The Great Sermon on the Mount
The gospel reading this morning follows immediately after the Beatitudes, the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, the great sermon at that start of Jesus’ ministry, where Jesus outlines the kingdom of God that he has come to bring and what discipleship means for those who follow him. This is central to Luke’s gospel.
In the Beatitudes he tells of the blessings of God that discipleship will bring them. They often refer to a state of suffering or powerlessness. “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the meek; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” They make us vulnerable and as the disciples will come to know, they reflect Jesus’ vulnerability and in him they saw God, the path to God and the unfolding their own lives needed to take.
To characterise the Beatitudes, they point to the core idea of living in a non-competitive, non-grasping way. This may prove costly, but in the light of the hope for the kingdom it is hard-headed commonsense, and that is why those who adopt this way of life are “blessed”.
Jesus then goes on to tell his disciples that they are the “salt of the earth”. It’s not something that they have to achieve, pass a test – they are the salt of the earth – this is their identity, who they are.
Yet he asks them “But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” It’s a fascinating word that “saltiness” as the NRSV translates it today, but I find the Revised English Bible rendering more imaginative - “saltness”. So the question reads “If salt becomes tasteless, how is its saltness to be restored?” Saltness is somehow a broader identity covering much more than taste as we usually think of it today. For when Jesus was teaching it was much more than just a food additive for as Mark Kurlansky shows in his book, “Salt: A World History”, “from the beginning of civilization until about one hundred years ago, salt was one of the most sought after commodities in human history.” The ancients believed that salt would ward off evil spirits. Religious covenants were often sealed with salt. Salt was used for medicinal purposes, to disinfect wounds, check bleeding, stimulate thirst, and treat skin diseases. Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt – hence our English word “salary”. The Romans salted their vegetables, as we do our modern day salads. Around 10,000 years ago, dogs were first domesticated using salt, people would leave salt outside their homes to entice the animals. And of course, in all the centuries before irrigation, salt was essential for food preservation.
So if we think about the typical people Jesus appealed to - the rag-tag, poor, hungry, sick, mournful, disreputable, crippled, frightened, outcast marginalised people who followed Jesus he is telling them –“ you who have been rejected, wounded, unloved and forgotten – you are essential – you are worthwhile, you are worthwhile, you are the “salt of the earth”. No wonder they followed him, for there was something about him that caused them actually to believe him.
He says that to us too, when all our efforts to be this salt, to live lives worthy of being this salt fail, causing us disappointment, shame or grief to ourselves or others – you are salt, this is your identity, it is never too late. And the other image – “be the light of the world, this is your commission, to bring light to the darkness and as the darkness is transformed so your fears and darkness will be transformed too. You will be transformed as you live this way. I think that’s part of it – this seems to be the way it works.
Yet there is a paradox there isn’t there? We are the salt of the earth, God’s salt and we can never lose that identity but there is also a sense in which we might lose our “saltness”. So what’s that about? Jesus is warning about something – how do we go to press that out further? What is this vital thing that we are warned not to lose, that somehow strips us of our true identity or at least makes it seem as if it is merely a byword without any real meaning?
What is it, in our time that is “saltness” for us, that we dare not lose, that we lose at our peril?
We have perhaps seen something of it over this summer in the communal response to the bushfires – in the compassion, generosity, courage and service to others, care that has also been extended to animals and birds, all of nature has been largely gathered up in the national response. It has been wonderful to see this amidst the tragedy and for many it has been an expression of God among us. Is perhaps the word being searched for, that which we have seen, that which we must not lose is it not - our “humanity”? For it is this humanity, and the full expression of it in the recognition of the humanity of others that perhaps makes us divine and it would certainly seem to set us a long way along the path of the fulfillment of the Beatitudes.
This line of thought in a world that is often seen as so lacking in humanity leads on with renewed urgency in this time to another expression of the role of the Church, the salt of the world, that group of people which Jesus began to be the light of the world.
Abp Rowan Williams in his recent book “Luminaries: 20 lives that illuminate the Christian Way” tells of the time of being invited by a national newspaper to name the most influential British citizen of the last millennium. He had little hesitation in responding “William Wilberforce” who died in 1833 after a long, often lonely struggle as the sometimes solitary voice in the British Parliament opposing slavery upon which so much of Britain’s economy depended. Wilberforce had several key insights about spirituality
which drove him on
- His conviction of responsibility before God
- He thought about how slavery affected Britain’s spiritual psyche, his country’s soul, seeing that injustice damages the oppressor spiritually as much as it damages the oppressed materially
- His third conviction was that the public policy of governments creates the world in which particular citizens live their lives; it creates a climate, a set of possibilities, a language and culture of public or international life (and that) the public climate has the capacity to make people less than they might be,
Rowan Williams concludes what it was that made Wilberforce the greatest British luminary of the last 1000 years with these words:
“Wilberforce believed politics was a vocation because he saw politics as always opening out beyond itself. Good politics was in significant part a matter of trying to make sure that a state’s public policy did not compromise the souls of its citizens, clouding and complicating their responsibility before God. It is a powerful and crucial legacy. Our democracy is very different now from what it was in the early 19th century, but some of the dangers are much the same. And Wilberforce confronts us now with the question, “If Christians, committed to personal responsibility and social justice, cannot keep before the eyes of the state and its legislators issues that are greater than security and profit, who can?”
Is this still a relevant question today?
Are our country indeed our world’s problems not so much economic as moral and spiritual and how does the Church bring light, saltness and humanity to them?