Dear Seed-Sowers,
I hope and pray that you are all well, safe, healthy and growing in grace. I have been rereading Matthew 5 this week and reflecting on Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Wow! There is so much meat in chapters 5-7 of Matthew. (Perhaps a challenge for you to read these chapters for a week?) In the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5, Jesus tells us that we are to be poor in spirit, called to be merciful and meek, called to hunger and thirst for righteousness in order that we may be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” In essence, what Jesus is telling the people gathered on that mountainside is that they are to not to just sit around listening about HOW to be a Christian, they are to go out and BE a Christian. Jesus clearly states the purpose of the Christian life — to be salt and light in our world!
SO WHAT? ABOUT “salt”?
SALT: PRESERVATIVE and FLAVOR
In the days of Jesus, and for many centuries thereafter, salt was the most common preservative used. There were no refrigerators, no deep-freezers in ancient times. Salt was used to keep things from going bad and becoming rotten, particularly meat. When Jesus said, “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 underfoot” Jesus was telling His disciples that they were called to be the preserving agents to a decaying world.
The simple principle is that you and I are called to be a preserving force in the world–wherever we are called to live, work, and play.
Think of it this way — salt that never leaves the shelf will do no good in preserving anything. To be effective, the salt had to be rubbed into the meat. Have you gone into the grocery store and looked at all of the “rubs” they have for seasoning these days? In the same way, we must allow God to use us as flavorful seasoning in our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, families, and churches. A small amount of love and kindness goes a long way in making our world a better place.
The other day I went to the grocery store to do some shopping. I went to buy juice, and I came across an insight on flavoring. I was holding a bottle of Blueberry Pomegranate Juice. There was a picture of a ripe pomegranate spilling its exotic, glistening seeds onto mounds of fat, perfect blueberries. I read the ingredient list: “Filtered water, pear juice concentrate, apple juice concentrate, grape juice concentrate.” Where was the blueberry? Where was the pomegranate? Finally I found them, fifth and seventh in a list of nine ingredients. By law, food ingredients are listed in descending order of weight. Meaning a product contains the greatest proportion of the first ingredient on the list and successively less of those farther down the list. According to the jug in my hand, it contained mostly water—a few other juices, with just enough blueberry and pomegranate for flavor and color. In the bottom corner of the front label in small, easy-to-miss type, were the tell-tale words: “Flavored juice blend with other natural ingredients.” The enticing picture and clever labeling were decoys to sell a diluted, blueberry-pomegranate flavored product convincingly disguised to look like something it wasn’t. I put the juice back on the shelf. I chose the juice that was more costly—because it had more of what I was looking for.
SO WHAT? THINK ABOUT THIS: What if we had an ingredients list printed on us?
Would Jesus be the main ingredient? If not, how far down the list would He be? Would our “label” accurately represent our contents? Or would we falsely project a misleading outward-appearance that cleverly masked our diluted ingredients? This made me think, our outside packaging may look convincing. We may look and sound like the real thing but what if someone came looking specifically for Jesus and found something else?
More than a hundred years ago, the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche reproached a group of Christians. Nietzsche said: “Yuck, you make me sick!” When their spokesman asked why, he answered, “because you redeemed don’t look like you are redeemed. You are as fearful, guilt-ridden, anxious confused, and adrift in an alien environment as I am. I am allowed. I don’t believe. I have nothing to hope for. But you people claim you have a Savior. Why don’t you look like you are saved?”[ii]
Friends, it is our calling as Christians to be the salt of the earth. We are called to bring love, joy, peace, hope, mercy, kindness, and grace into our families, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, churches and wherever we go. I think about the people who are serving us in the drive up. I can’t tell you how many times I pull away without something I ordered and paid for. The other day my 89 year old father-in-law taught me a life lesson. The drive up forgot his honey mustard sauce for his chicken nuggets. We were going to go park and take in the majestic beauty of the San Gabriel mountains while we ate our drive through. No honey mustard? Dad said to me, “It’s okay. The mountains are still beautiful.”
I’m trying to say, be the light and the salt of Christ in a world that’s missing the honey mustard sauce!
As you read the living word of God, I’m praying it becomes a great seasoning salt that’s rubbed deeply into your being. I’m praying that you are conformed, and transformed by what you read in your Bible. It’s a new year–pick a book (there are 66 of them) and read a paragraph, or a chapter a day. This week: be the salt of the earth. Lord knows, the world needs us!
See you Sunday.
God loves you and so do I,
Pastor Dave
www.theseedchristianfellowship.com
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