Salt of
the Earth! On Spice, Preservation, High Blood Pressure and Humour! Salt of the
Earth! On Spice, Preservation, High Blood Pressure and Humour! Salt of the Earth!
On Spice, Preservation, High Blood Pressure and Humour!

Salt of the Earth! On Spice, Preservation, High Blood Pressure and Humour!

In the gospel reading at Mass this coming Sunday, Jesus calls people “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.”  I am going to focus on salt, but I will just say that both things “give” of themselves for the benefit of other things.  Light - invisible in itself as it moves through space - “gives of itself” to everything in front of it, thereby making those things visible.  Light is the medium by which all things are seen. Salt also gives itself to something else to improve it - salt makes food taste better, for example.

So perhaps there is a hint in this Sunday’s gospel that we are invited to give of ourselves to make the world better. Can we, like salt, make the world spicier, tastier, adding flavour to people’s lives?  The spice of life may be associated with Los Angeles, Monaco or anywhere that life is lived in the fast lane, but one problem with the fast lane is that it can become dull.  There’s ultimately something boring, same-old same-old and addictive about a life given over to self-centred hedonism. Unless people find something or someone to live for other than pleasure and self, experience shows they often end up on the edge of despair.  Those who enjoy life - those whose life is salty, zingy, tasty and savoury - are those who use the good things they have to give life to others, to benefit others like salt (and light).  Please do not misunderstand what I am saying - there should be nothing puritanical about a person who believes in God.  Good things are good, not bad - booze is good, power is good, money is good - but these good things are meant to be given away, shared with those we have in our lives.  It’s sharing life with others that keeps life spicy, rich, tasty, and interesting. C. S. Lewis once said something similar.  He said that a lot of people are afraid that listening to Christ (who said love God, mainly through loving others) will make them bland and boring, with zero individuality. In actual fact, says Lewis, the opposite is the case.  Allowing Christ’s law of love into our lives makes us MORE ourselves, not less.  Love makes us flourish - just as salt does not destroy but brings out the true flavour of foods, making eggs eggier, steak steakier and fish fishier! The salt that is love improves others and us!

A second characteristic of salt is its preservative quality.  In the ancient world, meat and fish were preserved mainly (albeit not exclusively) through salt, which was hard to come by and therefore very expensive.  (This is why people could be paid in salt, which is where we get the word salary from.) So salt preserves - it keeps good things good. We all know that we live in a mad world where horrific things happen and yet, amidst all the corruption of individuals and institutions, there is so much that is good that needs protecting.  So if we are the salt of the earth, as the gospel says, I suppose the hint is to get into the various corners in our world where the good needs protecting. Do I think of my work day this way?  How about my family life?  Without our example, without our good word, without our love, without our occasional challenge, good things might not last!  Without assuming a Messiah complex (nobody likes an interfering, nosey do-gooder), perhaps from time to time we will be required to take a stand against wrongdoing, falsehood, bullying and injustice. As subtly as we can perhaps - nobody likes salt, even the salt of the earth, being rubbed in their wounds!  Families, the Church and workplaces are forever in danger of “going off” and stinking to high Heaven because they are made up of corruptible human beings.  Perhaps our own courage and goodness in Beaulieu will keep a good kid good and stop them from going bad.  A kid with the potential for good and bad in her, like all of us: what will prevent the good from going bad in her?  Maybe it’s you or me, our wisdom, our goodness, our kindness and patience?  Perhaps our commitment to justice and truth will keep a colleague from making a bad decision?  I remember one place where there was a whole load of trouble involving the removal of a colleague.  In the end, he was reinstated, and the big boss lost his job. But at the beginning of the turmoil, only 40 out of 500 staff were willing to sign a letter published in The Tablet, asking for a conversation and dialogue between the Church and the staff.  Most simply feared for their jobs under the regime, but the turnout was much higher than 8% a year and a half later at the celebrations marking the bestowal of a university title upon the place with their colleague present.  Human beings are often fair-weather players - there for the good times, but not always salty enough to fight to prevent something good from going bad.

Which brings us to a third characteristic of salt, sometimes connected to the preservation of good, its destructiveness. “Salting the earth” was a ritual and symbolic act in Antiquity to prevent the enemy from growing crops. The salting of Shechem is a famous example in the Bible.   There is also a widely believed story that the Romans “salted the earth” at Carthage, though ancient historians think it’s probably a myth (salt would have been too expensive for the Romans to consider doing it).  Anyway, if we are the salt of the earth, perhaps we are meant to give some people high blood pressure from time to time, as agents who undermine and critique anything that is the enemy of love, truthfulness and goodness.  If our commitment to justice and truth can prevent someone from making a bad choice, we will also sometimes need the backbone to call people out when they have already made that choice.

One of my favourite quotes about religion is not unrelated to our theme.  G.K. Chesterton said, “Any religion worth its salt can laugh at itself!” I’ve worked for almost 4 decades in my field, meeting plenty of people who love, despise or are indifferent to the Church.  That length of time and that number of people convince me that religion - like most things in life - can and should be laughed at sometimes.  I hope, indeed, that we are all worth our salt and able to laugh at ourselves when necessary! Another example of preserving something good, then, is when a sense of humour, our jokes and our smile might be just enough to keep someone’s head above water? Help get someone through their day-to-day?  There we are acting as a spiritual and moral preservative, adding spice and flavour to life, preserving what’s very much worth preserving with a laugh.

So the invitation this weekend is to be salt of the earth folk: 1) Making life spicy – fun, enjoyable, rich, savoury - by loving, by sharing our journey with others; 2) Preserving what is good in our students and all those we have in our life; 3) Challenging, undermining, calling out whatever opposes truth and goodness; 4) Having a sense of humour, especially about ourselves!

Have a great weekend, Beaulieu!