Mark's sermon, Matt 5:13, Keep it Salty
Salt and Light
13 “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.
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 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. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
This is a pair of directives given by Jesus. It makes the transition from the Beatitudes into the more formal teaching sections of the sermon.
On a surface level, these are here to show the relationship between the disciple and the world.
As the beatitudes come to a close, the emphasis in persecution. You will be persecuted. So the natural inclination of a disciple might be to flee to hide, or at least to stay below the radar. But in light of this teaching, that is not an option.
There is an ancient saying that states "There is nothing more useful than salt and the sun." This sums up when the heart of this passage. The disciples of Jesus are supposed to be useful.
Now this sets up a very interesting relationship: they hate us, we help them. We will look at this relationship this week and next. This week we will look more carefully at the salt aspect of the relationship, and next week we will consider the light aspect. Before we get into salt, lets look at some general observations.
1) Us vs.Them, Those who live the beatitudes and those who do not, Those who love God and those who do not.
2) In each case, the "Us" is impacting the "Them." Salt is impacting the food it is put on. Light impacts the darkness it shines into.
3) In the first case the "Us" prevents change in "Them," in the second case the "Us" brings the change.
4) So we are called to look for the good and preserve it, and look for the bad and expose it.
That is the point. Disciples are to be agents for good in a world of evil. But how do we do that? Do we don a mask, and a cape, and run around looking for bad guys.
Now, lets talk about salt.
Until recently, the primary purpose of salt was to preserve meat. And after a bit of study, it seems logical to me that this is the use Jesus had in mind. Do we have an bio-chemist in the room today. I am about to make this the most exciting sermon you have heard all year. Here is how salt preserves food.
Salt performs several functions in preserving food: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-05/926363092.Bc.r.html
1. Salt shifts the growth conditions to favor Gram-positive instead of
Gram-negative bacteria. Most human pathogens are Gram-negative. These
include Salmonella, Escherichia coli and Clostridia. There are only a few
Gram-positive pathogens, such as Listeria and Staphylococcus.
2. Salt removes available water from the food by changing the osmotic
pressure. This makes it harder for bacteria to obtain water to grow. The
availability of water in food is called "water activity", and every
species of bacteria has a minimum water activity below which it won't
grow. Most pathogens will not grow below a water activity of 0.92 (pure
water is 1.0).
3. Salt in itself eventually becomes poisonous to the microbes by creating
an electrolyte imbalance within the cell.
This then leads to the obvious question, how does salt lose its saltiness. Certainly the creator of the universe knows that sodium chloride is a stable substance. It cannot be less of what it is, without ceasing to be salt.
But it can be mixed with other substances that make it less effective. If you intend to use salt to preserve a piece of meat.
It understand this, we simple need to put our selves in the position of the ancient Roman world. When someone wanted to preserve a piece of meat they would add salt, but the ability of the salt to do its job, it had to be salt doing the job. If something else got added to the salt, the meat would spoil. It seems logical to me that this would be the best way to describe "Salt losing its saltiness" and when someone in ancient times discovered their salt had be contaminated, it could not be thrown in the field, it would kill the plants, so it was thrown on the path.
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It that is what Jesus was saying, the next question is what did he mean?
I think he means that we are to be spread out through out the face of the earth. We are to preserve the good in our world. We lose our saltiness if we don't continue to do our job.
So how do we preserve the good?
1) Recognize that we can have an impact. We can make a difference.
2) Open your eyes, and look for things that are going well.
3) Be an encourager.
4) Leverage your resources to do all you can.
Mark Kraakevik
The EDGE Colorado - Live The Message
720-308-4051
www.theedgecolorado.org
To live is Christ, to die is gain.
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