Be salty, be hopeful

In Matthew 5.13 Jesus tells his disciples that they are they salt of the earth, and that they should not lose their saltiness. If they have lost it, they need to become salty again, or risk being thrown out.

Salt ... well perhaps you remember all about it from school. It's sodium chloride. It's present in seawater with about 35 grams per litre -  that's about 3.5 %. Salt is essential for our lives, you find it in our bodies, it's essential for tissues. Salting is used in food preservation. How is salt produced - from salt mines or by the evaporation of seawater.

Salt has important place in religion. The ancient Greeks and Romans invoked their gods with offerings of salt and water. In our own faith, we learn that there are 35 verses which mention salt. Lot's wife was turned to salt as she looked back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Paul encourages us to let our conversation be always full of grace and seasoned with salt (Colossians 4.6)

But for us, what may it mean ? I have been thinking about the warming climate. 2016 was the hottest year on record, and so was 2015 and 2014. The climate is warming rapidly. Graphs show the loss of sea ice. It's very worrying.

I have been active in campaigning  for governments to act and reduce carbon emissions, but - truth be told - I have rather lost heart. It feels to me that no one is interested, and there are so  many areas of life where my time and effort is demanded. But it's no-one's fault except mine.

I think I have lost my saltiness.

When we believe that what we do does not matter, or when we think we do not matter, then we stop trying. When we think that following Jesus is hard, and I do a lot anyway, and surely others are working on this, then we give up.

Rebecca Solnit writes;

Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we may play in it. Hope looks forward, but it draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections. It means not being the perfect that is the enemy of the good, not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not assuming you know what will happen when the future is unwritten, and part of what happens is up to us.

It seems to me that for us followers of Jesus Christ, following him to Jerusalem to the cross,  that we are called to be people of hope. Salty people of hope, believing in our God-given power.  Jesus trusted in God so we must trust that our following, our love in action, will not be in vain. We can be salty.

Dust, glorious dust.

Ash Wednesday 2017

Sermon preached at St Mary’s in the Baum on 1^stMarch 2017

There’s not too much dust here in this Church. It’s kept pretty clean and tidy. But there is dust everywhere… of course.

Today in our liturgy of Ash Wednesday we shall hear the words:

“Dust you are and to dust you shall return”

Dust is seen as the enemy of the house proud, it gets everywhere.

Are you wining your battle with dust ?

Do you have a Dust Buster – one of those little Hoovers or..

have you given up. Perhaps you only dust when family or the Vicar visits !

Dust and Soil have many ingredients. These include animal, vegetable, organic, inorganic. Dust has a lot of pollution bits in. Smoke particles.

We are not just thinking about house dust, we are thinking about soil. Soil is again something that develops from waste, rotted matter.

One day we shall return to the soil. One way or the other we shall be pushing up the daisies. I don't use that term flippantly – we shall play our part in the next phase of life.

Soil is a magical thing. It covers most of the earth, contains minerals, essential for the growth of plants. We would not be here without soil.

And already by thinking about soil we have a clue about the story of Lent and Easter. There will be death and there will be new life

Today we live in a world of virtual reality. We complain about the young people with their PlayStation and Pokemon Go… but is it really that we are in touch with reality.

We filter our news through our favourite newspapers and meet people who agree with us. We keep ourselves away from dirt and difficulty.

Our Bible stories today tell us of people who believe they are too good to get any dust or dirt on their hands. People who think they are above all that.

Hindu religion in India has a caste system, and the job of the lowest caste or out castes is to sweep up and clean the toilets. It's not for the higher castes to do. Mahatma Gandhi did not like that – he would make a thing of cleaning toilets for people !

Thus it was for the people that Isaiah tells us about. I bet they didn't lower themselves to do any cleaning up.

We hear that they are fighting. Not sharing their food with the hungry . They could give a fig for justice.

They think they are A class and everyone else C class

Mathew tells us about a similar type of Character. Pious and self promoting and greedy. They are storing up treasure for themselves while making themselves look all religious.

They have pushed all the dust and dirt away from themselves. Left it for others to clean up.

It's sobering to be told that we shall return to dust.

Lent is a time of stripping away, of bringing us down to earth.

We get airs and graces and we – like the people Mathew and Isaiah are writing about – think we are like Gods we live for ever and we don't need others.

There's something very wonderful too about soil. It gives life. It has death and the promise of new life all bound up. So with this time in the Church's calendar. We journey through death to new life.

Let's remember that we are but dust

Let's turn away from the sin that divides us from our brothers and sisters in need

Let's turn again to the God who makes things grow in the fertile soil of our human nature

Mark Coleman