by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given October 21, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

In the Sermon on the Mount, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his followers, “You are the salt of the earth.  But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled.”

You are the salt of the earth.  I like that phrase.  It makes me think of the people we might call salt of the earth.  Think of the qualities we see in salt of the earth kind of people.  Humble, not taking themselves too seriously.  Ready to help others.  They are people you know you can count on.  They may not always be the first to be noticed, but they are very important.

In Jesus’ time, salt was a valuable commodity.  Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, hence the expression:  “worth his salt”.  Salt comes from the same root as salary.  And salt was used to preserve food—which meant that things didn’t have to eaten immediately after they were caught.  Salt was valuable but it was not something you could depend on.

Salt, because it was not pure like the salt we use today, could easily go bad.  It was mixed with all kinds of other substances that could change its form.  It could be stored next to the earth and come in contact with moisture, which could cause it to go bad.  And so this valuable thing needed to be stored in the right way and used in the right way.  You couldn’t count on it—salt could indeed lose its saltiness.

The people Jesus was speaking to—his followers—didn’t necessarily see themselves as valuable or powerful or important. They were in the minority, certainly, because of their beliefs.  In that statement, Jesus was saying something about how they were to be.  How they were to use their presence in the world.  They were to see the world—and themselves—in a different way.  They were to use their gifts well.  They were to be like salt—a little goes a long way and brings flavor… whatever it comes in contact with.

A story:

In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi was working to free India from British control.  He proposed a non-violent march to protest the British Salt Tax as a means of civil disobedience.  The Salt Tax essentially made it illegal to sell or produce salt, allowing a complete British monopoly.  Since salt is necessary in everyone's daily diet, everyone in India was affected.  The Salt Tax made it illegal for workers to freely collect their own salt from the coasts of India, making them buy salt they couldn't really afford.  Gandhi proposed a 240-mile journey to the sea where they would harvest salt in violation of the law.

So on March 12, 1930, Gandhi and 78 followers started their 23-day-long journey.  Women weren't allowed to march because Gandhi felt women wouldn't provoke law enforcers like their male counterparts, making the officers react violently to non-violence.  Along the march, Gandhi and his followers listened to music; the roads were watered and softened, and fresh vegetation was thrown along the path.  Gandhi spoke to each village they passed, and more and more men joined the march.

On April 5, 1930, Gandhi and his followers reached the coast.  After prayers were offered, Gandhi spoke to the large crowd.  He picked up a tiny lump of salt, breaking the law.  Within moments, the others followed Gandhi's passive defiance, picking up salt everywhere along the coast.  Eventually, Gandhi was arrested and thrown into prison, already full with fellow protestors.

The Salt March started a series of protests, closing many British shops and British mills.  That march to the coast resulted in horrible violence.  Gandhi’s non-violent followers did not defend themselves against the clubs of policemen, and many were killed instantly.  The world embraced them and their non-violence, and eventually enabled India to gain their freedom from Britain. 

In our times, it doesn’t seem that there is much we are wanting for. There are all kinds of things we take for granted.  So much of what we have to eat; certainly something as simple as salt.  The places that we have to live, the things we have at our disposal.

And yet there also seem to be so many things that aren’t right, so many things that we see need to be different:  The divide between the richest and the poorest, how we are with those on the margins, our lack of stewardship for the earth.  And yet one of the questions we might find ourselves asking is how to be in the world.

Jesus, in his teaching, often asked his people to be contrary to what the dominant culture was asking of them.

Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount he told his followers, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness.

Jesus, we know, did not come to make things easier for those who followed him.  It was not like that at all.  He had an affinity for those on the margins.  Sometimes you had to give things up in order to know life.

But it was from that place—that place of giving up the attachments we have in life, that place of giving up the things that keep us from knowing the holy; it is from that place that we come to know life in a different, in a deeper way.

With our salt, with what we bring into the world, how do we use those gifts?  How are we to be in the world?  What is it that we are asked to resist today?  What is it that we are asked to affirm?

It is not always clear how we are to be in the world.  It is not always clear how we are to use our power.  The messages can be contradictory.

It is interesting, when we look at salt in today’s world, a lot of what you find is the new market for luxury salts.  Salts that come from all kinds of places.  Salts with all kinds of different flavors.  Today you can spend upwards of 80 or 100 dollars on an ounce of salt.  It might be one called the Jewel of the Ocean from a small island off Japan that is evaporated on special ceramic vessels.  It might be the Danish Viking-Smoked Salt made in a style devised by the Vikings.  It might come from a sacred volcano in Bali or the pink salt from Peru.

