Once again Jesus’ statements seem filled with absurdities. Salt cannot lose its saltiness, cannot be what it is not. Once sodium and chloride are joined to make salt, they don’t unjoin. And who would light a lamp and immediately cover it? How silly is that? What’s the point?

Jesus says, “Be who you are—a blessing to a world that is hostile to you.”

You are salt. Lissa, my wife, is very talented in many important ways. She is also a pretty good cook, which is fortunate, since I like to eat a lot more than I like to cook. She makes a good potato soup. But there have been times when she’s forgotten to add the salt, or hasn’t put in enough salt. So very kindly I say: Pass the salt, please, and we pour it on. You know when it tastes just right: just enough salt. You know when it’s ruined: too much salt!

In Jesus’ day, salt was a lot more than a flavor enhancer. Salt had many connotations: it was used as a part of ancient worship in sacrifice; it was used in defining loyalty and covenant fidelity. To “share salt” was to eat together, and eating together expressed a binding relationship. Salt was used in purification and as a preservative of meats. Salt was also a catalyst for fueling earthen ovens, and a fertilizer for depleted soil. It is the spirit of Jesus within us which seasons this earth and makes life holy. We are the catalyst for firing the ovens of justice. We are the fertilizer that enriches the soil of others’ lives. We are that which brings spice to life!

Jesus also told his disciples: “You are the light of the world.” How strange that Jesus would identify us as that which gives life and light to this world. The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the light of the world. What can Jesus be thinking?

The primary function of light is not to be seen, but to let things be seen as they are; to help others find their way. C. S. Lewis, university professor, author of the Narnia series, once wrote an essay entitled “Meditation in a Toolshed,” describing how light functions in this world he referred to as Shadowlands.

“I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

“Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of the tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”

You are the light of the world. Your life illuminates for others the way to the true source of light.

In contrast, to be a city set on a hill is to be unavoidably noticed, and vulnerable. A community that lives by the power of prayer and mutual love is not an introverted secret society shielding itself from the world, but is a city set on a hill whose authentic life cannot be concealed.

It is good to remind ourselves that we do not generate our own light. We have been lit, recipients of light from God the source of light. And we are lit not for our own sakes, but for the sake of the world.

You’ve all seen how moths have their fun? Flying into the light, even if it’s a Coleman lantern that will turn them into a crispy critter. Flying into your citronella candles on the deck, or into your campfire. Why do they do that? Author Annie Dillard describes a moth death which she observed. She was camping alone in the Blue Ridge Mountains, reading by candlelight one night. A large female moth “flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frizzled, and fried in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper…and… vanished in a fine foul smoke.”

Her legs, her head, “her antennae crisped and burned away…. Had she been old, or new? Had she mated and laid her eggs, had she done her work? All that was left was the glowing… shell of her abdomen and thorax….

“And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth’s body… and widened into a flame…. That candle had two wicks, two flames of identical height, side by side. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.

“She burned for two hours without changing, without bending or leaning—only glowing from within… while I read by her light….”

I’ll never think of a moth in the same way again.

Let your light so shine. The prophet Isaiah tells us what it means to let our light shine. In chapter 58 the Lord speaks through the prophet, “{6} 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? {7} Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? {8} Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly;… then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

AMEN