Salt and Light: Faith That Melts the Ice

Salt in a salt shaker, it just sits there. Sits there. Sits there. What happens to it? We live in the South. It gets all clumpy and you can't break it apart. You can't get it out of the shaker. You gotta put some rice in it to try to help it, you know, to keep some of the moisture off of it. But salt that just sits there, if it's not doing something, it loses its, what's the Bible call it? It's savor. It loses its flavor. It loses its ability to do what it's supposed to do. [00:47:51] (38 seconds)  #BeTheSalt

Anyone who has lived through winter knows that ice doesn't go away because you name it. It doesn't melt because we acknowledge that it's dangerous. Ice changes when something engages it directly like salt or light. And here's the thing that we often miss. Both salt and light melt ice. Salt breaks ice apart from the ground up. Light brings warm and loosened it from the top down. But both ways, it takes this hardened thing and it it gets rid of it. It moves it out. [00:36:03] (39 seconds)  #MeltTheIce

Because sometimes we just do things because we do things because we saw somebody else do this thing and we think that's the way that we're supposed to do this thing because well, we don't know why it was being done. We just know that we do it. We do that in the church. Why do we do that? Just the way we've always done it. We can't change it because we've always done it this way. Well, why do we do it this way? We don't know. We don't know why we do it this way. We just do it this way. It's just what you do. But you know, maybe it's not just what you do. [00:43:34] (36 seconds)  #ChallengeTradition

Jesus doesn't choose one metaphor or the other. Jesus gives us both. You are salt and you are light. Maybe that's a call to disrupt. We're not just called to illuminate. We're called to do both. So let that question settle in. Where do you see ice right now? Where do places feel frozen? Where do things feel hardened or stuck? And what kind of melting do we need to happen? [00:36:43] (47 seconds)  #YouAreSaltAndLight

Jesus is talking about survival here. It's about what keeps people safe. It's about what makes life possible. And Jesus doesn't say, you will become salt one day. Jesus doesn't say, try harder to become light. Jesus says, you are. You are salt. You are light. Identity first. Action later. Identity always asks you something. It asks you something of yourself. [00:35:24] (40 seconds)  #IdentityFirst

What if we look at how we are living our lives, how we are caring about other people, how we are loving other people, how we are walking through this world with other people, and we think about why are we doing that? Who's gaining from that? Who's losing from that? Why are we doing this thing? Salt alone can feel very harsh. Light alone can feel very passive. But together, salt and light make a difference. [00:44:10] (38 seconds)  #SaltAndLightTogether

And our faith does the same thing. If our faith is just sitting there and our faith is not doing something and our faith is not going out and actually doing something in the world, then our faith is is gonna be diminished. I won't say it'll go completely away, but it becomes diminished because our faith is supposed to call us to do something. It's what embodied faith does. [00:48:29] (26 seconds)  #FaithInAction

Light doesn't attack. Light just shines. Steady, warm, slowly, steadily, patiently warming things up, making change in a slow and steady kinda way. And I submit to you that both of them are necessary because some hearts are frozen by fear. I can't do anything, I'm afraid. [00:41:11] (33 seconds)  #LightMeltsFear