Theological Status: COMPROMISED (Worldly/Sloppy)
Biblical Parallel(Archetype): Pergamum
❓ What do these grades mean?
🔍 Biblical Discernment: The 7 Church Parallels
The Cold Orthodox Parallel
Ephesus
Teaching that upholds doctrinal precision yet parallels the loss of the "first love"—the vital, motivating power of the Gospel (Rev 2:4).
The Compromised Parallel
Pergamum
Teaching that parallels churches tolerating the "doctrine of Balaam" through cultural accommodation (Rev 2:14), characterized by weak boundaries, sloppy theology, and worldly compromise.
Why strictly "Mark & Avoid"?
We do not issue this rating to attack the speaker, but to protect the listener. This ministry's overall teaching trend consistently deviates from sound doctrine. As per Romans 16:17, we identify these patterns so believers can guard their hearts.
We do not issue this rating to attack the speaker, but to protect the listener. This ministry's overall teaching trend consistently deviates from sound doctrine. As per Romans 16:17, we identify these patterns so believers can guard their hearts.
🧐 Overview
Theological Verdict & Summary
Sermon Summary: Are you merely existing in the world, or are you actively preserving it? Discover why your identity as 'salt' is not a goal to achieve, but a reality to embody through discretion and compassion.
Pastoral Analysis: Pastor Young delivers a compelling exposition on Matthew 5:13, effectively correcting the misconception that being 'salt' is an aspirational achievement. The sermon is rich with illustrations regarding the nature of influence and preservation. However, the theological foundation is weakened by a significant departure from orthodox views on divine justice and a therapeutic framing of Christian duty, which risks reducing the gospel to moralistic self-improvement.
Biblical Parallel (Archetype): Pergamum — The sermon blends orthodox truth with minor worldly philosophies. While the core identity of the believer is sound, the theological framework is compromised by a rejection of divine retributive justice and a therapeutic motivation for sanctification, reflecting a blending of biblical truth with modern cultural preferences.
Big Idea: Believers are inherently the 'salt of the earth,' a precious identity that requires them to pour themselves out with discretion to enhance and preserve the world, rather than dominating or hoarding their influence. [00:44:45 ▶️ 📄]
🎨 The Visual Metaphor
The spilled salt embodies the believer's self-giving influence that preserves and flavors the world, contrasting the barren earth's need for redemptive presence. The timeless, indecipherable carvings reflect the mystery and enduring nature of this sacred calling to pour oneself out.
📖 How they Handle Scripture & Jesus
- Primary Text: Matthew 5:13-20
- Usage Classification: Expository with Heavy Illustration
- Text-to-Talk Ratio: High
- Pulpit Decorum: ✅ PASS - The tone is respectful and pastoral, with no coarse language or inappropriate behavior detected.
✝️ Christological Focus: Implicit/Assumed
"Christ is presented as the source of identity, but the practical application of that identity is disconnected from His redemptive work, leading to a Christless sanctification model."
Scripture Saturation: Verses Read: 8 | Referenced: 1 | Alluded: 0
Passages Read Aloud:
-
Matthew 5:13-20
[00:33:10 ▶️ 📄]
"You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot. 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 the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Key References: Matthew 5:13-20
💧 Liturgy & Sacraments
Altar Call / Invitation Observed: Yes
- Theological Conditions: professing faith in Jesus Christ for the first time, transferring membership from another church home to this one
🎙️ Sermon Content & Delivery
Word Count: 3,247 words
📌 Key Topics Addressed
-
Identity as Salt of the Earth
[00:51:02 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor asserts that believers are inherently 'salt' by definition, not just encouraged to become it, emphasizing identity over mere action. -
Historical and Practical Uses of Salt
[00:48:20 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor details the historical significance of salt, including its use in religious covenants, medicinal purposes, paying soldiers (salary), and food preservation. -
The Danger of Imbalance
[00:50:10 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor explains that while salt adds flavor, too much or too little is detrimental, drawing a parallel to the need for balance in Christian witness and the danger of losing one's 'saltiness'. -
Children's Ministry Illustration
[00:18:20 ▶️ 📄]
> A children's leader uses real salt to teach kids that salt itself isn't tasty but enhances food, illustrating how Christians should 'add flavor' to the world through kindness and honesty. -
Identity and Nature of Salt
[00:51:57 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor argues that being 'salt' is a descriptive statement of who believers already are, not a prescriptive goal to achieve, emphasizing that we are inherently salt that enhances or embitters. -
Influence and Impact
[00:52:45 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor asserts that believers are never innocent bystanders; their choices and character inevitably ripple out to impact the world, illustrated by the scoutmaster and pebble story. -
Value and Preciousness
[00:55:13 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor contrasts the modern cheapness of salt with its historical value, arguing that Jesus conferred great worth upon the poor, meek, and outcast, making them essential and treasured. -
Self-Sacrifice and Poured Out
[00:58:00 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor explains that salt's best work is done when it dissolves and scatters, meaning Christians must not hide in churches but must give of themselves to preserve and enhance the world. -
Discretion and Non-Domination
[01:02:00 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor warns against 'domineering' saltiness that ruins what it touches, contrasting it with healing saltiness that enhances without destroying, citing the tragedy of Carly Berg's garden as a cautionary tale.
🖼️ Illustrations & Stories
-
Sermon Illustration
[00:45:53 ▶️ 📄]
> A Near Eastern woman named Anna recalls her mother teaching her to cook curry. The mother stressed that even with perfect spices, too little salt makes the dish bland, while too much makes it bitter, illustrating the need for balance and the essential nature of salt. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:49:42 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor shares a tip from Mike Norwood: adding a pinch of salt to coffee removes bitterness without sugar, illustrating salt's ability to soothe and enhance. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:18:20 ▶️ 📄]
> A children's church leader has children taste real salt to demonstrate that salt alone is not good, but it makes other food taste better, serving as an analogy for Christians being the 'salt of the earth'. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:49:42 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor shares a tip from Mike Norwood about adding a pinch of salt to coffee to remove bitterness, and notes salt's other uses like soothing sore throats and cleaning wounds. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:53:33 ▶️ 📄]
> A scoutmaster drops a tiny pebble into a still pond, creating ripples that spread to every edge, illustrating how every individual's actions have far-reaching impacts. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:54:45 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor references the movie 'It's a Wonderful Life' to illustrate how George Bailey's mundane decisions influenced the entire town of Bedford Falls. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:57:14 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor mentions that 70-90% of the world's quartz (used in semiconductors) comes from Spruce Pine, North Carolina, as a modern equivalent of a precious commodity. -
Sermon Illustration
[00:59:56 ▶️ 📄]
> The story of Carly Berg, an organic gardener in England, whose garden was poisoned by someone pouring salt on it, leading to a massive outpouring of donations that allowed her to expand her community garden. -
Sermon Illustration
[01:02:55 ▶️ 📄]
> The pastor uses the analogy of a bowl of soup ruined by using tablespoons of salt instead of teaspoons to illustrate how Christian influence can destroy rather than enhance if not applied with discretion.
🚀 Calls to Action (Application)
-
Pastoral Charge
[00:22:11 ▶️ 📄]
> Remember and act as the salt of the earth by showing kindness, trustworthiness, and honesty to others. -
Pastoral Charge
[01:06:45 ▶️ 📄]
> Pass the communion elements (bread and wine/juice) to one another.
