Preacher: Canon Karen
Date: 09/02/2020
3rd Sunday before Lent
Isaiah 58: 1-9
1 Corinthians 2: 1-12
Matthew 5: 13-20
Last week on the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, or Candlemas, as that name for the feast suggests, we thought about the light that the infant Christ had brought into the world as described by Simeon in what we now know as the Nunc Dimittis
…a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.
God’s light has broken into our world in the baby and today we reflect on what that baby, now the grown man, Jesus, has to say about our role in spreading God’s light in our world today. We are to shine, to spread God’s light, just as a lamp lights up a room, so we are to light up those places in which we live our lives and to bathe those people we meet and whose lives we share in God’s light.
But Jesus also uses another example of how we are to do his work – we are to be as salt.
Outside the city of Krakow there are a number of salt mines, one of which is known as ‘the underground salt cathedral of Poland’. Perhaps some of you have been there. Members of my family who have visited tell me that it is a fascinating place where visitors can climb down more than 300 meters to visit the site where table salt has been mined since the 13th century. But it is much more than just a place where miners have dug for salt. As well as mining, Polish miners have carved dozens of statues, three separate chapels and a vast underground cavern which is known as the underground cathedral.
When members of my family visited the mine they were invited to ‘taste the walls’. “Lick your finger” the guide said, “rub it on the wall and taste it” and it was of course that unique flavour of salt. A whole cathedral made of the stuff of which Jesus said ‘you are’. It’s a unique taste and what struck me on hearing about this remarkable building was that for being underground for not hundreds of years but thousands of years this was resilient stuff. Soft enough to carve easily but strong enough to support the roof above in a space about the size of a cathedral … and you could eat the walls!
Salt is significant for us as people of the Christian faith and also for people of many other religions. Ancient nomadic religions threw salt into a fire at the time of a new moon; Greeks and Romans offered salt to their gods; in Hinduism it is thrown at weddings and by Buddhists after funerals. And Jesus said ‘It’s what you are’. Now there are all sorts of explanations for the use of salt in rituals but one I like in particular is from the Jewish Passover meal where bread is dipped in salt and passed around the table. It is a symbol of preserving and cleansing the covenant between God and his people.
So when Jesus says you are to be that which preserves and keeps living the covenant relationship between God and his people, to be like salt is to be something special. It’s not just about taste, it is not just about preservation; it is about the vitality of a relationship between God and humanity. Just as salt can lose its taste it is possible for us to lose the momentum for keeping alive our relationship with God.
In the world today we put a lot of responsibility on our leaders to make our communities and our world better places and that’s right and proper, but that’s not a reason to absolve ourselves from responsibilities which are right and proper for us. And probably in the church as well, we place a great emphasis on the ability of our parish priest to sprinkle just enough magic dust to turn our church into a vibrant and exciting place.
I did think about bringing some salt with me and throwing it around just to see what would happen but then I realised that when Jesus spoke of salt he didn’t want us to be making better use of sodium chloride, he wanted us to be making better use of ourselves. We are the salt, each and every one of us – we are that taste that makes the difference, that taste that has the potential not just to preserve a relationship with God but to bring vitality to the covenant relationship between God and his people.
We sometimes say of someone who’s an ordinary good person ‘they are the salt of the earth’. And it is what God says to all of us … you are the salt of the earth, don’t lose it, make a difference.’
And what a vision we are given in today’s reading from Isaiah of a different world, God’s vision of how things could and should be – of justice, of freedom from oppression, of sharing fairly the resources he has given us, what St Paul in writing to the early Christians in Corinth described as
What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him – the gifts bestowed on us by God.
So today is a day for reflecting on what difference we each can make. Bringing in God’s vision may seem a formidable task, but if we each do something for its fulfilment, that will make a difference. What kind of salt are we? A salt that makes a difference to the flavour, to the vitality and viability of God’s church or have we lost it? And if we have lost it, what do we do to get it back?
Lent will soon be upon us and with it opportunities to reflect on ways in which we can perhaps mine deeper into our own relationship with God or on ways in which we can bring light and the flavour of God into our community. The forty days of Lent shouldn’t be miserable but rather an opportunity to do something different, to use the imagination of those miners in Krakow who saw in their mine the potential to transform it from a place with a utilitarian purpose into something beautiful and awe-inspiring.
And as we mine new depths of understanding God in us and we in him, so, by God’s grace, we shall discover new ways of being salt and also light in our communities.
Photo
Take a look now, if you would, at the photo you were given as you came to the service. It was taken deep underground – not in the salt cathedral of Krakow, but within the miles of abandoned salt mines beneath Yekaterinburg in Russia. Layers of the mineral carnallite band the tunnel walls, producing these technicolour masterpieces. A small portion of the carnallite mines remain in use, but most of the passageways are now closed and off-limits to the public without a special government permit.
Perhaps we can think of ourselves in terms of those vibrant colours – not buried and abandoned underground but breaking the surface of our town and displaying God’s glory, making a difference by bringing those shapes, that colour, that vibrancy into our communities.
Jesus said
You are the salt of the earth
Amen.