Matthew 5:13-16

 

The Mission of Disciples

 

Matthew 5:13-16     Salt and Light

(Mk 9:50; Lk 14:34-35)
 
13You are the salt of the earth.  
But if salt loses its taste, what can make it tasty?  
It is good for nothing,
except to be thrown out and trodden on by people.

In fact, pure salt cannot lose its taste. Perhaps, Jesus was expressing impossibility: no more can the Gospel not be preached than salt can lose its saltiness.

However, as it occurs naturally in Palestine, salt may be contaminated with other substances that, over time, react with it and bring about chemical change, resulting in the salt’s destruction. Taken in that sense, Jesus’ point may have been a word of caution to disciples not to take their faith for granted, given that they were submerged in a corrupted and corrupting world. Without on-going watchfulness and conversion, the Kingdom experience would not be realised.

The Greek word translated as lose its taste is an unusual word to use of salt. Its direct meaning is “to act foolishly”. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word was sometimes used in relation to persons who doubted the existence or power of God. In the context of the Beatitudes just listed, it could well refer to the power of the world so to corrupt disciples as to lead them to doubt God’s readiness to intervene in human history to bring about the “reversal” promised with the advent of the Kingdom.

Should disciples lose hope in the certainty of the Kingdom, they would, indeed, be no longer good for anything, but (to be) thrown out and trodden on by people.

14You are the light of the world.  
A town built on top of a hill cannot be hidden.

Centuries before Jesus, Second Isaiah had relayed the consoling message of God to the ineffectual and dispirited Jewish exiles in Babylon: despite their current insignificance, they were to be key instruments in God’s plan of universal salvation:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” [Isaiah 49:6]

Jesus was saying that the role of being “light to the nations” and instruments of the world’s “salvation” had become now the responsibility of his disciples.

Disciples have a mission: to show in their lives, as individuals and as community, the possibilities of the Kingdom. Like salt and light, their purpose is “for others”. Inevitably, their behaviour would affect their world, even within the constraints of Roman imperialism – provided, of course, that they did not lose their saltiness and become little different from those among whom they lived. For better or for worse, like the town built on top of a hill, they would be noticed. The Christian community was not to confine itself within its own ghetto.

15 People do not light a lamp and then put it under a large measuring utensil.
They put it on the lampstand, and it gives light for everyone in the house. 
16 In the same way, let your light shine out for people to see,
so that, when they see your good works,
they might give glory to your heavenly Father.

From the inevitability of being noticed, Jesus moved to opportunity and responsibility. In Jesus’ mind, discipleship was not a private privilege. It was duty. The world, the nations [28:13], was to be brought within the ambit of the Kingdom. When the Kingdom was truly experienced, disciples could not but want to share it with others. Just as light is not light if it does not shine, so love is not love if it does not reach out, if it is not shared. Good works are not an extra of the Kingdom experience – they are its practical expression.

However, the point of doing good works would not be any personal honour or recognition they might bring (Jesus would explicitly rule that out later in 6:1), but the revelation to the world of the enabling and ennobling power of God. (The glory of God – what can be seen by human eyes of the power and beauty of God – is “human persons fully alive”. And human persons are fully alive to the extent that they unfold in love.)

Next >> Matthew 5:17-37