Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw, 2/8/2026
Lessons:
Matthew 5:13-20
Beloved Brothers and sisters in Christ...
As many of you know, 1,200 feet below the City of Detroit lies one of the largest salt mines in the world - where there are 100 miles of roads traversing the 1,500 acres of salt that you know quite well because it's currently covering your entire car...
It's great to have so much salt so close at hand given our weather - and even better if you're ordering fries or dousing a bowl of popcorn while you're watching the Superbowl and deciding between Big Bunny or Kid Rock...
But in the ancient near east, salt wasn’t a garnish. It wasn't a de-icer. It was survival.
Before refrigeration, before preservatives with long chemical names, salt was the only thing standing between a piece of meat and total decay. It was the thin line between nourishment and waste, between Sunday dinner and starvation.
Why? As you know well: Salt slows the rot. Salt holds things together long enough for life to continue.
So when Jesus looks at this small crowd gathered on a hillside for his first, sermon and says, “You are the salt of the earth,” he isn’t offering a compliment. He isn’t saying, “You add a little sparkle to the world.”
He’s naming a responsibility.
He’s handing out a vocation, a calling, a blessed invitation to identity.
“You are essential,” he says. “Without you, things fall apart.”
And this was well-understood because Jesus was speaking to people who knew how fragile life can be.
Remember last week - The Beatitudes? The Sermon on the Mount begins with the poor in spirit. The mourning. The meek. The hungry. The merciful. People who already know that the world does not hold together on its own.
And to those people, Jesus says something almost shocking: you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. They were probably as shocked to hear themselves called that as you and I are!
And notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “Try to be salt.” He doesn’t say, “Work hard to become light.” He says, “You are.” Which means this isn’t about earning a role: It’s about living into an identity that has already been given.
When I pull out my passport to go overseas - which, these days, means Canada... My passport tells me I'm an American. I don't have to try to be, I just am.
It's the same with our identity in Christ.
We are light, we are salt.
And what does salt do?
Salt preserves. Salt preserves life! Salt resists decay. Salt keeps what is good from being lost.
And that image lands differently if we’re honest about the world we’re living in.
Because it doesn’t take much imagination to notice that things feel like they’re rotting in a lot of places right now. We hear it in the way we talk to each other. Not just strangers online, but coworkers, family members, people we love.
Conversations feel thinner, divided, sharper, quicker to break. We see it in how easily whole groups of people get written off. We feel it in the ambient cynicism that hangs in the air, convincing us that caring deeply is naïve and hope is embarrassing.
Cynicism is particularly corrosive because it dresses itself up as realism. It tells us we’re just seeing things as they are. But most of the time, cynicism is simply despair that’s learned how to sound intelligent. Many people are cynical about gun violence. 'Oh we'll never stem the tide, there are just too many guns and too many crazy people!'
But on Wednesday I was in a private meeting with our Attorney General, Dana Nessel. And she said that, for some reason - she doesn't know why - but the tally on gun deaths in Michigan for 2025 is about to be released - and after a year of lobbying, by St. David's and others, a year of working to pass laws and enact gun safety reform - that gun death rate over the last year has gone down by 100 people.
100 people who had Thanksgiving dinner with their loved ones. 100 families that did not have to attend a funeral. Systems can be changed. We don't have to follow the cynics. Cynicism is not realism! Being salt and light matters!
And being salt and light is not a call to stand at a distance and comment on the decay. Our calling is not to narrate the collapse with clever observations. Anyone can do that. Pointing out what’s wrong takes very little courage.
But we are asked to do something harder. Jesus chose salt and light because they are so common. They are everywhere. They stay close. They mix in. They refuse to stand at a distance and to give up on what could still be preserved.
That’s why this image gets uncomfortably close to the heart of Christian life.
As you know, in the Episcopal Church we have something called "The Baptismal Covenant" - in it we promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” That’s not abstract theology. That’s preservation work.
It’s staying in the room when the conversation gets tense and it would be easier to walk away. It’s refusing to reduce a human being to a headline, a label, or a single opinion. It’s holding onto hope when the cultural mood has decided despair is more sophisticated.