🧭 Biblical Alignment Dashboard
Overall Verdict: Compromised / Weak
| Category | Status | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Gospel Presentation | ❌ FAIL | The sermon lacks explicit tethering of sanctification to Christ's atonement, relying on 'assumed grace' rather than gospel fuel, and presents a distorted view of God's justice that undermines the need for penal satisfaction. |
| Soteriology | ⚠️ WEAK | While identity is affirmed, the mechanism of sanctification is driven by empathy and duty rather than the transformative power of the Gospel and Christ's finished work. |
| Bibliology | ✅ PASS | The exposition of the text is generally sound, though the application diverges from the text's broader biblical context regarding God's character. |
| Hermeneutic | ⚠️ WEAK | The pastor isolates the metaphor of salt from the broader biblical theology of justice, redefining 'justice' to exclude punishment, which contradicts the consistent witness of Scripture. |
| Theology Proper | ❌ FAIL | The pastor explicitly rejects the retributive nature of God's justice, replacing it with a human-centric definition of fairness, which is a fundamental error in the doctrine of God. |
| Sacramentology | ✅ PASS | No errors detected regarding sacramental theology. |
| Confessional Depth | ❌ FAIL | The sermon relies on emotional appeals and cultural metaphors rather than deep doctrinal exposition of God's nature and the mechanics of atonement. |
⚙️ The Gospel Engine (Confessional Distinctives)
❌ The Law And Wrath: Not observed in the sermon.
❌ Total Depravity And Inability: Not observed in the sermon.
❌ Active Obedience Of Christ: Not observed in the sermon.
❌ The Cross And Atonement: Not observed in the sermon.
✅ Commendations
Identity Correction | Ontological Salt
The pastor effectively corrects the common misconception that being 'salt' is an aspirational goal, firmly establishing it as an inherent identity given by Jesus.
Illustrative Richness | Practical Analogies
The use of diverse illustrations, from the curry anecdote to the 'It's a Wonderful Life' reference, makes the abstract concept of spiritual influence tangible and memorable.
Ethical Clarity | Discretion in Influence
The distinction between healing/softening and wounding/destroying provides clear, actionable ethical guidance for how believers should engage with the world.
🛡️ Verified Orthodox Mechanics
✅ Believers are inherently the 'salt of the earth.'
✅ Christian influence should be characterized by kindness, honesty, and trustworthiness.
⚠️ Theological Concerns
🟠 Rejection of Retributive Justice (The Error of Human-Centric Fairness)
Root Cause: Modern Liberal Theology / Social Gospel (The Error of Denying Divine Wrath)
"Grant us a relentless hunger for justice, not a justice that seeks to punish, but a longing that seeks to make things fair and right, even and especially for the downtrodden. the forgotten, and the vulnerable." [00:36:28 ▶️ 📄]
Correction: Scripture consistently defines divine justice as fundamentally retributive and forensic. God, as the moral ruler, executes righteous judgment and punishes evil to maintain cosmic righteousness (Romans 2:5-8).
🟠 Duty vs. Compassion Dichotomy (The Error of Therapeutic Motivation)
Root Cause: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (The Error of Self-Fulfillment over Obedience)
"We pray that our work for healing would not be done out of mere duty, but out of deep compassion and empathy. Teach us that in tending to the wounds of others, we often find our own wholeness restored." [00:35:49 ▶️ 📄]
Correction: Orthodox theology teaches that love and duty are inseparable. True Christian duty is the structured expression of loving obedience to God's commands, not a rejection of duty for the sake of emotional comfort.
🟠 Assumed Gospel / Christless Sanctification (The Error of Autonomous Effort)
Root Cause: Pelagianism / Works-Righteousness (The Error of Human Self-Sufficiency)
"It's not enough to simply believe. It's not enough to bask in our blessedness while all around us cruelty, dishonesty, and evil thrive. To be blessed, to be salt, to be followers of Jesus is to take seriously what our identity signifies and how we are most effectively applied and engaged in the world around us." [01:05:33 ▶️ 📄]
Correction: Genuine Christian obedience and ethical engagement must be explicitly tethered to Christ's redemptive work on the cross, as believers act out of gratitude for grace rather than autonomous moral effort.
📜 Full Sermon Transcript (Audit)
Use the 📄 icons next to quotes above to automatically jump to their location in this raw transcript.
[00:04:29] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:04:29] Good morning. Welcome back. I hope that you're just half as happy to be here seeing each other as I am to be here amongst you and to see you and catch up and visit. It's really nice to have the option to worship online when we need to, but it's really wonderful to be back together and to feel the presence of God at work between us. And so thank you for braving the cold this morning. I'm very glad that you are here.
[00:05:02] are joining us via the live stream, we're so pleased to welcome you this morning as well and hope that this is a fulfilling time of worship for you. There are several announcements that I need to share with you this morning, and I do hope that you'll take a look at your bulletin
[00:05:21] because there are more things going on than I have time to report on during this time. But we will have our Super Bowl Sunday lunch immediately following the worship service in the Wayland Hall. The women of the church have taken that on and they've got some pinto beans and
[00:05:38] cornbread. They've got some bean soup, some vegetable soup. And so please go to the fellowship hall. And then if you would like to, you may donate perhaps what you would have spent on lunch or some other amount that will be collected and will be used in our feeding ministry at St. Paul's
[00:05:57] that we do once a month. So everybody's welcome to do that after church today.
[00:06:02] youth and children and their families are all invited to the Young House tonight for our annual Super Bowl party. It will begin at 5.30, and we just ask that you bring an appetizer or dessert share and a two-liter drink, and we will have a great time watching the Super Bowl.
[00:06:22] On Tuesday this week, there are several committees that are meeting. The Building and grounds committee is going to meet at 9 30. The finance committee will meet at 2 30 and the deacon executive committee will meet at four o'clock. On Wednesday we are going to commence
[00:06:39] with our four o'clock bible study in the Wayland Hall and this is for all ages. Anybody that would like to come we'll meet. We're going to study the book of Acts and it will be a discussion oriented
[00:06:50] Bible study, but I invite you to come and attend. We won't be serving supper, but if anybody wants to go out to eat when we conclude, that will be an option. A group may go out and eat after we
[00:07:03] finish the Bible study on Wednesdays, but we'll start that this week. And then on Thursday, we'll have our Galentine's lunch. The ladies of the church will gather at 11 o'clock in the Wayland Hall, and if you haven't made a reservation yet, we do need you to make a reservation, and you
[00:07:21] have until noon tomorrow to call the church office and make a reservation for Thursday.
[00:07:26] So please do that if you'd like to attend. There are many folks that we're praying for. And again, I can't list everybody that's on our prayer concerns list, but I do want to update you on
[00:07:38] a few things. Hilda Smith is now at home and she's recovering from her pneumonia. It'll be a couple weeks before she's back up to speed, but continue to remember Hilda. Jim and Juanita Sparks are here
[00:07:52] today. Jim has so far completed four of 28 cancer treatments. They're going to Winston five days a week to have those. So pray for Jim, but also pray for their travel safety to and from Winston
[00:08:06] each weekday. Diane Hall, because of the weather, her TIPS procedure that was scheduled for the 28th of January has been postponed and won't be rescheduled until sometime in March. So please remember Diane. And then also Diane's sister, Peggy Shue, had a stroke. She is, mentally she's
[00:08:29] okay. She's having some problem with motion and has begun physical therapy that she'll do before she can go home. Linda Trevette will be having a watchman installed, which will allow her to go off of blood thinners because of her atrial fibrillation. It's one of those things that
[00:08:46] catches clots if you have them, but she'll have that inserted tomorrow in Huntersville. So please pray for Linda. Ann Dorsett and Diane Swaim are both recovering from hip replacements on Monday and Friday a week ago, respectively. Continue to remember them. They're both doing, I think,
[00:09:06] as well as they should be, but it's not an easy recovery. Dawn Gardner is also recovering from a knee replacement. And then in some really sad news, Philip and Christina Smith, that's Patrick and Sherry Smith's nephew and niece, they had a son, baby Gabriel Allen Smith, was stillborn
[00:09:31] on Friday at 4.30. They knew that Gabriel was going to be a Down syndrome baby, but they did not know that his heart was as underdeveloped as it was and it could just not sustain his life.
