Low Salt Area

Matthew 5:13-20
We have to follow the law even greater than the Pharisees and Scribes?  That seems quite difficult since they were the experts in the Jewish Law, the Torah.  Jesus says He came to fulfill the law not abolish it, so we need to explore what is the law according to the Rabbi Jesus.  The best example would be in the Gospel of Luke when a young lawyer tests Jesus on the law.

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ (Luke 10:25-28)

The lawyer answers with the Shema with an additional caveat of loving your “neighbor as yourself,” which is confirmed by Jesus as being the right answer.  Of course the young lawyer is not satisfied with this, and asks who is his neighbor, which is when Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan.  Making it clear our neighbor is not simply the person who lives next door.

There is this children’s book about two boys living in Jerusalem.  One Jewish and one Muslim, who were both feeding the same stray white cat.  Both had been raised on the rules of their religious tradition, and both thought the other was not their neighbor, until the day they both worrying about the cat who had been missing for a while.  When they went looking for the cat and  met each other, they followed the rules of their society and fought (specifically over whose cat the stray was).  They followed the cat to a litter of kittens as a rare snowfall began concerned about her freezing.  They realized that she wants peace and they worked together for their love of the cat.  The book is called “Snow in Jerusalem” and is truly a oversimplification of peace in the Middle East.  Or is it?  The boys realized that love took precedent over the rules they had learned.  They saw how the snow fell, as we noticed this week in Durant, on everything.  Reminding me of Jesus’ saying in the end of this chapter five of Matthew:

‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The boys realize that the snow represents the Grace of God that falls upon everyone, so we are to love everyone as God does.  That is the real law.  It is not simply about the rules.

So what about this salt?  It is a very strong metaphor that is understood when you explore how it was used in Old Testament.  How the first believers would have understood salt as a religious metaphor.  First of all culturally, one would say in the first century, “sharing salt” to refer to table fellowship.  That is certainly powerful for Christians, whose worship centers around a holy feast.  In Leviticus 2:13, “  You shall not omit from your grain-offerings the salt of the covenant with your God; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” Which tells us to specifically to put salt in all offerings, because as the first half of the text says, it is a metaphor for the covenant itself.  The next piece of scripture I have us turn to is Numbers 18: 19, “All the holy offerings that the Israelites present to the Lord I have given to you, together with your sons and daughters, as a perpetual due; it is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord for you and your descendants as well.” Again telling us that salt is a sign of the everlasting covenant.  And a very powerful sign of the covenant.  We have been iced over the whole week and we have not had salt to through out on the roads to melt the ice.  Up north we would call it a Low Salt Area, which you would see signs for such areas around reservoirs.  Salt is so strong it  contaminates the water supply, and I have known of houses whose wells are no longer good to drink from because of the salt that is put down on the roadway.  This idea of salt being so powerful is also found in 2 Kings 2: 19-22

Now the people of the city said to Elisha, ‘The location of this city is good, as my lord sees; but the water is bad, and the land is unfruitful.’He said, ‘Bring me a new bowl, and put salt in it.’ So they brought it to him. Then he went to the spring of water and threw the salt into it, and said, ‘Thus says the Lord, I have made this water wholesome; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.’ So the water has been wholesome to this day, according to the word that Elisha spoke.

Now we know that salt is seen as very powerful and even purifying, a symbol of table fellowship, and the Covenant, the Law.

Jesus says to the believers who were listening to him on the mountain, “You are the salt of the earth”  You are the very powerful purifying, table fellowship that is the covenant.  You are the Law.  You are the law as He teaches and fulfills which is love of God and of humanity, our neighbor.  We are not to lose our saltiness but to permeate the world and change it.  To be a light for the true covenant that is embodied by Jesus’ love that He went to the cross for all of us, leaving us to be the church the body of Christ, the fulfillment of the Law, SALT.

Go out in the world as salt demonstrating this love and flavoring the earthly world with Heaven’s law.