Salt of the Earth

Dear Friends,

In his book Led by the Carpenter, author James Kennedy writes this this scene:

A man walked into a little mom-and-pop grocery store and asked, “Do you sell salt?”

“Ha!” said Pop the proprietor. “Do we sell salt! Just look!” And Pop showed the customer one entire wall of shelves stocked with nothing but salt:  Morton salt, iodized salt, kosher salt, sea salt, rock salt, garlic salt, seasoning salt, Epsom salts, every kind of salt imaginable.

“Wow!” said the customer.

“You think that’s something?” said Pop with a wave of his hand. “That’s nothing! Come look.” And Pop led the customer to a back room filled with shelves and bins and cartons and barrels and boxes of salt. “Do we sell salt!” he said.

“Unbelievable!” said the customer.

“You think that’s something?” said Pop. “Come! I’ll show you salt!” And Pop led the customer down some steps into a huge basement, five times as large as the previous room, filled wall, floor, to ceiling, with every imaginable form and size and shape of salt, even huge ten-pound salt licks for the cow pasture.

“Incredible!” said the customer. “You really do sell salt!”

“No!” said Pop. “That’s just the problem! We never sell salt! But that salt salesman, Hoo-boy! Does he sell salt!”

The point is this:  Salt that stays on the shelf doesn’t do any good at all!  Jesus called his disciples “the salt of the earth.”  It’s an amazing statement.  He is speaking to a small handful of peasants!  He is saying, “You inconspicuous, insignificant people, you disciples of mine, you who will soon disown me one and all, you who will exhibit such little faith, you who will sleep when you should be watching and who will deny me when you should confess me, you who will falter in your walk with me…  You, and you alone are the salt of the earth and the light of the world!”

Martin Luther made an interesting observation about salt.  He said, in effect, the one thing you never do with salt is to salt salt!  In other words, you salt food, you never put salt on salt!  In the same way, he concluded, followers of Jesus are to be representing the Lord in their communities and in the world.  Salt on the shelf does no good at all!

This weekend, Crosswalk church will be involved in our community.  We will have a booth at Sunnyvale’s Art and Wine Festival, where we will bless children with balloons and face-painting, and share information regarding our church and school.  Others will serve food and feed the homeless at the Refuge in Sunnyvale.  The Journeymen from Crosswalk will lead worship, and our own Angel Hernandez will be sharing the good news. On top of those endeavors, we will honor God by worship this Sunday!  Please pray for all our efforts to be salt and light to our community!!

This Sunday we will continue our Mythbusters series, and we will look at the charge leveled in recent times by the new atheists that Christianity in particular and religion in general has been a curse on the world and has done more harm than good.  Friends, it is a myth!  Lord willing, we will bust it open by our Lord’s teaching about being salt and light!  I hope to see you at worship this Lord’s Day!!

Blessings,

Pastor John