“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? …You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden…Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
These familiar words are not spoken to the crowd of admirers who gathered to see what Jesus might do next. They are not spoken to the onlookers who are interested in whatever new teaching Jesus would bring. Jesus spoke these words to his disciples, who answered the call to “follow him,” and stepped out of the crowd to be part of his kingdom movement. When I’ve thought about this short passage in the past, I’ve heard it in my mind, “Christians SHOULD be salt and light.” When Jesus addresses those who answered the call to follow him, he says, “You ARE salt and light.” In that context, he then says that salt which loses its saltiness, is “no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
We’ve already been to the end of Jesus’s sermon where he says that those who hear his words and put them into practice are wise and those who hear his words and don’t put them into practice are foolish. He begins his sermon with making sure those who have answered the call know that they are blessed by God. This blessing is the one thing that truly matters in this life and becomes the foundation in which all things are done. You can only attempt to live out the sermon on the mount if you first know that the one who calls you to practice the sermon is the one who empowers you to practice it through his love.
Jesus says we are salt and light. This is our vocation and reality. Those who practice the sermon will live in the world in such a way that the world is changed. Throughout the sermon, Jesus will address heart issues that lead to breaking the law. When we create rules that only change outward actions we leave the heart unchanged and it doesn’t take much for the surface of our lives to be scratched and the ways of the world to pour out of us. It seems as though each generation of Christians create a list of markers that people must follow which signify who is “in” and who is “out.” These lists give us a sense of control rather than calling us to a place of submission to the transforming work of Christ. When we allow Jesus to call us to a place of heart transformation in the Sermon on the Mount, we become a community of Christ’s transformative work, and cannot help but be salt and light in the world.
I’m wrestling with this next thing I’m going to say but I want to offer it for you to wrestle with it as well. “If you set out to be light, you will only blind people. If you set out to be transformed by Christ, he will work through you to illuminate the world.” What I mean is this: when we make rules for what it looks like to be light we focus more on a person’s actions. A person can act righteous, while their heart is sour, and they end up being further from the kingdom of heaven. Most of this thinking comes from what Jesus says in 7:21-23 where people will point to the things they did for God and Jesus responds with “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” It seems as though Jesus is giving warning that the most important thing is to know him and be transformed by following close to him. Keeping right action apart from keeping close to Jesus is a way of keeping some kind of control in your life rather than submitting your need for control to Jesus and allowing him to move you. When we know Jesus, the natural outcome is to be what we’ve become in Christ: Salt and Light.
The question from this section has been posed this way: Are Christians so separate from the world that they can’t make any difference in the world? Or, have Christians become so much like the world that they are not different enough to make any difference?