February 8, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott
Matthew 5:13-20
Like many Americans in the later decades of the 20th century, my grandmother was told that she had high blood pressure and needed to watch her salt intake, which she interpreted to mean that she could not add salt to food. One of my enduring memories of her is the way that she worked around this rule. We’d have tomato sandwiches, and instead of giving the tomatoes on the sandwich a sprinkle of salt, she’d have a handful of potato chips.
She knew what she was doing; she always said, “I’m just eating these for the salt. Tomato sandwiches don’t taste right without the salt.” And being the nutritional expert know it all that I was as at the age of 28, I would say, “Grandma, I’m sure your doctor would rather have you use a sprinkle of salt on your sandwich than eat those high fat chips.”
And now, I can’t read this passage and others like it without thinking about the use of salt, both in the ancient world and in our own world. The use of light, both the literal use and the symbolic use, hasn’t changed as much in two thousand years. But our relationship to salt is different. Or is it?
Think about your own feelings about salt. Do you salt your food before you even taste it? Guilty. Do you have a variety of salts and swear that you can tell the difference between them? Me too. Well, that’s not exactly true, but I do swear that kosher salt is different from all the rest.
At this point you may be saying, “Wait, is Jesus giving us cooking commandments or dietary instructions?” To which I would say, maybe not literally. But in terms of how to live life—yes, he’s using salt as a way of teaching us about the life of the faithful, and the ways that the lives of faithful people can add dimension and nuance to their communities—and in doing so to change the world beyond their communities.
We’ve lost some aspects of this metaphor. In the time of Jesus, his Jewish listeners would have heard the message about salt and remembered that salt was a symbol of the Covenant that God made with God’s faithful people. Sacrifices in the temple would be sprinkled with salt as a sign of that covenant.
Salt was also used as a preservative—one reason why canned food often has a fair amount of salt. But in ancient times, before refrigeration, salt was the kind of preservative that meant you could have meat long after the point where ordinary meat would spoil. You could butcher an animal and not have to eat all the meat right away. You could get to the time of the year when it was impossible to find fresh meat, and if you had salted meat, you would have a much more interesting diet.
So, is that what it means in this context? What does it mean to think of ourselves as salt? Jesus is telling us that as believers, we enhance what is good. He is also telling us that faithful people elicit what is good. Just as salt brings forth some qualities of food that we wouldn’t have otherwise, followers of Jesus do the same for their societies. They make their societies better in ways that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Think about all the hospitals and universities and other types of schools and childcare centers that wouldn’t exist without the efforts of believers who took the words of Jesus about caring seriously. Similarly, many scientific developments happened because of a belief in a better world and that belief was often nurtured in communities of believers.
As I was driving this week, I listened to a show about vaccines, and one of the experts talked about polio and Jonas Salk, who created the polio vaccine. Because he refused to patent the vaccine, more people were able to get it across the world, and the disease was eradicated more quickly. Salk, who had Jewish immigrant parents, was educated in public schools, schools which were formed a century or more earlier by other immigrants who believed in education for all. The decision by Salk and other polio vaccine creators not to patent the vaccine so that more people could have access—that decision has inspired later generations to do the same.
As I listened to this interview with modern vaccine creators about the polio vaccine, I thought about another ancient use for salt. Long before our modern agricultural processes, people would use saline solutions to purify the soil and get it ready for planting. I thought about how previous generations can live faithfully, and not only enhance and preserve their own societies, but also prepare soil for future generations to grow and thrive.
Another darker use of salt has been a constant across empires, though, as a weapon of war. Across time, armies have sowed so much salt into the soil of adversaries that nothing else could take root.
As I go back to our reading from Isaiah, as I think about the relentless march of armies and world history, I think of what it would mean to read those passages in the context of being the salt that thwarts the evil that empires want to sow. If we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for those outside our family and friend groups, then we build a stronger society.
We might have been taught that good government should also want to do those things, but we know that it’s far more common for empires to rule by way of fear: fear of hunger, fear of exposure, fear of being cast out, fear of violence and imprisonment, fear of war. Those fears can keep more of us cowering in the shadows, not demanding the justice that God’s law, God’s law proclaimed by Christ, demands. If more of us cower, unsavory types can move in and make money from our collective misery. If we aren’t active in our societies, who will do the work of preserving, fertilizing, and enhancing so that our world is more in line with what God envisions for humanity, instead of what wealthy billionaires would inflict on us all? I know which one has a vision that is better for those of us outside the elite, and it’s not the wealthy billionaires. It’s God, the way God has been made known through the generations, through ordinary people like my grandmother.
My grandmother and I ate those tomato sandwiches in her breakfast nook, not the formal dining room. In that room, in addition to boxes of breakfast cereal and the everyday dishes, sat her hymnbook, her Bible, and her daily devotional. She began each day with a daily devotional and each meal was punctuated with prayer: prayers for her family, prayers for her church, and prayers for the world beyond. Those of us who joined her for meals saw a powerful, albeit quiet, example.
I have learned my grandmother’s lessons well, although not necessarily in the ways she might have foreseen. I will always salt my tomato sandwiches—with kosher salt, if it’s available. And I will spend every day looking for ways to be the salt in the larger world.
We live faithful lives, salty lives, in order to create the kind of soil that can support God’s vision, a vision of flourishing, not floundering. We live faithful lives, salty lives, so that society can be the kind of garden that will NOT be poisoned for the purposes of empire, so that those enemy poisons WILL NOT take root. We live faithful lives, salty lives, to nurture the next generations coming after us who will continue the work. We are not useless condiments, salt without flavor, just taking up space on the shelf. NO. We are here to keep our commitment to God. We are here to follow that commitment to the larger community. We are tiny grains of salt, each and every one of us good, each and every one of us able to overpower the evil that threatens to root itself in our communities. We are here to rebuild the ruins, to restore the streets, to repair every breach. In our doing, we will solidify the foundations of future generations.
