and illuminates. Jesus expects the impact of our ‘shining light’ to be “that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” This Kingdom light manifests itself in good deeds. Not simply good words. We are called to show. Not simply tell.

So often in Christendom we think because we have ‘shared a word’ that we have shared Christ. But Christ Himself exhorts us to ‘show the word’ by living it. Because a lived word can never be accused of hypocrisy (a charge Jesus warns against four times in the Sermon on the Mount and 14 times in the book of Matthew altogether).

There is absolutely a time for talking about the Life of God’s Kingdom. Jesus talked a lot about it. It was His favourite subject. But our words are always framed by our actions and by the life we live. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is all about behaviours, and lived realities. He expects His Kingdom to be seen in the way we live, act and respond. Not just heard in our rhetoric.

This world today is full of too much content and not enough community. Jesus on this hillside was calling a people together to live differently in the world- to become community of people who live like they belong to a different Kingdom. To become a light emanating both His love and His illuminating word to a world lost in the dark.

But Salt all heaped in one place is too much and tastes terrible on the tongue. It must be spread through a meal to season it and enhance the flavours already there. Light emanates freely in all directions. In order to be salt and light, we must be spread throughout this world: in it, while not being ‘of it’. Not gathered in ghettos with other believers, but (in deep supportive fellowship with believers) taking the light out into the world.
We are to be ‘outsiders’ inside the world. Salt scattering everywhere.

Jesus teaches us what emanating the light of His Kingdom in the world looks like practically through the rest of the Sermon on the mount, and He also prayed for us in our living of all His words in the Gospel of John…

‘I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.’
John 17:14-18

So let’s let our words and actions season the lives of those around us. Let’s let the light of Christ within us shine outwards, far and wide. Let’s let it travel with the speed of light into the places where people are lonely and hurting, let’s let it bring the warmth of light to the lost and weary and bring the illumination of light to the confused and the mislead.

Let’s let it bring the everlasting light of God’s Kingdom coming on this earth. As it is in Heaven.

 

 

 

Journaling the Journey

In what ways, places, circumstances and relationships are you like salt? Name the ways you have lost some of your saltiness.

In what ways, places, circumstances and relationships are you like light?

Are the times when you have put your light under a bowl?

What does obedience to Jesus call to “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” look like in practice for you?

What will stop you from following Jesus call?

 

Today’s Mountainside photograph was taken at Sugarloaf Mountain, Wales, UK.

References

*Cyndi Parker ‘Encountering Jesus in the real world of the gospels’ 2021 Hendrickson Publishers