In fact, we have some salty people in our parish. We have people who believe differently things - about politics, economics, diplomacy, human sexuality - and it's their salt that keeps them connected - it's their salt that is illuminating and life giving!
It's because salt says, “No, we’re not letting this relationship disintegrate if there’s still something worth saving.” Salt says, “No, we’re not done with this community.” Salt says, “No, we’re not going to let contempt have the final word.”
Salt has to stay close. It doesn’t work from a distance. You can’t preserve meat by waving salt at it. You have to rub it in. You have to stay close enough for it to matter.
Which is precisely why this calling is so uncomfortable. Being salt means proximity. It means staying engaged with people and situations that are messy, complicated, and sometimes disappointing. It means resisting the temptation to retreat into purity or disengagement.
And Jesus knows that comes with a risk.
“If salt has lost its saltiness,” he says, “how can its saltiness be restored?”
That’s a strange warning, because salt, chemically speaking, doesn’t really lose its saltiness. Which suggests that Jesus isn’t giving a chemistry lesson. He’s giving a spiritual lesson.
How does salt lose its effectiveness? When it’s diluted. When it’s mixed with too many other things. When it becomes overwhelmed by much larger amounts of bitterness, resentment, and contempt that surrounds it.
And that’s the real danger for the Church. Not opposition. Not marginalization. But becoming so saturated with the world’s cynicism, apathy, and division, that we no longer offer anything different.
If we become just as quick to judge, just as eager to divide, just as addicted to outrage as everyone else, then we aren’t preserving anything. We've lost our saltiness - and we’re just participating.
Being salt means you bring a different chemistry into the room.
You’re the one who slows things down when everyone else is escalating. You’re the one who preserves dignity when things get ugly. You’re the one who insists on truth without cruelty and grace without sentimentality.
And that work is not glamorous. Salt does its work quietly. No one applauds salt. No one notices it on the table. No one pays much attention to it until one thing happens: It goes missing.
Which is why Jesus pairs this image with light: “You are the light of the world.”
Light, like salt, doesn’t argue. It doesn’t shame the darkness. It simply shows up and, by being what it is, changes the environment
Many of you remember my mother's fastest and most economical way to clean the kitchen - turn down the lights! And don't act like you’ve never done it...
Which brings us back to that uncomfortable question this text asks each of us - it's about where you and I are most needed: Where is the rot starting to set in?
Not abstractly. Not “out there.” But concretely.
Is it in a relationship you’ve quietly given up on? Is it in the way you speak about people who frustrate or frighten you? Is it in your social media habits, where outrage has replaced curiosity? Is it in your own heart, where hope has worn thin and bitterness is starting to feel justified?
Jesus doesn’t say, “Notice it and move on.” He intentionally cultivated a group of followers to be alive and active in the world, who would be repairers of the breech, as light breaking forth like the dawn, preserving the world as faithfully and reliably as common salt.
Which means we don’t just observe decay. We engage it.
You show up when it would be easier to disappear. You tell the truth when silence would be more comfortable. You offer grace when the situation feels undeserving.
And yes, salt can sting.
Anyone who has ever put salt on a wound knows that preservation isn’t painless. Standing against decay often involves discomfort. It can irritate. It can expose. It can hurt before it heals.
And no one knows that better than Jesus - better than that love that came down from heaven to stand at the center of all of it all. The one who entered a world already bent toward decay and did not turn away. That's what love does. The one who stayed close enough to touch lepers, eat with sinners, and absorb the worst the world could offer. That's what love does.
On the cross, Jesus doesn’t stand above the rot. He enters it. And in the resurrection, God declares that decay does not get the final word. That's what love does.
Which means our calling as salt and light is not of comfort and convenience, safety or popularity. It’s cruciform. It looks like loving what others have written off. It looks like hope that persists even when outcomes are uncertain.
So don’t underestimate the holiness of staying when it would be easier to leave. Don’t underestimate the power of refusing to become bitter. Don’t underestimate the quiet, stubborn grace of a life that slows decay simply by loving well.
My brothers and sisters,
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
Not because you are perfect. But because God has chosen to work this way.
Now more than ever, the world needs you to do so: to stay salty and stay lit.
Amen.