Salt, light, and the Law
Sermon for Epiphany V, 2025, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text: Matthew 5:13-20 I have been thinking about salt a lot recently, mostly as a question “Do you have any salt for sale?” at various hardware stores or places like Walmart or Meijer. Salt is a valuable thing to have at specific times, like when you need to sharpen flavors in a meal or melt snow and ice. So, when Jesus says “You are the salt of the earth,” I want to say, “Yeah, but I need to get out of my driveway. Is shoveling snow not enough to make a difference in the world?” Jesus also says that I am the light of the world, which is nice, but sunlight is better at melting snow than I am using salt. And then Jesus says he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and I start to think that maybe he’s going to do something about the people who run the stop sign at the end of my street. But the Gospels are not about seasoning food, or dealing with snow and ice, or enforcing someone’s la...