A Buddhist tells this story:

Once upon a time, there was a tavern owner in Mumbai. He had a hard-working bartender, who was always trying to be helpful by inventing new ways of doing things. One hot day, the tavern owner wanted to go to the beach. So he left the bartender in charge while he was gone. The bartender had noticed that many customers ate a little salt after drinking their liquor. He didn’t know why, but not wishing to show his ignorance, he never asked. He thought it might be that the liquor needed salt to taste good, and he wondered why taverns didn’t just add salt to their liquor. He decided that if he did so, the business would make much higher profits, and the tavern owner would be very pleased. So he added salt to all the liquor, not knowing that the actual reason the customers ate the salt was to chase away the aftertaste of the liquor. To his surprise, when the customers came to the tavern and drank the salty booze, they immediately spit it out; they left and went to a different bar. When the owner returned from his day at the beach, he found his tavern empty, and all his liquor ruined.[1]

A Jewish woman who blogs about food and keeping kosher tells this story on herself:

If I can say so myself, I happen to be a pretty good challah maker. While I generally don’t bake, and can’t handle recipes that need to be exact or look a specific way, challah has always been my specialty.

Until this past week.

It smelled good. It looked good. But it tasted . . . awful. It had no flavor, was the wrong consistency, and ultimately was not edible, as hard as my guests tried to smile and digest.

Now when I make challah, I work with about 15 lbs. of flour. (I want to make enough not only to separate the challah and make the blessing, but to have extra I can freeze!) That means a good few cups of sugar, a nice amount of oil, half a dozen or so eggs (see, I told you I’m not exact) and a much smaller dose of salt. It would seem that I must have forgotten a pretty main ingredient to ruin so much dough. But no, tracing back my steps, everything was included. Well, almost.

I forgot the salt.[2]

The use and experience of salt is universal; we find salt in every human culture and, thus, we find salt used in every human religion, both as a ritual substance and as a spiritual metaphor.

For the Buddhist storyteller, the salt represents the danger of good intentions carried out in ignorance, of acting before asking, of leaping before looking. In the West, we might say the story of misused salt illustrates the old saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The Jewish writer says of the salt: “It is the discipline. It is the rigidity. It is the boundaries and borders that are so very necessary.” For her, salt is a metaphor of the law of God, one might even say of God’s self. As architect Mies van der Rohe famously observed, “God is in the details.” The salt in the challah reminds us that attention paid to small things has big rewards; the details, the laws of God, and, of course, God’s self, are important.

Within their context, these are good metaphors, and they illustrate well the moral, philosophical, and theological principles the storytellers are putting across. However, for Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, salt, and also the lighted lamp and the hilltop city, are not theological metaphors; they are anthropological metaphors. They stand not for moral teachings or religious precepts. Instead, they represent people, the followers of Jesus, you and I and our brothers and sisters in the Christian faith across the centuries and around the world.

As salt, we are to enhance goodness. As the lamp, we are the illuminate the world. As the city on the hill, we are to inspire all around. I am sure that Jesus’ analogy of the city reminded his hearers of Psalm 122 and its description of Jerusalem as a city “at unity with itself; to which the tribes go up . . . to praise the Name of the Lord.”[3] Remember Ronald Reagan’s last speech[4] in which he recalled this metaphor and spoke of the city on the hill as a place of inspiration, encouraging harmony and peace, social commerce and creativity, with doors open to all who wish to enter? That’s as good an exegesis of the city image as I can think of. All three of these metaphors are rich and instructive, but today I want to focus on what it means to be “salt of the earth.”

Since we are the salt, the Buddhist story of salted booze and the Jewish story of unsalted challah should lead us to some possibly troubling questions. In response to the story about the lack of salt, we ought to wonder, “What if there are too few of us, perhaps even none of us, in a society?” The first story about too much salt where it ought not be raises the even more troublesome question, “What if there are too many of us?”

