Being Salt and Light

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 8, 2026.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

"You are the salt of the earth."

When somebody is described as a "salt of the earth" person, it describes somebody who is down to earth. They're going to tell the truth. They're going to do what's right. They don't demand a lot of attention for it.

It's a pretty important analogy that Jesus is making, and we're not too far off of it in the way that we use it colloquially. "You are the salt of the earth"—be a salt-of-the-earth kind of person. Be dependable and trustworthy and not build yourself up better than you are, but just do what's right and stay in your lane.

But Jesus says something a little bit more about this that should get us asking a question: "If salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?"

For us modern people in the 21st century, that doesn't make any sense at all. "If salt has lost its saltiness?" If you've ever had a little Morton salt canister—the one with the girl on it—you know what I'm talking about. If you set it in your pantry, pushed to the back, and forgot about it, then later you find it back there, do you look at that salt and say, "It's no good. Throw it out. It's been on the shelf too long"? No, of course not. Because salt doesn't go bad.

But Jesus says, "If salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?"

Salt as a Preservative

Part of the problem is that through our 21st-century lens, we're thinking about table salt—that beautiful, pure, white, crystalline salt that comes in the little blue canister with the girl on the front.

But when people were buying and selling salt in the ancient Near East, sometimes merchants would try to stretch things a little bit. They would say, "You know what, 100% salt and 90% salt taste pretty similar." And salt was really, really expensive—not a discardable commodity.

Even in more modern eras, we have weird superstitions about spilling salt and throwing some over your shoulder. Salt is a discardable thing to us. But salt was incredibly valuable and important in the ancient Near East, not just because people liked the taste of salty food. Salt had another purpose, much more important in those days: it was a preservative, especially for meat.

If you had meat and couldn't eat all of it at once, you needed to preserve it. Without refrigeration, meat turns rancid and disgusting. In order to preserve it, they would remove the water from it. The means they used was salt curing. They would put salt on their meat, and that would draw the liquids out. That dry product would last not just for days, but for weeks, months, or even longer.

In fact, archaeologists have uncovered salt-preserved meat that is still essentially edible thousands of years later. I don't recommend trying that, but it could, at least in theory, work.

Adulterated Salt

So Jesus says, "If salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?" Think about it: If I were to pick up some dust and mix it in the salt, would you try it? If I mixed it 50-50 with dirt and dust from the ground outside, would you try that? Pretty soon, that salty salt loses its taste. It's become diluted with the world, literally with the earth.

It might look fairly similar, especially in an era where they didn't have carefully processed and chemically pure salt distributed en masse to anyone who wanted it. But the fact is, that salt has lost its taste. How then can its saltiness be restored? It's a rhetorical question. It can't. They didn't have the means to separate out the salt and restore it to its purity.

But salt, once adulterated with the dirt and dust on the ground, would be good for nothing. You wouldn't want to put that on your food to preserve it against decay. You would throw it out.

You Are the Light of the World

The other analogy that Jesus gives is light. He says:

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 a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

As I described with the kids earlier, they would have had oil lamps fueled by olive oil. It would have been a very smoky, sooty flame. They wouldn't have ten lamps in the house—they would have one. And they wouldn't use it a whole lot.

In order for that light to spread to every corner of the house, of course you wouldn't do something as stupid as putting a bushel basket on top of it—not only because it would probably catch fire, but also because why did you light the lamp in the first place if you didn't want the light?

Then Jesus says to us, "In the same way, let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."

The purpose of our good works here, as Jesus teaches us, is not that God needs our good works, that he is somehow dependent upon them, or that if we just give him enough, he'll have the power he needs to do what is right in the world. No, God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.

False Fasting

The prophet Isaiah reports a question at the opening of our reading today. The people ask:

"Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"

They're fasting because they're looking for God's favor. But the favor is not that God has somehow received from them what they must do in order to get a positive response from God. Rather, the fasting they are doing is only in their own self-interest. And that's a problem.

God, through the words of the prophet, responds to this question: "Why are we fasting and you're not doing anything? Why humble ourselves? You're not even noticing? Look at the way that we are harming ourselves for your sake, God! Don't you care about that?"

Here's God's response:

Look, you serve only your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

In other words: you're so focused on yourself and what fasting can do for you—what spiritual things can do to elevate you in God's eyes so that you can connect with God. You're so focused on your actions giving you something good that you've lost the plot.

Because if you fast and humble yourself and pray, but in the meantime your life and the rest of its aspects do not live in a way that follows God—that is righteous, good, and true—then you're just a hypocrite. You're an actor. That's what the word "hypocrite" means, by the way: an actor.

The Fast God Chooses

But then God says:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly. Your vindicator will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, "Here I am."

Good Works for Your Neighbor

You see, so often we act as if the righteous, pious, good, and godly things that we do are for our own sake—"just between me and God." God will have nothing to do with that attitude. Because we are called to be people who care about the people around us in order to glorify God.

Jesus says in Matthew, "Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." It's not enough simply to know the good things to do like the Pharisees or to know about God, but to put that faith into practice.

And when we fail to do so, we put ourselves wholly on the mercy of Jesus Christ, our Lord. For Jesus Christ has done for us what we could not do for ourselves—upholding the law not well, but even better than well, upholding it perfectly. Perfectly keeping the law in all its aspects. Perfectly seeking God's righteousness and peace in every aspect of his life, at every point in his life. Doing for you what you could not do yourself, so that you might be saved from your sin. Dying on the cross, taking your sin upon himself and giving you the clean white robe of his righteousness. Clothing you in his grace—not because you deserved it, because you humbled yourself in fasting and prayer and sacrificed and did all sorts of things to make God love you. (That's not even possible.) But because Jesus Christ loves you and gave himself for you on the cross.

This is what he means when he says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Because the scribes and Pharisees of his day had become so captive to the idea that by their own righteousness they would be righteous, that they couldn't see that what God was looking for the whole time was simple trust and faith.

Serve Your Neighbor in Christ's Love

May you rely entirely on the righteousness of God. And then, having been saved by his life, turn not to God to give your good works to him—for God has no need of them. But instead, God calls you to serve your neighbors around you in his love and his care and his peace.

He calls you great in his kingdom who makes these sacrifices for his neighbor and his enemy. For Christ has made this sacrifice for you already. He has loved you even to the point of death—even death on a cross. And he has risen from the dead, victorious over death, so that we might be confident that no matter where we go or what we do—no matter how we give ourselves for the sake of God and neighbor—that we may trust that it is not in vain.

Go then in this new peace of Christ. And may the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord to life everlasting. Amen.