"Be Iodized" given 9/27

            "Ya' know, ol'  Ron over by there is a heckuva nice person. He's the salt of the earth."

            "Yeah, he's a real good guy. Why he'd give you the shirt off his back."

            "You’re right. He's a real "Good Samaritan"

            "Like I said-- he's the ‘Salt of the Earth’."

            It's intriguing how much we borrow from the language of Scripture in order to liven up our language with colorful idioms. Even more interesting is the way that this borrowed Biblical language--especially the sayings of Jesus--can end up robbed of their power and invitation to radical obedience and faith.

            The reason we're able to do that so handily is rooted in the literary genius and homespun wisdom of Jesus. He was able to pronounce powerful, sometimes painful truths in the language of everyday events and natural occurrences. That made His words strike home to their original hearers with a power that you and I can only imagine.

            Take this salty earth business. Today, we I blithely go  to Butera and buy a box of Morton's. We take it home, pour it into a shaker, and when something seems missing in the taste of our hamburger, we apply liberally. It's as simple and easy as that. No wonder we've come to water down Jesus' words as a description of "a good ol' boy," or an "okay person", or "a nice gal".

            But when Jesus coined the phrase, his listeners would have understood it in a totally different context. To them, salt was more than a condiment. In the ancient world, salt was an absolute necessity of life.

            In the climate of Palestine, meat and fish don't keep well.  They had no refrigerators or canned goods. If food could not somehow be preserved, it would quickly spoil and turn rancid. As likely as not, the family would then face the choice of starvation, or ptomaine and dysentery. The primary preservative of food in Ancient Israel (and until relatively recently for the entire world) was salt.

            So when Jesus calls his listeners-- and us-- to be the "Salt of the Earth", He's doing a lot more than asking us to spice up everyday life a bit by being amiable and nice. He's telling us that our task as Christians in the world is to keep our world-- the whole kit and caboodle-- from turning rancid in the sight of its Creator.

            Look around. Turn on the news—Fox or MSNBC or anything in between. We aren't doing such a great job, are we? The flesh of this world is putrefying. We live on a planet in which starvation is more common than a full belly, where war is more common than peace, oppression is more common than freedom, injustice is more common than justice and hate is more common than love.

            Yet Jesus' invitation to saltiness has been staring Christians in the face for the past two thousand years. So what is it that He expects us to do? How do you and I salt the earth? You know the other thing that salt does? It changes things, soak something in brine—salty water, and it transforms them—fresh into pickled, pork into ham or bacon, brisket into corned beef.

            .Does Jesus call us to change from capitalists to communists? Or from Republicans to Democrats? Or from haves into have-nots? Is Jesus calling us to change from conservatives into liberals? Or from liberals into progressives? Or from progressives into radicals? Or from radicals into revolutionaries? Or should we progress in the opposite direction to libertarianism?

            Jesus is calling you and calling me to a much more difficult and challenging change. Jesus is calling every single one of us to stop being self-centered unbelievers and turn our lives around in order to become unselfish believers--His followers—Christians—literally “Little Christs”.  If we can manage to do that, it does not matter what political label or philosophy that we hang on ourselves.

If we truly become His followers, the labels may never change. Jesus is not interested in minor name changes-- Jesus simply calls you and me to salt the earth by taking seriously and acting upon one simple, solitary principle--the principle of Love.

            Now I realize that I may have just lost the attention of every one of you. We pastors have been preaching love at congregations since the church began. We will probably be preaching love at the moment before the Apocalypse. We talk about the love of God, the love of Christ, the love of family, the love of country, and the love of all humanity. You name it, and any time, night or day, somewhere some preacher is solemnly telling some congregation somewhere to love it.

            But let me tell you why we keep harping on that subject. The reason preachers keep going on, and on, and on about love is-- we really don't have too much else to talk about. When you strip the Christian faith down to its essentials-- love is at its heart.  Remember John 3:16? God loved the world by sending Jesus Christ to die for it out of love. Jesus commanded His followers to respond to that love by believing, by  loving one another, by loving all of humankind, and in so doing, to love Him.

            That's really all there is to this Christianity business. When Jesus calls you and me to salt the earth, He is calling us to spread love throughout the world to everyone in it. Don't kid yourselves friends, that is no easy task. Jesus pulls no punches in His invitation to us. "This is my commandment, love one another as I have loved you."

And, "There is no greater love than to offer your very life for your friends."

Of course, there are compensations.

"Anyone who hears these commands and obeys them is loving me. And anyone who loves me will be loved by God. And I will love that person and reveal my Presence to them."

            Given that everything I've said so far is true, how exactly are you and I supposed to go about salting the earth with our love? Sure, it's easy enough to love people we know, or are related to, or those we call friends. That's no more than loving the loveable.  And it’s from our experiences in being loved by and loving the loveable that you and I learn how to love at all. The problem for so many of us lies in finding the courage to carry their salt beyond that intimate circle.

