For many years I waitressed off and on as a way to pay the bills. I can distinctly remember my first waitressing job. I had to turn in a time a card which included a box where I was to report my tips. And so I reported my tips. The manager of the restaurant came to see me after that first time card and said that I didn’t understand. There was this system for reporting tips and I was supposed to report such a such percent of my hourly wages as my tips. I answered him, with some real naiveté, “but those aren’t my tips.” He then asked me, did I want to pay more taxes?  Plus, the implication was, what about everyone else? Was I going to put them in jeopardy?

“But those are my tips,” I answered. He sighed and let it go and stomped back to his office. At that workplace I stuck out like a sore, or perhaps salty, thumb. I don’t know if now I would have the same bravery, or perhaps simple understanding of right and wrong. I fear I may have lost some of my saltiness.

Jesus talks to the crowds this week about salt —we are still reading from the Sermon on the Mount.  Salt was an everyday item in the lives of first century folks.  It was used to heal and to preserve food “but in ancient times it also was rubbed on newborn children, used to seal covenants, sprinkled on sacrifices, and understood as a metaphor for wisdom. No wonder, then, that salt became "associated with God's gracious activity" (The Lectionary Commentary).

We use salt for many, many things just as Jesus’ audience did. Salt cleans out bacteria. It’s an ancient form of healing that we still use today. It can be used on wounds; salt water can clear out infected sinuses. Salt stings when you use it. But then again, that’s when you know it is working. 

Every year my father would do battle with the poison ivy in the woods behind our house in Rhode Island. And every year he would get a terrible rash. He was actually really allergic to it. The only thing that worked to heal and stop the itch was to go swim in the ocean. Keep in mind this was spring time. In New England.  It was cold. But he swam and let the salt heal the wounds.

We are called to be salt as a community of faith. To heal, to clean up what is infected or damaged. And to heal not just body, but the soul. For what salt is more healing than tears…. ? This is a place where crying is not just allowed but accepted, even welcomed, as a way for healing to take place. I tell many folks who worry about crying in worship that truly there is no better place than here, among folks called to be salt.

I learned this week that salt is used in exorcisms or to prevent demonic or evil presence in the first place. One pastor on my lectionary list quietly confessed: “I periodically salt the sanctuary of our church.   A Roman Catholic priest who had left the priesthood to become a pastoral counsel suggested this practice many years ago.   He had learned it from a priest who did exorcisms for his diocese--and old tradition that he continued.   I sprinkle a little salt at each window and door of the sanctuary and ask God to protect the space from all spirits of evil, divisiveness, or repression.   I am not practiced in combating the dark forces like Anthony Hopkins is in his new movie.  But I don't think it can do any harm, and it feels healthy and holy for me to do it privately and inconspicuously a couple of times a year.  I really want our space to be a "sanctuary" where only goodness, love, and light dwell.” (Timothy Haut, midrash.org list serv)

We are called as a faith community to be salt, to periodically attend to our worship space, our community, and our church with salt. To make sure this is a place where only goodness, love and light dwell in our worship, in our meetings, in our discussions, and in our disagreements. This is a place of love and light and salt.

As human beings we need salt. It is a mineral that our body needs in small amounts. I’m not giving you license to gorge yourself on salty snacks during the game later today but we do need salt. It is grounding, a part of the earth that keeps us running smoothly. Our faith, what Jesus asks us to do, is the same. It is grounding. It reminds us of what path we are to choose. What decisions we are called to make—usually the hard ones. It reminds us that we have chosen a life that is not just our own, but rather lived in service to God.

A couple years back I saw a billboard in late winter. It was for some beauty salon or spa and it read, “Summer is coming. Time to take care of your scary winter feet!” I laughed because although I hadn’t thought of my feet as scary, I knew what it meant-- the calluses and rough edges we get on our feet through the long dry, too many wool socks, etc season.  One way to care for ones feet, a spa treatment if you will, is a salt scrub. The salt gently sands off the dead skin, the calluses, the rough edges, the dead stuff, to get us back to pink, lovely feet.

