I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people. (Ephesians 1:18)
“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.” (Mark 9:50)
Everyone will be salted with fire. (Mark 9:49)
Is tasteless food eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the sap of the mallow? (Job 6:6)
Prop: large salt granules or pink Himalayan rock salt / photos on screen
In Europe, salt lamps like the one you see here [see photo] are popular art and health pieces for the home. The lamp is a bowl filled with rock salt from mines in Poland and the Punjab area of Pakistan. Or it can be a carving of an animal. Underneath is a candle or bulb. Health gurus claim that these lamps have significant health benefits due to the release of negative ions when the flame heats the salt.
Not only does the salt increase the intensity of the heat, as all salt will, but salt also has “hygroscopic” properties. That means the salt attracts water molecules from the environment around it. The idea is that any pollutants or contaminates in the air will bind to the salt, creating a cleaner, purified atmosphere. Health benefits of salt lamps are said to include clearing of allergies, easier breathing, easing of asthma, increased energy levels, and improved mood.
Whether or not this is all true, salt has been used for thousands of years (since about 6,000 BCE) for seasoning, healing, preserving, and cooking –that is, it is used to heat the food.
You all know that salt makes ice turn to water, not because it makes it hotter, but because it breaks down the molecules and turns the ice to water. It’s still just as cold, but it lowers the freezing point. In the same way, adding salt to hot water makes the water hotter even though it hasn’t reach the boiling point. We add salt to vaporizers to induce better steam, for example.
In the same way, salt, when added to other substances, will make that substance burn better and more vigorously. For this reason, the Jewish people and others in the first century and before used salt not only in purification, healing, and religious rituals, but they also used it for cooking.
The Jewish people cooked their food in Jesus’ day in roundish clay ovens like the one you see here [photo below].
In order to bake or cook their food, the women would need a portion of salt. Not the kind of salt we use today, but the kind evaporated from the Dead Sea. This kind of crude rock salt was created by dumping water from the Dead Sea into large pits and then allowing it to evaporate. The result was a kind of rock salt, filled not just with sodium chloride, but with many other kinds of minerals and metals from the seawater. The rock salt was mined for purchase.
For cooking purposes, the salt was packed into cakes and mixed with animal dung to form briquettes. That’s right. You heard right the first time. These dung briquettes were lighted in order to cook food and bake bread. Or you could layer a solid salt slab with the dung layer. That would work too.
Why salt? Because salt is a catalyst. Salt makes the fire hotter. Salt makes the fire burn longer and more evenly. In fact, many people still put salt into the wax of candles to make them burn brighter and last longer.
But here’s the thing. Once the salt was used for a period of time, it would break down. The minerals would be depleted, and the salt would lose its catalytic ability. It would then be tossed out to be trampled. It had lost its “saltiness,” the mineral content needed to stoke the fire.
Crude salt in fact (that evaporated from the sea), which contained a number of minerals, could lose its “saltiness” in a number of ways. It could dissolve in tap water, losing its saltiness. Or the kind you bought could be filled with too many foreign contaminants.
Not all salt was the same. Depending on the mineral content, it could taste good, or not so good if it contained too many minerals or too high a concentration of metals.
So, in Jesus’ time in fact, salt COULD stop being “salty” in a number of ways –through cooking, through drenching, through just the wrong mineral content.
Once it lost its ability to purify, preserve, cook, or taste, it had no more value.
In our culture, cars lose value immediately the moment you buy them. After a year or two, the value has already dropped thousands of dollars just due to ownership. That’s called “depreciation.” Cars are not an appreciating asset, but a depreciating asset.
In a sense, salt was like that in the first century. Salt was hugely valued. In fact, Roman soldiers often were paid in a “salarium” –a salt ration (hence “salary”). It was a highly desirable commodity. And it was a strange mineral. When entirely dry, it could be immovable as stone. When wet, it could dissolve completely in water. It had mysterious properties. It was used to heal as well as to heat and create fire. And salt was the object of superstition as well as a highly important metaphor in the Hebrew scriptures.
Salt was a symbol of purity for the Jewish people, so much so that a bit of salt was needed for each sacrifice, perhaps because it would make the fire flame up, similar to the way God’s Spirit seared Elijah’s offering! Salt was also the “nature” of God’s covenant with humankind (Numbers 18:19). What did this mean?
To have “salt” in the covenant meant purity, loyalty, durability, fidelity, allegiance, faithfulness, trust, passion/fire, healing, but most of all, to have integrity in one’s relationship with God –all descriptors for the way salt is used. You had salt on the altar because one had salt in the covenant.