Love that's confined-- even to a sizeable group-- will eventually die, just as love hoarded by one person will die. Love needs room to spread out and grow and reach into places and lives where we least expect it. When we put too much salt into a box of popcorn, or on a steak, or a hamburger, that salt, confined as it is, will ruin the taste of food. The opposite of that is “salt that has lost it’s saltiness” stored in the shaker and never used until water seeps in and the crystals congeal. (That, by the way is why churches have fights—we’ve lost our saltiness)

            It's only when our love is used--allowed to spread beyond ourselves-- beyond our limited group of loveables-- that we can even begin to salt the earth, and preserve its flesh from the maggots of hate and fear and injustice.  Some of you are probably thinking that this is easy enough to preach, but impractical in the "real world". After all, how can anyone even begin to imagine loving nearly four billion people?

It's like the young man who asked the late Mother Theresa how she planned to minister to and feed all the suffering and dying people in Calcutta.

            "One at a time, my son. One at a time." You and I are invited to believe that as the invitation remains--so does the possibility exist.

            "This is what the Creator asks of you, only this," we read in Micah 6:8, "to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God."

            The love of the other, the love of the world is more than a motto or an abstraction. Loving means nothing more or less than willingly placing the happiness and well being of the other ahead of our own. Salting the world with Christ’s love is a state of active concern for, and involvement with, and willingness to sacrifice for the well being and survival of humanity.

            That sort of love, might mean visiting a nursing home, volunteering at a food pantry, tutoring a high school dropout to pass the G.E.D. It might mean volunteering as a Big Brother/Big Sister. It might mean starting a prayer group. It might mean taking a foster child into your home, or adopting a third world child. Salting the world can mean contributing to a cause you believe in, or getting involved in the local political process. Above all else, it will mean you and I standing up for and working for what we know is right.

            Salting the world with Christ’s love is a lot more than civic duty or charity, or kind behavior. It means our total involvement in the task at hand-- the risking and spending of part of who we are for the sake of others-- or even just one other.  Why? Simply because we recognize that other person is of value-- simply because we recognize that other person is-- as we ourselves are-- a beloved child of God—simply because we are salting the earth with our love.

            Salting the world might be as dramatic as Ralph Bunche negotiating an end to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, or Ghandi leading his people to freedom through non-violent action. Or the Pope scolding Congress. It can be Woodrow Wilson giving life and health for the League of Nations, or Martin Luther King sharing his dream in Washington DC, or Begin and Sadat negotiating the only peace accord between Israel and any Arab nation that has not been violated-- right up to this very day.

            Salting the world can be as un-undramatic as helping out a neighbor in trouble—lending a hand to someone doing a job over their head--or  listening, really listening to the fears and concerns of a friend in their time of struggle and need-- and then responded  with care and courage-- and doing all that without criticism or judgement, and without giving our own very excellent advice. Or it might literally mean going the second mile with someone- at a hunger walk, or by getting involved with people or groups working for a more just, more equitable, more godly society.

            That last one may be a bit of a toughie for some of us. But you and I may not necessarily agree with one another's causes, or efforts, or tactics or targets. But as our Lord reminds us earlier in the passage,

"Who ever is not against us, is for us." When we find ourselves in disagreement with the tactics of someone who is honestly trying to build a better world, we need to recall that the other-- even the opponent-- is usually acting out of their own all-too-human perceptions of what is just or unjust, loving or unloving, appropriate or inappropriate—just as you and I are. Our differences arise, after all, because we are all only human.

            We are free to collaborate. We are free to unite. We are free to disagree. But we are never free to sit idly by and do no more than criticize.  Jesus reminds us,

"No one who does a miracle in my name will then be able to speak evil of me."

            In a very real sense, Jesus is telling us that political parties, ideologies, causes, denominations, points of view, even faith traditions and the causes we stand up for, are secondary to the concern that they arise from, and to the human needs that are met, the salt that is shared—in His Name.

That lesson is still valuable for us today. The cause of Christ is not served by rejecting other legitimate ways to God. The cause of Christianity is not helped by those who claim that no real good can happen beyond the boundaries of our own particular persuasion, or nationality, or life style, or color, or gender..

            The salt of tolerance and love can only be only discovered within us. If your or my prayers are simply aimed at getting what we want from God, we’ll inevitably end up  jealous of those who seem to have gotten more than us. But if we can pray with open hearts - without words or images, without expectations, simply  listening and not speaking, just being present in thankful trust with our Maker- we will find ourselves becoming more and more open—less and less judgmental— more and more empowered to salt the world with His loving compassion.         

            Maybe you think I just stopped preachin' and got into meddlin' now. But I'm still talking about Salting the world. And Salting the world with the love of Christ will always be a Spiritual issue.  Christ Jesus calls you and me into every arena of this, our world, and in our particular corner of it--to salt it with all our strength and hope and faith and tolerance— with our love.

            The late Dag Hammarsjold wrote in Markings, his spiritual journal.

                 What you have to attempt-- to be yourself. What you have to pray for-- to      become a mirror in which, according to the degree of purity of heart you have          attained, the greatness of life will be reflected.

            In His earthly ministry, Jesus did essentially two things-- He preached, and He healed.  In His preaching  Jesus challenged His listeners to Love—as He was loving them. In His healing, Jesus  loved those He was healing and allowed their faith to come to the forefront of their lives. And when they were open to Jesus' love—those He ministered to in love became whole.

            Jesus' whole life and ministry was nothing more or less than Love made real and concrete in the lives of men and women and nations. Jesus is the embodiment of Love—love lived out in Justice, and Hope, and New Life. And that of course, is why we call Him our Savior and Christ.