In the church we periodically take the equivalent of salt and work on our rough edges and dead areas. Lent, a time of repentance, prayer, sacrifice, is coming up soon. A time we take salt and clean up our scary winter selves.

But salt is not just for us alone as faith filled people. We are to be salt to the world. We are different as Christians. Not better or right or above others. But different. We’re supposed to be different. That’s what Jesus is telling us. If not, what good are we? We lose our saltiness.

We sometimes are in deep need of salt. We sometimes lose our way. We lose sight of what it means to be Christians, what it means to be seeking the paths of peace and justice. Like athletes who use up all the minerals in their body, we need salt in the times when we lose sight of what it means to reach for what is possible instead of settling for what is.  Salt that loses its saltiness.

You know I have always heard this saying “salt losing its saltiness” as a metaphor. I didn’t think that it was actually possible. How could salt not be salty? Isn’t saltiness the essence of salt?  Well, actually salt can lose its saltiness. It becomes an element called natron also known as impure salt. Natron has no salty flavor. It is bland, plain, like sand or dust. Natron was known in Jesus’ day because some of the main sources for natron were in the Rift Valley in Egypt, a part of the Roman Empire at the time. For natron, impure salt, like regular salt, was good at preserving things. But instead of making salted fish or meat, the Egyptians used natron, this impure salt, salty-less salt, to preserve bodies. It was one of the main components of mummification or preserving kings as mummies.

So salt that has lost its saltiness is only useful to the dead. As Jesus says, it is thrown away and trampled underfoot.  It’s only good for helping to keep the snow off the Michigan streets.

We are called to be salty—different—spicy or even people who sting a little. Different.

I had a terrible time in middle school and early high school. I was bullied. I didn’t really have friends but hung on by a fingernail to the edges of this group of girls who didn’t want me around. They were mean. Not just to me but to lots of people. One boy in particular they teased mercilessly. He wore very plain clothes to school—no popular brands. And he was smart—a liability in my school. And, this was the big thing, he wore a large wooden cross around his neck. It might as well have been a target. To say he stuck out is an understatement.

As my ninth grade year wore on, my status in this group of mean girls hit a crisis. At the same time I met a couple of other kids who went to a Catholic youth group and they invited me to come. I felt like my identity and life was on the line: what to do? I finally, finally let go of my desperate position as hanger on and went with these new folks, who actually wanted to be my friend, to their group. And when I got there, who was there, but the boy with the cross around his neck. He was a gentle, peaceful soul, way beyond his years. He welcomed me. He sat with me when I cried. He told me I was loved by God. To say he was different from the mean girls was an understatement. He was salt. Different. And healing. And living a life he believed he was called to live, serving Christ.

Indeed, when people encounter us – as individuals and as communities of faith – they should see and sense more: they should feel hope, they should feel the possibility of a "different world," Charles Cousar writes, "marked by unheard-of reconciliation, simple truth-telling, outrageous generosity, and love of one's enemies" (Texts for Preaching Year A). We're called not to make just a refreshing but a reinvigorating difference in the world, so that all who watch us will feel new life, new vitality, new possibility, new hope

With Jesus talking about salt in this week's Gospel, it is tempting (and perhaps easy) to simply slide into 'salt's good for flavoring food; go out and spice up the world.'

But since Jesus states before this salty statement about being persecuted as were the prophets before the disciples/crowd, and then goes on in the passage to say he has come to fulfill the law and the prophets, perhaps there is a connection to which we should pay attention.

So, rather than just a simple statement to go out and be flavorful, Jesus saying that the disciples (and now, us) are in the prophetic succession, and that we are now called to stand as witnesses to God’s love and light, to be salt in the world.

Blessed are you when you are salty…

When you are covered in sweat from the hard work of a day building a habitat house, or a hot day in front the capitol protesting torture

Blessed are you when you are salty…

From crying your own tears for the losses in your life, the suffereing of the world, or the tears of another that wet the front of your shirt as you hold them and tell them they are loved by God.

Blessed are you when you are salty…

When the words of truth you speak in a business meeting or a school board session or in the midst of your own complicated family, are seen as different, subversive, difficult or just “too Christian.”

For you are the salt of the world, a world desperately in need of the salt we bring.

Amen.