Pentecost 17

Pentecost 17 Proper 21 Salt is good.

Salt played an important part in the lives of ancient peoples. Salt was used as a seasoning, a preservative, a judgment and as currency.

We all know the ability of salt to enhance a meal. Many of us may know how salt was widely used to preserve foods before the time of refrigeration. That time is not that distant. Some of us have grandparents who were born before refrigeration became available to ordinary people.

Salt was also used as a judgment. The Romans sowed salt into the land surrounding their arch enemy Carthage. The salt rendered the land useless for growing plants. It was the ultimate punishment Rome could impose on Carthage. And, it was incredibly costly.

Salt was not cheap. Because of its value people some times used salt as a means of exchange, as a substitute for money. And, because of its value, some people discovered a way to cheat in order to increase their wealth.

If you had a pound of salt you could double your money when you sold it by mixing it with an inert substance that looked like salt. Of course, it didn’t taste much like salt. If you cheated in this way you needed to be careful to avoid detection and arrest.

This is the meaning of Jesus’ statement: if salt has lost its saltiness how can you season it?
The context for Jesus’ teaching about salt is his call to a new way of living. It is a call to faith. The call to faith is the call to examine our priorities. It is a call to examine our values.

What, or who, is more important than God? It is an important question. It is important because God the Father designed us as human beings to live in an eternal relationship with God the Son through the indwelling transforming power of God the Holy Spirit.

But, the Bible consistently reveals to us that people do not live their lives as God designed us. We, collectively and individually, choose another way of living. We choose an alternative way of being human. The Bible calls this alternate way of being human sin. The Bible also shows us how the cumulative effects of sin destroy lives, families and nations.

We don’t need divine revelation to discern this. We need only to pay attention to how we live and how we make our choices. We need only pay attention to the consequences of our choices. Some times the consequences are immediate. Some time the consequences emerge over the course of years.

We do need divine revelation to teach us the principles of living that produce a life of blessing. We need divine revelation because the sin nature distorts our reason and convinces us we can cheat life, cheat the laws that govern life, and cheat the God who designed the Laws of life.
Divine Law is very simple. All beings who are capable of love are designed to make choices. Those choices enter into a world that is governed by the principle of cause and effect. Cause and effect produce consequences. Those consequences always manifest in accord with the divine rational creative pattern of the universe.

The root of all sin is the distortion of love. The only source of love in the universe is God. The Bible reveals to us that God just doesn’t show love or have love, God is love. He is in fact the source of love. In order to be filled with love we must immerse ourselves into the Divine Nature. This is how God designed angels and humans to live.

As we celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels we remember how some of the angels attempted to live apart from love. They chose the way of power. In that choice they murdered their true selves and are now merely burnt out remnants of their former glory.
Humans have made the same choice. Yet, God offers us all an opportunity to make a different choice. That different choice is a different way of living, a different way of being human. It is the way of Jesus Christ.

Jesus used the exaggerated language of the spiritual teachers of the day to get the attention of his audience. He poses several very extreme situations for people to consider. These are the "what if" questions that help us think carefully about our lives and our choices.
The principle governing these scenarios is the principle of choice. Who or what is most important to you? Where are you grounded? What are you not willing to give up or sacrifice for some temporary pleasure or advantage? The answer to these questions reveals who or what you worship.

Lucifer came to worship himself. He convinced his followers to worship him. That choice led to the loss of love for Lucifer and for all of the angels who followed him. In losing love Lucifer reached out for power. He lost that as well. He is now a diminished spirit of spite seeking to destroy all that God loves.

This is why the first and great commandment directs us to worship the one God with the totality of our being. The principle that governs created beings is that we become who or what we worship. To worship is to be fully engaged in the nature of the one we worship. If we worship God we offer our souls to God to be immersed in divine love.

As we grow in our worship of God we take on more and more of the divine nature. We become more of who God created us to be. We become more fully alive and more fully capable of enjoying the pleasures of life and more capable of dealing with the sorrows of life.

The salt Jesus references is the choice we make to respond to God’s great gift of Himself to each of us. A little bit of salt gives us a taste of that gift. It creates the thirst. It actually enhances every aspect of our lives here and now. The salt is life. The salt is love. A little salt enhances life.
More salt preserves the essence of life. If we try to mix the salt of divine love with the distractions of this world we lose the wonderful affects of the salt. As abandon love the salt of life becomes abhorrent to us.

If we mix and blend the salt with the distractions of this world we lose the blessing. We in fact trade eternal love for temporary pleasure. The salt becomes useless, tasteless, meaningless. The soul is not designed for separation or division. The soul is designed for immersion in Divine Love.
Jesus is warning us: it does matter what you believe. It does matter who or what you worship. It does matter how you worship. Worship mediates Divine Love to the human soul.

What are people willing to sacrifice to make worship the priority in their lives? What are people willing to choose in place of worship?

Jesus teaches us that Hell is not a punishment imposed on us but a consequence of choices we embrace.. He warns us, it would be better to lose an eye or a hand than to lose eternal love.
King Solomon, the wealthiest man of his time, once wrote: if a man were to offer to abandon love to gain wealth he would be utterly scorned. The love Solomon describes is divine love. The very source of love.

The lesson of scripture is consistent and urgent. When ever we trade love to get power, possessions, pleasure, prestige or pride we lose our own souls. Hell is hell because it is inhabited by souls that traded love for something else.

The Biblical principle is very direct. Only God is love. That love is eternal. As we worship God we immerse ourselves in divine love. We become who we worship. As we make a choice to abandon the worship of God for any reason, temporary pleasure or advantage, so we abandon love.
So we distort our souls and form them apart from love.

The choice is ours. Jesus stands before us throughout our lives inviting us to choose God, to make worship our priority, to immerse ourselves in God’s love. Jesus reveals to us what we too often fail to perceive. The gift of God in Jesus Christ is very much like salt. Jesus teaches us this morning: salt is good. Have the salt of God’s grace in your souls. Immerse yourselves in the eternal love of God through worship. AS you make that choice you will bring forth peace in your live and in the lives of the people closest to you.

Salt is good.