“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men."
Dear Jesus,
I have heard people quote you. They say, "Isn't he just the salt of the earth?" Their remarks praise a family with "Those folks are the salt of the earth."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: "Everything else needs to be seasoned with salt, but once the salt itself has lost its savor, it can never be salted again. Everything else can be saved by salt, however bad it has gone--only salt which loses its savor has no hope of recovery. That is the other side of the picture. That is the judgment which always hangs over the disciple community, whose mission is to save the world, but which, if it ceases to live up to that mission, is itself irretrievably lost. The call of Jesus Christ means either that we are the salt of the earth, or else we are annihilated; either we follow the call or we are crushed beneath it."
Salt seasons. Salt can lose its ability to season. Once its savor is lost, it cannot be regained.
What a powerful hope. What an alarming warning!
Christ-followers are that savor to a broken, hurting, sin-cursed world. We offer hope, zest, life, and purpose to an otherwise chaotic and meaningless existence. We extend passion for living to lost, hopeless people.
But the warning is against losing our zest, our savor, our flavor. The warning is against becoming so exposed to our surroundings, so corrupted by other influences, so decayed and decrepit in our faith that we fit into our surroundings. We hide. We lose any sense of remark-ability. We become ordinary, despairing, hopeless, complaining, critical people. We gossip, lie, fornicate, steal, cheat, deceive, manipulate, coerce, and live in drunken inebriation. No flavor. Or we may simply dwindle in our passion, our zeal, our zest for life in Christ, until we are neutered into harmlessness, defanged and declawed, by a world system of tolerance which seeks to normatize us into its conventions.
Oh, God. Keep me salty. Help me to be an invigorating, savory, flavorful influence to draw others to Jesus, my Savior and Lord!
In the Name of Christ, my Lord,
Amen.
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