I can still remember the first time somebody gave me salted fruit. I was visiting a plantation in Nicaragua, and the grower cut a fresh ripe pineapple in the field. He sliced it into these bright tantalizing spears, and my mouth was watering for the tang. I was just about to take the slice from his hand when he reached into a bandana in his pocket, took out a generous pinch of salt, and liberally sprinkled my slice. I am ashamed to say that I actually recoiled. That’s one way you might know I’m a thoroughly white Anglo Saxon protestant. My people didn’t salt our fruit, at least not 30 years ago. It felt like a transgression, maybe like mixing milk and meat at Passover.
Of course Guatemalans have always known about the magic of salt and sweet fresh fruit. But in that moment it was, for me, a shock and a revelation. The light dusting of salt opened up the flavor of the fruit and revealed a complexity I had never tasted before. For a few weeks afterwards, I went a little crazy. Salting every tropical fruit I could find: mangoes and papayas and melons. They all tasted so much better! Familiar, but more so. Like a truer version of themselves.
Salt and light, that’s what we are called to be according to Jesus. Metaphors that each have deep Biblical resonance. We’ve been bathed in light images throughout this season after Epiphany. Light was the paintbrush of God’s creation, the pillar that led the Israelites to freedom, inaccessible but for the image of the invisible God. Light is invaluable to our daily existence. It may not be as readily apparent to us how valuable salt was to Biblical people, because now we mostly enjoy it in abundance. But for the ancients salt was invaluable as a preservative, as a disinfectant, and as symbol of purity and wealth. Our English word salary actually comes from the Latin word for salt.
Salt and light are precious; Jesus surely wanted his hearers to recognize themselves that way. But there’s another distinctive characteristic that salt and light share: they are both powerful in small quantities. We all know that it’s possible for a food to be too salty and a space to be too bright. But we also know that there’s a world of difference between a totally dark room and one with a single lit candle. There’s a world of difference between a slice of pineapple with no salt and one with a few grains dissolving into the juice. In both cases, a deeper truth is revealed by just a little salt or a little light.
I am grieving right now; maybe you are too. I am grieving the fair and transparent legal system that the United States used to stand for. I am grieving the systems of international cooperation and accountability that kept our world safer than it feels right now. I am grieving the people who have been hurt and killed and even disappeared under the current regime of immigration enforcement in the US. My husband and I teach English to Guatemalan immigrants every Tuesday night when we are home, so I know firsthand how frightened they are. But ordinary Guatemalan citizens know the terror of authoritarian governments, and are still here to tell the truth about it. And to teach the rest of us how to heal from it.
Even the most fair and robust of legal systems need people who will serve as light and salt to insist on its importance and recover its value. That’s why the framers of the US Constitution insisted on a balance of powers. That’s why the “Memoria de Silencio” report by the United Nations documented the human rights abuses here, and victim support for Mayan communities is so important. That’s why the Hebrew prophets stood up to authoritarian kings, and warned the religious leaders of the danger of narrow legalism—
“They ask of me righteous judgments… [but] you serve your own interest on your fast day… Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”
What Isaiah reminded the powerful is that laws are only as good as their capacity to protect the most vulnerable living under them. In the Gospel we heard this morning, Jesus had just finished giving his sermon on the mount, which was a kind of recapitulation of the Ten Commandments from the perspective of the poor, the hungry, the merciful and the peacemakers. When we acknowledge that we are all vulnerable, when we stand for what is right—and maybe fail—but still encounter the all-encompassing grace of God, we can hear afresh words like: “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly” and know them to be true.
When Jesus preached to his disciples, he was reminding them that they might have to stand up to powers, but that their own power—just like a small amount of salt and light—would be sufficient. Today’s lessons; they are humbling. Who among us can rise to a challenge like “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven?” But then again, who among us has not taken the side of a person in need, or challenged the oppression of a vulnerable person? We don’t have to be superheroes to be righteous; we just have remember our worth in God’s sight, and not be shy to let our lights shine.
This week was the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord, also known as Candlemas or Candelaria. Another reminder that a little candle can shed a lot of light in a dark room. A pinch of salt reveals a deeper truth. Salt and light are metaphors, of course, so you may have your own ideas about what they mean for you. And that’s why Jesus used them, I think: he already knows that our mileage may vary. Metaphors are open-ended enough to help us understand who we are in God’s sight, and what we’re called to do. Here’s another metaphor I like, written by theologian GT Shedd in the late 19th century: “A ship is safe in harbor,” he said, “but that’s not what ships are for.”
To mashup multiple metaphors, we are called to be salt, not to be safe. To shine, and not to be ashamed. To sail, not to sleep. So let’s be brave to use what we have—as Christian people and as a scrappy community of Anglicans from all over—to make someone else’s life better. To give light where things seem dark. To discern and to do the faithful thing that is uniquely ours to do. There isn’t anything to fear, because at the end of our voyage, there really is a harbor. THE harbor, in fact. And God’s very self is waiting for us, lamp in hand, ready to welcome us to the most savory feast.
