This week Jesus wants us to be light and salt to the world and wonders what’s up with hidden light and unsalty salt. The light thing? I get that it seems pretty straight forward but unsalty salt? Is that a thing? Some people say absolutely, but I’m not so sure. I get a top layer feeling of what Jesus was getting at, but I think down deep there has to be more, maybe several things more. So let’s take a look at light, salt, water, poo, mud and other “Needful Things”and how they can help us to better understand our relationship to the kingdom of God, our baggage, God, and one another.
Why would you hide a light beneath something? There are reasons, right? Maybe you want to evade detection, or to actually be able to see further at night. As a kid, if we wanted to watch it snow outside, or if we wanted to see if something was in the yard, we needed to kill the lights. But what Jesus is talking about today is denying light it’s functionality or sole purpose which is illumination. Without illumination most plants don’t photosynthesize. Without it we wander in darkness. If we have light human qualities and aspirations it’s gets more difficult and the reasons to hide it or shut it off fade, especially if we are bearing the light of Christ. Trying to avoid detection runs pretty counter to our purpose and the whole looking out into the darkness and not being able to see, fails as part of our mission is going out and illuminating that darkness not staying behind our windows and walls. So some good points can be taken from this metaphor fairly painlessly. But then we get the advanced metaphor which is more complicated, and unlike light we don’t get many hymns about it. So let’s dig in.
In our modern culture and in our lifetimes we have an understanding of what salt is all about, but I was surprised to read about the differences in understanding and uses for salt back in Jesus’ day. Back then they sprinkled it on sacrifices, rubbed it on newborns, used it of course to flavor things and cure them. There was a specific usage that Jesus was also talking about. In the commentary Word- Sunday it states, “In Matthew 5:13, the salt also referred to the leveling agent for paddies made from animal manure, the fuel for outdoor ovens used in the time of Jesus. Young family members would form paddies with animal dung, mix in salt from a salt block into the paddies, and let the paddies dry in the sun. When the fuel paddies were lit in an oven, the mixed-in salt would help the paddies burn longer, with a more even heat. When the fuel was burnt out, the family would throw it out onto the road to harden a muddy surface.”
I had learned these little tidbits some years ago, but this week, one particular segment was really bugging me and this time I refused to be sidetracked. “But if salt has lost its saltiness or taste.” That just didn’t sound right from a chemistry perspective. I checked that online. Salt, sodium chloride is sodium chloride, period. Salt as salt can not lose its saltiness or taste. Now if salt were mixed in with other things it would definitely be corrupted or contaminated or diluted. Who wants to test the saltiness of salt mixed with manure? A host of other contaminants resulting from mixtures or solutions would seem to affect its saltiness or taste. I had some questions about this so I decided to resort to the big guns, my go to. I called my kid.
I bet when Nathan sees my number in the middle of the day he steels himself for one of two things, a stupid dad joke or a really bizarre, off the wall, out of nowhere difficult science question. So I called him up. “Hey buddy. How ya doin? Got a second for a chemistry question? I need to know something for my sermon. So, If you mixed salt and cow poop together, how would you get pure salt back out? And what if you dried it and burned it? I did some preliminary research and I know salt can’t lose its saltiness?!? The cool thing is, after 24 years, he knows that I have some reason, he takes a deep breath and steps into the corridors of his brain that he hasn’t strolled down in awhile. I can almost hear him flipping on the lights. The other cool thing is that he takes my questions seriously. It turns out that its a pretty difficult random question. We started exploring together. The “knowing stuff” is him, the Googles are me.
Chlorine has a very high electronegativity. That’s how it started. Then discussion about crystallization, how salt wanted to be salt chemically, how you can introduce other substances to get other contaminants to fall out, some really nasty water with just weird stuff in it, cost, time, filtering etc. The thing is, the process always began with adding water. I knew from my work in a dialysis clinic how to get all that stuff out of water to have fantastically pure water, the problem was we wanted the salt, not the water as the pure end product. Nathan told me some history of salt stuff and I kept saying, yeah, but how? What did that look like? He was on a great “do it in the lab” path, but it was very complex. I finally had a flash of inspiration. They do this all the time on a massive scale somehow, because it would be impossible to have as much salt as we do or find it in nature if there wasn’t a simple process other than magic. How on earth does Morton’s salt do it? Omigosh! I can contribute. Dear internet, how does Morton’s make pure salt? A multiple vat evaporation system. They add water and as it turns out NaCl likes being with NaCl. It crystalizes where contaminants can be drawn off and they continue down the chain until, voila! Pure salt is left. We both started to see the metaphorical ramifications or applications of Jesus’ chosen substance.
Salt does not lose its saltiness. It may get connected to many contaminants so that it may not be able to be used for its functional purpose like curing meat or seasoning food, but as long as it’s NaCl it’s salt and it is actually salty behind all of the interference, masks and pollutants. It just seems to us that it isn’t. Isn’t that really how it is with us? The good news is that we are children of God. We equal salt. We can not become any less God’s children. We can’t lose our saltiness, but we can sure seem like it. We do things to hurt one another, we behave selfishly, we think we are unlovable and unforgivable, we cease to forgive and show mercy, love and kindness. We become enmeshed in those contaminants, the mud, poop and ashes of the world. We cease to function as what we were created to be.
Here comes more metaphor. The solution? The solution’s the solution. I love catching an unintentional pun. The waters of baptism and those contaminants are washed away or poured off. Those waters and the process of a chain of daily repentance, that is turning away or detaching from those contaminants allow us to be effective disciples. In the Stephen King book A new shop named “Needful Things” opens in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. The owner, Leland Gaunt, is a charming elderly gentleman who always seems to have an item in stock that is perfectly suited to any customer who comes through his door. The prices are surprisingly low, considering the merchandise – such as a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card, a carnival glass lamp shade, and a fragment of wood believed to be from Noah’s Ark, a healing amulet – but he expects each customer also to play a little prank on someone else in Castle Rock. Gaunt knows about all of the jealousy and grudges in the town, and the pranks are his means of ramping them up until the whole town is eventually caught up in hatred and violence. In the end it is revealed that the needful things were just illusions, seeming to be the things that the people wanted so desperately that they sold their soul for the illusion.
King’s story is a pretty good parable. We can see the contaminants, the illusions, our desires and how they bound themselves to them and lose who they are until they are so mired in the mud that they are unrecognizable as to who and what they were created to be. So salt, as it turns out is a pretty awesome metaphor. Jesus issues the call to action for us then to lean in to both of the metaphors. We are called to reflect Christ’s love, grace and mercy and we are made aware that despite the things we’ve done and the things that have made us feel diluted and worthless, in Christ and in our baptism there is forgiveness and restoration and re-formation and re-creation as clean and pure children of God. Amen