It was almost two months ago that Stephen asked me to fill in for him today and when he did, I immediately took a look at the lectionary to see what the lessons might be. In all honesty, I wanted to see if I had an old sermon I could pull out and use. I did have one which focused on the city metaphor,[5] but decided not to use it. So I started thinking about salt and the things it is used for, such as seasoning food, preserving food, melting snow, softening water, and helping to freeze ice cream. At one time it was used as currency (Roman soldiers were sometimes paid with salt which is where we get the word “salary” from), and it has had and still has a variety of religious uses around the world. All of these things, we might say, are salt’s jobs and we could probably metaphorically link them to the expectations and obligations of the Christian faith. When there is too little salt, or none, these things can’t be done, or at least aren’t done well. Food doesn’t taste right (witness the Jewish baker’s inedible challah); ice cream doesn’t freeze; and ice on the roads doesn’t melt.

When there are too few people of good will, whether they be Christians or not, society suffers; when they fail to speak up and do their part, evil prevails. As Edmund Burke reportedly observed, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”[6] The candle hidden under the bushel basket fails in its task; the city on a hill can crumble into ruin, and darkness conquer. As it is the role of the lamp to enlighten and of the city to inspire, it is the role of salt to enhance the goodness in the world. As with seasoning the challah, it doesn’t take much, but it takes a little and that small amount must have its saltiness. It (we!) must have the enlightened intention to do good which the Buddhist story encourages; it (we!) must follow the moral and spiritual principles which the Jewish baker’s story recalls.

It occurred to me, however, that the one thing salt is not expected to do is make more salt, which takes us back to that second troubling question: what if there’s too much salt? You know the answer: when there’s too much salt it’s ruinous, even toxic. At one time, salt was used to poison farmland; the ancient Hittites and Assyrians used it to curse their conquered enemies’ fields and render them incapable of producing crops. I think Jesus’ salt metaphor may be a cautionary corrective to over-zealous evangelism!

We are often taught that we are supposed to go out and make more Christians, in fact to make everyone Christian; the Great Commission – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you”[7] – is certainly often interpreted and taught that way. But we should remember that though this may be the Great Commission, “Jesus’ greatest commandment was not about membership. It was about love.”[8]

We know what happens when one group, even the Christian community, becomes too large or too powerful a majority in any society! It leads to the –isms which plague the nations: nationalism, nativism, populism, jingoism, chauvinism, call them what you will. And the worst –isms are those which ally or buttress themselves with religion. When they take hold, love disappears and poison takes over.

We have witnessed this around the world. Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar violently oppresses the minority Muslim Rohingya community. Muslim nationalism in Iran violently suppresses the Christian community. The “German Christian” movement of the 1930s with its rallying call of “One Nation! One God! One Reich! One Church!” may not have led directly to the Holocaust, but it surely didn’t stop it. It was a direct descendant of the Christian regimes throughout medieval Europe which expelled the Muslims and deprived the Jews of legal rights and forced them into ghettos. The growth of so-called Christian nationalism in our own country today is, frankly, frightening to watch. The story repeats itself again and again. When there is too much salt, something happens to salt. In the words of Jesus’ metaphor, it loses its saltiness; instead, it becomes toxic.

The great Protestant theologian Karl Barth refers to this as “secularisation”:

Secularisation is the process by which the salt loses its flavor. It is not in any sense strange that the world is secular. This is simply to say that the world is the world. It was always secular . . . but when the Church becomes secular, it is the greatest conceivable misfortune both for the Church and the world. And this is what takes place when it wants to be a Church for the world, the nation, culture, or the state – a world Church, a national Church, a cultural Church, or a state Church. It then loses its specific importance and meaning; the justification for its existence.[9]

It is not the job of salt to change the world into salt, to make more salt and thus to make the world toxic; it is the job of salt to season the world, to enhance it, and make it better.

An Anglican theologian, Martin Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, urges us to look beyond the “table salt” understanding of Jesus’ metaphor (indeed, he suggests that understanding is misguided). Instead, he suggests that “salt of the earth” refers to potash, a potassium salt, or perhaps phosphate, both of which are used to improve agricultural soil. Percy notes that both are “available in abundance in and around the Dead Sea area of Palestine, and [in Jesus’ time] were used for fertilizing the land and enriching the manure pile, which was then spread on the land.” Understood in this way, he says, “religion, as salt, is a life-bringing force in an otherwise sterile culture. * * * As a result of individuals, communities, values, witness and presence . . . being literally dug into society, the earth or soil will benefit, and many forms of life can then flourish.”[10]

The Dalai Lama has observed that “our world community has become like one entity: a multi-cultural, multi-religious singular entity. * * * [T]hrough close contact [of the major world religions], we can learn new things from each other; we can enrich our own traditions.”[11] I recall reading that he once said that the goal of his ministry was not to make everyone a good Buddhist, but to encourage Christians to be the best Christians they can be, Muslims to be the best Muslims they can be, Jews to be the best Jews they can be, and so on. Whether table salt or agricultural chemical, that is the role of the “salt of the earth.”

