Foolish Salt

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“As presumptuous as it sounds, we Christians are the reason that God preserves the world and does not destroy it right now.” One of my seminary professors once struck at the heart of today's Gospel lesson this way, and it is perhaps a worthwhile entry into Jesus' discourse.

Jesus says to His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.” Oceans of ink have been spilled onto forests of paper debating what this means. You all know what salt is and what it does. It is one of the most necessary compounds on the planet, right up there with water and oxygen. Salt is one of those things that makes the world go round. Wars have been fought and nations built on the salt of the earth.

But, “if the salt becomes foolishness, in what way will it be made salty?” Salt is a preservative. Aeons ago, salt was practically the only preservative known to man. And it still is the most common way to preserve food throughout the world. And so also you are the salt of the earth. You – the Church – are the preservative of the world.

Remember the story of Abraham bargaining with God for the lives of Sodom and Gomorrah. God purposed to destroy those wicked cities and all their inhabitants, but Abraham bargained with God that He show mercy for the sake of the faithful who might live there. Would God destroy the fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten faithful along with the wicked hordes? No, the Lord promises – for the sake of the few faithful, He will preserve the many faithless.

And so, o you faithful, it is in our world even to this day. You are the salt of the earth. You are the faithful remnant, the descendants of Noah to whom is given the promise that the Lord will never again destroy the world. You are the preservative that protects the life of the world from destruction on account of gross unbelief and sin. You are the bargaining chip, the feather that tips the balance in favor of life. It is on account of the Church – however small and suffering she may be – that the world is and continues to be. Because He has promised to uphold your life, the Lord will not wipe the human race off the face of the earth.

But, “if the salt becomes foolishness, in what way will it be made salty?” There has been some question raised among scholars as to whether the “it” in the second part of that sentence refers to the salt, or to the earth. Grammatically, the simplest reading of the text is usually best, and so one would say that “it” refers to the salt. However, for the purposes of the analogy that Jesus is building, I think you can see it both ways.

If the salt becomes foolishness, if it becomes adulterated in such a way that it loses its taste and its function, then how will the salt be made right again, how will it be reconstituted? If you – the salt of the earth – become foolishness and nonsense, what will make you coherent and relevant again?

Perhaps, then, the question to ask is: how did you become foolishness? We have been hearing from St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians these weeks. He speaks to the Corinthians about foolishness and wisdom. The Gospel is the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation, but it is foolishness and a stumbling block to those who are perishing, both Jews and Greeks. However, Christians have always faced the temptation to attempt to become wise in the eyes of the world – going back to the serpent's temptation to Eve in the Garden. And this is the problem: when you attempt to become wise for the world, you become foolishness in the eyes of God.

You become foolishness when you speak what is not given to be spoken, and when you hold your tongue when it is necessary to speak. A great lot of organizations with the word “church” in their name or title say a great lot of things – some good, some bad; some true, some not so much. Whether it is the rabid fundamentalism of the Appalachian snake-handling sects or the defamatory Westboro Baptist crowd, or the conciliatory cooing of the liberal Protestant intelligentsia, the church that attempts to insert itself into the culture of the world is playing a losing game, and – one might argue – not being the Church.

On one hand, there is a temptation for the Church to have an opinion on everything. There are faith-based organizations which have drawn up lists of stores and merchants with which one ought or ought not do business. Just listen for a day to Christian radio, and you will hear lots and lots of chatter about how to influence “the culture”, how to “win people for Christ”, and how to build the Kingdom of God through legislation and other forms of coercion. Christians of a certain ilk will sit and pray to God about what sort of car to drive, which house to buy, what college to attend, what brand of cereal to eat, whether wheat is okay to consume. The Church that says too much becomes foolishness, both in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of God. How will she be made salty again?

On the other hand, the Church faces a temptation to have an opinion on nothing. The Christian life is no longer couched in terms of Law and Gospel, sin and grace, life and death. Instead, it is a matter of bigotry versus acceptance, hatred versus love, piety versus pride. The Church should not speak in such hateful, outmoded ways. The people of yore may have been very pious in their faith, but they were misguided in their attempts to force everyone into their rigid, narrow definitions of the world and the Gospel. God is bigger than our petty differences. Should we not just life and let live, love and let love? Love wins in the end, after all.