[00:09:46] And so please pray for the Smith family and then the Altergott family is the bride's family, the grandparents, and they're all just really heartbroken as you can imagine. So keep them in your prayers. Thank you so much again for being here today. There is something different
[00:10:08] about being together and in person, and I'm glad that we can share this time of worship together.
[00:10:13] Let's bow now for our invocation. Blessed and redeeming God, as we gather for worship today, give us the courage to face the parts of ourselves we'd rather hide. Teach us to pray, Lord, with honesty and to welcome our shadow into your light. Help us to trust that your mercy
[00:10:41] is big enough for all of who we are. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.
[00:10:56] May the peace of Christ be with you. Thank you. And now at this time, I'd like to share a special welcome to those of you who are guests with us today. We're especially glad that you're
[00:11:11] here, whether you've come with a friend or family or come on your own. I really want you to feel welcome and make yourself at home there is a guest card that's in the back of the pew in front of you
[00:11:23] if you're willing and you can fill that out and place an offering plate when it goes by in today's service later on simply to give us a record of your being here and if you have any questions
[00:11:33] or concerns that you'd like to share with me you may do it on that card and i'll be happy to reach
[00:11:38] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:11:38] out and now we're going to sing our praise course it's printed in your worship bullets and carry the light. We're going to sing both sides. You've got two columns there. One's the verse and one's the
[00:11:50] chorus. We'll sing it all the way through at one time and then we'll turn and read to the name of Christ. Maybe do a fist bump just to keep from sharing germs and then we'll as we come back to
[00:12:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:12:01] our seats we'll sing through one more time. Let's stand and sing carry the light. Children will you
[00:17:04] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_07]
[00:17:04] join me? First of all we're going to say just a little happy birthday because today is Kaylee's birthday. Happy birthday, Kaylee. She is nine. Isn't that awesome? I have something. What is this? It is salt. All right. Put your hand out and I'm going to sprinkle a little bit
[00:18:20] of salt on your hand. Just a little bit. Yes, it's real. It's real salt. And now I want you to just taste just a little bit of it. You need to lick your palm. You can take some
[00:18:47] and just taste a little bit. Now, on its own, is salt very good just by itself? No. No, it's not.
[00:18:59] It's salt, but yeah, it's, you wouldn't have it for a meal, right? No, it's real salt. I promise.
[00:19:07] It is real salt. I'm not kidding with you. I wouldn't do that to you. But listen, do you know that's a chef will tell you that the difference between food at a restaurant and food at home,
[00:19:24] the difference is the amount of salt on the food. Now, by itself, as you know, salt isn't very good, right? It's not very tasty. It's not something you would have as a treat. However, when you add
[00:19:40] salt to your food, it does. That's exactly what I was going to say. It makes what you add it to
[00:19:48] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:19:48] taste better, right? It somehow brings out the flavors of the food, right, that you put it on.
[00:20:03] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_07]
[00:20:03] It's good. My mommy used to take me to the playroom, and then her son, after children's church. Okay, we'll see, maybe then. But listen, so did you also know that as followers of Jesus, that we are called the salt? We are called salt? Did you know that, that Jesus called his followers the salt of the earth?
[00:20:33] Did you know that?
[00:20:35] Now, why would he do that?
[00:20:39] What would be his reason?
[00:20:41] Well, kind of like when you add salt to food, it makes it taste better.
[00:20:48] Well, when you add us, or Jesus' followers, it helps him.
[00:20:59] It kind of adds flavor.
[00:21:04] We add a little bit of flavor.
[00:21:06] because as salt of the earth, when we follow Jesus and we show kindness when we're honest, when we're trustworthy, we not only can make maybe God look a little bit better to the outside world,
[00:21:29] to others that may not know him, but it also, when we help others, when we help God's people, which is all, when we help his people, it makes the world a better place. Isn't that awesome to kind of know that we can do that, that we can help God in so many ways
[00:21:55] by being the salt of the earth? I want you to remember that when you're taking care of others or when you're talking to other people, or when you just see strangers, that you are the salt of
[00:22:11] the earth by being kind, by being trustworthy, by being honest. All right, will you pray with me?
[00:22:21] Dear God, we are so thankful for you, for your son. We are so thankful for all that you bring to us and how you bless us, but we also are thankful that you allow us to be part of your
[00:22:38] work, that you allow us to be the salt of the earth. Remind us that by our actions and our words that we display who you are, that we can be extra flavor for you and for others.
[00:23:06] We love you so much.
[00:23:09] We praise you and we pray this prayer in your son's beautiful name.
[00:23:16] Amen.
[00:23:17] All right, guys, it's time for children's church.
[00:23:19] Are you ready to go?
[00:23:20] Let's go.
[00:23:21] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:23:21] Let's pray together.
[00:26:48] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:26:48] God your love for us is great and we thank you for your son Jesus who we believe in and who showed us and taught us on the earth how to live and you do call us to share your love to share our faith and one way we can do that is
[00:27:18] realizing the blessings that you have given us through finances through gifts through talents, through just sharing our love.
[00:27:32] So help us during this time to reflect and to know how you are calling us to share.
[00:27:41] And may we do it with open hearts.
[00:27:45] And may you be a blessing to these gifts and help us to also know how we need to share throughout the community, not only giving back to you, but to everyone that we meet.
[00:27:58] that we may share your love and share our faith.
[00:28:03] In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
[00:28:05] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:28:05] Scripture today comes from the New Testament from the Gospel of Matthew,
[00:33:10] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:33:10] chapter 5, verses 13 through 20.
[00:33:14] Hear these words.
[00:33:18] You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?
[00:33:27] It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.
[00:33:35] You are the light of the world.
[00:33:37] A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
[00:33:41] No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
[00:33:52] In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
[00:34:03] Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
[00:34:08] I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill.
[00:34:12] For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
[00:34:25] Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:34:37] But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:34:43] For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
[00:34:53] this is the word of God for us the people of God. Will you bow with me in prayer? Gracious and loving
[00:35:10] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:35:10] God, we gather today acknowledging that you have called us by name and set us apart for a purpose.
[00:35:19] We thank you for the identity you have given us, a people meant to bring out the best in the world around us, to preserve that which is good, and to add the blessing of your grace and love to every
[00:35:33] life we touch. Lord, we ask for the strength to be your presence in places of brokenness.
[00:35:42] May we be quick to offer a hand to the fallen and a word of peace to the anxious.
[00:35:49] May our lives reflect the hope and strength that faith in you bears. We pray that our work for healing would not be done out of mere duty, but out of deep compassion and empathy. Teach us
[00:36:09] that in tending to the wounds of others, we often find our own wholeness restored.
[00:36:19] Stir our hearts to seek your truth in a world blurred by chaos and confusion.
[00:36:28] Grant us a relentless hunger for justice, not a justice that seeks to punish, but a longing that seeks to make things fair and right, even and especially for the downtrodden.
[00:36:43] the forgotten, and the vulnerable. Help us to be a steady, uplifting force in our communities, standing firm against the decay of indifference and living out the virtues Holy Scripture calls us to embody. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
[00:37:07] and self-control, that we may be known by our fruit. And especially, God, we pray to find the spirit of joy in our service. Save us from the bitterness of burnout. Protect us from the heaviness of doing good without a sense of community or togetherness. Remind us that
[00:37:35] working for your kingdom is not a somber task, but rather a profound privilege. And we beseech you now, our Lord, to bring comfort to those who are hurting and afflicted, those suffering the pains of recovery and rehabilitation after surgery, as well as those enduring illness while waiting on a
[00:38:00] treatment or a cure. Bring your comfort and peace to all those who are grieving, God, as you also pour out your grace on those who harbor guilt, shame, or anger. We confess that we all have
[00:38:19] failed you, Lord. None of us get it right all of the time, even when we are trying our very best to please you. It is our earnest prayer that you forgive our sins and that you sustain and
[00:38:37] embolden that part of each of us that does in fact desire to please you in all that we do.
