Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.
In 2013, I was serving my pastoral internship at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Littleton, CO. You may not know this, but seminarians in the ELCA spend an academic year out of the classroom and in the parish, learning in a hands-on way from a supervising pastor just what a year in the life of a congregation looks like. It’s a time to hone our skills, test the waters, and face our fears. The fear I faced that year? Summer camp.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a real and true phobia of camp or anything, just a…general unease with outdoorsiness, an embarrassingly San Diegan inability to withstand the elements, and absolutely zero pairs of practical footwear.
However, I was the unmarried and childless intern, and so it was the least logistically complicated for me to uproot my routine to spend a week at Rainbow Trail Lutheran Camp with our confirmation students. We were joined there by groups from all over the state, getting up and away to 8500 feet of elevation for some time in community and nature.
I was…trepidatious, to say the least. But I put on a brave face for those teens and I sat around a campfire with the best of them. Sure, I hadn’t brought any long pants—it was July! What did I know about elevation?—and had to buy a whole new Rainbow-Trail-branded wardrobe from the camp store, but I survived the experience.
Why am I telling you this not especially flattering story? The theme for that week was “Blessed to Be A Blessing” and the scripture we focused on was—you guessed it—Matthew 5:13-20. We spent the week wondering about salt and light and whatever a bushel basket is.
Whenever I hear these words from the Sermon on the Mount, I remember what it was like to sit outside with dozens of 13-year-olds, staring up at the starriest sky any of us light-polluted-city-dwellers had ever seen, contemplating our place in the universe and in the family of God. Whenever I hear these verses, I am transported back there, to those kids who are now adults, and I wonder briefly about where they’ve taken their saltiness and where they’ve shined their light.
It’s interesting that these second-person declarative sentences follow the Beatitudes we heard last week. Those were third person, describing people who may or may not have been present and listening. But these words, these truths, these are for you. Whoever you are. You are salty and you are luminous.
I appreciate that Jesus is not giving us instructions for how to become salt and light, but rather letting us know that we already are, just as we are. It isn’t “you will be salt and light if you…” or “in order to become salt and light you must…” or “the best among you are salt and light..” but just straight up.
You are the salt of the earth.
You are the light of the world.
You may be someone who prefers not to stand out in a crowd. Not especially interested in being the center of attention or the “city on the hill” as the case may be. You might choose to keep your light hidden under that bushel basket most of the time, only letting it shine when strictly necessary.
As the person who stands up here and does a lot of people’s worst fear—public speaking—every week, it is fairly difficult for me to empathize with this perspective, but I do respect it.
Fortunately for you, being the center of attention is not the same thing as being salt and light. You do not need to fling your salt everywhere like grains of rice at a wedding or winner-of-the-big-game confetti. You do not need to shine your megawatt flashlight into everyone’s eyeballs all the time.
“Like salt and light, God made you a small thing that can make a big difference for a larger whole.” [1] Those of us who have baked a batch of sugar cookies know that a pinch of salt in the dough balances the flavor beautifully; mistakenly using salt instead of sugar is a recipe for disaster.
Sunlight is critical to our existence, ensuring that we synthesize our vitamin D and keep our circadian rhythms rolling even in the winter. Anyone as pale as I am, though, knows that a perfect day at the beach is very quickly a sunburn when one is not careful. Your call to be salt for the earth and light for the world does require balance.
“Salt is for saltiness. Light is for shining.” [1]
You, beloved child of God, are not permitted to hide your light under a bushel basket, because it has been given to you to shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify your God. Neither are you permitted to hoard your salt, such that everything around you is bland and boring and decidedly un-delicious. “God made us this way, blessing us with gifts that can bless the world.” [1] God created you just as you are, and continues to co-create with you into who you are becoming.
This is not an opportunity to compare flavors and brightnesses with the people around you, in order to feel better or worse about yourself. Your gifts are unique to you. “God made you to shine as only you can.” [1] When all of us utilize our saltiness for the enrichment of the world around us, and when all of us shine our lights out into the darkness of this weary world, we are coworkers in the gospel, bringing about the reign of God together.
You may feel like this is veering dangerously toward evangelism. You are right, it is. But remember, we’re not throwing handfuls of salt or brandishing torches.
There’s an idea attributed to Martin Luther about this. He wrote that the good Christian cobbler does not shine his light by marking every pair of shoes with crosses, but by honing his craft, working hard to make the best shoes his hands and tools can produce.
I have not yet met everyone so maybe one of you is, in fact, a cobbler by trade. But I’m willing to guess that not all of you are, and so you’ll have to find the analog that works for your vocation. What might it look like, in practical terms, to share what you have with those who need that, and to receive from others what they are uniquely gifted to give you? How might you encourage others to be saltier and more luminous? Give it a try and let me know how it goes.