“You are the salt of the earth, ” Jesus said. By this he meant that we Christians—we the church—ought to make people’s lives better, to make our communities better, to make our world better. As I say in this sermon, that begins with us—with an inward transformation by the Holy Spirit—just as the elements of sodium and chlorine react with one another to form salt. This sermon also challenges us to be witnesses for Christ, what Jesus means when he says that we’re also the “light of the world.”
Sermon Text: Matthew 5:13-20
The following is my original sermon manuscript.
I grew up in a popcorn-eating family. Seriously, we had popcorn several nights a week—nearly every time we sat down to watch TV in the evening. For most of my childhood, we had an electric popcorn popper, which popped the corn in oil. When the popcorn was finished, you inverted the lid, added salt, and—voila!—delicious popcorn. Then some time around 1981 or so, we made the switch to a hot-air popper. Remember these? It was like a blow dryer for popcorn. It didn’t require oil to heat up the kernels. It used hot air. Supposedly, we made the switch for “health reasons”—because this was the early ‘80s, after all, and we didn’t want to undo all the calories we’d burned from our Jane Fonda Workout, so we all ate hot air-popped popcorn, which, without all the oil, is fat-free.
Except here’s the problem—and if you’ve used a hot air popper you know exactly what I’m talking about: Not only is hot air-popped corn fat free, it’s also taste free. Imagine eating a bowl of packing peanuts, except it probably doesn’t taste that good. So you get the salt-shaker. [mimic shaking salt on; then more and more] The problem is, you can’t salt it enough! Because all the salt falls off the popcorn and goes straight to the bottom of the bowl. Without oil, the salt had nothing to stick to! So you finish eating your packing peanuts and see this mound of salt at the bottom of the bowl.
The hot-air popper manufacturers knew this was a problem because they put this optional tray at the top in which you could put, like, half a stick of butter. And as the hot-air chamber heated up, the butter would melt and drip down onto the kernels. Then, at least, the salt would stick to the kernels and it would taste a little better than packing peanuts. Of course, after you substitute all the butter for popcorn oil, you might wonder why you bothered switching to a hot-air popper in the first place!
The moral of the story is that popcorn is worthless without salt. Salt is indispensable for the enjoyment of popcorn. In fact, it’s indispensable for all food. We put at least a little bit of it in nearly everything. We put salt on the roads when it snows to lower the freezing point of water and turn ice into slush. We mix it in with the ice solution when we’re making homemade ice cream.
Salt is an indispensable part of our lives. It makes our lives better. It makes our world better. So what does it mean when Jesus says to us disciples, “You are the salt of the earth”? He means that we disciples—we the church—should be equally indispensable to the communities that we serve. He means that we ought to make people’s lives better. He means that we ought to make our world better.
Our church does this all the time, of course. We have a community food pantry on Wednesdays and Fridays, which enables the poor in our community to feed their families with nutritious food. We run a preschool for children, which provides a quality education at affordable prices. We help sponsor a missionary family in Kenya, the Griffiths—which we’re doing right now by collecting change in these blue cups. We rebuild or repair storm-damaged houses and churches. We work to improve local schools. We send money to UMCOR, which does disaster relief work in our world as good or better than anyone. In fact, through our church’s apportionment giving, we educate children, we eradicate malaria, we fight poverty, we stand up to social injustice.
This is just who we are, and what we do as United Methodists.
Did you see this wonderful movie last spring about Jackie Robinson called 42? After Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as their starting first baseman, Branch Rickey, the owner and general manager of the Dodgers, received a call from his counterpart with the Phillies, Herb Pennock. Pennock told him that when the Dodgers come to Philadelphia, the Phillies won’t take the field if Jackie Robinson dresses out for the game. “We’re just not ready for that sort of thing in Philadelphia,” he tells Rickey. And Rickey—who was not only a deeply Christian man but also a Methodist—says, “Do you think God likes baseball, Herb?” And the Phillies general manager says, “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It means one day you’re going to meet God, and when he enquires why you didn’t take the field against Robinson in Philadelphia, and you answer that it’s because he was a Negro, it may not be a sufficient reply!”
Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson were a couple of Methodists who were being the “salt of the earth.” That’s just what we do!
My wife, Lisa, is a chemistry teacher, and she reminded me of something interesting about salt. It’s sodium-chloride. Sodium by itself is an extremely reactive metal—it’s highly explosive. You could blow things up with it. The other element in the compound, chlorine, is, by itself, a poisonous gas. So salt, this stuff that is good and necessary for the world, is made up of things that—by themselves, prior to a chemical reaction—are explosive, dangerous, poisonous, even deadly.
Isn’t that a fitting metaphor for what’s often inside of us human beings?
I have a friend, John, who is a successful pastor, theologian, and published author—he’s non-denominational, not Methodist. And the truth is, while he likes me O.K., he’s not too sure about us Methodists in general. Years ago, he pastored a church in a small town in Texas, not far from Dallas. And in this small town, as in nearly every town, there is a First United Methodist church. John had friends in that church. And one day John was complaining to me—the Methodist pastor—about some things he’d heard were happening in this particular Methodist church. First, he said, one group in the church was gossiping about this person, and then another group was gossiping about that person, and this other group was doing this bad thing, and the pastor was doing this other bad thing. So John asked me—the Methodist pastor—“Could I believe how horribly all these church people were behaving?” And I shook my head and said, “Unfortunately, John, I can totally believe it. Listen, the dirty little secret about Methodist churches is that they are filled with sinners.” They are! Aren’t they!