But I digress.  I expect some of those salts do introduce us to flavors we have not known before.  But the questions might be how we make our choices.  Sometimes when we have so much, we might not appreciate what is in front of us.  We might, as the scripture says, find that the salt has lost its saltiness.

The question then comes back to our lives.  Too often in our world, we have too much salt.  And too many other things as well.  We are asked to have a balance in our lives, mindful of what we have, where it comes from and what it brings.  We are asked to live with what we need and not more.

If we have too much, the salt may lose its flavor, it may end up losing what it most essentially is.  It might no longer be effective because it has become something else.  And so it might be with our lives.  We can get pulled away from what is most important, what is most essential.  In our lives we are asked to live in balance and to see life with some perspective.  To see how we are connected with everything around us.

In our lives we are asked to flavor the world—to use our power well.  We are asked to use the right amount of salt and the right means to make change in the world.  We are asked to live with an awareness of ourselves in relation to the world.  We are asked to move with a kind of groundedness, with humility, with compassion for others and for the earth.

To always ask how it is that we find our balance, and from that place of balance to live in right relationship.  How is it that we live with the awareness of how everything is interconnected?  From that place we not only give but we receive.  We find ourselves where it is we need to be.

Another story:

In her book Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, Maxine Hong Kingston tells the story of Sandy Scull who served as a lieutenant in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968.  Before he went to war he was a poet; someone she describes as the kind of person who was a poet since he was a child.  But then he went to war.  And for 30 years he could not write poems.  He came home and said that he lost his spirit and lost his imagination.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which means that the body goes numb, the appetite is gone, he’s alienated from his fellow citizens.

This is a poem about his journey back to writing poetry and to life:

Sea Salt

After the Vietnam War, I withdrew
to Nantucket: "faraway isle."
Hoping to glimpse the boy
before spirit fled the body.
Thirty-three miles of ocean exiling me
from a homeland offering little embrace.

Me and my dog Christopher. Christ-love
disguised as loyal canine. We combed beaches.
Working for the island newspaper connected me.
Tides soothed with ebb and flow.
A rhythm I could trust. Even eat by.
I fished the last three hours of the east tide.
Buried my toes in the sand, searching

for the texture of littleneck clam. When water was warm, I sailed out solo.
Stripped then slid into the sound.
Looking up toward the surface light.
Christopher's gaze wavering with wind
and water between us. Breath bubbles
rose, bursting under his nose.

My body now embraced,
a ritual purification in salt.
Dismembered dreams floated closer.
Something dissolved in a solution
that held me. Breathing easier,
I could imagine again.

How is it that we are to imagine in our lives?  How is it that we are to see our lives in the context of the whole?  How is it that we are to live in such a way that we are salt to the earth, to the world?

Sometimes with the news of our times, it feels as if it is easy to lose our saltiness.  To lose that sense of flavor and wonder for life.  To wonder what difference we make.  Sometimes possibility can seem far away.

But we can’t let our salt lose its saltiness.  We can’t take ourselves out of the world just because it may not be clear where we need to go.

One of our tasks over and over again is to see ourselves as sources of possibility, sources of hope in the world.  We need to see ourselves as bringing flavor, to see ourselves as being part of the world that we might sustain the world and bring life to the world.

That it all might be part of a whole.  Everything is interconnected. What we do in our lives matters to everything else around us.

Words of Pablo Neruda:

And then on every table
in this world
salt …
Dust of the sea, through you
the tongue receives a kiss
from the oceanic night:
taste merges your sea-essence
into every seasoned morsel
and thus the least, tiniest wave
from the saltshaker
teaches us
not only its domestic whiteness,
but the central flavor of the infinite.

We live in difficult times.  But we also live in opportune times.  We live in times that ask us to see things in ways that we may have not have seen them before.  Times that ask us to think about how we might live in differently.  How we might walk more gently.  How we might live more peacefully.  How we might best use our power.

The question might be, how are we to add flavor to the world? How are we to use our gifts in the world?  How might we, in our lives, be salt of and for the earth?

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, be with us in all the days of our lives.  Call us to act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly in you.  Help us to live in ways we have not lived before, help us to imagine life in ways we have not imagined before.  May we know life, always aware of our vast interconnectedness.

BENEDICTION

May you know life, and know it abundantly.  Bring your gifts into the world.  Go in love.  Go in peace.  Amen.

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Copyright 2007, Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.