Stay Salty
Dear Abbey Friends,
In both Luke and Matthew, Jesus makes a comment about salt. He wants us to be salty… and not salty with the edge you might find in the Urban Dictionary but salty in terms of faithful. If salt looses its saltiness, it's of no use. Now, of course, a modern scientist might point out that sodium chloride is a very stable compound, and salt really can’t loose it’s saltiness. This is a helpful reminder that the Bible is not meant to replace your Organic Chemistry text book. The point is exploring who we are and how God invites us to be, and so here we are with this image of salt, being the salt of the earth.
Salt in the ancient world is life. It is essential. We need salt to live. In II Kings, salt is added to water to purify. Salt preserves food, extending the sustenance and nourishment. Salt helped fertilize, and of course it made the meal all the more savory. Salt is a partner, it comes alongside. We don’t serve salt on a plate alone… even if it’s pink Himalayan sea salt. Salt is not a solo artist, it comes alongside, it participates, and it changes something to make it more life-giving.
But salt… could loose its saltiness. It was valuable. It was so valuable our word salary is rooted in salt, how we talk about earning a living, sustaining our lives... it harkens back to the value of salt. And just like any valuable commodity, people can do act in ways that are deceptive and unkind. Salt could be blended with something more like chalk or plaster… and lose it’s saltiness. Just like we might lose our saltines, our ability to partner in the world, change it, and make it give life. In the Gospel of Matthew this salt metaphor is connected to the beatitudes, giving a powerful context for what it means to be faithful… or salty in the best possible way. Jesus blesses the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry, the peacemaker and more… all the nobodies. All the qualities we certainly don’t find electable. In the Gospel of Matthew this list of blessings is longer and linked to Isaiah’s words. For example, the “poor in spirit” is not a way of making the rich feel more comfortable, and in a way that Luke doesn’t, it is related to a poverty that is so intense the spirit is crushed by the systems of oppression and the flame of hope is just a vulnerable ember about to be doused by water by some Caesar or Pharaoh or CEO or somebody. Being salty is hard, coming alongside the world and being an agent that gives life by seeking justices and compassion is hard work. Most of us get uncomfortable with our own feelings and hard spaces let alone others. Loosing our saltiness might be easy to do… particularly when a lot of our Christian churches probably lost it a long time ago.
This week a blog circulated titled something like, “If your church isn’t talking about immigration you should find a new church.” And that is probably true. But I thought, we have talked about immigration in general, and the separation of families specifically, for the last three weeks. In fact I cannot remember a time in active ministry in the last ten years when we were not working on immigration reform. Three years ago in this very room with this microphone, Sister Kathleen Erickson shared about her time as a chaplain in the for-profit family detention centers. They looked like great Texas summer camps on the outside and were horrors on the inside, and she reminded us that we could have spent less putting each woman and her children in a Hyatt hotel for the same nights. A local lawyer spoke, he volunteered to defend these woman, and he wept openly in front of us sharing how he had lost every case and was certain we were sending these women and children back as a death sentence. We have been working on immigration, and it is exhausting. We have been calling and writing and meeting and learning, and it is hard to stay salty. And that is only immigration, we have been working on human trafficking and domestic violence and environmental destruction and gun violence and countless other avenues in need of desperate reform. It is easy to loose our saltines, to decide it better to stay home and just watch Netflix or maybe move off the grid so Facebook cannot inform you of one more breaking news story that crushes your spirit. I have been feeling pretty tired lately, perhaps you have too… there is a lot of news.
And then I remembered, Brené Brown at the close of Braving the Wilderness asks us to honor our pain and our joy; to celebrate it rather than feel guilty about spending time looking at birthday cakes when there are parents who don’t get to hold their baby tonight. She reminds us that our pursuit of healing for the world is not only about justice but about wanting everyone to live a full and healthy and happy life, we must live that to want it for others. We should celebrate love and give big hugs to family and family of choice, because when we value the gifts before us we can really honor the pain and lose others are experiencing even more. I think this is a way to stay salty. I can plan a Tinker Bell party for an almost five year-old and the joy of this fuels me to work for every parent to be able to do the same. I can listen as she sings “This is my Fight Song!” and the joy of that moment fuels my next call to Don Bacon reminding him, not everyone gets to hear their child sing tonight and I want a world where they do. I want a world where kids go to school safe from gun violence. I want a world where difference is valued, and immigrants and refugees are greeted with open arms. I want earth as it is in heaven; a world where everyone goes to bed safe, loved and well-fed. We are called to this work by our faith. Our faith links us to unlikely blessings and if we are worth our salt, we will come alongside and change the world to make it give life. This week I invite you to pause and cultivate your joy. Pause and find your passion that can keep you salty in the best possible way.
May it be so! Amen.