Salt, Light and Desire

Matthew 5:13-16
 ‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

I’ve got a question that I think has crossed every Christian’s mind at some time or other, a question that isn’t easily expressed because it seems like such a selfish question. It is the question of “Why should I?”

Why should I be salt? Why should I be a shining light? Why should I share my bread with the hungry? Why should I walk as a member of the royal priesthood in order to pastor the poor and serve the people with my gifts? What’s in it for me?

Isn’t that a terrible question – what’s in it for me? How selfish and shallow can you get? Yet, in actuality, it’s a valid question and one that we would all do well to seriously ask the Lord because if we don’t get an answer to that question, an answer that satisfies our hearts, we will always find it difficult to be salt and to let our lights shine. It would be wonderful if we were all totally selfless creatures filled with a constant desire to give with no reward. It would be marvelous if all our motives were pure and holy with no thought of self-satisfaction ever entering our minds or hearts. But we’re not like that. Part of the reason for this is because we are broken. We have a false self that makes us selfish and self-oriented.

However, there is another reason we need to ask “What’s in it for me?”

It’s because God created each one of us with a deep need and desire. This need is within every living being and every living being spends its days trying to fill up this need and desire, usually without success if there is no God in the equation. The desire is to be intimately and lovingly connected to God. As someone once said, there is a God shaped hole in each of us, and God is the only one who can fit into that hole and fill it up completely. We yearn to know God and to be known by him. We long to understand our worth and value to him. We desperately need to know our worth in our heart of hearts not just in our heads. We want to have faith that we are loved so strongly that nothing can shake or jar that knowledge. It is out of this heart knowledge that dynamic life filled goodness flows.

Consider this: if the whole world suddenly decided on an intellectual basis that all Jesus’ directions on how to be people of integrity made logical sense and laws were passed that required everybody to be kind to each other, share their goods and make sure that everyone had what was needed to live comfortably - and everyone actually obeyed those laws - the world would be a much nicer place to live.  But it would lack something. What would be lacking would be salt and light. Flavor and illumination.  It would lack the Spirit’s dynamic force that begets life. It would be missing the God filled love relationship that has creative power. Life would be nice but it would be flat.

When Jesus calls us to be salt and light, what he is inviting us to do is be intimately connected to him. Jesus didn’t come to give a whole bunch of new and improved rules to live by because rules, even really good rules, aren’t enough to bring inner life to people. Life under the Old Testament law proved that just following all the rules didn’t create relationship with the heart of God. The Jews for the most part followed rules assiduously but they had lost their saltiness and illumination. They had lost relationship. Jesus wants a people who are so enthralled by him and so eager to spend time in his presence soaking in his love that they just can’t help but reflect the light of his face and become a pungent and pleasing flavor to the world. When Jesus walked on the earth, it wasn’t just the fact that he was a man who followed good rules that touched the people; it was that he was ‘plugged in’. He was so intimately connected to God’s love and had such a deep sense of who he was that people were astounded. People either loved him or despised him but nobody was neutral about him. He was the saltiness that the world had lost; he was the light that had come to rekindle and enliven all that had become dark, stale and two-dimensional.

Another word for the combination of light and salt is ‘joy’. Joy is not necessarily a happy bubbling emotion although it can present itself like that sometimes. Joy is the manifestation of being solidly plugged in to Christ and consequently being solidly plugged in to who you really are. There is nothing in the world like that heart knowledge. It is not a precept. It is not the culmination of being obedient to a collection of rules. When Jesus says, “Be flavorful salt and let your light shine,” he is not simply providing laws for being good people. He is saying, “ Stay intimate with me. Then you will be able to love yourselves and each other the way I love you. Then your joy will be full.”  It’s a case of cause and effect. You can’t love like he does, you can’t add flavor like he does, you can’t illuminate the world around you like he does unless you experience his love, taste his salt and are lit up within by his light. You can’t possess joy unless you experience his joy. Jesus is a joyful God. He is continually beside himself with delight and jubilation. This is what he calls you to experience in your relationship with him.

 Possessing this joy won’t mean that you will never have pain or struggles in your life again. It won’t mean you’ll never be stressed, disappointed, anxious or in deep grief. What joy does is give you a solid foundation so that all the hard things life throws at you become the building blocks of a higher and stronger spiritual life. Joy also becomes the cement that holds the blocks firm and creates a durable edifice that won’t crumble from under you.   

So, when Jesus says to be flavorful and shine, go ahead and ask, “What’s in it for me? What do I get out of this?” The answer will be: a strong foundation and the fulfillment of the desires God placed within you before you were born. These are desires that he put there because it is his own huge and eternal desire to be the true fulfillment of those desires. First, you receive him. Then you receive your true self. After that you will have the strong desire and the grace to be salty like him and be light like him. This is God’s desire that was planted in you. He wouldn’t have put it there unless he meant to fill it.

For the next few Sundays, try not to hear the Gospel readings as a list of New Testament addendums to the old law. Try to hear Jesus saying to the Jewish people, “Come to me. I am the fulfillment of what the old law was trying to lead you to. I am the incarnation of The Relationship. I am the image of the heart that has always been calling you to merge with his integrity, walk in his humility, allow his love to flow through you and be one with his mercy. Instead, you just followed dead law, lost the light, lost the vision, lost the salt and lost the flavor. By losing these things, you lost yourselves. Come home. I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. I am the way, the truth, the resurrection and the light. I am the salt. I am your identity. I have come to bring you back home.”

Go to him. Go home. You have to receive salt and light before you can be salt and light.