Bible reading: Matthew 5:1-16.

Message.

“Mary is reliable, trustworthy, and straightforward; in fact she’s the salt of the Earth”. What sort of image would flash up in your mind if you heard someone saying that? For me, it would be an old-fashioned picture of a hard-working woman who lived in a terraced house in an industrial city, rising early each morning to stoke the fire, get her husband’s breakfast, then cleaning, washing, shopping and scrubbing the front step until it gleamed. She’d be middle-aged but beginning to look a bit weary, dressed neatly but plainly; she’d also be honest and plain-speaking. And if you think that picture makes me sound a bit snobbish or condescending, you’d be absolutely correct, because one dictionary definition of “salt of the earth” says that it’s used mainly by upper-class people when they are talking about working-class folk whom they consider good but rather rough-and-ready. It probably says more about the speaker than the person they’re describing!

Well, I don’t think that Jesus was being condescending or snobbish when, during his famous Sermon on the Mount, he called his hearers “the salt of the earth”. Matthew gives us the impression that Jesus was specifically speaking to his disciples but surrounded by many other people who were keen to hear what he had to say. This phrase is of course immediately followed by another which seems to reinforce its message: “You are the light of the world”. The question we need to ask ourselves this morning is, “What did Jesus actually mean?”

Before I attempt to answer that, I’d like to say something about salt itself. It’s so common that we scarcely give it a moment’s thought; yet it is not only useful but essential to life. I went onto the Internet and came away with a long – but by no means complete – list of salt’s uses, quite apart from flavouring and preserving food. For instance it’s used to stabilise cloth dyes, to remove impurities when processing steel and aluminium, to cure the latex when making tyres, and to help cool the bits used in drilling oil wells. Salt-based compounds are essential for making batteries, especially the sodium-ion ones which are replacing lithium ones, and salt is a vital ingredient in the chemical, glass- and paper-making industries. It has various uses in the pharmaceutical world, such as in intravenous fluids and saline drips; it also forms part of the glaze in a type of pottery (I’ve learned a lot from watching the “Antiques Roadshow”!); it has agricultural applications as well.

That’s not all. I’m sure we’ve all been grateful to salt when it’s been used to de-ice our roads (although the pavements seem to get missed). In our gardens it can be used to kill poison ivy, deter ants and kill slugs; in our homes it can be used to clear wine and coffee stains, to deep-clean our cookers, to brighten our brassware, to remove water-marks and to sanitise our fridge (not that I’m going to attempt any of those things!). A salt solution can also allegedly whiten our teeth and soothe itchy and dry skin. So salt has many uses; of the 300 million tons produced globally each year, only a small percentage is used in food.

Obviously salt didn’t have so many uses in Jesus’s day! But we’re still left with the question of what he meant by telling his disciples that they were “the salt of the earth”. That’s further complicated by his reference to salt “losing its saltiness”, as we know that simply doesn’t happen; salt can dissolve (obviously true when it’s mixed with grit and spread on our roads) but solid salt still remains salty! Well, most explanations of Jesus’s words that I have heard have centred on us Christians being people of integrity, contributing to society in small but significant ways, gently seeking to influence politics and morality. Just as a small pinch of salt in cooking flavours the entire dish, so our “saltiness” can have a pervasive and disproportionate effect on society. Most people won’t hear what we’re saying or notice what we’re doing; yet those “little things” (to quite Dewi Sant) have their effect.

That’s an attractive interpretation of Jesus’s words, and it’s one which can encourage us if we feel that we are an ignored minority in society, that our efforts to do good and create a better world are very much taken for granted. It also fits in well with Jesus’s parable of the yeast or leaven, in which a small amount added to the flour brings life to the whole loaf of bread. However during my research for today’s service (well, a little bit of reading!) I came across another interpretation which made me sit up in surprise but then made a lot of sense. It involves not just salt but also cow-dung and fire; let me tell you about it.

I need to start with the suggestion that, in Biblical times in the near East, salt wasn’t much used either as seasoning or to preserve food. It wasn’t much used as seasoning because it makes people thirsty, which isn’t what you want in a hot, dry summer when water might be hard to obtain; more common seasonings, at least nowadays, include cumin, zatar, dill, capers and mint. As for using salt as a preservative, meat was rare in most peoples’ diet, not part of daily fare. It appears that meat was either eaten immediately after the animal had been killed, or that it was smoked or dried – rather than salted – for storage.

