Matthew 5:13-20 When I was a graduate student in Texas, I attended a Lutheran campus ministry. We had services every Sunday morning, just like most churches. We followed the lectionary, we heard a sermon, and we celebrated the sacraments. Our pastor, whom we called PJ, had a certain way he liked to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. He would invite us all up to the front, to stand in a circle around the altar. And the first thing he would do was take a little dish of salt. He would go around the circle to each one of us, take a pinch of salt and put it on our tongues, saying, “remember your baptism.” Remember your baptism. I was always a little bit mystified by this ritual. I wasn’t entirely certain I understood what salt had to do with my baptism. But I liked it. A little bit of salt tastes […]
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Jesus Preaches, Part 2: Salt and Light
Matthew 5:13-20 There is an old English folktale that I have always loved, The Three Sillies. A young man is courting a farmer’s daughter and is invited to their house for dinner. During the meal, the daughter is sent down to the cellar to fetch the beer for supper. As she is drawing the beer she notices a mallet stuck in one of the beams overhead. And she thinks, “Suppose one day he and I get married and we have a son, and our son comes down to the cellar to get the beer and the mallet falls on his head and kills him!” and she is so overcome with grief she can’t move. Soon her mother comes down to look for her. “What is the matter with you?” she asks. The girl points to the mallet and tells her mother this imagined scenario – and the mother collapses […]
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