[00:38:46] We offer this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught his disciples to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
[00:38:58] Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:39:05] Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
[00:39:15] and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power,
[00:39:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:39:24] and the glory forever. Amen. You have praised the Lord and you have lifted us in worship.
[00:44:45] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:44:45] Now I kind of feel like Peter who went to Jesus at the transfiguration and said, you want me to build a tent so we can stay here? And Jesus said, no, we got to go back down the
[00:44:53] mountain. Well, welcome back to the valley. Here we go. You know, some of us may consider ourselves experts on salt by now. It's everywhere. It's on our roads, our sidewalks, our driveways.
[00:45:13] It's in our cars, on our cars. We've traced it into the house. You may have it in your hair. I don't know. Yet I doubt that Jesus, even in his infinite wisdom, was thinking about melting snow
[00:45:29] and ice as he spoke about this precious resource as part of his most famous sermon. As I was researching and studying for today's sermon, I came across a reflection from a Near Eastern woman who wrote that when she was seven years old, her mother decided that she was old enough to help her
[00:45:53] in the kitchen. And Anna, that was her name, Anna's first task as her mom's sous chef were to grate coconuts, chop onions, and peel what felt like thousands of cloves of garlic.
[00:46:11] But there was one culinary lesson that her mom stressed above all others. Before she let Anna preside over an actual pot of curry, she had to learn, or rather her mouth had to learn, how to check for salt. Under her mother's careful tutelage, the little girl learned
[00:46:34] that it was possible to get every ingredient in curry just right, to combine perfect amounts of cumin and turmeric and paprika and ginger and garam masala and cayenne and still ruin the dish with salt. Too little salt and the curry would remain bland and lifeless, all of its potential
[00:46:59] zest and kick subdued. But too much salt and the curry would lose its depth and complexity to a sharp and unbearable bitterness.
[00:47:13] In our gospel reading for this week, Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth.
[00:47:21] But if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?
[00:47:25] That's a rhetorical question, it can't.
[00:47:28] It's no longer good for anything, but it's thrown out and trampled underfoot.
[00:47:34] You know, living lives of plenty as we do in a globally relative way of thinking, there are so many things that are readily available and accessible and affordable to us that it's easy for us to take them for granted. Sometimes precious things like salt,
[00:47:55] for instance. But as Mark Kurlansky writes in his book, he did write this book, believe it or not, salt a world history. From the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities of human history. The ancients believed that salt
[00:48:20] could help ward off evil spirits. At one time, religious covenants were often sealed with salt.
[00:48:28] Salt was used for medicinal purposes, to disinfect wounds, to check bleeding, to stimulate thirst, and to treat skin diseases.
[00:48:40] Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, hence giving us the English word salary.
[00:48:45] At one time, brides and grooms rubbed salt on their bodies to enhance fertility at their weddings.
[00:48:53] the Romans salted their vegetables as we do today in a modern salad around 10,000 years ago dogs were first domesticated using salt people would leave a little salt block outside their homes to entice the animals to come around and of course in all the centuries before refrigeration salt
[00:49:18] was essential for food preservation. Nowadays, we still use salt for all sorts of purposes. Salt serves as a taste catalyst that enhances flavors. It helps to make homemade ice cream. It softens hard water, and it hastens a boil. You know, Mike Norwood taught me something else that salt does.
[00:49:42] If you don't want to put sugar in your coffee to sweeten it, but you think coffee's a little acrid or bitter, you can put half a pinch of salt in your coffee, and it takes all the bitterness
[00:49:52] away. It works. It soothes sore throats. It rinses sinuses. It eases swelling. It still cleanses wounds. In some contexts, though, salt brings more than flavor. It has an edge. It stings.
[00:50:10] It can burn or irritate. And you know, if we don't have enough salt in our bodies, we die. But you know what else? If we have too much salt in our bodies we die. People with high
[00:50:26] blood pressure have to limit their salt intake and these folks will tell you that though there are lots of salt alternatives on the market there's no substitute for real salt. Now I know it's possible to take a metaphor too far. No single descriptor in scripture whether it be salt
[00:50:47] or light or bride or clay or sheep or vine or investor or worker or soil will completely cover or contain what it means to live as followers of Christ. But when Jesus calls his listeners,
[00:51:02] his followers, the salt of the earth, he is saying something extraordinarily profound, something that we can easily miss in our 21st century context if we don't lean in and dig a little deeper. First of all, Jesus is telling us who we are. You are the salt of the
[00:51:32] earth. We are salt. We are not supposed to be salt. We are not encouraged to become salt.
[00:51:44] We're not promised that if we do become salt, God will love us or God will love us more.
[00:51:50] The language that Jesus uses is 100% descriptive.
[00:51:57] It is a statement of our identity.
[00:52:01] We are the salt of the earth.
[00:52:06] We are that which will enhance or embitter, soothe or irritate.
[00:52:16] Melt or sting, preserve or ruin, for better or for worse, we are the salt of the earth.
[00:52:31] And what we do with our saltiness matters. It matters immensely and eternally.
[00:52:45] Whether we want to or not, whether we notice it or not, whether we're intentional about it or not, you and I, as followers of Jesus, spiritually impact the world in which we live, for better or for worse. None of us are innocent bystanders or spectators.
[00:53:14] We are all involved in the outcome of the game of life. A scoutmaster once took his Boy Scouts to the edge of a pond by which they'd been camping. It was at first light and the water
[00:53:33] was still and it was as smooth as glass. And the leader picked up a pebble, I mean just a tiny little stone, and he dropped it into the water. And the boys stood there with their leader in
[00:53:50] silence as they watch those ripples spread out from the petal's tiny splash and extend all the way across the pond until they reached every single edge and shore. Scoutmaster then said, there's not a single stone, rock or pebble, no matter how big or small, that's not made its
[00:54:13] presence known and its ripples felt. Think of it like it's a wonderful life and the manifold ways in which George Bailey's life and his decisions, both important and mundane, influence the world around him in Bedford Falls and beyond. Being salt means that our choices, our decisions,
[00:54:45] our character our callings all have impact on the world around us secondly Jesus message is that we are precious again it's easy to miss the point of this metaphor in our modern world where a 26 ounce carton of iodized salt is a dollar fifty or two dollars and can be picked up at
[00:55:13] any grocery store or convenience mart. But imagine what Jesus' first followers would have heard when he called them salt, this precious commodity. Remember who they were. Remember what sort of people Jesus addressed in his famous Sermon on the Mount. The poor, the mournful, the meek,
[00:55:36] the persecuted, the hungry, the sick, the crippled, the frightened, the outcast, the misfit, the disreputable, the demon-possessed. And he said it, you, he told them all, you are the salt of the earth. You who are not cleaned up and shiny and well-fed or fashionable or
[00:56:04] well-connected. You've been rejected, wounded, unloved, and forgotten. You are essential.
[00:56:13] You are worthwhile. You are treasured. And I am commissioning you. For all of us who've spent months or years trying to earn divine favor, believing that our piety might someday make us precious in God's eyes, I hope that this metaphor will stop us in our tracks. And for those of us
[00:56:42] who feel underqualified or non-essential or expendable, listen up. Jesus knowingly named a commodity that was priceless in his time and place, and he conferred great value on those who were not valued by anyone, including themselves. You know, today Jesus might call us
[00:57:14] quarts, which is necessary for the production of all semiconductors and microchips.