So what was salt used for? This is where the cow-dung comes in! For it appears that village people in Palestine baked their bread in earthen ovens, often communal. Indeed something similar was common in Britain until fairly recently, with housewives bringing not only their bread but also their Sunday roasts to be cooked at the bakehouse. However, there was a problem: firewood is not plentiful in Palestine, so it couldn’t be used as fuel. What was easily obtainable was animal dung; goat and sheep dung were too dry but donkey, camel or cow dung mixed with chaff and formed into patties were just the thing. About 2000 of these patties would be needed for a year’s supply of fuel. It was women’s work to collect and shape the dung during the warmer months of the year (we might say, “Trust the men to make them do the nasty stuff!”); it would be laid out in the sunshine to dry.

“That’s all very interesting”, you may be thinking, “but what has it got to do with salt?”. Well, hang on – I’m getting there! For apparently salt was mixed with the dung, or flat plates of it were placed underneath the dung on the bottom of the ovens. The effect of this (please don’t ask me about the science involved!) was to make the fire burn better. In other words, the salt had a catalytic effect which made the oven hotter. However it seems that, over time, perhaps years, the salt plates underwent some kind of chemical reaction, possibly due to contamination, with the result that they stifled the flames rather than enhancing them. At this point one might have said that the salt had “lost its saltiness”; it was no longer useful and had to be thrown out. You might use it as a paving slab on a muddy path, but little else.

I wonder what you think of this analysis of Jesus’s words? I find it fascinating as it helps us to hear them as his disciples did, in their cultural context which was so different to ours. It’s sometimes hard for us to remember that, when we read the Bible, we read it as 21^st century Europeans – but it was written in the 1^st century near East.

Having said all that, are we any closer to understanding what Jesus actually meant when he called his disciples “the salt of the earth” (as well, of course, as “lights for the world”). Well, this phrase comes straight after the Beatitudes in which Jesus spoke of God’s blessing resting upon certain categories of people: the meek, the poor, the mournful and several others. He concludes with both a cheery summary: “Be happy and glad, for a great reward is kept for you in heaven” and a solemn warning: “This is how the prophets who lived before you were persecuted”. That’s the springboard from which he tells his disciples that they are “salt” and “light”. He seems to be saying that living out the Beatitudes by giving priority to the poor, the needy, the sad and the down-trodden is good and may even be a catalyst in changing the way society regards them – but also that adopting such revolutionary principles may well whip up anger and antagonism from the complacent people who hold the levers of power.

Another idea about the meaning of Jesus’s words comes from Luke’s Gospel, where he says, “I have come to set the earth on fire: how I wish it were already blazing”; and explains that his call to discipleship may tear households apart. In other words, Jesus knew that his ministry could start fires and bring division and strife. This may not be a big issue in Britain, where most folk have a fairly free-and-easy attitude to religion. But it certainly is a big one in Jewish and Muslim contexts, where converting to Christianity is regarded as a betrayal of one’s family and community. Michael Salamon Alexander, the first Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, was considered a reprobate and outcast in his home town of Schönlanke in East Prussia when he converted from orthodox Judaism and went to England. I tell you this because I can relate to him: my father was born in the same town 70 years later.

We’ve covered a lot of ground this morning; you may have found what I’ve said complicated, fanciful, challenging, confusing, irrelevant or simply boring! But our examination of these words of Jesus does leave us with at least two thoughts. One is that, as his representatives in this world, we cannot keep ourselves to ourselves: that would do no more good than keeping salt in a sack or a container. As Christians, we are called to live out the Beatitudes, doing and saying things that will have an effect on our fellow-humans, on society. Coupled to that is the thought that those words and actions may at times cause a rumpus or a stir, that they might ignite a fire of controversy which we hadn’t expected – just as Jesus’s own acts and teachings did. He may not be asking us to quietly infuse society with his seasoning, but to be inflammatory. Ultimately Jesus calls us to live our lives with honesty and integrity; we are his representatives and what people think of him can only be based on what they see of him in us, his salt of the earth.