There’s this passage in our gospel today that is interesting. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”
Some people would take this to mean that if a person doesn’t have faith in Jesus Christ, then they aren’t a full human, and can be treated as disposable. This was why the English, Portuguese, and Spanish Empires used the church and missionaries to sanitize their exploitation of the Americas. The strategy was very simple. Anyone who isn’t a Christian, is like salt that has lost its saltiness, and so they can be trampled under foot, their land can be confiscated, their gold and salt taken, etcetera.
So the missionaries would be there to offer salvation, to offer the possibility of having faith in Jesus. And anyone who resisted faced a sword or the barrel of a gun. That’s quite a terrible evangelism strategy. So why would Jesus say this? Why would Jesus warn us against not being salty and being trampled under foot?
What if Jesus is saying something altogether different? What if he is saying that we should never underestimate our worth? We forget just how precious salt is, and was in antiquity. Salt was like a miracle commodity. If you could get your hands on salt then you could be a rich person. So there Jesus is talking with the masses, and he tells them, you are much more valuable than salt! You are priceless! You are invaluable! You are amazing stuff! You are a living breathing miracle of profound intelligence and capability! We haven’t the foggiest idea of our worth. We undervalue ourselves something terrible.
This is our greatest sin. We believe the lie that we have somehow lost our saltiness. In fact it is our two greatest sins. Number one: we don’t know how valuable we are. Number two: because we don’t know how valuable we are, we allow ourselves constantly to be undervalued and underappreciated and trampled on. To say it a bit more clearly is that our greatest sin is that we allow ourselves to be exploited and taken advantage of.
If you think about it for a moment we know that this is true. Everybody knows that this is true. Some of us get mad at the government, and we think that it is their fault. We resent the fact that after working very hard the government exploits us by doing what? Taxation! They tax us, and it is felt that this is a form of tyranny and exploitation. And indeed it is, especially when they take our hard earned money and squander it while our own children go hungry. Then there is another group of us who get mad at the corporations! They are the ones who are fixing prices, and selling us garbage, with a bunch of empty promises. So which one is it? Big government or Big tech? Neither. It’s big religion!
Think about it. All day long religious leaders, especially so called Christian leaders say that humans are broken sinners who are going to go to hell. But if humans are so bad, then why do all the religions want the people so badly? Here’s the truth, without regular every day people and lots of them: Business, Government, and Religion would all go out of business. It is the people who are valuable! Salt never stops being salty. You can’t not be salty!
When we are talking about grace we are talking about the fact that Jesus said you are the salt of the earth. You are that way built into the fiber of your bones. You are valuable.
I’ve been reading Noam Chomsky lately. Noam Chomsky studies languages. He argues that all of the languages of the world use universal rules. Their differences are minute. It follows that the ability to communicate as we do is almost programmed into our genes, and built into our brains. It has been discovered that deaf communities in isolated communities in impoverished countries develop languages that operate with the same rules as American Sign Language, for example. Furthermore it is an absolute miracle that we are able to communicate at all. The amount of intelligence required to carry on a very rudimentary conversation is extraordinary. What follows from this is that human beings in their wide variety all share an extraordinary capacity for thought and critical thinking. The differences between human beings mostly have to do with the environment more so than internal intellectual ability.
So the question then emerges. If we all share a universal set of rules for communicating, then why do we so badly misunderstand each other? If we have more in common than we have not in common, why is it that as a society we disagree so profoundly one with another? Maybe it’s because we swim in an ocean of lies every day. Maybe we don’t disagree all that much. Maybe it’s all just a big misunderstanding; and we can quite easily get to the bottom of our disagreements, find common ground, and decide on a course of action that the vast majority of us all can agree to.
What it means is this. If and when you see somebody getting trampled on, it is not because they stopped being salty. It is for no good reason whatsoever. There is never a good reason for anyone to get trampled. It’s always a travesty of justice. The only way to stop it is for good people to get together and do something about it.
When we are talking about faith, we are talking about believing in this truth that you are the salt of the earth, as is all of creation. If you truly believe it, and if you recognize it, then you will have the creative capacity to figure it out. To get to the bottom of things, and find a solution.
And whenever somebody treats you like garbage, know that they are committing a lie. They are pretending as though you don’t matter to manipulate you. Don’t believe the lie. Hold fast to the truth. Especially those who resort to intimidation must understand that they are worthy too.
So if you or someone you know is being trampled under foot you have a decision to make. Will you go along with it with your head down believing the lie? Or will you lift up your head, intervene, and speak the truth plainly and clearly? You are the salt of the earth.
Is this person being trampled under foot because God has rejected them, because they don’t have a sufficient faith? Or are the people doing the trampling the ones at fault? Do they lack faith? Do they not see the value of the one they are trampling. Jesus could be saying this: stop the trampling!
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