Jesus calls his disciples to be salt, tasty salt.
“Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears hear listen!”
Jesus calls his disciples to be salt, tasty salt. In addition to functioning as a preservative in the world of Jesus, salt helped other things to taste better. True disciples of Jesus aren’t killjoys who make the world less interesting, less beautiful, less true, and less zesty. On the contrary, we help the world to be more what God intended it to be in the first place: more interesting, more beautiful, more true, and zestier.
In Luke 14:34-35, Jesus says, “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears hear listen!” Here Jesus implies what he makes clear in Matthew 5:13 when he says to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.”
Commentators on the Gospels point out that salt had two primary functions in the world of Jesus. It was used both to preserve food and to season it. Faithful disciples of Jesus will serve a similar role in the world, both preserving what is good and enriching the world’s “flavor.” Our role in the world isn’t so much to be tasty as it is to help other things to become tastier. True disciples of Jesus aren’t killjoys who make the world less interesting, less beautiful, less true, and less zesty. On the contrary, we help the world to be more what God intended it to be in the first place: more interesting, more beautiful, more true, and zestier.
So it can be for those of us who follow Jesus. We may not be “big” people, we may not have obvious influence and power, but if we are living out our faith in the world, we will make a difference for God’s kingdom that truly matters.
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