Salt of the Earth
A couple of weeks ago I drove over to Columbus to visit a parishioner who had an orthopedic operation at a hospital located in that community. I enjoyed my trip to Columbus. I sometimes enjoy spending a couple of hours alone in the car. It gives me an opportunity to do some thinking and make some plans.
After I made my hospital stop in Columbus I got on the road and headed home. The roads one takes between here and Columbus are fairly desolate. Just outside of Butler I came upon an old country store. Many of us are probably familiar with the site. It was an old white clapboard building with a metal Coco-Cola sign adorning the front. This sign proclaimed, Picken’s Grocery and Feed Store.
The sight of such a place made the die-hard southerner in me salivate at the opportunity to have R.C. Cola and a Moon-Pie. I went into the store and went over to the ice box and fished out an R.C. Cola in a glass bottle. I located a rack in the store that contained nothing but Moon-Pies and plucked one from the rack.
I looked around the store and much to my surprise there were countless boxes of Morton’s Salt lining the shelves. There was Morton’s salt stacked from the floor to the ceiling on the store shelves. Over half of the store’s inventory was Morton’s Salt. I had never seen so much salt even in a large grocery store.
I approached the counter to pay for my R.C. Cola and Moon-Pie. My curiosity got the best of me and I asked the proprietor, who I presumed to be Mr. Pickens, “Do you really sell this much salt?” To that he replied, “No but a fellow came through here the other day who could flat sell the heck out of it.”
Salt—Jesus mentions salt in his famous discourse which has become known as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus tells his followers that they are the “Salt of the earth.”
Salt today is a relatively inexpensive item in the grocery store. However, in the first century world salt was very valuable and was even considered a medium of exchange like coins and currency. Roman soldiers were often paid in salt. In fact, our English words salt and salary both have the same Latin root.
Thus, when Jesus was telling his people that they were the salt of the earth he is telling them that his followers are valuable. Jesus is telling us that we are a valuable commodity.
We live in a world that values many things. However, it has been my observation that one of the things that our world often does not value is its people. Our world tends to reduce people to categories, demographic groups, or simply as cogs in the machine of a larger society.
Often I receive mail at my house that doesn’t even have a name on the envelope but is addressed to “postal customer,” “resident,” or “occupant.” Once I was staying in a hotel and there was a problem with the air conditioning in my room. I went to the front desk to report the problem and I heard the desk clerk call a maintenance person and say “423 has a problem with the air conditioner.”
It wasn’t “Mr. Brown in 423 reports a broken air conditioner” or “John in 423 is uncomfortable will you check the air conditioner.” Little did I realize when I checked into this hotel I had given up my name and had become “423.”
Yes our world often dehumanizes us and reduces us to something less than an individual. Yet, Jesus tells us that we have value. We are salt. We are of value to God. So it is that when you and I feel the dehumanizing hand of our culture and have become simply a number or a blank face in the crowd we can say, “I am salt.”
Of course a lot of folks will look at us with funny looks when we say that. However, we will know what it means. More importantly God will too.