Blessed are the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek. That’s what Jesus tell the disciples early in their relationship. Good news for the poor, the persecuted. But the need for judgment is part of the blessing because the world isn’t going to let the blessings go where God wants them to go. The world is set against blessings flowing to the meek, the persecuted.
Which is perhaps why Matthew follows the blessings with the teaching about salt, the purifying of the world, judgment. Matthew 5:13-20
Salt Then
Described as the foundation of civilization for its ability to preserve food, its production, transportation and use were responsible for the Salt Roads of the Bronze Age. Early Roman roads were built to transport salt from the Adriatic Sea to Rome. Roman soldiers may at times have been paid with salt. (They say the soldiers who did their job well were "worth their salt.") The word 'salary' may refer to money given to soldiers so they could buy salt.
Salt created and destroyed empires, won and lost wars, caused mass migration of peoples, created and destroyed economies.
Salt Now
A condiment, a preservative, used in many industrial processes, curing concrete, drilling for oil, solidifying the soil under highways; used in the production of many chemicals; it’s used in the dyes of your clothes, bleaches your toilet paper, heals your sore throats, pickles your olives, is licked by cows and deer; extinguishes fires and detaches leeches, and, this year, kept a few million people (though not all unfortunately) from crashing their cars and breaking their limbs.
Jesus didn’t need to know all the uses that salt would be put to, to know that salt was essential to life.
So when he told the disciples they were the salt of the earth, he told them they were essential to God’s will for the world, necessary for God’s blessings to be felt. They were going to function as a cleansing agent for the world -- ensuring God’s blessing for the meek. The disciples are salt in order to reveal the glory of God.
If we are to join the disciples to be salt revealing God’s glory, what does God’s glory look like?
What does God’s glory look like to you?
Think of the people who have touched you,
the people who, because of their love and care for you,
inspired you to believe in the God of Love.
How have people been the salt of the earth to you?
The glory of God is unique because of the lowly ways he chooses to show it.
Sometimes it’s in the smallest moments, the tiniest of human actions that God’s glory is revealed to you.
The most used letters in social media after ‘lol’ are ‘omg’ -- used in so many different ways -- I’d like to think that it’s in some of these unexpected moments that people who are not looking for it, may not even know what it is that is happening to them, encounter the glory of God.
