Salt of the Earth

Call to Worship: Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing to the Lord, all the world! Sing to the Lord and praise Him! Proclaim every day the good news that he has saved us. Proclaim his glory to the nations, his mighty acts to all peoples.

Hymn Lord, the light of your love is shining[i]

Prayers of Adoration and Confession

Children’s Address

Ask for volunteers to taste crisps. Which packet do they prefer?

We need a little salt – but too much spoils food and can make us ill.

There used to be a story on the outside of the salt packet about two Scottish doctors who tried to live on a salt-free diet and became ill. Now we are more concerned about people eating too much salt. It’s important to know how much of anything we need and how much is too much.

God has given us lots of things to enjoy, but we need to use them in moderation – and share them so that everyone has enough.

We mustn’t let anything become more important to us than God – not food, or our houses, or our cars, or our jobs. Get your priorities right.

Hymn O Jesus I have promised[ii]

Reading Judges 7: 1-8, 19-21

Reading 1 Kings 19: 1 - 18

Hymn One more step along the world I go [iii]

Reading Matthew 5: 13 – 16

SERMON

There’s a lot of debate going on at the moment about what to do about small congregations. This isn’t just in this church or this circuit or even just within the Methodist connexion. I have friends in the Church of England, the Baptist Church and other denominations and they are all worried that congregations are dwindling as older members die and are not replaced.

In many churches in this circuit evening congregations are shrinking – or to be honest they haven’t been very large for a good number of years now. When I go around the circuit, the stewards often apologise for the small congregation – it seems that I always manage to be planned when several members are away on holiday!

I don’t think any apology is necessary – aren’t we told “when two or three are gathered together …”? I don’t feel that I have wasted my time if I come to a church where there are only half a dozen people in the pews.

Of course, we may need to adjust what we do to suit the size and make-up of the congregation. Have you heard the story of the Bishop and the Old Farmer?

The bishop went to take a service at a remote country church on a wild and stormy night. When he got there, the only other person was an old farmer. After waiting for a while to see if anyone else would arrive, the bishop said to the farmer, ‘I think we’ll cancel the service, seeing as there are only the two of us here.’

The farmer replied, ‘when I take my tractor out to the field with a trailer of hay to feed my sheep and I only find one sheep in the field, I don’t just go back without feeding it.’

So the bishop proceeded with a full sung communion service with hymns and psalms and three Bible readings and a ten-minute homily. At the end, the old farmer said to him, ‘when I take my tractor out to the field with a trailer load of hay to feed my sheep and I only find one sheep in the field, I don’t give it the whole trailer-load of hay!’

I tend to assume – perhaps I’m wrong – that small elderly congregations will prefer traditional hymns and a sermon, rather than modern choruses and an interactive address. In a larger church with a smattering of youngsters present, I would try to be a little bit more trendy. But either way, the number of people present is not a measure of the “success” of the service.

I think at present we are a bit too much concerned about how many people are coming to our services and how many are becoming members of our churches. We are told that we are living in a post-Christian era and that the country has, as a result lost its moral values. The former Bishop of Rochester[iv] expressed fears that Christianity will be displaced by radical Islam as the leading spiritual influence in Britain.

But when I read Jesus’ words telling us that we must be the salt of the earth and light for the world, I wonder whether it’s right for us to expect to be a large body of people. As we saw earlier, only a very little salt is needed to season our food.

And why do we add salt to food? Is it because we want all our food to taste the same? No! We add just a little salt in order to bring out the flavour of the different foods. We are warned that lots of processed foods have hidden salt that we can’t taste but which may contribute to our developing high blood pressure if we eat too much of them. So salt isn’t there to make everything salty, but to make each component of the dish fuller in its own flavour.

If we are the salt of the world, should we be expecting to change everyone we meet so that they are just like us? For many years that is how Christianity has operated – our mission was to convert the heathen and make them adopt our vision of God, our mode of worship and, often, our way of life. But is that how it should be? Could it be that God has other plans for other people? Could it be that he has chosen a few of us to be his seasoning for the world while others have different roles to play?

I would venture to suggest that we should stop worrying about how few we are and concentrate on whether we are fulfilling the role that God has given us. Are we providing the salt that makes the whole meal taste better? Are we like a lamp shining in a dark room?

