Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany [Proper 5], rcl yr a, 2026
ISAIAH 58:1-12; PSALM 112:1-9; 1 CORINTHIANS 2:1-16; MATTHEW 5:13-20
You are the salt of the earth
I have a relatively new kitchen at home. I forget just how much I enjoy cooking until I have a kitchen that works for me. Then we build a kitchen that works—and I start to cook again!
These days the condo is often filled with the aroma of fresh home-made stock, my phone is offering up any number of cooking related reels, and Sunday nights are often restless nights not because I have any work-related anxiety (that’s the rest of the week) but because I’m imagining just how to cook that new recipe, or that recipe I just haven’t used in a while—Boeuf Bourguignon, Chicken Marsala, and this week: Coq-au-vin! It’s not helping the grocery bill, but it’s certainly bringing me a good deal of joy.
One of the things I’ve learned most recently about cooking is about how to season food. Most of my life in food has been impacted by the worry about the ill-health effects of salt, to the point that I really didn’t know much more about how to use salt in cooking other than putting a bit of it in my food after it was put in front of me. This, as it turns out, is not the way to use salt! But I’ll come back to that.
In the ancient world, when Jesus speaks of salt, it was quite a different kind of salt than what we use now. It was not pure, or close-to-pure; it had a lot of things other than salt in it, but things that looked like salt—various non-salt minerals, that under certain conditions would remain, while the salt itself was washed away. So you could find yourself using something that looked like salt, but didn’t actually have any salt in it. And when this happens, the good things salt can do—preserve food, especially, in a time without refrigeration, or adding to the tase of food—it couldn’t do what it was meant to do. And so, as Jesus puts it—“if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” It can’t—it looks like salt, but the salty-salt is gone, and as Jesus puts it: “It is no longer good for anything.”
We’ve been working on a bit of ecclesiology over the past weeks—learning what it is to be the church—beginning with Jesus’s call of the first disciples, where Jesus tells those disciples that they would no longer fish for fish, but fish for people, and we took from that the ways in which we are called, as Jesus’s disciples now, to be gathered together, and to gather with others. That the Christian life is marked by being together with the others that Jesus is drawing to himself.
Last week, in reading the Beatitudes—the “Blessed are” sayings of Jesus—we looked not so much to ourselves as individuals trying (unsuccessfully) to live up to all the Beatitudes, but looking to Jesus as the one who fulfills each one of those “Blessed are” sayings. That the one who is poor in spirit, who mourns, who is meek, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, who is merciful and pure in heart, the one who is a peacemaker, reviled and persecuted, is Jesus himself.
And this gives us a sense of what it might mean to be the living body of Christ in the world now, the church—where we don’t necessarily live up to each of those beatitudes as individuals, but we do live into them as a church.
I find this helpful because it allows for a certain amount of patience with myself, as I grow, by grace, into the full stature of Christ; it also helps me appreciate the ways in which others are blessed, and made holy in the church, and in ways that I am not—that a diversity of holiness within the church is a good thing, and helps me be patient with others whose gifts are different than my own.
And this week we get something else to add to our understanding of the church: that the members of the Body of Christ are not only a blessing to one another, but that we are a kind of blessing to the whole of the world. That we are “the salt of the earth,” given to the world for the sake of its preservation, given to the world for the sake of world’s health and well-being. And that our distinctiveness, our saltiness, our difference is essential to that function. That we are not called to be just like the world, but to bring something to the world that the world doesn’t have on its own. We follow Jesus not just for the sake of ourselves, but for the sake of the well-being of the world God loves.
But back to my own kitchen, my own learning about how salt works in cooking. Part of what salt does is not quite to make things taste salty. In fact, if your food comes out tasting salty you’re probably not using salt to its best advantage. Because what salt does, when used well, is to make ingredients taste more like themselves. Beef tastes beefier; vegetables taste less bitter and more naturally sweet. What salt does is bring out the best in what is already there, and mitigates what is unpleasant.
And so there’s a way to imagine that being called the salt of the earth, is not a call to make all other things taste like salt—but that to be a church that is the salt of the earth is to reduce what is bitter and unpleasant, and to bring out what is already there, and already good; the good in the world God has already made good, the world that God so loves.
To be the salt of the earth is not a matter of turning the world into the church—the strategy of so many of the contemporary attempts at Christian Nationalism—but a matter of drawing out the good of the world through our own eccentricity, our graciously given holiness and blessedness. We don’t turn the world into the church; we take part in bringing out what is already good in the world God loves.
To bring out the flavours already present in the food you are cooking also means you don’t just dump salt on your cooking right at the end. This is probably one of the most effective ways to just make your food taste salty. Instead, seasoning is a matter of drawing out flavours as you cook—because adding seasoning throughout your cooking helps to bring out all of those wonderful flavours a little bit at a time. It calls to mind the patience we would be wise to cultivate as we engage with the world around us. Sometimes there is a time for a singular effort; but it is far wiser, and more sustainable, to my mind, to season as we go, to add our saltiness to the life of the world patiently, rather than all at once or all at the end.
Was this what Jesus meant? I don’t think we are all that far off. Jesus says too that we are the light of the world. And light has its cleansing properties, much like salt does as it preserves food from spoiling. But light too, allows us to see things for what they are, much like salt allows for ingredients to be their better selves. Light and salt allow things to be more what they truly are, to be seen, or tasted, with greater clarity. And we are called to be leaven in the dough—not to make the dough something else, but to bring it to its potential to be leavened bread.
By God’s grace, let us be the salt of the earth: distinctive, but not necessarily making all the earth taste of salt; but in our distinctiveness, in the eccentricity of our holiness, may we work for the sake of world’s thriving, the world’s well-being, and the world’s preservation, for the sake of the world’s better self; according to the existing goodness of the world that is fallen, but that in its deepest heart, God has already made good.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.