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Salt of the earth
- Gethsemane Lutheran Church
- Feb 8
- 6 min read
(Sitting with the children) Since Jesus talked about salt, I thought today would be a good day to do some baking. Okay, we’re not going to really bake anything, but I have all these baking ingredients in jars. Some of these ingredients look the same as others—which of these is flour? Baking powder? Baking soda? Sugar and salt? But how can you tell which ingredient is which? By the box it comes in. But if it’s out of the box, how do you know? Maybe you gotta taste it?
Also when you’re baking, you need the proportions just right or the food doesn’t turn out the way you want it. It will taste wrong, or the bread won’t rise, or the cake falls flat. If you’re measuring salt into your dough and mix in WAY TOO MUCH salt, how do you get the salt out of the dry mix? You can’t. If it’s mixed in with too much other stuff—flour and baking powder and sugar and whatever—you can’t separate the salt out of the mixture again. You can’t put it all back into the box of salt, because it isn’t entirely salt anymore—like Jesus (kinda) says, you can go ahead and just throw that out onto the ground because it no longer works as salt, and it ain’t about to become your salty bread now.
Jesus said “If salt loses its saltiness, there’s nothing more you can do with it—just throw it out.” Salt is a mineral and scientists are quick to remind us that salt cannot lose its saltiness. The only way that can happen is if it gets mixed in with other stuff—you can’t take the salt out.
And the thing about salt is that it is distinctive. You know what it tastes like, and it doesn’t taste like anything else. Salt is never confused about its purpose.
I got this little salt shaker when I graduated from college, 24 years ago. It was a gift from my campus ministry. While I was in college, living away from the home where I grew up, I needed to be connected to my faith, because I knew God was there too. I needed to worship and to learn to pray and to make friends who could help me understand what God was doing and how God was leading me. And at the University of Texas at Austin, at Lutheran Campus Ministry, there was a meal served every Wednesday night. It was free—we students didn’t have to pay for it, we just had to show up and be fed. Sometimes we would help make the food, and we helped set the tables and helped clean up after dinner, but otherwise we didn’t contribute.
So when we graduated, we were given these salt and pepper shakers to remind us to be “salt of the earth” like Jesus said, and also to equip us to go out and feed others, to take care of our neighbors. The salt shaker is to remind us that we’ve learned what it means to be fed, and we have experienced that as a gift from God, and now we get to share that love with others by feeding people so they also know what it feels like to be taken care of.
Just like salt, we know clearly what our purpose is—to love one another and to care for our neighbors. And today we’ll play with the salt and make a design with glue and salt on paper which we can take with us when we leave today.
In a Scripture commentary this week, Amy Frykholm spoke to the Scriptures that we’ve read in worship this morning, how even when we feel helpless in the face of the world’s problems, “our sense of helplessness is a mirage. We carry with us, as the whole of our tradition teaches us, a responsibility to our neighbors, to strangers, and to our enemies that lies just outside our door. I can’t answer for you what it means to be a “repairer of the breach, a restorer of streets on which to live” (Isaiah 58:12). Here where I live, however, I know I am relying on the example of others, including the people of Minnesota.”[1]
She writes that while there are other places in Scripture that recommend silence regarding good deeds, keeping good works secret, these Scriptures suggest the opposite. Frykholm writes:
“Here the idea is to make the light as visible as possible, to shine in the darkness. The text is clear about what exactly light is, how exactly we should go about shining in the darkness. ‘They will rise in the darkness as a light,’ Psalm 112 says. ‘Their hearts are steady; they will not be afraid.’”[2]
“And so,” she writes, “Minneapolis has become a city on a hill. My friends and their neighbors are no longer asking themselves in any abstract sense what it means to be salt and to be light, what it means to let their lights shine (Matthew 5:13–14). There is no time for that.”[3]
Regarding the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) in Minneapolis, Frykholm recalled the encouraging words from her friend Jason who lives in Minneapolis: “Make no mistake, things are horrible here. But the networks of community relationships that are emerging and deepening and expanding are beautiful and breathtaking. For me they are a real source of hope for what might be when this occupation ends.”[4]
And since we’re in St. Louis, not there in Minneapolis to see for ourselves, I want to share what my colleagues there are witnessing. In a video posted on social media,[5] 34 clergy persons of the ELCA who are currently serving in Minneapolis delivered this message, each one speaking a line. It’s powerful to watch, so I commend this to you, but listen closely for where these pastors are finding hope right now:
“We are Lutheran clergy, and we are here to say to the administration currently terrorizing our community: stop. Just stop. Our children are being detained. Our teenagers are being teargassed on school property. Our congregants are being unlawfully arrested at asylum hearings and at bus stops. Our congregants’ car windows are being smashed as they document the abuses. And flashbangs are being used against us, religious leaders, as we attempt to comfort the afflicted.
“We are here to say these tactics are brutal. These tactics are morally bankrupt. These tactics do not reflect freedom or safety or well-being. And they certainly do not reflect Christian values and the way of Jesus.
“But as a leader of faith, we are also here to say, “There is another way.” It’s the way of love. It’s the way of mercy. It’s the way of peace. And we see it arising all around us.
“We see grandparents on street corners. We see young adults keeping watch. We see restaurant workers bringing sambusas to the traumatized. We see people delivering groceries, witnessing documents, teaching children to name feelings adults can’t even metabolize. We see strangers protecting strangers. We see U.S. born neighbors and newly arrived neighbors forming circles of care for our shared home.
“These are not “paid protesters.” These are ordinary people saying “no” to violence. These are ordinary people who trust that mercy has the power to crack the armor of domination.
“The truth is that we pity anyone who is afraid of community, who fears the beauty that arises when people unite across difference, who believes that belonging is a pie—more for one means less for another, who believes that our safety requires someone else’s suffering. That isn’t the way of Christ. It’s the opposite.
“But we are finding our way to one another. Becoming accountable to one another. Saying with our bodies, “Enough.” And part of our vocation as a community of faith is to keep telling the truth about what we see.
“This community is beautiful. This community is holy. These lives are precious. This is a place of belonging for all people. We will not allow brutality to redefine who we are.
“In every sanctuary and on every street corner, we have seen candlelight flickering against evil, summoning us to something more. A corridor of tender, stubborn, resilient, radiant light in the face of militarized violence.
“And when we say “ICE out,” we are not asking for this terror to be redistributed across the country. We are asking our elected leaders to have one tenth the bravery of a 70-year old Lutheran woman following ICE around Minneapolis in her Subaru Crosstrek. And to join us in saying, “Enough.” Not here. Not anywhere.”
Like salt knows its purpose, do you know your God-given purpose?
I’ll close with a blessing from Kat Armas in her book, titled Liturgies for Resisting Empire:
“May we remember that our bodies are sacred vessels—carrying life, love, spirit. We were crafted not for profit but for purpose, woven with intention. We are not commodities, we are beloved, whole, and free. Let us rest in the truth that we are sacred, and we are enough. Amen.”
Pastor Cheryl
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
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