Sermon for February 8, 2026: Restoring Our Saltiness based upon Matthew 5:13-20

Matthew 5:13-20 Salt and Light (New International Version)
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

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     “Learn to navigate Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat, and you can make anything taste good.” This is Samin Nosrat’s bold claim in the introduction to her cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. Nosrat, a renowned chef who has cooked and taught cooking professionally for more than 20 years, came to this understanding early in her career while learning from great chefs. As she learned more techniques from more teachers and more cultures and types of cuisine, she began to recognize a pattern. Food that tasted good, from food made at home by regular people trying to feed their families to the highest of cuisine at the most exclusive restaurants, included some combination of those four elements: the right amount of acidity to balance whatever fat was involved, the right about of cook time, at the right heat, and the right amount of salt used the right way. If we learn the basics about each element, we can use them to make our food better, too.

     Our reading for the day includes two of these very same elements as metaphors for how Christians are supposed to be in the world: Salt and light (the presence of light almost always means the presence of heat). In an effort to help those who had listened to what we call The Sermon on the Mount understand the effects of following the priorities of God in our actions in the world, those who are allowing themselves to be shaped by Spirit into the Body of Christ will be transformed and, will, in turn transform this world.

     In a commentary on this text, Warren Carter notes that salt does more than one thing. It is a transformative substance, offering flavoring but also preservation and purification. In the introduction to the chapter on salt, Nosrat when describing the process of refining a dish for customers in the first restaurant she ever worked in, “[m]ost often, when a dish fell flat, the answer lay in adjusting the salt.” The salt could be adjusted in myriad ways: sometimes by adding literal crystals of salt, sometimes by adding elements to the dish that already had salt incorporated: grating some parmesan over the dish, adding a few olives or capers, mixing in some bacon or bits of anchovy. The right amount of salt can make or break a dish.

     As the wife of a geologist, I’ll make sure to mention that the salt we eat, sodium chloride, is a mineral that naturally occurs on earth. Nosrat also notes that salt is essential to human health. We can’t store much salt in our bodies, so we need to eat it regularly just for the basic functions of our bodies to work. Our bodies are “hardwired”, as she calls it, to crave the salt we need to regulate our blood pressure, distribute water around our bodies, get nutrients to cells, and make sure our nerves and muscles work. Would that many other things in our lives be as pleasurable as salt is to taste while also being so useful and necessary for our bodies to function.

     While salt has many uses, Nosrat argues that the primary role of salt is amplification of flavor. She says, “[n]early every decision you’ll make about salt will involve enhancing and deepening flavor.” Salt has a flavor of its own and can also affect other flavors. We add it to greens to cut bitterness. We add it to caramel to balance the sweetness. Salt will even affect how we smell the food we eat. She said that if we’re going to learn only one lesson from her book, it is: “Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient.” No wonder Jesus hopes our presence will be like salt in the world. Salt is powerful. Salt is necessary. Salt, when used correctly, makes things better.

     Carter notes that in describing how God is blessing the world in the Beatitudes, which is the passage just before today’s reading, Jesus also describes the reality of the world. The world of his time and ours is shaped by wealth and poverty, grief and mourning, the relationship between those who wield power oppressively and those they harm, the reality of injustice and the pursuit of justice. Jesus’ followers are directed out towards this world shaped by both war and peacemakers, the merciful and the cruel, and tasked with amplifying God’s grace in it. The presence of these grace amplifiers, like sea salt on an espresso brownie (a dessert Nosrat describes in the book), helps decrease bitterness, enhance sweetness, and offer contrast to the life offered by empire.

     Like the human body needs salt, the Body of Christ needs grace to function. It is the role of the Christian to maintain enough salty grace to share it in this world. A Christian unprepared to bless those who God blessed in the Beatitudes should be as unthinkable as salt that is no longer salty. We must be more than tiny, tasteless cubes!

     And, what of the light? Nosrat talks about flavor as the intersection of taste, smell, sound, appearance, and temperature. Appearance and temperature are where we most clearly connected with light. First, it is light as described in our scripture: literally a force of illumination, making clear and plain what is before us. When we speak of the power of presentation of food, we are reminded of the usefulness and helpfulness of seeing clearly what is before us. For this, we need the light.

     With light, also comes heat. Any of us who have tried to change a recently blown lightbulb were likely quickly reminded of this relationship. Candles, wood stoves, flickers of pilot lights, the backs of televisions, and bolts of lightning... light and heat are right together every time. Getting the heat right with our food is imperative. Nosrat described the best cooks as paying attention to how the heat affected the food, rather than simply the temperature of the food or the amount of time spent on the fire. The sounds of sizzling, the rise of bubbles in a pot set to boil, the tenderness of the meat or the noodles... these are sure signs of the transformative power of heat... the product of the movement of light in the world.

     While plenty of foods do not require being cooked on a stove... ceviche, tartar, and muktuk are meat dishes known for being prepared without heating over flame... much of the food we enjoy is cooked with heat. It makes many foods safer and easier for our bodies to absorb. And, it makes many things more delicious. In order to use heat well, Nosrat encourages us to be clear on what we are actually wanting from the food. Then, we can use heat in the right ways to achieve it.

     Christ ultimately imagines a world where those who struggle are blessed by God. The light within Christ’s followers will shape that which it encounters in the world just as surely as heat applied at a low temperature for a long time can change brisket from a cheap cut of meat into a delicacy I shared with my mom last week. Part of the reason we can smell something delicious being cooked is that heat has broken down the cell walls that contain flavor molecules, releasing them into the air and into our grateful noses. Karoline Lewis, in her commentary on our scripture, described being a disciple as being like the light through which God shapes the world. The next time you smell something amazing, imagine yourself being the heat that releases some of God’s grace into this world, drawing neighbors together for sustenance, fellowship, and joy.

     This is a time that demands salt and light, that demands an amplification of grace, and the melting of forces that cage us in, isolated us from one another, and preventing us having what we need to function as the body God made us to be. May we be forces for light in this world, making it easier to see the truth of the world we live in, but also shaping it for the better. Last week, the Beatitudes gave us the ingredient list for the kindom of God... blessing for those who need it and a promise of change to come. Now, it is our time to go to work in the kitchen, adding a little salt here, turning up the heat there, until we have a meal to share for the good of the world around us. We may not make the recipe perfectly the first time. This kind of cooking is a skill. We’ll keep learning together, novices at the side of the Holy Spirit, who patiently shows us again and again that we can probably add a little more salt to most things, and it will make them taste better.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:  
Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, illus. Wendy MacNaughton (Simon and Schuster, 2017) 
Warren Carter: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-513-20-6 
Karoline Lewis: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-513-20-2