How is salt used in the Hebrew scriptures? We see it evaporated. We see it added to incense in the Temple and to sacrifices. In fact, the rabbis were not allowed to eat it. But it was used in purification and fire, for lighting and for a reminder of the covenant, for the baking of ritual meals. And to remind people of the covenant –using one of the most prominent metaphors for God in scripture –the smokepot or furnace/oven.
From the time God creates a covenant with Abram through the stories of the prophets, God appears as a fiery furnace, a divine smokepot. In fact, even in the story of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace is in a sense “replaced” by the “unquenchable” fire of God which surrounds Daniel and his compatriots.
Why does Jesus mention salt and light in the very same teaching? Because for Jesus, they are intrinsically connected. Salt fuels light. The covenant with God, faith, and the visible signs of God within you that others can see, are necessarily bound. Salt and light are twinned concepts.
You are not only called to be faithful. Your faith must be lived out in ways that reveal God’s light! To engage in relationship with God, to be faithful and true, means you have “salt” within you. And that “salt” fuels your ability to shine God’s light far into the world, so that others can see God’s divine presence within you. Salt is a catalyst. You are to be a “catalyst” for change in the world. This Jesus says, is part of what it means to be a disciple. What it means to have “salt” in your covenant with God. It is the salt that fuels the light.
Be Salt and Light.
Salt for the Jewish people and for Jesus in the scripture today didn’t just mean to be a “spicy” disciple –full of seasoning and spunk. It didn’t just mean to be faithful and kind and loving. It also meant, you were to be a catalyst for others. Your life would need to shine, because the “saltiness” within you can’t help but to shine God’s light with an uncanny brightness into the world and into other peoples’ lives. The light is the sign that your life is burning bright with a covenant catalyzed with “salt.”
This is so important, because of what this means for us as disciples of Jesus. Being a disciple is not only about YOU. It’s about other people too. It’s about how YOUR life impacts the world, and not just the good parts of the world, but the Samaria parts of the world as well.
Jesus tells us in Matthew’s gospel, YOU are the light of the world. Did you hear that? It’s not just Jesus who is the light of the world. YOU. You are! When you build God’s “altar” of fire and light on a hill where you can be seen by everyone around you, that light cannot be hidden. When you put that light on a stand (as the giant lights that surrounded Jerusalem), it lights everyone in your household –in the “house” of God. It cannot be helped.
YOU are the light of God on fire for the world. Don’t forget the salt. The salt within you will make it burn brighter and brighter.
Today, our scripture story is about letting your light shine! It’s about having “salt” within you –the kind of relationship with God that means, you are spending time in prayer, spending time reading and studying the scriptures, spending time in communion with Jesus, so that your life becomes a bright beacon of God’s love and mercy, power and glory for everyone to see.
[Come….all of you know the story of Daniel and the fiery furnace….tell it with me…]
There was a young man named Daniel. He and his Jewish comrades, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo refused to worship the golden calf that King Nebuchadnezzar had built. They would only worship the One True God of the Israelites. Because they disobeyed the King, he ordered his men to build a big furnace and to turn up the heat 7 times more than before –which means very, very hot. Now, we know from this sermon don’t we that God also appears in the form of a fiery furnace. So Daniel and the others knew that God would never let them burn, but would save them from the fire.
And what happened? [Give them time to answer.] That’s right. The King was amazed, because he saw the men walking around in the middle of the fire inside of the furnace. He couldn’t figure it out. When they came out, they didn’t even smell like smoke. From then on, the King decided, that Daniel’s God was the True God.
Listen –the men in this story had salt. And that salt –their passion and faith in God that was immovable and inconsumable—acted as a protector within that furnace. The men were not consumed but protected by the fiery presence of God’s True Light.
Today, I invite you now to come forward to the alter and to scoop out of the bowl up front a handful of salt. Hold it tightly in your hands and receive the blessing of God’s power and protection. Keep it with you as you go out into the world today to remind you that YOU are the light that lets everyone around you know that God IS present, powerful, and alive in the world. Yes, even today.
*Photo of clay oven is taken from www.thattheworldmayknow.com. Photo of salt lamp from www.himasaltlamps.com.