[00:57:22] Did you know that 70 to 90 percent of the world's supply of quarts comes from mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina? Whether salt or quarts works better for you, we are precious to Christ.
[00:57:40] Thirdly, salt does its best work when it's poured out, when it's scattered, when it dissolves into what is around it. Just as Anna would have done her mother's curry no favors if she'd kept the
[00:58:00] salt shaker locked in the kitchen cabinet. Salt is not meant to be hoarded. It's not meant to cluster. It's meant to give of itself. It's meant to share its unique flavor in order to bring out
[00:58:18] the best in all that surrounds it. Which means that if we want to enliven, enhance, deepen, and preserve the world we live in, we can't hide within the walls of our churches. We must not batten down
[00:58:38] the hatches and congregate simply for our own comfort. We must not retreat into pious theological bubbles out of fear, cynicism, shame, or self-righteousness. Salt does not exist to preserve itself. It exists to preserve what is not itself. You know, there's another scriptural metaphor for
[00:59:11] this, a metaphor that Jesus uses all the time, dying. Jesus calls us to die to self, to lay down our lives for others, to die in order that we might live. We are salt. It's not a question of
[00:59:35] striving to be something we're not. It's a question of living in to the precious fullness of who we already are, who God created us to be. Carly Berg is a woman that lives in Harlow,
[00:59:56] England. And after surviving a really rough patch in her own life, she started an organic garden to provide healthy food for people in need in her town. And she'd helped feed just over 1,600 people when last April somebody poured five kilograms of salt on her garden, killing
[01:00:23] everything that she'd planted for that year and rendering her soil poisoned and unusual.
[01:00:30] She posted a video on TikTok about what had happened, and good salt rose to the surface and came forth. Her GoFundMe account that she'd used to get her project started was flooded with donations, and within a week, she had 194,000 pounds, or $243,000, that she's still putting
[01:00:58] to use, feeding those in need, expanding her operation to include cooking stations, places to sit down and visit and have a cup of coffee, as well as building a larger community garden.
[01:01:14] We pour ourselves out. Lastly, salt is meant to enhance but not dominate. Christian saltiness heals. It does not wound. Christian saltiness purifies. It does not dehydrate. Christian saltiness softens. It does not destroy. And even when Christian saltiness has an edge, when, for
[01:02:00] For example, it incites thirst.
[01:02:04] It only draws the thirsty towards the living water of Jesus.
[01:02:11] It doesn't leave the already thirsty parched, bone dry, and bittered.
[01:02:19] It does not attack, accuse, or exclude.
[01:02:25] One of the great tragedies and most consequential sins of historic Christianity has been failure to understand this distinction. Salt fails when it dominates. You ever had a bowl of soup where they switched the salt tablespoons instead of teaspoons? How does it taste? Instead of eliciting
[01:02:55] goodness, it destroys the rich potential all around it. Salt poured out without discretion leaves a burnt bitter sensation in its wake. It ruins what it's supposed to enhance. It repels like what happened to Carly's garden. This unfortunately is the reputation Christianity
[01:03:19] has all too often these days. We are known as the salt that exacerbates wounds, irritates souls, and ruins goodness. Fair or unfair, we are considered arrogant, domineering, obnoxious, and uninterested in enhancing anything but ourselves. We are known for hoarding our power,
[01:03:50] not for giving it away. We are known for shaming, not for blessing. We are known for using our words to burn, not heal. This is not what Jesus ever intended when he called us to be the salt of the
[01:04:09] earth. Our preciousness was never meant to make us proud and self-righteous. It was meant to make us humble and to give us all. So what do we do? Our vocation in these times and places is not
[01:04:31] to lose our saltiness. That's the temptation, to retreat, to hide, to choose blandness instead of boldness, to keep our love for Jesus a hushed and embarrassed secret. But that kind of salt, Jesus told his listeners, is useless. It is untrue to its very essence. And so we are called
[01:04:58] to live wisely, creatively, and in balance. We have to learn, as Anna did when she was a little girl, how to check for salt. Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out
[01:05:16] with discretion so that God's kingdom might be known on this earth. A kingdom of spice and zest, a kingdom of health and wholeness, a kingdom of varied depth and flavor and complexity.
[01:05:33] In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes concrete the work of love, compassion, healing, and justice.
[01:05:41] It's not enough to simply believe. It's not enough to bask in our blessedness while all around us cruelty, dishonesty, and evil thrive. To be blessed, to be salt, to be followers of Jesus is to take seriously what our identity signifies and how we are most effectively applied and
[01:06:10] engaged in the world around us. We are the salt of the earth. That is what we are, for better or for worse. May it be for better. May your pouring out and mine be for the flourishing
[01:06:31] of the world. As Mr. Rogers says, when we look for what is best in the person in front of us, we are doing what God does all the time. In loving and appreciating our neighbor,
[01:06:45] we take part in something special, something sacred. So this week, would you please, please pass us all. Amen. Our hymn of decision this morning is hymn number 486, Lord, hear my eyes.
[01:07:11] We stand together and sing. If there's anyone here that would like to join this family of faith officially, either by professing your faith in Jesus Christ for the first time or by transferring your membership from another church home to this one. I'll be down front to greet you as we stand
[01:07:29] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[01:07:29] together and sing hymn number 486. Thanks so much for being here today. I hope you'll join us for
[01:08:58] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[01:08:58] lunch in the Wayland Hall. Our youth will be standing at the exits today. If you can't stay for lunch but would like to contribute to our feeding ministry at St. Paul's Crisis, you may give to them in their soup pots as you leave. Of course, that is at your discretion. But now as we
[01:09:14] leave this place, may we all live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, forgive freely, pray daily, pass the salt, and leave the rest to God.
[00:04:29] Good morning. Welcome back. I hope that you're just half as happy to be here seeing each other as I am to be here amongst you and to see you and catch up and visit. It's really nice to have the option to worship online when we need to, but it's really wonderful to be back together and to feel the presence of God at work between us. And so thank you for braving the cold this morning. I'm very glad that you are here.
[00:05:02] are joining us via the live stream, we're so pleased to welcome you this morning as well and hope that this is a fulfilling time of worship for you. There are several announcements that I need to share with you this morning, and I do hope that you'll take a look at your bulletin
[00:05:21] because there are more things going on than I have time to report on during this time. But we will have our Super Bowl Sunday lunch immediately following the worship service in the Wayland Hall. The women of the church have taken that on and they've got some pinto beans and
[00:05:38] cornbread. They've got some bean soup, some vegetable soup. And so please go to the fellowship hall. And then if you would like to, you may donate perhaps what you would have spent on lunch or some other amount that will be collected and will be used in our feeding ministry at St. Paul's
[00:05:57] that we do once a month. So everybody's welcome to do that after church today.
[00:06:02] youth and children and their families are all invited to the Young House tonight for our annual Super Bowl party. It will begin at 5.30, and we just ask that you bring an appetizer or dessert share and a two-liter drink, and we will have a great time watching the Super Bowl.
[00:06:22] On Tuesday this week, there are several committees that are meeting. The Building and grounds committee is going to meet at 9 30. The finance committee will meet at 2 30 and the deacon executive committee will meet at four o'clock. On Wednesday we are going to commence
[00:06:39] with our four o'clock bible study in the Wayland Hall and this is for all ages. Anybody that would like to come we'll meet. We're going to study the book of Acts and it will be a discussion oriented
[00:06:50] Bible study, but I invite you to come and attend. We won't be serving supper, but if anybody wants to go out to eat when we conclude, that will be an option. A group may go out and eat after we
[00:07:03] finish the Bible study on Wednesdays, but we'll start that this week. And then on Thursday, we'll have our Galentine's lunch. The ladies of the church will gather at 11 o'clock in the Wayland Hall, and if you haven't made a reservation yet, we do need you to make a reservation, and you
[00:07:21] have until noon tomorrow to call the church office and make a reservation for Thursday.
