Spiritual Spice

“You are the Salt of the Earth.”

Once upon a time, people liked salt.
It was used in cooking,
and in seasoning, without a second thought;
without fear--
tell me, who here loves popcorn without salt?
Let me see a show of hands.
I thought not.

Salt adds a little spice,
if you'll pardon the pun,
to food.

But, unfortunately,
medicine has discovered that Salt is bad for us.
Salt is evil.
Diets high in Sodium are bad for
the blood pressure and the heart,
And, so, we cut out the salt in our cooking.
We cut out the salt in our seasonings
We cut out the salt on our popcorn--
well, maybe a little salt on the popcorn wont hurt too much?

Today, Salt is evil.
And yet, Jesus called the Church the “Salt of the Earth!”
By that, did he mean that we were called to give the
world High Blood Pressure and Heart Attacks?”
No, though I sometimes wonder if that’s what churches
want to do to pastors!

No--we have been called to a special calling.
Not to evil, but to Good.
Would You Pray With Me?

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

When Jesus said this,
he gave us an expression which has become one of the greatest compliments
that can be paid to any person.

Far from being an insult,
when we say that good ol’ Joe “is the salt of the earth”
we are saying that Joe is faithful,
solid,
and dependable.

In the ancient world,
Salt was highly valued.
People didn't fear it like they do today.
The greeks called salt Divine.
The Romans said that nothing was more useful than “Sun and Salt.”
In the time of Jesus, Salt was connected in people's minds with three special qualities:

Firstly, Salt was connected with purity.
It is white,
and the color white has long been connected with purity

The Romans said that Salt was the Purest of all things
because it came from the purest of all things: The Sun and the Sea.
And the Sun evaporated sea water, leaving Salt.

In the Jewish Sacrifices,
Salt was almost always included because
it purified the offering.

Salt is also a vital part of Holy Water ...
the addition of a little bit of table salt to to the water,
as an old monk friend of mine once told me,
'keeps the demons out.'
Salt has long been connected with purity.

If Salt is pure
and Christians are called to be the Salt of the Earth,
Then it follows that Christians are called to be examples of purity.

A Calling which, by and large, we have--far too often--sadly failed to meet.
Just one look at the world's declining Moral standards
should convince us that we are not
following our calling.

For some reason, Christians are afraid of
proclaiming morality.
Oh, we're good at arguing over issues of doctrine,
and we good at fighting over fine points of theology,
but morals and values are dirty ideas in today's culture.

If the Church is going to be relevant to the world,
it's going to have to throw out such oppressive concepts.
We have fallen so far in our calling to be a purifying Salt in the world
that,
in our disciple Bible Study lesson for last week,
we were asked by the manuel:
“Is it realistic today to expect Christian disciples to be chaste
in singleness and to be faithful in marriage?”

What do you think?

Have the standards changed?
Or have we been frightened away from
being example's of Christ's purity
just as we have been frightened
away from table salt?

Morality is not the central message of the Gospel,
faith is,
but faith, empowered by God’s grace and lived
in full devotion to the love of Christ Jesus,
generates true, internal, morality ... a morality
which goes beyond works,
beyond do do this and don’t do that
to Christ’s working in and through you.
For some reason, the Church, today,
is afraid even of this message.

Secondly, in the Ancient World Salt was the commonest of all preservatives.
It was used to keep things from going bad and rotten,
and to hold down the progress of decay.
Salt, in other words, preserves things from corruption.

And that is what the Church is called into the world to do:
To preserve humanity from corruption.
Christians are called to be the cleansing antiseptic
in society, defeating corruption by their
very presence and offering the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, which is able to purify the world.

Thirdly, the greatest and most obvious quality of salt
is that it adds flavor to things.

As I said, earlier,
who likes to eat popcorn without at least a little salt--
even just a dash of salt--

Christians are called to be Salt by adding
the flavor of God’s love
to this dreadful life the world leads.
Some people look upon religion as boring.
Some people think about the Church as being a dull place,
but the Christian faith is one which adds a wondrous,
spicy flavor to this mortal existence,
because it promises eternal life.

As the Salt of the Earth,
we are called to be examples of purity,
to preserve, and to add a spiritual spice to this dull, mortal life.

That is what Jesus meant when he said that we
are “The Salt of the Earth.”

We must, therefore, take special care that
we don't lose our saltiness.

What happens when your popcorn begins to lose it's salty flavor?
You add more salt!
What happens when we begin to lose touch with Christ's purity,
preserving nature
spiritual flavor
Divine spice?

I wish it were as easy as adding salt to popcorn,
but in truth is’s not that much more difficult either.

When the spiritual life grows dry we are called to
partake of the Means of Grace,
The Sacraments and the Sacramentals
which God has given us to nourish and empower
us for this Christian life.
To be spiritually spicy,
we must partake of God’s Holy Spice,
God’s powerful, life transforming Grace.

Give thanks and praise to God
that we are blessed to partake of God’s glorious grace,
God’s powerful, wonderful, amazing spice,
Today, at the Table of the Lord.