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
Matthew’s Account of Jesus’ Teaching on a Mountainside Regarding Salt and Light (5:13-16 and 6:19-24)
Minor Text
The Light Comes into Being (Genesis 1)
The Lord Makes a Covenant with Abram as a Smoking Firepot (Genesis 15)
The Lord Meets Moses as a Fiery Furnace on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19)
The Lord Burns Up Elijah’s Sacrifice Like an Oven (1 Kings 18)
Elisha Heals the Spring Waters of Jericho with Salt (2 Kings 2:19-22)
In David’s Song, the Lord Appears as a Fiery Furnace (2 Samuel 22)
Psalm 16: I Keep My Eyes Only on the Lord
Psalm 25: My Eyes Are Ever on the Lord
Psalm 49: Those with Wealth Do Not Endure
Psalm 73: The Malice of a Callous Heart
Psalm 97: Light Shines on the Upright in Heart
Psalm 101: My Eyes Will Be on the Faithful
Psalm 119: Open My Eyes
The Story of Daniel and the Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3)
The Lord Laments the Idolatrous Eye of Israel and Will Bring Forth an Unquenchable Flame (Ezekiel 20)
Israel’s Cleansing by Fire of the Cookpot (Ezekiel 24)
The 7 Lampstands (Revelation 1)
Matthew’s Account of Jesus’ Teaching on a Mountainside Regarding Salt and Light
“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.”
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
Image Exegesis: Salt and Light
Put away from you a deceitful mouth and put devious speech far from you. Let your eyes look directly ahead and let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you. Watch the path of your feet and all your ways will be established.… (Proverbs 4:24-26)
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:6)
Jesus’ teaching and healing go hand in hand. In the scriptures, on a mountaintop, Jesus, in rabbinic style, interprets the scriptures using metaphors to help people understand what he is trying to get across. In these first teachings as we have them from Matthew, Jesus moves from one theme to another, obviously choosing them based on current issues of the day for the people at hand. While addressing covenant, prayer, justice, forgiveness, divorce, and other issues which were variously interpreted during this time, when the House of Hillel and House of Shammai so widely disagreed, and during which time the Shammai and their extremist interpretations had become the norm, Jesus sets people straight –or on the straight and narrow one might say-- regarding THE interpretation sanctioned by God and in the meanings God truly intended.
The metaphors of “salt” and “light” follow the beautitudes, and in such, they describe the nature of what it means to be in covenant with God, what that looks like in one’s life.
A bit later, Jesus would again use the metaphor of light, this time along with the metaphor of the “eye” to talk about the difference between yearning for God and yearning for wealth and materiality (the current day’s equivalent of the golden calf).
The “light” can only shine when one’s heart and mind are fixed on God. For this to happen, one must have “salt” within. What does this mean?
When you cook BBQ (especially if you’re from the south!), you know that slow is better. To grill is fast heat; to barbeque is lower heat; but the best of the best, to smoke, requires low heat and long time. A cook will tell you that when you cook large hunks of meat, slower and lower means a lot more flavor. It means that the outside won’t burn before the inside is done. It means more even cooking, juicier meat, smoky flavor. For this, your outdoor oven or smoker or whatever you are using must not be on high flame, but on low burn –for a long, long time. This requires consistency, evenness of flame, lots of heat at a low regulated temperature.
And it requires…salt. Throw salt on the coals…..and you’ll reduce flaming flare-ups, and guarantee a nice evenly slow burn.
The art of smoking you might say is pretty close to the way people cooked meat or baked bread in Jesus’ day. They used large clay mounds outdoors with a hole where they would put a mixture of manure and …you guessed it…salt. The salt would serve as a catalyst for the flame, making the oven very hot but allowing for a controlled, even heat.
While we mostly think of salt as something we taste, for people in Jesus’ time, it was more something you used for healing, for preserving, and for purification. They sprinkled it on sacrifices to God. They rubbed babies with salt to insure they would have a pure life. They preserved meat with it. And they used it in their ovens.
But the salt they used was not what you think of as your table salt, which is pretty much pure sodium chloride. This “purification” agent was far from pure salt. In fact, it was a “crude” salt, filled with all kinds of minerals and metals, derived from the salt of the Dead Sea.
This salt in fact was better used as a medium in your oven than as a seasoning in your stew! In fact, priests and those offering sacrifices were not allowed to have salt, taste salt. They were required to use it as a purifier for the sacrifice itself.*
Crude salt easily dissolves in water. And it quickly hardens when dry (think of Lot’s wife!)
It also can lose its “saltiness.” Whether caught in a rainstorm or heated numerous times as oven “charcoal,” sooner or later, the salt would lose its “saltiness,” its mineral qualities and its ability to serve as a catalyst for the oven. At that time, the slab of salt would be removed and discarded (to be trampled underfoot). It was no longer useful. It no longer had any of the properties of its former self. It had lost its fidelity to create heat and light.
Ever wonder why Jesus mentions salt and light in the same paragraph? Salt was used in the incense and in the lamps in Jesus’ time to keep them lit longer. In fact, even today, if you put salt into candle wax, it will make the candle burn longer and more evenly.
Salt was a very important commodity. In fact, Romans soldiers were paid a salarium (paid in salt). It was a highly prized mineral.
