The following biblical verses are recognized for their inspirational and affirmational qualities within the scripture. One day Jesus gathered his disciples on a mountainside and preached to them about the kingdom of God and how to find a sense of blessedness in the way they live their lives. These few lines, simple and straight forward, make it clear that Jesus sees in them something He wants the people to see in themselves. So, He tells them who they are.
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
No parsing of words here! We may be the salt of the earth, the ones called upon to make life something we savor, but if we do not do what we are meant to do, we will, for sure, serve some other function, so less noble!
The second part of the passage serves a similar function.
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew5: 13-16, NRSVU)
Salt of the earth and light of the world, which is how Jesus defines us. Today, can we say that we are still both salt and light for our world?
The spring digital edition of the Yale Divinity School Magazine, Reflections. arrived at my computer recently. The opening letter began:
Dear Reflections reader:
Warning signs are flashing left and right: a spirit of cruelty in public policy, an out-of-touch ethos in institutional life, the harm of clergy abuses. Is American Christianity losing its salt and light?
Dean Gregory Sterling wrote the following for an introductory column:
In recent years, I have repeatedly asked myself whether Christianity has lost its religion. I ask because, on the one hand, there are now churches with American flags but no crosses in the sanctuaries. There are churches where the liturgy is more of a fevered political rally than a spiritual expression of awe towards God. There are churches brimming with people who are moved more forcefully by a political ideology than by the plaintive cries of the poor whom Jesus served.
I ask, on the other hand, because there are too many churches whose sanctuaries are filled with empty space. There are churches where the sounds of the liturgy echo in beautiful spaces but not in human hearts. There are churches where the spirit that moves in them is the wind that makes its uninvited way through unrepaired windows and doors. There are too many churches whose doors will close not for a Sunday service but for good. (Gregory E. Sterling, Dean of Yale Divinity School; May 2025))
Have we lost our saltiness and our light?
In her highly informative Substack article yesterday, May 15, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson cited a remarkable quote by Bruce Springsteen, “the Boss.” The article was about the recently authenticated copy of the Magna Carta at Harvard University and the status of human rights here and abroad. Springsteen was in London and made the following comment:
Musician Bruce Springsteen has no doubts about those rights, embedded as they are in the country’s DNA. At a concert in Manchester, England, yesterday, he warned: “In America, the richest men… [are]... abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.” He criticized lawmakers who have “no…idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
(DJT went to all caps again on his Truth Social this morning, derisively condemning Springfield both for his lack of talent and his traitorous opinions, giving a fresh gust of media attention to the narrative and calling for a full investigation of “The Boss” and other Hollywood notables. UGH!)
I believe the same of a wide swath of Christians in this country, particularly those associated with and, supportive of the new White House Faith Office. In my view, they have no idea of what means to be ‘deeply Christian,’ that is, to live as a follower of Jesus or to live Jesus’ religion.
The election of a new pope has certainly renewed the focus of America and the world on the church. Two of the most powerful men in the world now are two Americans, Pope Leo XIV and President Donald J. Trump. Column for the New York Times, May 11, 2025, David French wrote the following about Pope Leo:
In his first homily, he said that the church should serve as “an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world.”
But, the pope argued, it does not accomplish this through “grandeur” (and here he referred to the beauty and majesty of the church’s buildings and cathedrals), but rather through “the holiness of her members.”
It is not the church’s power or wealth but the church’s witness that helps transform the world.
In the case of Leo, the church’s witness to the world also becomes part of America’s witness to the world. Millions of Americans have been lamenting that the most prominent American in the world is a person who embodies cruelty and spite.
He closes:
“The church,” Martin Luther King Jr. said, “must be reminded once again that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” The Catholic church, however, is a global church. It’s not the conscience of one nation. It is the conscience of many nations.
In one of the articles written for the aforementioned Reflectons, Staying in Church by Walking with Visionaries, Shannon Craigo-Snell (’95 M.Div., ’02 Ph.D.) refers to one of my preferred theologians, Howard Thurman. She writes:
In the mid-1930s, a question similar to Letty’s was posed to him in accusatory form, when a man in India indicated that by embracing Christianity, Thurman was being “a traitor to all dark-skinned people of the earth.”[3] Thurman faces this head on: given that Christianity has been part and parcel of slavery and colonization, is being Christian supporting racial discrimination? His answer is to “make a careful distinction between Christianity and the religion of Jesus.”[4] By studying the biblical texts closely, Thurman sees Jesus as a poor, Palestinian Jew living under Roman occupation, who was also a beloved child of God. Jesus teaches that we are all beloved children of God. Accepting that identity opens up a life of freedom for those who participate in the religion of Jesus. Thurman writes: “Wherever [Jesus’] spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”[5]
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Beacon Press, 1976), p.29.
We hear daily the distasteful, even nauseating, news about our unsavory world and those who are imposing their immoral will upon it. The nights are dark in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, and so many regions around the world where USAID has been suspended. Need I go on? The world desperately needs the church’s witness, that is, the ‘holiness of its members’ that serve not only as the conscience of our nation but more importantly, for the world. The world desperately needs those who identify less as Christian and more as followers of Jesus, or as those who would live the religion of Jesus. They need to gather yet again on the mountainside to hear and ponder what it means to be the ‘salt of the earth and the light of the world’ and then to go to and be among the hurting and disinherited, the marginalized and miserable to announce the good news that ‘ fear, hypocrisy and hatred’ are no longer the common order of the day. It will be the witness of those who find their identity in these words of Jesus that will help transform the world, and oh, how it needs such a transformation!
We are ‘the salt of the earth and the light of the world.’ Let us live that truth.