When Jesus says that we are the salt of the earth, I think He is following up on what He just said.
Listen carefully to the flow of thought:
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
This passage about our being salt and the next one about our being light flow out of the Beatitudes He has just mentioned. Those values are our means for influencing the world, i.e., being salt and light. But, also very specifically, it seems to me that Jesus is insinuating that if we respond to persecution with joy, we can be salt, and thus have a true influence on the world; or we can lose our saltiness by responding in worldly ways, and then we will no longer have an ability to influence our society. We will have lost our power to impact, and Jesus asks, “how can you get that back?”
Without realizing the connection, I think many of us have been asking this same question that Jesus asked so long ago. We, too, have wondered what happened to the church’s influence in our society; and we, too, are now asking, “how can we regain that influence?” How can we be made salty again?
The answer to those questions lies not in the power brokers in the halls of Washington but in the passages we have been exploring in this column for the past several weeks. Our ability to truly influence our society for eternal good, lies in the same means that Jesus gave us to be “salty” in this famous sermon. It’s not a secret knowledge attained through surveys or focus groups, rather it is readily accessible in these very verses. When we can joyfully accept mistreatment … when we can be known by our efforts to get along and help others do so … when we have a singleness of purpose that is completely immersed in God’s will … when mercy is truly our guiding principle … when we are known for our hungering for God more than hungering for the same stuff the world chases … when gentleness is our calling card … when our tears flow freely with those who weep … and when humility leads us to trust in Jesus and into service to others, then we will have regained our saltiness.
– Deryk Pritchard, Preacher