[00:07:26] So please do that if you'd like to attend. There are many folks that we're praying for. And again, I can't list everybody that's on our prayer concerns list, but I do want to update you on
[00:07:38] a few things. Hilda Smith is now at home and she's recovering from her pneumonia. It'll be a couple weeks before she's back up to speed, but continue to remember Hilda. Jim and Juanita Sparks are here
[00:07:52] today. Jim has so far completed four of 28 cancer treatments. They're going to Winston five days a week to have those. So pray for Jim, but also pray for their travel safety to and from Winston
[00:08:06] each weekday. Diane Hall, because of the weather, her TIPS procedure that was scheduled for the 28th of January has been postponed and won't be rescheduled until sometime in March. So please remember Diane. And then also Diane's sister, Peggy Shue, had a stroke. She is, mentally she's
[00:08:29] okay. She's having some problem with motion and has begun physical therapy that she'll do before she can go home. Linda Trevette will be having a watchman installed, which will allow her to go off of blood thinners because of her atrial fibrillation. It's one of those things that
[00:08:46] catches clots if you have them, but she'll have that inserted tomorrow in Huntersville. So please pray for Linda. Ann Dorsett and Diane Swaim are both recovering from hip replacements on Monday and Friday a week ago, respectively. Continue to remember them. They're both doing, I think,
[00:09:06] as well as they should be, but it's not an easy recovery. Dawn Gardner is also recovering from a knee replacement. And then in some really sad news, Philip and Christina Smith, that's Patrick and Sherry Smith's nephew and niece, they had a son, baby Gabriel Allen Smith, was stillborn
[00:09:31] on Friday at 4.30. They knew that Gabriel was going to be a Down syndrome baby, but they did not know that his heart was as underdeveloped as it was and it could just not sustain his life.
[00:09:46] And so please pray for the Smith family and then the Altergott family is the bride's family, the grandparents, and they're all just really heartbroken as you can imagine. So keep them in your prayers. Thank you so much again for being here today. There is something different
[00:10:08] about being together and in person, and I'm glad that we can share this time of worship together.
[00:10:13] Let's bow now for our invocation. Blessed and redeeming God, as we gather for worship today, give us the courage to face the parts of ourselves we'd rather hide. Teach us to pray, Lord, with honesty and to welcome our shadow into your light. Help us to trust that your mercy
[00:10:41] is big enough for all of who we are. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.
[00:10:56] May the peace of Christ be with you. Thank you. And now at this time, I'd like to share a special welcome to those of you who are guests with us today. We're especially glad that you're
[00:11:11] here, whether you've come with a friend or family or come on your own. I really want you to feel welcome and make yourself at home there is a guest card that's in the back of the pew in front of you
[00:11:23] if you're willing and you can fill that out and place an offering plate when it goes by in today's service later on simply to give us a record of your being here and if you have any questions
[00:11:33] or concerns that you'd like to share with me you may do it on that card and i'll be happy to reach
[00:11:38] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:11:38] out and now we're going to sing our praise course it's printed in your worship bullets and carry the light. We're going to sing both sides. You've got two columns there. One's the verse and one's the
[00:11:50] chorus. We'll sing it all the way through at one time and then we'll turn and read to the name of Christ. Maybe do a fist bump just to keep from sharing germs and then we'll as we come back to
[00:12:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:12:01] our seats we'll sing through one more time. Let's stand and sing carry the light. Children will you
[00:17:04] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_07]
[00:17:04] join me? First of all we're going to say just a little happy birthday because today is Kaylee's birthday. Happy birthday, Kaylee. She is nine. Isn't that awesome? I have something. What is this? It is salt. All right. Put your hand out and I'm going to sprinkle a little bit
[00:18:20] of salt on your hand. Just a little bit. Yes, it's real. It's real salt. And now I want you to just taste just a little bit of it. You need to lick your palm. You can take some
[00:18:47] and just taste a little bit. Now, on its own, is salt very good just by itself? No. No, it's not.
[00:18:59] It's salt, but yeah, it's, you wouldn't have it for a meal, right? No, it's real salt. I promise.
[00:19:07] It is real salt. I'm not kidding with you. I wouldn't do that to you. But listen, do you know that's a chef will tell you that the difference between food at a restaurant and food at home,
[00:19:24] the difference is the amount of salt on the food. Now, by itself, as you know, salt isn't very good, right? It's not very tasty. It's not something you would have as a treat. However, when you add
[00:19:40] salt to your food, it does. That's exactly what I was going to say. It makes what you add it to
[00:19:48] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:19:48] taste better, right? It somehow brings out the flavors of the food, right, that you put it on.
[00:20:03] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_07]
[00:20:03] It's good. My mommy used to take me to the playroom, and then her son, after children's church. Okay, we'll see, maybe then. But listen, so did you also know that as followers of Jesus, that we are called the salt? We are called salt? Did you know that, that Jesus called his followers the salt of the earth?
[00:20:33] Did you know that?
[00:20:35] Now, why would he do that?
[00:20:39] What would be his reason?
[00:20:41] Well, kind of like when you add salt to food, it makes it taste better.
[00:20:48] Well, when you add us, or Jesus' followers, it helps him.
[00:20:59] It kind of adds flavor.
[00:21:04] We add a little bit of flavor.
[00:21:06] because as salt of the earth, when we follow Jesus and we show kindness when we're honest, when we're trustworthy, we not only can make maybe God look a little bit better to the outside world,
[00:21:29] to others that may not know him, but it also, when we help others, when we help God's people, which is all, when we help his people, it makes the world a better place. Isn't that awesome to kind of know that we can do that, that we can help God in so many ways
[00:21:55] by being the salt of the earth? I want you to remember that when you're taking care of others or when you're talking to other people, or when you just see strangers, that you are the salt of
[00:22:11] the earth by being kind, by being trustworthy, by being honest. All right, will you pray with me?
[00:22:21] Dear God, we are so thankful for you, for your son. We are so thankful for all that you bring to us and how you bless us, but we also are thankful that you allow us to be part of your
[00:22:38] work, that you allow us to be the salt of the earth. Remind us that by our actions and our words that we display who you are, that we can be extra flavor for you and for others.
[00:23:06] We love you so much.
[00:23:09] We praise you and we pray this prayer in your son's beautiful name.
[00:23:16] Amen.
[00:23:17] All right, guys, it's time for children's church.
[00:23:19] Are you ready to go?
[00:23:20] Let's go.
[00:23:21] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:23:21] Let's pray together.
[00:26:48] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:26:48] God your love for us is great and we thank you for your son Jesus who we believe in and who showed us and taught us on the earth how to live and you do call us to share your love to share our faith and one way we can do that is
[00:27:18] realizing the blessings that you have given us through finances through gifts through talents, through just sharing our love.
[00:27:32] So help us during this time to reflect and to know how you are calling us to share.
[00:27:41] And may we do it with open hearts.
[00:27:45] And may you be a blessing to these gifts and help us to also know how we need to share throughout the community, not only giving back to you, but to everyone that we meet.
[00:27:58] that we may share your love and share our faith.
[00:28:03] In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
[00:28:05] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:28:05] Scripture today comes from the New Testament from the Gospel of Matthew,
[00:33:10] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:33:10] chapter 5, verses 13 through 20.
[00:33:14] Hear these words.
[00:33:18] You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?
[00:33:27] It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.
