Many years ago, when I was training to be a teacher, we were told by our Educational Psychology lecturer that if we wished to give effective feedback to children, we should never follow up a positive comment by using the word “but” because if we did, then the pupil would forget the positive comment and focus entirely on what came after the word “but”.
I remembered that piece of advice when I read the first verse of today’s Gospel. Jesus tells his disciples:
"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.”
Jesus starts with a wonderful affirmation of his disciples, an affirmation which has become a proverb used by many people who are unaware that they are quoting from Matthew’s Gospel.
“You are the salt of the earth”
It’s not a commandment, it’s a commendation – he doesn’t say “You’ve got to be the salt of the earth”, he says “You are the salt of the earth”. And it’s very emphatic.
So take the compliment – You, the disciples of Jesus in the church family of the Good Shepherd, are the salt of the earth.
Salt meant several different things to Matthew’s first readers, things that wouldn’t immediately occur to us. It was used in sacrifices. It was used as an antibiotic, which is why we still talk about “rubbing salt in a wound”. It was used to stop fish and meat going bad. The Roman writer Pliny pointed out that the income paid to Roman soldiers was called a salarium (literally a “salting”) because in the past they had been partly paid in bags of salt. So our word “salary” has a salty connection, and anyone who isn’t really earning their salary is said to be “not worth their salt”. And salt had another important significance for Jewish people in the time of Jesus, and we’ll come back to that a little later.
So Jesus starts with a huge compliment
“You are the salt of the earth”
And then, ignoring the advice of my Educational Psychology lecturer, uses the word “but”.
"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.”
That raises the question “how can salt lose its saltiness?” A few commentators have suggested that Jesus was deliberately making an absurd comment, reassuring the disciples that they would always be the salt of the earth. It is much more likely that what Jesus had in mind was the fact that corrupt traders in salt used to mix that commodity with other substances to increase their profits. Taken to an extreme, that would lead to a mixture which had so little salt in it that it would not taste salty. So there’s something in this teaching about the Christian calling to be radically for the world but not to be so of the world that we cease to be distinctively Christian.
That’s a difficult calling, for it is a call to serve a society which is increasingly ignorant of the good news of Jesus Christ. In some ways we find ourselves in the same position as the first generation of Christians. The recipients of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, from which today’s Epistle is taken, were also a minority. Paul tells them:
“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.”
To put that more simply, the Corinthian Christians’ saltiness comes from God not from the prevailing values of the city in which they live.
It’s significantly different for us, in that we live in a post-Christian society and there is much in the values of that society which is a legacy from many centuries of Christian belief and practice. The struggle for a more just society, an inclusive society, a society in which the weak and the vulnerable are protected rather than exploited, a society which respects the environment and tackles the threats to it - these are issues and values which we share with many of our non-Christian contemporaries.
It’s also important that we don’t lose sight of the fact that we come at those issues from a distinct direction. We believe that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Our concern for the environment is rooted in an awareness that the universe is God’s creation, God’s gifting to us of the possibility of life in all its diversity. This distinctiveness is our saltiness, the gift we have to give to a society which badly needs it.
That need arises in part from the fact that the secular notion of human rights has serious drawbacks. The current and heated arguments regarding the Gender Recognition legislation passed by Holyrood have reminded us that the secular notion of human rights can easily lead to conflict and abusive language if the assertion of the rights of one group is seen to impinge on the rights of another. The Christian doctrine of humanity, starting as it does from the belief that all are made in the image and likeness of God, offers a way through such conflicts and stalemates, for it calls people to recognise the divine in one another and to a loving listening to the concerns of others, to a focus on that which is shared rather than on that which divides.
Which brings me to the other important significance that salt had for Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries. They spoke of eating a meal together with other people as “sharing salt” and they also used that as a metaphor for the idea of making a binding commitment to others.
We gather regularly both to receive and to share salt in our celebration of the Eucharist. It is an important way in which our saltiness is developed and it is the way in which, to quote from one of our post-Communion prayers,
“…we are made one in him and drawn into that new creation which is your will for all mankind.”
We are the salt of the earth – no buts - and our calling is to share that saltiness.