My father will be turning 85 next month.  This tends to surprise many people who meet him, especially in light of his continued good health and his outgoing demeanour.

 

As some of you know, my Dad continues to live in the house in Cambridge that he shared with my mother, who passed away eight years ago after a difficult struggle with ALS.  During the years of her decline, my father started to take on a few of the duties that my mother had typically performed, including doing the groceries and preparing meals.

 

Since taking on more of these duties, he seems to pay a lot more attention to what he eats than he did earlier in his life.  He was never a particularly unhealthy eater, but from time to time, he now passes me healthy eating newsletters that he has found helpful, and has often commented that he is now far more intentional, when buying food, about reading the ingredients on grocery store items.  Without becoming some form of health food fanatic, he simply seems to be far more aware of the importance of paying attention to what we is in the food that we eat. Which breakfast cereal is the best in terms of fibre and nutrients?  How important fresh fruit and vegetables are in a person’s regular diet?   And, perhaps most importantly, how much salt is in the various foods that we typically eat?  He has mentioned, a number of times, that he often stops to read the sodium content on cans of soup – and any one of you who have done so will know that canned soup typically contains a very significant amount of salt.

 

Salt.

 

Salt is one of those often overlooked but incredibly fascinating substances in our lives and in our world.  Debates and controversies continue to go on about how much salt is healthy for us to consume – without running a heightened risk of heart disease, stroke or a host of other difficult maladies.  At the same time, salt is one of those substances that it is not possible to live without, since our bodies need sodium to transmit nerve impulses, to help muscle fibers (including in our heart and blood vessels) to contract and relax, and to help our bodies to maintain a proper fluid balance.  A lack of sodium leads our kidneys and sweat glands to hold onto water, which affects their proper functioning,  Too much sodium, on the other hand, can have an adverse effect on the amount of water that our bodies retain, which in turn affects the proper functioning of our heart and blood vessels.

 

But salt is not only important in our bodies.  The history of our world has been shaped and influenced, in profound ways, by the presence of salt.  In addition to its effects on the taste of food, salt has been used to preserve food from contamination and to lengthen the amount of time that food can be eaten before it goes bad.  This, in itself, has helped our ancestors to fend off hunger and starvation, as well as to travel over increasingly large distances both on land and on the seas.

 

Salt has played an amazing role in human history, around the world.  It been used as currency by various cultures; trade routes and entire cities have been established in proximity to salt mines and to ensure access to salt; the revenue from salt taxes are said to have the basis for entire civilizations and for the financing of human achievements such as the Great Wall of China; wars and revolutions have been fought over salt, including the French and American Revolutions, as well as Mahatma Gandhi’s famous Salt March, in which Gandhi and his followers marched close to 250 miles to the sea to collect their own salt as a way of non-violently protesting the taxes imposed by the British empire on salt production.

 

But we are in Canada.  And, sad to say, in only a few weeks, or perhaps months, we will be reminded of another great use of salt as the ice and snow on the roads are melted with the use of salt.  Salt keeps us safe when the storms arise.

 

Salt is a fascinating substance — from the label on a soup can to the functioning of our bodies to the reshaping of global empires to the effects of salt on wintry roadways, there are very few substances which have played as intriguing or as influential a role in human life, as has that little granular substance that we sprinkle on our food.

 

It is necessary for health and vitality; it saves life; it improves the taste and quality of that which it touches; it preserves the food that nourishes us, and helps to prevent hunger and starvation; it affects nations and empires and global interactions; it keeps us safe in the midst of winter’s worst storms.

 

Life; vitality; health; preservation; good taste; right relations between people and cultures; safety – so much more than a simple ingredient listed on a soup can label.

 

And you are the salt of the earth, said Jesus.

 

The image of salt is used, throughout the Gospels, in a number of interesting ways.  The Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, draws upon this image when it tries to identify the role that the followers of Jesus were meant to play in the world.  You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth – words which were meant to remind his followers that the presence of the Christian community was meant to have a similarly life-giving, sustaining, nourishing, preserving, enlightening, transforming effect on this world that God loves.

