March 17, 2013 Salt

Matt 5  You are the salt of the earth.  The light of the world.  

Salt is salt, and rocks are rocks.  Rocks are not salt, even though they may look the same.  Salt is not always white like we have come to expect.  

It looks a lot like a translucent rock if it is mined from the massive Bolivian salt mine I once toured.  So if you were to take a bag of rocks and throw in some salt, it is reasonable to expect that some of that salt would rub off onto some of the rocks.  And since they all look alike, one of those rocks may even be tempted to say, “Hey, I look like a piece of salt, and I’m pretty salty, I must be salt!”

Rocks don’t rub off on salt, only the reverse is true, because salt is softer than rock, it gives way to the hardness of the rock and breaks down first.  And only salt is useful for preserving things.  Only salt can purify the oceans, or treat a wound.  If you want to preserve a pig, you’d need a bag of salt, not rocks.  If you tossed a rock of salt in your mouth and it tasted salty you’d be tempted to think, yep, salt, time to preserve the pig.   

But then, what if the saltiness wears off, and you discover it is not salt at all, just a bag of rocks that tastes like salt?  No good for preserving pigs, better used as road base.  So you’d be better off tossing the salty rocks into the road, to be trampled on by Prius's, and men. 

Jesus says, 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 but to be thrown out and trampled by men.  Can this be true? 

Jesus says that in his kingdom that salt is used , and rocks are thrown out.  The salt is of the earth and for the earth, and the rocks are just good for helping make roads.  Salt is made useful by being absorbed into something other than itself.  A rock is made useful by being walked on.   

Salt is the most useful not when it is purified by being in a bag with all of the other salt, but when it is stuffed into the body and flesh of the dead pig, dissolved, and separated from itself and smelling more of pig, than of salt.  It is there that its work of preserving begins.   

Jesus says you are like salt in my kingdom.  As long as you are dis-solvable, and ready to smell like pig, you are of use.  As soon as you resist being dissolved, and become adamant that you keep yourself together, rock solid, well then you are not really salt at all, you are more useful as road base.   

But he assures you are salt.  You most certainly are salt.  You must just be dissolved into the appropriate pig.  If you don't dissolve, then you are road base.