Jesus invites people to be salt and light; to dig into and mine the secret truths of their being - the Holy places. This is difficult, costly work. But here, in the discovery of our truest self, lies freedom.
Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash
“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.
“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 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. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Salt and light make a massive difference. We need salt to preserve balance in the body, to give tang and flavour to food. Without light, we are lost, stumbling around in the dark, our bones crumbling for lack of vitamin D.
These are essential elements - things needed in order that the kingdom of Heaven can flourish here on earth. His words follow a manifesto - The Beatitudes - possibly the most radical and poetic ever enunciated. The call to be salt and light is not pious or religious: these essential elements are created by poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, thirst for justice, mercy, purity of intention, peace-making, and the acceptance of persecution.
We live in a world where much is hidden. Our society and politics are full of spin, altered images, fake news and curated Instagram feeds. Jesus advocates good works and prayer done in secret, for in this world God lives and thrives. From there, light and saltiness emerge.
You may like to listen to the haunting Secret World from Peter Gabriel’s album Us. It talks about an inner world where deepest truth resides. From that secret, utterly truthful, world emerges our true face, feelings and intuitions. The song describes intimate relationships - a marriage failed; an ended affair. It is applicable to more than this, however.
“...in this house of make believe, divided in two like Adam and Eve.”
Here is the human condition, our reality: we find it hard to live our truth, so we create a house of make believe that seems safer. All the while, in the secret places, we hide love.
In another song, Digging in the Dirt, Gabriel writes: “I’m digging in the dirt to find the places I got hurt.” He talks of secrets and of honesty. Willingness to go beyond the surface and find our truth is perhaps what makes our light shine and our salt, salty.
You could watch the brilliant Sky HBO mini-series Chernobyl to mediate on what happens when we stop paying attention to inner saltiness and illumination It describes a society in thrall to the superficial, the optics of things. One of the main characters, nuclear scientist Valery Legasov is asked how a Nuclear reactor explodes: he lies. When you abandon the inner, secret world and sell your soul to the dominant narrative or popular and easy solutions, catastrophe is not far away. And the truth eventually comes out:
“Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies? ... When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”
In life, church and politics we do well to meditate on these words. They are not easy: the inner journey to our secret world is challenging and requires support. But it is worth it. As Jesus says elsewhere, ‘the truth will set you free’.