Being from California, Ginger and I love sourdough bread. The best sourdough bread in the world comes from San Francisco, though you can find good sourdough bread everywhere in California.
At Disneyland, they have their own sourdough bread factory—and it’s considered an attraction! You can walk through the bakery, watch the bread being made, and even get a free slice of sourdough bread to eat. Then you can purchase a sourdough bread bowl filled with clam chowder. It’s overpriced, of course, but still delicious.
Here in Illinois, good sourdough bread has been hard to find. The sourdough bread on the grocery store shelves (I’m sorry!) just doesn’t cut it. Not tangy enough. And the crust isn’t crusty enough.
We had just about given up on finding decent sourdough bread, just as I have given up on finding good fish tacos in Illinois… but then we discovered the little store on Center Street, a few blocks from here, right across from the museum.
It’s only open on Saturdays. In the summer, when the farmer’s market is taking place, the lines can get long, and they sometimes run out of different varieties… because there, in that tiny little shop, is what I would consider to be really good sourdough bread.
Last week, that little market posted a lengthy update on Facebook, detailing some changes. When I started reading it, I thought, in horror: Oh no! They’re closing!
But they’re not closing. Whew!
Over the years, they’ve expanded, and in addition to bread, they sell cheese, yogurt, veggies, and meats, all from central Illinois farms, and so now they decided to come up with a new name that includes all the different things they do and all the different foods they sell. And that new name is Salt Fork Food Works.
They chose that name because a tributary of the Salt Fork waterway runs behind their farm, and they always felt the name was a good omen for them. As they said in their facebook post: You can't make cheese or bread without salt!
***** When I first started baking, I was surprised at all the recipes that call for salt. Salt goes in… everything! Even things that are sweet, like cookies… or the homemade granola I bake.
You may not notice the salt when you eat these things. But you would notice the difference if the salt was missing.
In most recipes, salt doesn’t draw attention to itself. Without salt, the food is bland. Boring. You want to spit it out.
Salt makes food enjoyable. We enjoy eating, and when we can, we enjoy eating together, with other people.
Salt is essential to that.
And although our modern diets sometimes contain too much salt, salt is actually a critical and essential mineral in the human body. It has a number of important roles including maintaining proper nerve function; and it's also used in the regulation of fluids in your body.
We need salt.
Jesus said to his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth.” That was his way of saying: “The world needs you.” Without you, this world would be bitter, bland, tasteless, unpalatable.
But with you, the world is complete and whole and good. You are needed in this world. You are the salt of the earth.
Not every salt is the same. There are different types of salt. I looked online and discovered that there is fine-grained table salt, coarse kosher salt, mineral-rich Himalayan pink salt, and ocean-evaporated sea salts (like flaky Fleur de Sel, which is also called Flor de Sal if it comes from Spain or Mexico). Other varieties of sea salts include grey Celtic Salt, and volcanic Hawaiian Black Salt.
There are also flavored/smoked salts; each offering different textures, flavors, and best uses in cooking, from everyday seasoning to gourmet finishing. (I bet they have a lot of these types of salt at Bloomington Spice Works, another great store we have here in downtown…)
In the same way, Jesus’ disciples came in all different varieties. You have Peter, “The Rock,” who, early on, tended to speak before he thought, but who became a great leader among the disciples. You have James and John, the “sons of thunder;” I always wondered why Jesus thought that nickname was appropriate for them.
You have Matthew, a tax collector, whose past had been one of accommodation to Rome, right there alongside other zealous opponents of Roman rule. How on earth they ever worked together despite those differences is something else I’ve always wondered about.
The point is, the disciples were a group of wildly different people coming from wildly different backgrounds, with wildly different gifts, abilities, and ideas.
By all accounts, it shouldn’t have worked, them working together to build and carry on the movement Jesus started. But it did.
***** I’ve told you before about one of my favorite camp activities: stargazing.
We look at the stars, I point out a few constellations, and then ask campers some questions to help them get an idea of just how incredibly huge our universe is.
Questions like: How long would it take to travel to the moon in a rocket ship? How long would it take to travel to Mars? What about the nearest star? What about the farthest star we could see?
While humans have travelled to the moon, travelling much farther than that is impractical, because of how incredibly long the journey would take. To go to Mars would take about seven months. To go to the nearest stars would take 100,000 years.
In the world of science fiction, we imagine traveling at the speed of light. And who knows, maybe one day we will be able to travel at the speed of light.
If we could do that, a trip to Mars would only take 3 minutes—not 7 months. A trip to the nearest star would take about 8 years—a long time, but much shorter than 100,000 years.
But it would still take 2 million years, traveling at light speed to reach the Andromeda galaxy, which is the closest galaxy out of billions of galaxies in our universe.
I really can’t comprehend these sorts of things, the vast size of the universe, and how many billions of galaxies there are, each one containing billions of star systems…
And the point of all this is to realize that, in this vast universe, God still thought it important that there should be one of YOU. One and only one YOU.
You, the person sitting in a pew at First Christian Church, 401 W Jefferson Street, Bloomington, IL on planet earth, third star of our solar system, in a galaxy filled with stars and solar systems, in a universe filled with billions of galaxies.
Or, you, sitting wherever you are, worshiping with us via livestream…
This universe would not be complete without YOU. It would be lacking you and your unique gifts, skills, and abilities. It would be lacking the unique flavor you bring as a particular type of salt of the earth. It would be lacking the light that God has put inside of you, to illuminate the darkness and make this a brighter, more hopeful world.
***** Sometimes people wonder why God doesn’t do something about the state of the world…
Well, God did do something. God created you: to love this world as only you can.
And when I say that God gave you a unique set of gifts, skills, and abilities, I mean that you should let all those gifts, skills, and abilities shine. Even the parts of you that the world tries to get you to hide.
Some of us were created by God to think differently, feel differently, love differently.
Yet the world tries to get us to hide those parts of us that don’t quite fit with what the world expects of us. The world tries to take the salt out of us, the unique flavor of salt that only we possess.
And we hide the light of our neurodiversity. We hide the light of our sexuality. We hide the light of the uniqueness of our bodies and physical differences.
To shine the light means to be who God created you to be—fully you. When you let your light shine, you allow the world to see your gifts and your beauty.
What if the world doesn’t want to see your gifts and your beauty? What if the world tells you to tone it down a bit? Isn’t that the same thing as telling you to dim your light?
Your light may be too bright for some… You don’t need to shine your light in their eyes so they go blind. But let it shine around them. Let it shine on the path, so they can see a way forward. Shine it gently if you need to…
But let it shine.
As a church, how can we be a community that encourages people to let their light shine? How can we welcome people as they are? How can we help them use their gifts in ways that benefit the world?
I started this series on the Sermon on the Mount last week, with the beatitudes. Those blessings are, in their own way, saying what today’s scripture says: that you are salt and light.
And these blessings, these affirmations, give hope.
And when Jesus speaks these blessings and these affirmations, he’s doing what we in the church should be doing. Providing hope. Hope that can even save lives.
Speaking these words of truth, these blessings and affirmations, is suicide prevention. Jesus is saying to people who are frustrated with their situation (oppressed) or their identity (peasants & artisans, mostly—people devalued by the government and by society, people made to feel they aren’t important, that they are a burden, that they have no power or agency)...
Jesus is saying to them that they do matter, that they are blessed, that God affirms them as they are, and that, in God’s eyes, they are exactly what this world needs: salt and light.
YOU are exactly what this world needs. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
