many uses for salt

Matthew 5:13-20
[Jesus said:] “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to so the same, will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

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The last time I paid attention to salt was in a long bath soak, where those Epsom salts are used to draw out impurities from the skin. It's rare to slow down long enough for a nice long soak in the tub lately, so much to do, but drawing out toxins is important work. Especially when those toxins have been planted so deeply for so long that they have taken root, it might make us sick at first to pull out those structures that hold up disease, so as to make way for health. Like going for a really good massage and forgetting to hydrate after, if we don't recognize the toxins and take care of cleansing and resting and repairing after breaking up the infections, they just come back, resettle, root a bit deeper and get nastier as time goes on. Which is another reason salt is important - when you conquer an area and destroy the city of the oppressor, you salt the earth so they can never again put down roots in your land. It's extreme, but salt is cleansing, it is powerful and valuable, and our ability to tolerate injustice has gotten to the point that extreme measures are looking less and less extreme in comparison. Not only that, but injustice robs us of our voice, our diversity, our health, and our character, so the power of salt to highlight our natural flavor is also vitally important in these days. You want to see the kingdom of God? Righteousness, my friends. It exists in the righteousness that celebrates, rather than ostracizes, diversity. The righteousness that claims justice for the least of these, as expressed in the laws of God, which stress care for the outcast and widow, protection for those who cannot protect themselves, leaving the gleanings of our fields for the migrants who pass through, remembering ourselves what it means to be a wandering people. Even the laws in Leviticus about what animals we are to eat or not to eat center on the theme of not hunting those creatures which have no defense against us.
We live as salt for the earth both when we uproot injustice and when we contribute to the thriving of those whose lives are different than ours. This of course takes effort, because the entropy of privilege lulls us with promises of comfort, of safety if only we keep our noses clean, of peace kept by avoiding conflict. But that sort of passive inactivity is how a garden becomes overgrown with weeds, how neglect of a body leads that body to wake up with bedsores and brittle bones to boot. Sure, we can ignore the injustice around us as long as it does not affect us directly, but the way of it is those vines creep into our view eventually, choking off our lives by first shrinking the diversity of our ecosystem until we no longer live by the give and take of diverse minerals and nutrients. Am I making sense to anyone? You know they say if you want your insides to function optimally it's a good idea to ingest diverse bacteria, probiotics, to recolonize the guts with those organisms that help our internal systems to function in the healthiest way possible. Yet injustice acts as swallowing bleach or trying to subsist on only super bowl snacks, it might feel awful for some at first and great for others, but eventually the entire body suffers for it.
This is a lot of metaphors, isn't it? And lots of Jesus' stories are meant to connect in us with the contexts where we live, so they're not really specific, but illustrative of themes and values, so that we can think for ourselves about how they translate into our understandings of what makes for a world that thrives. And whether the law prohibiting preachers from pushing politics from the pulpit it lifted or no, it should be made clear that everything we do is political, because it all has an effect on the world and the people around us, and all that politics is is how we live with people. How do we decide who deserves what and what to do about it when those expectations are not met or different expectations from different life experiences come into conflict. Refusing to voice our values or preventing others from doing so would be to deny our saltiness, to refuse to feel our feelings or let others be heard and seen, that is the opposite of righteousness.
So how in this day and age is your saltiness coming into contact with the world that needs its full flavor to thrive? How is your saltiness uprooting injustice and bringing out the natural flavors of those who have had their cultures and characters stifled? And how are you uprooting those injustices that have kept you captive, how are you being supported in celebrating your full humanity? Because if you're not, then you need to find a way and a community where that does happen. God did not make you to stifle you, but to experience your fullness in community with the fullness of your neighbors, so that life may thrive in every place, in every color, in every shade of light and dark, in spite of every tragedy and fear. That, my friends, is the kingdom of God. Nobody gets left out or left behind. Nobody gets turned away. Nobody has to prove their worthiness, because everyone's unique flavors are uncovered and embraced, uplifted and made to shine. Because salt cannot lose its saltiness. Just by existing we have already changed the world. So, salt, keep on being your holy, human selves, keep on encouraging your neighbors of every color, language, and nationality to do the same.