Yes, we are to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ; yes, we are to teach what he taught; and yes, we are to baptize those who come to us wishing to join our communities. But salt is not meant to make the whole world salt and thus toxic; the lamp on the stand is not meant to set everything else in the house on fire; and the city is not meant to engulf the countryside and the farms which surround it.

Too little salt and food is unpalatable, too little potash or phosphate and the soil is unproductive; too much, the food is inedible and the soil poisoned. How do we strike the balance? Where do we find that “Goldilocks point” of the “just right” amount of Christian witness? I suggest the answer is in today’s reading from Isaiah: loose the bonds of injustice, let the oppressed go free, share our bread with the hungry (without expecting them to become Christian), clothe naked (without expecting them to become Christian), and shelter the homeless (without expecting them to become Christian).[12]

This is not a call to charity! Remember that neither Isaiah nor Jesus were talking to individual Jews, nor was either addressing only the Temple clergy. They were speaking on God’s behalf to the nation as a whole and to its leaders. We are to do these things and to support charitable institutions which do these things, but more than that, these values are to inform the way we organize our churches and our schools. They are to be the principles upon which we conduct business and choose the firms we patronize. They are to be the touchstones of our politics and basis on which we select our leaders.

In a word, to be the “salt of the earth” is to live our Christian faith in such a way that we set an example for others, encouraging and enabling them to grow and to flourish to be the best people, of whatever faith or of none, that they can be.

Amen.

====================

This homily will be offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 9, 2020, to the people of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Mayfield Heights, Ohio, where Fr. Funston will be guest preacher.

The illustration to this page is Salt of the Earth, a portrait of Nelson Mandela by South African photographer Martin Osner: it is included here by permission of the photographer. “Nelson Mandela, an inspirational leader, world icon for peace, the father of democracy to many, and former president of the South Africa is immortalised here in a tribute by photographic artist Martin Osner. The portrait, created using salt crystal overlays, is available in two different sizes and the prints are printed on high quality textured fine art paper. Selected quotes taken from the 1964 Rivonia Trial are also hand written on the bottom of the print.” Prints of the photograph may be purchased from Art Photography Gallery of Cape Town, SA. See Art Photography Gallery, website accessed 9 February 2020.

The lessons scheduled for the service (Epiphany 5A) are Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 112:1-10, 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, and St. Matthew 5:13-20. These lessons can be found at The Lectionary Page.

====================

Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text.

[1] Story adapted from Todd Anderson, Prince Goodspeaker: Buddhist Tales for Young and Old (Buddha Educational Foundation; Taipei:1995), Tale No. 45

[2] Sara Esther Crispe, Don’t Forget the Salt, Musing for Meaning blog, November 25, 2012, website accessed 20 January 2020

[3] Psalm 122:3-4 (BCP Version)

[4] See Transcript of Reagan’s Farewell Address to American People, The New York Times, January 12, 1989, website accessed 6 February 2020

[5] City on the Hill, Obscured, That Which We Have Heard & Known, February 5, 2014, website accessed 6 February 2020

[6] The attribution of this quote to Edmond Burke is incorrect, but often made. See John Rentoul, The Top 10: Misattributed Quotations, The Independent, August 25, 2017, website accessed February 6, 2020

[7] Matthew 28:19-20 (NRSV)

[8] John K. Brown, Love Theory of Everything (self-published, 2016), pg 101 (emphasis added), PDF available online

[9] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: Aids of the Preacher (T&T Clark, Edinburgh:1977), pg. 525

[10] Martyn Percy, The Salt of the Earth: Religious Resilience in a Secular Age (Bloomsbury, London:2016), pgs. 17-18

[11] The Dalai Lama, Establishing Harmony within Religious Diversity, website access 6 February 2020

[12] Isaiah 58:6-7 (NRSV)