As Jesus, whom Matthew sees as the new Moses, teaches his disciples in Sunday’s gospel, he compares them to salt and light. Today every cook has a salt shaker near the stove and every table has a salt shaker for those who want saltier food.
Two thousand years ago, people had no refrigeration. People who survived on fish had to eat them immediately after catching them. Hunters had to eat meat as soon as they killed an animal. Salt became a precious commodity because it allowed fish and meat to be dried and cured and thus last a long time.
Salt’s ability to preserve food is a foundation of a new level of civilization. The process of curing food eliminated dependence on its seasonal availability and allowed food to travel and be traded.
However, salt was difficult to obtain and consequently a highly valued trade item. At the time of Jesus, the Romans controlled all salt production in their empire. The Latin word for salt is salarium. Roman soldiers received salarium as payment for their work. Salt was their salary.
Although the Romans treat the Jews as worthless discards of society, Jesus encourages his disciples to realize their preciousness in God’s sight. Jesus builds up the confidence of his disciples by telling them that they are valuable. He encourages them to be fully human and preserve society from the moral decay perpetuated by the occupying Roman forces. By comparing his disciples to salt, he drew on their knowledge and understanding of the importance of salt in healing, cleaning, and curing.
- Who affirms you are worth your salt?
- Who values your gifts for discipleship, for continuing Jesus’ mission?
Jesus also compares his disciples to light. People made lamps in Jesus’ day from clay. These simple lamps had a reservoir for olive oil and a lip or nozzle on which a flax wick rested. Household lamps were small enough for those in the family to carry them in the palms of their hands. To get the most illumination, a family set a lamp on a stand.
Roman rule kept Jewish people subjugated with little hope of being full, active human beings. Jesus encourages his disciples to be like lamps in the darkness. He challenges them to stand tall and share their illumination with others.
As disciples Jesus calls us, too, to be counter-cultural to all in our society that dehumanizes ourselves and others. Jesus’ sermon on the mountain collects practical sayings for living as Jesus’ disciples. Kind, gracious, generous, respectful actions toward others invite the same in return. We are to illuminate our society.
- What light shines in your actions?
- What impedes your light from shining?
Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in what is now called Romania. At 15, the Nazis deported his family to the death camp in Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished; he and his two older sisters survived. Elie and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died shortly before the camp was liberated in April 1945. Wiesel’s book Night is a memoir of his imprisonment.
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1986, Wiesel suggests a way to let our light shine: “As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame.
“What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.” Wiesel counsels us that “there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
- Share a story from your experience of protesting injustice.