And salt was the important ingredient to heat and light for the fiery furnace, the burning light of God.** God’s flame is the flame that cannot be quenched, yet does not burn the righteous, but only the chaff.
The scholar DeLanghe (1954) even goes as far as to interpret the scripture: “You are the salt of the earthen oven; but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how shall its saltiness be restored?”
The gospeler John says, Jesus is the Light of the World. But here in Matthew, Jesus says, YOU are the light of the world. Wow! When you have “salt” within you, it means that you not only have the integrity of honoring your covenant with God, but you serve therefore as a catalyst for God’s divine light. And everyone who looks at you can see it!
God’s light becomes your light within, which shines without. You literally “burn” evenly and brightly with God’s heavenly light.
How powerful is that!
Interestingly, people in Jesus’ day also believed that salt would keep you safe from demonic sources. Jesus however was not interested in superstitions. He was interested in discipleship that burned brightly and could change the world with its passion and energy.
Perhaps this is why in the Hebrew scriptures, God speaks of a covenant of salt. Salt was the essence of the fidelity of the covenant. When we have salt within us, we make Jesus (the new covenant) visible to the world.
Far from embers of resentment, God’s “slow burn” is a never-ending loyalty to the One True God. This is true purity in Jesus’ interpretation.
Just after speaking of salt, Jesus talks about the lighted city on the mountain (reference in Revelation the Divine Light that illuminates the entire City of God). The word in Hebrew is mountain, not hill. And Jesus also mentions the lamps (reference the huge lamps surrounding Jerusalem which light up the city). When your inner lamp burns with the Light of God, everyone can see it. It’s SO bright that it will illuminate an entire city and household (think “house” meaning generation).
A catalyst (salt is the catalyst for the oven) is a substance that initiates a chemical reaction. It precipitates change. It is a stimulus, a spark, an impetus. If salt (being loyal to the covenant and in relationship with God) is a catalyst for the light of God within you that shines so brightly, then that light is not just something people see, but something that has the power and energy to produce change within them.
“The Lord, whose fire is in Zion, whose furnace is in Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 31:9)
Jesus is not just talking about a characteristic of YOU. He is talking about YOUR ability to change the world (God changes the world through you). You are not just changed. But your changedness changes others.
“Lord give light to my eyes” says the psalmist (13). Jesus takes the concept of God’s light even further in his teachings when he says that the “eye” is the “lamp” of the body. So we can take this idea of “salt covenant” and “you are the light of the world” and note that your “eye” is responsible for how you receive that light!
You not only have to have salt within you. But your “eye” must be focused only on God! This is of course having salt as well.
If your eye strays, you lose your “saltiness” for you have lost your identity. Your identity is attached to what your eye is set upon. If you set your eyes upon wealth and material things, your soul will be in darkness. God and money cannot exist together. As Jesus says, “you can only have one master.” When your eye however focuses only upon God, you will be filled with light.
Jesus notes that only God is eternal. Only God’s fire cannot be extinguished. “Where your treasure is, there is your heart.” Is your heart filled with the fiery light of God? Or in other words, “Be careful what you love!”
What you crave with your eyes, you love with your heart.
In Jewish folk culture, “ayin hara” is the evil eye. People believed that the malicious gaze could bring about evil. In midrash, the evil eye cannot bear to see the good fortune of others. It is selfish and greedy. A “good eye” enjoys seeing others happy and successful.
The eye also represents primeval light, the spiritual light of God, divine radiance. To blacken it, is to black out God. In a sense, this is what Jesus is saying. Your eye can reflect the light of God, or it can black God out with its desire for the “golden calf.”
The inner eye (Ruach HaKodesh) is connected to the heart. And we can choose whether to use our eye for good or evil. Will we be humble? Or idolatrous? The eye once gazing in the wrong direction can easily become a slave to sin (yetzer hara –evil impulse).
A person’s gaze therefore reflects his or her inner character.
YHWH is the Light of Creation, the shekinah. And we are to be the Light to the World (as Isaiah says as well).
When Sabbath candles are lit, the words are repeated: “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who sanctified us with his commandments, and commanded us to be a light to the nations….”
Jesus’ teachings begin here. No matter what other interpretations h.e makes, we must first be part of the Light.
As James says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17).
*See the Cultural Dictionary of the Bible. For more on salt pits see the Jewish Encyclopedia. The Mishna makes a similar statement: “When salt becomes corrupt with what is it salted?” [Bek 8b].
**The burning furnace is one of the most prominent metaphors pointing to God in the Hebrew scriptures. See John J.U. Pilch “Salt for the Earthen Oven” in Theological Studies.