[00:33:35] You are the light of the world.
[00:33:37] A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
[00:33:41] No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
[00:33:52] In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
[00:34:03] Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
[00:34:08] I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill.
[00:34:12] For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
[00:34:25] Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:34:37] But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:34:43] For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
[00:34:53] this is the word of God for us the people of God. Will you bow with me in prayer? Gracious and loving
[00:35:10] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:35:10] God, we gather today acknowledging that you have called us by name and set us apart for a purpose.
[00:35:19] We thank you for the identity you have given us, a people meant to bring out the best in the world around us, to preserve that which is good, and to add the blessing of your grace and love to every
[00:35:33] life we touch. Lord, we ask for the strength to be your presence in places of brokenness.
[00:35:42] May we be quick to offer a hand to the fallen and a word of peace to the anxious.
[00:35:49] May our lives reflect the hope and strength that faith in you bears. We pray that our work for healing would not be done out of mere duty, but out of deep compassion and empathy. Teach us
[00:36:09] that in tending to the wounds of others, we often find our own wholeness restored.
[00:36:19] Stir our hearts to seek your truth in a world blurred by chaos and confusion.
[00:36:28] Grant us a relentless hunger for justice, not a justice that seeks to punish, but a longing that seeks to make things fair and right, even and especially for the downtrodden.
[00:36:43] the forgotten, and the vulnerable. Help us to be a steady, uplifting force in our communities, standing firm against the decay of indifference and living out the virtues Holy Scripture calls us to embody. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
[00:37:07] and self-control, that we may be known by our fruit. And especially, God, we pray to find the spirit of joy in our service. Save us from the bitterness of burnout. Protect us from the heaviness of doing good without a sense of community or togetherness. Remind us that
[00:37:35] working for your kingdom is not a somber task, but rather a profound privilege. And we beseech you now, our Lord, to bring comfort to those who are hurting and afflicted, those suffering the pains of recovery and rehabilitation after surgery, as well as those enduring illness while waiting on a
[00:38:00] treatment or a cure. Bring your comfort and peace to all those who are grieving, God, as you also pour out your grace on those who harbor guilt, shame, or anger. We confess that we all have
[00:38:19] failed you, Lord. None of us get it right all of the time, even when we are trying our very best to please you. It is our earnest prayer that you forgive our sins and that you sustain and
[00:38:37] embolden that part of each of us that does in fact desire to please you in all that we do.
[00:38:46] We offer this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught his disciples to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
[00:38:58] Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:39:05] Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
[00:39:15] and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power,
[00:39:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[00:39:24] and the glory forever. Amen. You have praised the Lord and you have lifted us in worship.
[00:44:45] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:44:45] Now I kind of feel like Peter who went to Jesus at the transfiguration and said, you want me to build a tent so we can stay here? And Jesus said, no, we got to go back down the
[00:44:53] mountain. Well, welcome back to the valley. Here we go. You know, some of us may consider ourselves experts on salt by now. It's everywhere. It's on our roads, our sidewalks, our driveways.
[00:45:13] It's in our cars, on our cars. We've traced it into the house. You may have it in your hair. I don't know. Yet I doubt that Jesus, even in his infinite wisdom, was thinking about melting snow
[00:45:29] and ice as he spoke about this precious resource as part of his most famous sermon. As I was researching and studying for today's sermon, I came across a reflection from a Near Eastern woman who wrote that when she was seven years old, her mother decided that she was old enough to help her
[00:45:53] in the kitchen. And Anna, that was her name, Anna's first task as her mom's sous chef were to grate coconuts, chop onions, and peel what felt like thousands of cloves of garlic.
[00:46:11] But there was one culinary lesson that her mom stressed above all others. Before she let Anna preside over an actual pot of curry, she had to learn, or rather her mouth had to learn, how to check for salt. Under her mother's careful tutelage, the little girl learned
[00:46:34] that it was possible to get every ingredient in curry just right, to combine perfect amounts of cumin and turmeric and paprika and ginger and garam masala and cayenne and still ruin the dish with salt. Too little salt and the curry would remain bland and lifeless, all of its potential
[00:46:59] zest and kick subdued. But too much salt and the curry would lose its depth and complexity to a sharp and unbearable bitterness.
[00:47:13] In our gospel reading for this week, Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth.
[00:47:21] But if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?
[00:47:25] That's a rhetorical question, it can't.
[00:47:28] It's no longer good for anything, but it's thrown out and trampled underfoot.
[00:47:34] You know, living lives of plenty as we do in a globally relative way of thinking, there are so many things that are readily available and accessible and affordable to us that it's easy for us to take them for granted. Sometimes precious things like salt,
[00:47:55] for instance. But as Mark Kurlansky writes in his book, he did write this book, believe it or not, salt a world history. From the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities of human history. The ancients believed that salt
[00:48:20] could help ward off evil spirits. At one time, religious covenants were often sealed with salt.
[00:48:28] Salt was used for medicinal purposes, to disinfect wounds, to check bleeding, to stimulate thirst, and to treat skin diseases.
[00:48:40] Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, hence giving us the English word salary.
[00:48:45] At one time, brides and grooms rubbed salt on their bodies to enhance fertility at their weddings.
[00:48:53] the Romans salted their vegetables as we do today in a modern salad around 10,000 years ago dogs were first domesticated using salt people would leave a little salt block outside their homes to entice the animals to come around and of course in all the centuries before refrigeration salt
[00:49:18] was essential for food preservation. Nowadays, we still use salt for all sorts of purposes. Salt serves as a taste catalyst that enhances flavors. It helps to make homemade ice cream. It softens hard water, and it hastens a boil. You know, Mike Norwood taught me something else that salt does.
[00:49:42] If you don't want to put sugar in your coffee to sweeten it, but you think coffee's a little acrid or bitter, you can put half a pinch of salt in your coffee, and it takes all the bitterness
[00:49:52] away. It works. It soothes sore throats. It rinses sinuses. It eases swelling. It still cleanses wounds. In some contexts, though, salt brings more than flavor. It has an edge. It stings.
[00:50:10] It can burn or irritate. And you know, if we don't have enough salt in our bodies, we die. But you know what else? If we have too much salt in our bodies we die. People with high
[00:50:26] blood pressure have to limit their salt intake and these folks will tell you that though there are lots of salt alternatives on the market there's no substitute for real salt. Now I know it's possible to take a metaphor too far. No single descriptor in scripture whether it be salt
[00:50:47] or light or bride or clay or sheep or vine or investor or worker or soil will completely cover or contain what it means to live as followers of Christ. But when Jesus calls his listeners,
[00:51:02] his followers, the salt of the earth, he is saying something extraordinarily profound, something that we can easily miss in our 21st century context if we don't lean in and dig a little deeper. First of all, Jesus is telling us who we are. You are the salt of the
[00:51:32] earth. We are salt. We are not supposed to be salt. We are not encouraged to become salt.
[00:51:44] We're not promised that if we do become salt, God will love us or God will love us more.
[00:51:50] The language that Jesus uses is 100% descriptive.
[00:51:57] It is a statement of our identity.
[00:52:01] We are the salt of the earth.
[00:52:06] We are that which will enhance or embitter, soothe or irritate.
[00:52:16] Melt or sting, preserve or ruin, for better or for worse, we are the salt of the earth.
[00:52:31] And what we do with our saltiness matters. It matters immensely and eternally.
[00:52:45] Whether we want to or not, whether we notice it or not, whether we're intentional about it or not, you and I, as followers of Jesus, spiritually impact the world in which we live, for better or for worse. None of us are innocent bystanders or spectators.
