BEING DIFFERENT PUBLICLY

The beatitudes are meant to be lived publicly, not left as fine words. Notably, Jesus illustrates this with two ordinary, everyday things, rather than rare objects. First, salt. You might expect something sweet and pleasant like honey, but salt is essential for adding flavor and acting as a preservative that stops decay. It is different from the things it affects. In Jesus’ day, some salt was extracted from salt marshes and could be quite impure—it could ‘lose’ its saltiness—but salt is distinctive only when it’s salty! Jesus challenges us to be different in our ordinary everyday lives, by the way we affect others. Salt involves being God’s moral disinfectant, confronting lies, injustice, and anger. Not insipid and ineffectual, not pretend Christians, but Jesus followers who are provocative and proactive disciples, stopping world decay.

Second, light. When Jesus calls himself the ‘light of the world,’1 he speaks of light revealing truth in dark places. This is a positive, uncompromising function of warming and illuminating a dark world that tragically responds with hatred. Jesus then claims that what matters about light is that, like a city on a hill, it cannot be hidden. Visibility is essential. Yet, because those in the dark hate his truth, he knows there’s a temptation to hide it. The intentionally ridiculous picture of someone hiding a lamp under a bucket enforces the point that Jesus calls us to be public, shining people, because of his light in us. Not hidden away but courageously shining so that people can see good outcomes and praise God.

It is interesting that while salt comes in grains, which emphasizes the individual aspect of following Christ, seeing light involves a focal gathering into one point.

Can you identify times when you and your church have been distinctive in word and action recently?