Salt of the Earth: A Blessing and Curse

St. Scholastica

Salt of the earth: not a good thing to be.

Salting the earth in the ancient Near East was a practice performed by victors in war, to ensure that the land they had conquered would remain infertile, and to symbolize a curse upon the land.  Salt is a metaphor for destruction, and it lasts forever: salt, in the Old Testament, was also a symbol of everlasting fidelity.

We are the salt of the earth.  If we are the salt scattered by the victor, then who is the victor, and who are the conquered?  God is the sower of salt.  God is the victor.  Consider how this would sound to Jews living under Roman oppression: You are the salt of the earth, God's people who remain to curse a world that has forgotten God.  You have been sown here to condemn injustice, and you have been sown here to symbolize God's ultimate victory over the evils of the world.  

We are the salt of the earth.  We are to be a curse on the land of "worldly" values, calling a plague upon the greed and selfishness and violence and injustice that fill our earth.  We are supposed to symbolize God's eternal triumph.  
Yet salt is not only a curse - it is also a blessing.   It preserves food and enhances flavor.  It cleanses and heals wounds.  In the Old Testament it was offered to God with gifts of incense and grain.  

So while we are a curse sown by God upon the evils of the world, we are at the same time to be a symbol of healing and hope.  The world sees us as a curse, but despite the world's perceptions and intentions, we can become a blessing.  We can choose faithfulness and reconciliation.  We can choose to offer ourselves as sacrifices to God.

It is the cycle of death and life, of destruction and creation, of curse and blessing.  It is a dangerous responsibility we have: like salt, we possess simultaneously the power to be forces of death or forces of life.  We must choose what we will destroy and what we will preserve.  

Do not lose your flavor.  Do not renounce this responsibility.  Do not be afraid to be the curse and the blessing, the death and the life.  Die to sin, be born in Christ.  

Be the salt that is sown over the evils of the world.  Be the salt that destroys the roots of injustice.

But also: be the salt that heals with God's grace.  Be the salt that cleanses with God's Word.  Be the salt that preserves goodness.  Be the salt that lasts forever.