Living Like Yeshua, Part 7 (Matthew 5:13-16

 

You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Say what??

Indeed. In Yeshua's sermon on how to live as one of his disciples, He takes a very sudden shift from "blessed are they" to talking about candles and table salt.

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."
Matthew 5:13-16, BSB 

There's a few interesting pieces to this section. And we can nearly fill an entire lesson with salt alone.

Salt was a valuable thing in ancient times. There was an era where merchants traded North African salt for West African gold at an ounce for ounce ratio!

Roman soldiers were paid in salt. This practice is actually where we get the word "salary" from. And the phrase "worth your weight in salt" came from Greeks and Romans using salt as a currency in the slave trade. Why was it so valuable? Because it was hard to harvest.

To collect salt, you have to do one of three things.
1. Rake it up from evaporated salt flats
2. Put saltwater into pans and let the water evaporate
3. Put a mine shaft down a underground salt vein

In modern times, we have ways of refining our salt. We can put refined sodium chloride on our food, in our swimming pools, in our water softeners, on icy roads, and it has many other purposes. And sodium-chloride is an extremely stable chemical compound. Salt doesn't become unsalty, as Yeshua seems to imply in His sermon.

HOWEVER, first century technology and general hygiene were not what they are today. Salt was not refined, and often had a whole lot of impurities. Dirt, sand, other trace minerals such as potassium and magnesium (which are also salts of their own nature, but not "salty"). And sodium chloride, being the most water soluble element of the mix, would easily wash away if a container of salt got wet. The remaining material would have the appearance of being salt, but be tasteless.

And if the salt loses its saltiness, you can't put it back in

And this is key to a second point. Salt as a fertilizer. Sometimes, invading armies would salt the land to destroy any ability to grow crops. But due to the low levels of actual sodium in ancient salt, this took a lot of salt. And due to salt dissolving in water, this effect was more symbolic than destructive. The land would be arable in a few years. CONVERSELY, small amounts of salt, because of the magnesium and potassium and other non-salty minerals, was actually useful in making the land more fertile. 

So the point Yeshua made is actually two-fold. Firstly, a Christian's life ought to fertilize the earth like magnesium and potassium salts. We ought to be fruitful in all we do. Yet too much salt can actually have a negative effect on the land and drive people away from us.

Secondly, salt makes food taste better, and it preserves meat in places without freezers. But too much salt makes food taste bad. And if the salt is too full of impurities like dirt and gravel, it doesn't add flavor. It's not even worth its weight as road pavement.

Essentially, there are three types of Christians, and only one type really qualifies as disciples.
1. The Sodium-Chloride Christians
Every atheist seems to know one. Non-believers assume the entire church is this sort. This is the holier-than-thou vibe. The Pharisees and their burdensome laws. The judgmental worshipers of a God who is so holy that He will strike you dead if you so much as sneeze the wrong way. They tend to drive people away like too much pure refined sodium-chloride makes food taste terrible.

2. The Salt Marsh Christians
The opposite of the Sodium-Chloride Christians. They've embraced way too much of the world's impurities. They call themselves salt, but they don't have the slightest counter-culture effect on the world around them, wrongfully relying on the Lord's grace and mercy as a license to live in the sensual and sinful.

3. The Disciples of Yeshua's Way
Like the seed that fell on good soil and produced a bountiful crop, these are the Christians who hear Yeshua's message and strive to live it out, walking the fine balance line between the Pharisees and the heathens.

So what kind of salt are you?

While you're thinking on that, I'll move on to the next points of study. Salt of the earth.

The Greek word for earth is 'gēs', which can be broadly defined as the entire planet, or a specific country, or one local region, or the literal dirt itself. And there does not seem to be a hard fast rule for defining what definition is which.

However, out of 136 mentions in scripture, it does seem as though the word "normally" means the whole planet, unless a specific place is mentioned, like "the gēs of Judea", or a unit of measurement is implied. "some seed fell on rocks, where the gēs was not deep"

So it stands to reason Christ is saying we are collectively the salt of the planet, not telling His specific disciples that they were the salt of Israel. On a rabbit trail, this would also suggest that when he says "all the tribes of the gēs will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds", this is the whole planet, not the nation of Israel, and thus this event is a much bigger scale than the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD

That rabbit trail aside, Yeshua goes on to make some points about light. Cities on hills, candles on stands instead of under baskets, that sort of thing. What is interesting is that He does not say we are the light of the gēs. We are the light of the kosmos.

Does that look like cosmos? Yes. It should, because it is. In a literal sense, kosmos means "something ordered", but is used to denote the universe as an ordered creation. Basically, Yeshua just called us the light of the universe and the entirety of Creation. That's a tall calling!

And it sounds a bit contradictory, because later in the sermon, Yeshua will tell us "do not give alms to the poor in order to be seen by men. Give to the poor in secret."

But because this later point specifically targets giving money to the poor, I think it specifically targets giving money to the poor. In other words, don't go around showing the world how much money you give away to people.

However, to be the light of the kosmos, we should be doing any other good/noble/kind acts of service openly. Certainly not blowing our own horns, "oh, look at me", but we should make no effort to conceal what we're doing. Freely and openly give acts of service, kind words, even a joyful smile.

When the world can see you glowing with the Father's loving light, they will notice.

Be the light. There's a whole lot of dark in the cosmos.