One of the things my wife appreciates about me is that I cook dinner about half the time. Actually we both enjoy cooking, and we have had many weekend “dates” when we cook up a special dish together. But of course the real challenge is to make something tasty on those regular nights during the week when time is short. We tend to have our regular dishes that we know are reliable, but we may tweak now and again to try to perfect the recipe. My specialty is jambalaya. It’s really a pretty simple dish with chicken, sausage, onions, tomatoes, peppers, rice, and some spices. But most important jambalaya needs some “heat” in the form of hot peppers, or Tabasco. Sometimes I will use Cajun style andouille sausage which contains its own heat. A couple of weeks ago, though, I used regular sausage but I left out the hot peppers. The result was I suppose as nutritious as ever, but it certainly did not have the pizzaz that it should have had. It was rather disappointing.
Now I am not up here to give cooking lessons during the sermon time, and we can share recipes some other time. What I am trying to do is connect the spiciness of our own lives, of what we bring to the table, to the goodness and vibrancy of our relationships in and out of the church, and to the kingdom of God. We need to bring some of our own “heat” and passion to our Christian living, if it is not to be bland and uninspiring.
Jesus says in Matthew, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste it is thrown out.” Back in those days salt was very valuable, highly desired to make bland food taste palatable. It was used to preserve foods as well, highly important when there was no refrigeration. Salt, sodium chloride, is one of the simplest compounds. It can be changed into something else by various chemical reactions, but then it is no longer salt. Salt, as long as it remains salt, by its very nature, cannot lose its taste.
We are the salt of the earth, says Jesus. We have been created to give enjoyment and taste to our lives and the lives of others. We have been created in the image of God. We have been made to be co-creators with God. We are born salty. And so we bring life, and enjoyment, and taste to our relationships. We are made to help each other, to bring food to the hungry, to clothe the naked, to bring hope to the desperate. Isaiah says “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom by like the noonday.” The saltiness we bring to our world is the foundation of righteousness.
Jesus goes on to say, “You are the light of the world. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket.” Jesus is saying this as he preaches to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, right after the beatitudes. We disciples of Christ have been given something special, a special relationship with God, that perhaps goes beyond our fundamental saltiness. We have been given the Spirit of God; we have been given God’s wisdom, so that we can understand the gifts of God. That is what Paul proclaims to the Corinthians and to us. He says that “those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” We disciples have been given the gifts of God in trust for the whole world, because there are those who are not ready to hear.
So we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Isn’t that utterly amazing? God has given us human beings the dignity of creating us in his own image, to be like God in forming our world, giving us the capacity to love each other and to love God in return, as God loves us. On top of that then, he has given us who are open to it the light of wisdom and gifts of the Spirit in order to build up our community, and to build up the kingdom of God, and to share with those who need our gifts.
But unlike sodium chloride, we sometimes do lose our saltiness. Sometimes we do hide our light under the bushel. We try to run from our innate goodness, try to duck our responsibilities to feed the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted. We try to live in the darkness, rather than embracing our own light. Marianne Williamson has written this: “My deepest fear is not that I am inadequate. My deepest fear is that I am powerful beyond measure. It is my light, not my darkness, that most frightens me. I ask myself, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually who am I not to be? I am a child of God. My playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around me. I am meant to shine, as children do. I was born to make manifest the glory of God that is within me. It is not just in me; it’s in everyone. And as I let my own light shine, I unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As I am liberated from my own fear, my presence automatically liberates others.”
We hide from our own light, place it under the bushel. We are afraid of our own power, our own saltiness. We are afraid to speak out, afraid to tell people about our faith. We retreat behind the church doors, and our religion becomes bland because there is not enough salt. Behind the church doors our light has a hard time shining out. We cannot let the Church building be a bushel basket which hides our light. Our children crave the adventure of a bold, living Christianity, even a dangerous Christianity, and so they seek to satisfy their spirituality in other ways. Too often, we fail to think bigger, and so the church appears to be irrelevant. Why are we so afraid?
One reason, of course is that if we speak out, and stand up, we may jeopardize our relationships. People we care about may not approve. There is an old Japanese saying that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. We don’t want to be hammered down.
Sometimes we simply forget who we are, that we are children of God, that we are powerful beyond measure. That very power may frighten us. We don’t know where it may lead, what might change. We might get hurt.
But I think the biggest reason we hide from our own light is because we too often think we are unworthy. In my experience, one of the hardest things for a Christian to do is to accept our own forgiveness. We wallow in our sins, like pigs in mud, because that becomes a comfortable place to be. Or we get stuck in our victimhood, holding on to the injustices done to us like a badge of honor. To accept our forgiveness, to accept our wholeness, to accept our power and light, means that something is expected of us. We are expected to be righteous.
One of the things I have come to love at St. James is the closing blessing, especially the phrase, “Remember whose you are.” That can be taken merely as a reminder that Christ gives us his comfort and companionship. But it is also a challenge. When we remember who we belong to, then we also must remember that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. When we remember whose we are, we will be the spice that makes the world a tasty place.