Isn’t our church filled with sinners? I’m not saying that it’s good that we’re sinners. It’s just that if our church is filled with sinners, that means that I’ll fit right in!
But hold on a second… If we’re sinners, Jesus says some words here that ought to terrify us: he says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” These scribes and Pharisees were the most religious people around. Most people in Jesus’ day would look at these very religious people and say that they were by far the most righteous people around, yet Jesus says even they’re not good enough to pass muster with God. And somehow our own righteousness must exceed their righteousness if we are going to get into the kingdom of heaven. Are we in trouble?
We would be, except for the fact that God knows we can’t fulfill the Law of God. We can try as hard as we’d like, and we’d end up no better than the scribes and Pharisees. But you know who can fulfill God’s Law? God. And that’s exactly what God did, when God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, came to us as a human being, Jesus Christ. Jesus fulfilled God’s Law on our behalf. Jesus lived the perfect life of obedience to God on our behalf. Jesus lived out every word of the Sermon on the Mount on our behalf. Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Jesus, though he was perfectly meek, lost his inheritance on the cross, so that we could have an inheritance with God. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Jesus, though he was perfectly “pure in heart,” was forsaken by God on the cross, so that we wouldn’t be forsaken. Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Jesus, though he was perfectly merciful, received only punishment on the cross, so that we could find forgiveness, grace, and mercy.
Brothers and sisters, it is true that our righteousness has to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees in order for us to enter the kingdom. But it’s also true that on the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ traded his righteousness for our unrighteousness, and as a result, two powerful and important things happened: We received his righteousness as a gift, even though we didn’t deserve it. And he received our unrighteousness, and suffered the penalty that our unrighteousness deserved—which was death and separation from God—even though he didn’t deserve it.
As a result, we don’t have to prove our worth to God. God has proven it for us. And God has proven that we are of infinite worth to God. Why do I say this? Because God paid an infinite price to save us: God’s very life on the cross. So we have nothing left to prove.
Twenty years ago, I worked in sales with a large telecommunications company. One year, the branch manager decided he would motivate us salespeople by posting a big chart on the wall that listed each person’s name and the amount of their annual sales quota they had retired. As one friend told me, they may as well post your W-2 on the wall, because everyone can guess how much money you’re making. It just so happened that for most of the year, I was down near the bottom of the heap, and it made me feel miserable about myself. I called it my “wall of shame.” Everybody could see how badly I was doing. But the next year, I blew out my quota. I was at or near the top in sales all year. Only… the branch manager didn’t post the chart that year. Other people couldn’t see how well I was doing, and I didn’t like that!
My point is, I’m still mostly that same person today. Always looking over my shoulder, comparing myself to others. Seeing how I stack up. Seeing whether I measure up. Deeply insecure. If I don’t measure up to some external standard, then I don’t feel like I’m a person of worth. I worry that other people won’t love me as much. I worry that God won’t love me as much. So I’m always trying to prove my worth. My ego is always getting in the way. So I’m very sympathetic with these scribes and Pharisees. I’m a lot like them! They were in the business of religion, and, like me, they were trying to measure up and prove their worth, too.
Jesus is telling me: “Let it go. You don’t have anything to prove to me. You couldn’t do anything to make me love you more than I do now. After all, when you were still a sinner lost in your sins without me, I loved you enough to die on a cross for you. Do you think I love you any less now? I want to set you free from the idea that you have to do anything to make me love you. It’s all grace. You don’t have to earn it.” Amen?
As if dying on a cross to save us weren’t enough, that’s not all God did for us.
Years ago, there was a popular Christian bumper sticker or license plate or T-shirt that read, “Christians aren’t perfect. Just forgiven.” And I understand the appeal of this: It’s true that even though we’re Christians, we still sin; we’re not perfect. And because of what Christ accomplished on the cross, God has forgiven us. By all means! The problem is with that word “just.” We are not just forgiven—because remember: Jesus says that we’re the “salt of the earth.” That means that we’re no longer the sodium and the chlorine of the earth. Instead, God has transformed these dangerous, poisonous, deadly elements inside us—as if by a supernatural chemical reaction—into something that is incredibly good for our world.
I’m thinking of my friend Fran, an elderly shut-in from my church in Alpharetta. I would go and visit Fran—you know, to minister to her. And it never failed that no matter how bad my day was going, how stressed out I was, or what kind of mood I was in prior to going to see Fran, I would leave her apartment feeling so much better about myself, about my life. It never failed. She made you feel loved. She lifted your spirits. She was encouraging and optimistic. She was the kind of person you wanted to be around. Even though she was the one who was sick and frail and stuck at home! That’s what a “salty” person is like!
I want to become a “saltier” person. I’m not as “salty” as I want to be, not counting the salty language I too often use. But I have experienced enough of God’s love, God’s grace, God’s transforming power, God’s ability to make our lives better, God’s ability to make us truly happy, to want other people to experience it as well.
And that brings us to another metaphor that Jesus uses to describe us. We are the “light of the world,” which enables people in the dark to see where they’re going. In other words, we’re supposed to help other people find their way to a life-changing and life-saving relationship with God. In other words, we’re supposed to do that thing that all of us United Methodists said we would do when we joined the church. What did we commit to do when we joined the church? We said that we would serve the church through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and our what? Our witness. We’re supposed to be witnesses.
[Invitation to be the “light of the world” in someone’s life.]