What then should we be doing as the Salt of the World? Well, what is salt used for? In cookery it is used to enhance the flavour of our food. As I’m sure you have been told before, in Jesus’ day it was a scarce commodity and hence valuable. The word “salary” is derived from the Latin world for salt, because Roman soldiers were paid in part in salt. When we say that someone is “worth his salt” we mean that he is doing his job properly and deserves to be paid.

So, salt is a valuable substance, which we add in very small quantities to bring out the flavour in food. As the salt of the world, we are needed only in small quantities and our role is not to change people and make them all like us – that would be like spoiling a dish by adding too much salt so that the other flavours are obliterated. We should be helping them to become more themselves, bringing out their individual flavours and increasing the variety of people in the world.

To do that we need to stop thinking about how to get more people into church, and start thinking about what we can do for those outside the church. What are their needs? What are their problems? What are their aspirations? How can we help them to make more of their lives? When we’ve answered these questions and we start trying to address the issues that really concern them, it may be that they will decide that they would like to join us, but for as long as we are viewing them simply as potential converts or potential new church members, we will not be likely to attract them to us.

Our interest in those outside the church needs to be a genuine outpouring of God’s unconditional love, not an attempt to fill the pews – or the collection plate!

Another use for salt is as a preservative. Before the invention of the freezer, salt was regularly used to prevent food from rotting when it was stored. We also have this role. We keep the Gospel message fresh, ready for every new generation to hear it. But you have to be careful about preserving things – they often don’t come out quite the same as they went in.

Have any of you tried to cook salt fish? You can still buy it from some fish markets and I remember my mother cooking it when I was a child in Newcastle. Peter cooked some for us to a Portuguese recipe after he and Bernie came back from their holiday on the Algarve. It comes as a stiff sheet, rather like cardboard in texture. Before you can eat it you need to soak it for several hours – overnight usually – before it can be cooked. If you fail to soak it for long enough it will be inedible because the salt taste will be overwhelming and it will be tough and unpleasant.

When we are presenting the Christian message to others, do we sometimes forget to prepare it properly before serving it up to them? Are we offering a dish of dried up salt fish, instead of a delicious dish of Bacalhau (Portuguese salt cod)?

We are all products of our past history and upbringing. The way that the Good News was presented to us in church or Sunday School may not be appropriate to a new generation – or to those from a different background. It is not sufficient simply to preserve the Church as it was when we were children.

We must be prepared to allow the rigid salt fish to soak until it is flexible and can be made into something that is a joy to eat. We must learn to distinguish between the central essence of our faith and the peripheral accoutrements that have been acquired over the years – and we must preserve the one and be ready to jettison the other.

To sum up:

· We should not be worried that we are few in number – God repeatedly chooses a small group of people to be his representatives on Earth. Abraham had no children, but he was told that, through his descendants, all the families of the Earth would be blessed. The Jews were exiled to Babylon, but a remnant came back to Jerusalem. Christianity spread round the world because of a small group of men and women who had seen the risen Christ.

· We should value everyone for what they are, and seek to help them to become more themselves, rather than trying to produce clones of ourselves.

· We should carefully preserve God’s word, but present it in new ways to suit changing times. Remember that Jesus said, “Every teacher of the law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who takes new and old things out of his store room.”

Let us pray.

Father, we thank you that you have called us to be salt to season the world and light to help people to see their way. Help us to know how best to serve your children. May we always keep our light bright, shining to guide them home to you.

Hymn The church of Christ in every age[v]

Prayers of Intercession

Hymn Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go[vi]

Benediction: May the God of love stir up in us the gifts of his grace and sustain each of us in our discipleship and service; and the blessing of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy spirit, remain with us for ever. AMEN

[i] Singing the Faith 59. For more information, and the guitar chords, see http://www.singingthefaithplus.org.uk/?p=1750

[ii] Singing the Faith 563.

[iii] Singing the Faith 476. For more information, see http://www.singingthefaithplus.org.uk/?p=1478

[iv] Michael Nazir-Ali (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Nazir-Ali)

[v] Singing the Faith 415. For more information, see http://www.singingthefaithplus.org.uk/?p=1261

[vi] Singing the Faith 450.