[00:53:14] We are all involved in the outcome of the game of life. A scoutmaster once took his Boy Scouts to the edge of a pond by which they'd been camping. It was at first light and the water
[00:53:33] was still and it was as smooth as glass. And the leader picked up a pebble, I mean just a tiny little stone, and he dropped it into the water. And the boys stood there with their leader in
[00:53:50] silence as they watch those ripples spread out from the petal's tiny splash and extend all the way across the pond until they reached every single edge and shore. Scoutmaster then said, there's not a single stone, rock or pebble, no matter how big or small, that's not made its
[00:54:13] presence known and its ripples felt. Think of it like it's a wonderful life and the manifold ways in which George Bailey's life and his decisions, both important and mundane, influence the world around him in Bedford Falls and beyond. Being salt means that our choices, our decisions,
[00:54:45] our character our callings all have impact on the world around us secondly Jesus message is that we are precious again it's easy to miss the point of this metaphor in our modern world where a 26 ounce carton of iodized salt is a dollar fifty or two dollars and can be picked up at
[00:55:13] any grocery store or convenience mart. But imagine what Jesus' first followers would have heard when he called them salt, this precious commodity. Remember who they were. Remember what sort of people Jesus addressed in his famous Sermon on the Mount. The poor, the mournful, the meek,
[00:55:36] the persecuted, the hungry, the sick, the crippled, the frightened, the outcast, the misfit, the disreputable, the demon-possessed. And he said it, you, he told them all, you are the salt of the earth. You who are not cleaned up and shiny and well-fed or fashionable or
[00:56:04] well-connected. You've been rejected, wounded, unloved, and forgotten. You are essential.
[00:56:13] You are worthwhile. You are treasured. And I am commissioning you. For all of us who've spent months or years trying to earn divine favor, believing that our piety might someday make us precious in God's eyes, I hope that this metaphor will stop us in our tracks. And for those of us
[00:56:42] who feel underqualified or non-essential or expendable, listen up. Jesus knowingly named a commodity that was priceless in his time and place, and he conferred great value on those who were not valued by anyone, including themselves. You know, today Jesus might call us
[00:57:14] quarts, which is necessary for the production of all semiconductors and microchips.
[00:57:22] Did you know that 70 to 90 percent of the world's supply of quarts comes from mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina? Whether salt or quarts works better for you, we are precious to Christ.
[00:57:40] Thirdly, salt does its best work when it's poured out, when it's scattered, when it dissolves into what is around it. Just as Anna would have done her mother's curry no favors if she'd kept the
[00:58:00] salt shaker locked in the kitchen cabinet. Salt is not meant to be hoarded. It's not meant to cluster. It's meant to give of itself. It's meant to share its unique flavor in order to bring out
[00:58:18] the best in all that surrounds it. Which means that if we want to enliven, enhance, deepen, and preserve the world we live in, we can't hide within the walls of our churches. We must not batten down
[00:58:38] the hatches and congregate simply for our own comfort. We must not retreat into pious theological bubbles out of fear, cynicism, shame, or self-righteousness. Salt does not exist to preserve itself. It exists to preserve what is not itself. You know, there's another scriptural metaphor for
[00:59:11] this, a metaphor that Jesus uses all the time, dying. Jesus calls us to die to self, to lay down our lives for others, to die in order that we might live. We are salt. It's not a question of
[00:59:35] striving to be something we're not. It's a question of living in to the precious fullness of who we already are, who God created us to be. Carly Berg is a woman that lives in Harlow,
[00:59:56] England. And after surviving a really rough patch in her own life, she started an organic garden to provide healthy food for people in need in her town. And she'd helped feed just over 1,600 people when last April somebody poured five kilograms of salt on her garden, killing
[01:00:23] everything that she'd planted for that year and rendering her soil poisoned and unusual.
[01:00:30] She posted a video on TikTok about what had happened, and good salt rose to the surface and came forth. Her GoFundMe account that she'd used to get her project started was flooded with donations, and within a week, she had 194,000 pounds, or $243,000, that she's still putting
[01:00:58] to use, feeding those in need, expanding her operation to include cooking stations, places to sit down and visit and have a cup of coffee, as well as building a larger community garden.
[01:01:14] We pour ourselves out. Lastly, salt is meant to enhance but not dominate. Christian saltiness heals. It does not wound. Christian saltiness purifies. It does not dehydrate. Christian saltiness softens. It does not destroy. And even when Christian saltiness has an edge, when, for
[01:02:00] For example, it incites thirst.
[01:02:04] It only draws the thirsty towards the living water of Jesus.
[01:02:11] It doesn't leave the already thirsty parched, bone dry, and bittered.
[01:02:19] It does not attack, accuse, or exclude.
[01:02:25] One of the great tragedies and most consequential sins of historic Christianity has been failure to understand this distinction. Salt fails when it dominates. You ever had a bowl of soup where they switched the salt tablespoons instead of teaspoons? How does it taste? Instead of eliciting
[01:02:55] goodness, it destroys the rich potential all around it. Salt poured out without discretion leaves a burnt bitter sensation in its wake. It ruins what it's supposed to enhance. It repels like what happened to Carly's garden. This unfortunately is the reputation Christianity
[01:03:19] has all too often these days. We are known as the salt that exacerbates wounds, irritates souls, and ruins goodness. Fair or unfair, we are considered arrogant, domineering, obnoxious, and uninterested in enhancing anything but ourselves. We are known for hoarding our power,
[01:03:50] not for giving it away. We are known for shaming, not for blessing. We are known for using our words to burn, not heal. This is not what Jesus ever intended when he called us to be the salt of the
[01:04:09] earth. Our preciousness was never meant to make us proud and self-righteous. It was meant to make us humble and to give us all. So what do we do? Our vocation in these times and places is not
[01:04:31] to lose our saltiness. That's the temptation, to retreat, to hide, to choose blandness instead of boldness, to keep our love for Jesus a hushed and embarrassed secret. But that kind of salt, Jesus told his listeners, is useless. It is untrue to its very essence. And so we are called
[01:04:58] to live wisely, creatively, and in balance. We have to learn, as Anna did when she was a little girl, how to check for salt. Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out
[01:05:16] with discretion so that God's kingdom might be known on this earth. A kingdom of spice and zest, a kingdom of health and wholeness, a kingdom of varied depth and flavor and complexity.
[01:05:33] In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes concrete the work of love, compassion, healing, and justice.
[01:05:41] It's not enough to simply believe. It's not enough to bask in our blessedness while all around us cruelty, dishonesty, and evil thrive. To be blessed, to be salt, to be followers of Jesus is to take seriously what our identity signifies and how we are most effectively applied and
[01:06:10] engaged in the world around us. We are the salt of the earth. That is what we are, for better or for worse. May it be for better. May your pouring out and mine be for the flourishing
[01:06:31] of the world. As Mr. Rogers says, when we look for what is best in the person in front of us, we are doing what God does all the time. In loving and appreciating our neighbor,
[01:06:45] we take part in something special, something sacred. So this week, would you please, please pass us all. Amen. Our hymn of decision this morning is hymn number 486, Lord, hear my eyes.
[01:07:11] We stand together and sing. If there's anyone here that would like to join this family of faith officially, either by professing your faith in Jesus Christ for the first time or by transferring your membership from another church home to this one. I'll be down front to greet you as we stand
[01:07:29] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]
[01:07:29] together and sing hymn number 486. Thanks so much for being here today. I hope you'll join us for
[01:08:58] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[01:08:58] lunch in the Wayland Hall. Our youth will be standing at the exits today. If you can't stay for lunch but would like to contribute to our feeding ministry at St. Paul's Crisis, you may give to them in their soup pots as you leave. Of course, that is at your discretion. But now as we
[01:09:14] leave this place, may we all live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, forgive freely, pray daily, pass the salt, and leave the rest to God.