So how does salt which has become foolishness recover its saltiness? How does it get re-salted? The salt must stick to doing what it does best – being salt. That is, the Church must be the Church – no more, no less. St. Paul told the Corinthians, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified … that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” The message that the Church proclaims, and must proclaim above all else, is Christ crucified for sinners. For all sinners, of whatsoever variety.

For if there are no sinners, but only those confused and discomfited, then there is no need of a savior, and Christ has died in vain. But if you confess that you are sinful and unclean, then our Lord Christ comes to you, sprinkles you with the blood of the New Covenant shed upon the cross, and cleanses you from all unrighteousness. He salts you with the salt of the earth, so that you may be preserved from sin, death, and the devil.

If the salt becomes foolishness, how then will the earth be salted? How could food be preserved from decay and destruction without salt that has the potency of salt to do what salt does? If the Church becomes foolishness, how will the unbelieving world around her be saved from the righteous judgment of God? In what way will the world be preserved from destruction, from being handed over to the results of its own sin and corruption?

The world will not be saved by appeals to the hearts of the unbelieving to “feel the power of God”. It will not be saved by dismissing or relaxing the requirements of the Law. For Christ did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. The world will not be saved by picketing outside the funerals of honorable citizens, nor by tolerating every sort of sin and misbehavior. The Church must stand, or fall, on the person and work of Christ Jesus our Lord. The function of the Church is to be the Light of the World, letting her light so shine before men that all may see her good works and glorify her Father in heaven.

And what are the good works of the Church which she holds up as the light of the world? First and foremost, the good work of the Church which enlightens the world is the reception of the Gifts which her Head and Bridegroom has come to give to her. The Church – and that means you, o her members – exists to receive the Gifts of God. You are here not to snooze through some morality tale or self-help lecture. You are not here to get a happy feeling or to chat with friends on a frozen Sunday morning. You are here to confess your sins and to hear the Absolution. You are here to listen to the Word of the Lord proclaimed to you through the voice of the prophets and apostles and evangelists. You are here to have the Law of God cut your heart and your life like a knife and the Gospel of Jesus Christ laid upon you as a healing salve, the healing of the nations placed upon you.

You are here to be marked with the cross of Christ. You are here to receive life in the Name of Christ the Crucified, the Lamb of God who died for your sins and rose for your justification. You are here to be drowned and die to sin, and to be raised again to new life in Christ. You are here to have the Body and Blood of God the Lord placed upon your tongue for the forgiveness of your sins and the strengthening of your faith and communion.

And you are here to be strengthened for life in and service to the world around you. Salt that sits in a jar or shaker or mine does no one any good. It is when it is applied to the food that it becomes a transformative element, reshaping whatever it touches. The Church in isolation – if that were even possible – is not the Church. But when the Church of God opens the shutters and shines the Light of the World into the darkness of this present age, the whole world is lit up. When the Church salts the earth with her life-giving and heart-transforming proclamation, she is changed into an instrument of God's love and mercy, and the world around her is transformed. Nothing can stay the same when the Word of God resounds through creation.

And that light continues to shine throughout the world as the earth is salted by the Church's good works which flow from the life of faith. You are salt and light, not by your niceness or your piety or your not being “one of those people”. You are salt of the earth when you work for the good of those around you. You are the light of the world when you make someone's darkness a bit lighter, whether by a word or deed.

Your good works do not generate the light within you, any more than the sea generates the salt in it. But you are transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and you transform the world in which you live by the works of mercy and love which flow from you because of the light that shines in your heart. Christ our Lord does not need your works, for He has done what is needful for you. But your neighbor does, because his needs of body and soul still need to be met, today and each day thereafter. Your light shines before men, because the darkness cannot overcome it, overshadow it, or comprehend it. Your saltiness transforms everything you touch. Let it be seen, that men may know the hope that is within you, and glorify the God and Father who has created you to do such good works.

Through the Church, God gives salvation to the earth. The Church cannot run away from that; it is who you are and why you exist. This day is a day full of grace, because God has preserved the world for the sake of the elect. Through the preaching of the Gospel and through the Church's works of mercy, the world sees a God who is gracious and merciful to sinners. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.