 

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark draws upon this same image, though in slightly different ways.  After a series of statements to his disciples about a number of different themes – how they should not oppose anyone who was doing good in the name of Jesus, even if the person who was doing the right action was not a member of their community as they understood it; how they should avoid doing anything that would cause a child to stumble; how they should hold themselves to an incredibly high standard for their behavior, even to the point of using the extreme and hyperbolic analogy of removing parts of their body if those parts of their body were preventing them from the fullness of life in God’s kingdom as Jesus intended.

 

Jesus’ words – about throwing oneself into the ocean with a millstone around one’s neck, or dismembering oneself in the pursuit of holiness – do not need to be taken literally or acted upon to realize their power.  His point stands – the pursuit of our salvation, the quest for God’s kingdom, was meant to be so important, so central to our existence that anything that stands in its way, or anyone who provides a stumbling block or hurdle to its realization, was to be avoided at all costs.

 

They were challenging, provocative and demanding words.  And they were rooted in Jesus awareness – and his warning to those who would follow him — the pathway of discipleship, would not always be easy.  Challenges would come.  Struggles would come.  “For everyone,” he said, “will be salted with fire.”  But even in spite of those struggles and challenges to our lives, to our faith, to our sense of what should happen, Jesus was calling them to keep following him, to keep striving towards the fulfillment of his kingdom, to keep this quest of the soul, at the very heart of their existence.

 

Sadly, we sometimes lose the immediacy, the power, and the provocation that these words are intended to convey.  We become easily distracted by other concerns, we become blasé about the cultivation of our faith, we ponder God’s call and claim upon our lives only if we have nothing better to do.

 

And this complacent, blasé attitude leads us, so often, to lose something of the poignancy and punch of how following Jesus Christ is supposed to change our lives and our world.

 

In other words, we lose our saltiness.

 

And Jesus knew that that would happen as well – “salt is good,” he said, “but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?”

 

In other words – you who I have called to be the salt of the earth must continue to remember who you are, and what I have called you to be, and to do.

 

Like salt, I want you to be a life-giving, vital, healthy, preserving, saving, tasteful, stabilizing presence in this world.  Don’t be complacent; don’t be blasé.

 

This invitation to rise above complacency – or as Jesus put it, to rise about a lack of saltiness — might sound like words of judgement or condemnation.  They might sound like they are trying to provoke feelings of guilt or shame within us; or make us feel badly that our souls and spirits are not as alive as they might be.

 

But rather than reading these words in tones of self-judgement and self-condemnation, they can also be read as motivating words, inspiring, words of honest self-assessment, words of self-reflection, words that call us to remember that our lives, both individually and together, can be and can do great and amazing things in this world.

 

They can remind us that living lives that are complacent about the world around us, or allowing ourselves to be lulled into a blasé embrace of faith, is not the way that Jesus wanted his followers to live.

He wanted them – he wants us – to be salty.  He wants the community of his followers to be filled with people whose lives accomplish what salt does – enlivening life in this world, increasing good taste and enjoyment, preserving what is good and life-giving, ensuring safety and security for those who are in the midst of life’s wintry storms.

 

And when we aren’t – he invited his followers, and he invites us, to look within, and to realize that there is wondrous potential in each and every one of us to allow such characteristics, such virtues, such qualities, such blessing to live and grow in us.

 

But this saltiness is not only meant to enhance and enrich our own lives.  To the contrary, this saltiness is intended to be a blessing to each other, and to the world.

 

After all, did you notice how Jesus words end in this passage?  They end with a reminder of the external effects of internal saltiness – and the external effect is nothing less than the blessing of peace.  “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

 

So if you are not there yet, if you are not quite as salty as you should be – and let’s face it, none of us are – we are called to look within, to check whether our way of being, our perspective on life, our treatment of others, our willingness to live with generosity and kindness and compassion and forgiveness and love – are these dimensions of our lives in good order?

 

Or have we allowed the cares, the distractions and the concerns of this world to erode a bit of that life-enhancing saltiness that he came to bestow on us?

And if we have, he calls us to turn ourselves back to him, and to open our spirit to his Spirit, and in so doing to allow the Spirit of the living God to work in us so that our saltiness can be restored – to have salt within ourselves so that we can be at peace with one another, and with this world that God so dearly loves.

 

Amen.