Salt & Light
Matthew 5:13 - 16
1. Beaufort West is a mid-sized, rural, sheep farming town in the center of the Cape Province in South Africa.
• One of its claims to fame is that it was the birthplace of the world’s first heart transplant pioneer, Dr. Chris Barnard.
• Another claim to fame or notoriety is that it was the home and place of ministry to your pastor, Anne, and our kids for the year of 1983
2. I can remember like it was yesterday, the day of our arrival at the parsonage – having driven around 300 miles NE from Cape Town to take up the new pastoral appointment at the Methodist Church.
• The lady who was there to open up the parsonage was Mrs. Hester van Rensburg – a large and imposing farmer lady with a stern and critical persona.
• She looked down on me with her hands on her hips and said in her strong Afrikaans accent, “So, you’re the new minister here? Well, I’m Mrs. Van Rensburg. They call me ‘The Battleaxe’, so you better pasop (be careful)”.
• And she certainly lived up to that description! A person who was only content as long as her orders were obeyed to the letter and her perspective on all matters was approved. All the other women and many men lived in fear and trembling of her. No one wanted to deal with her domineering personality.
• One year before I came there she had even refused to serve the President of the Annual Conference, who happened to be a Coloured man, tea out of the same cups that the rest of the white folks drank – and no one had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to her!
3. About half way through the year, I was asked to bring a message to the Women’s Auxiliary (like the UMW). I spoke on the importance and significance of our names.
• How the names – conscious and subconscious - we accept for ourselves largely define and determine the way we relate to the world
• Those who have accepted names for themselves like “critical”, “argumentative”, “worrisome”, “fearful” – are going to manifest those characteristics just as readily as those who have accepted names for themselves like “confident”, “caring”, “beautiful” – and so on.
• And then I went around the circle and shared with each of the ladies the Cultural Origin, the Inherent Meaning, the Scriptural Connotation of their names along with a supporting Scripture.
4. When I came to Mrs. Van Rensburg, whose name was Hester, I reminded her that her name meant STAR and the Spiritual Connotation was GIFT OF GOD. I then said to her, “Hester, from this day on your name is no longer ‘The Battleaxe’, but ‘STAR, the Gift of God’. Be who you are!
• There was an initial stunned silence in the room, but after a few moments all the ladies started calling her ‘STAR’. She was delightfully and pleasantly speechless as a warm flow of blessing came her way from those ladies.
• We moved from Beaufort West 6 months later and so I did not get the opportunity to see a fuller outworking of the change in Hester, but within a few weeks there had been a marked and very noticeable change in her demeanor and even a softening in her facial features that must have been such a welcome relaxation of tension for her.
5. In our Scripture lesson for today, as Jesus launches into the main body of His Sermon on the Mount, He says to His group of very ordinary disciples, who still struggle with all their frailties, their fears, their frustrations, and fightings – they are by no means perfected individuals – even Judas Iscariot was likely among the bunch – He says, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world…”
• Whenever God determined to do a new thing in a person’s life, He gave them a new name.
• He did it for Abram. He did it for Isaac. He did it for Simon the fisherman. He did it for Saul of Tarsus – and He does it for you and me when we receive for ourselves the name of His Son by calling ourselves “Christ-ian”
• And Jesus does it here on the mountain for His disciples and now also for us as He says, “You are salt…You are light…”
6. He doesn’t say “Try to be like salt…try to be like light”. He doesn’t put a guilt trip on us and say “You ought to be like salt…you ought to be like light…”
• He simply states it as a matter of fact and a description of our true identity – Be who you are!
• I spent many years as a Boy Scout and learned the Scout Code of Honor that stated, “A Scout is Trustworthy - Loyal - Helpful – Friendly - Courteous - Kind - Obedient – Cheerful - Thrifty - Brave - Clean – Reverent” – those were all descriptive names by which a scout would come to know himself and the more those names were internalized, the more each of them became part and parcel of you were and how you perceived yourself.
7. Jesus apparently did not feel the need to go into any lengthy elaboration and explanation of all the functions of salt – how when it is rubbed into fish or meat it slows down the rotting process, how it is used as an antiseptic, how it enhances the flavor of food – nor did He have to expand on the functions of light to help people to find their way, see where they’re going, and not trip over or bump into things.
• And so if He did not believe it necessary to go into further explanation of those images, neither am I this morning. Rather I am going to trust that as you accept those names – SALT and LIGHT - as descriptions of who you are, of your essential nature, - and as we keep reminding one another of those qualities God has placed within us, the Holy Spirit will increasingly flesh out and expand the content of those words in your life and mine.
8. Now Jesus does include a potential negative in each of these descriptions – and so we need to be watchful of it ourselves as well.
• He says “If the salt should lose its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is then good for nothing except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men”.
• Well now, the pure sodium chloride we use as table salt today cannot lose its saltiness. You could keep it for 100 years or more and it will always be salty. But the salt of Jesus’ day was sea salt or rock salt mixed with impurities and if the salt was washed out of the mixture, all you would be left with was worthless and tasteless residue of no value to anyone.
• If we, as His disciples, lose our distinctiveness as salt, we cease to be God’s agent to slow or prevent the process of corruption in our world. We cease to provide the healing and antiseptic function of our presence. And our savorless presence leaves the world without flavor to God.
• Salt that just remains in the pretty shaker and refuses to be sprinkled out there in the world is defeating its purpose.
• Likewise a lighted lamp placed under a bucket serves no useful purpose to anyone and pretty soon it uses up its oxygen supply and goes out.
• We are light for all in the house, in the neighborhood, in the community, in the workplace, on the sportsfield – wherever people gather.
9. Too much salt in the food makes us gag and want to spit it out. Bright light shone into people’s eyes is annoying and a hindrance to seeing.
• Salt is not added to food so you can taste salt above the food – just a hint to enhance the food’s own flavor is all that is needed.
• Salt gives itself away to benefit the food.
• The light is not there to draw attention to itself but to illumine who and what is shaded in darkness and result in God receiving glory.
10. On Friday morning as I came into the Nurses Station at the Issaquah ED, one of the male nurses jokingly said, “Uh oh folks, the Chaplain’s here. We need to watch our language”. I replied, “Of course. And if you do so enough while I am here, perhaps you’ll get in the habit of controlling your speech when I am gone”.
• You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world. Be what you are!
AMEN
