Re-charge Bible Study: Lessons from the Sermon on the Mount: Salt

The Full Monty:

Matthew 5:1-7:29 To read if you have time to take-in the whole story.

The Continental Option:

Matthew 5:13-20 Read this if you only have time for a few, key verses.

One Shot Espresso:

Matthew 5:13 ‘What good is salt if it has lost its flavour? Can you make it salty again?’ 

In-flight refuelling

You’ve probably never heard of Sir Alan Cobham. I hadn’t either, until I stumbled on him while wandering through Wikipedia. The terms ‘probe-and-drogue’ and ‘grappledline looped-hose’ were also unknown to me, but, along with Sir Alan, they are vital to the history of in-flight refuelling. This is the technique by which a plane can fly further and for longer by being refuelled from another aircraft in mid-air. The techniques were developed during experiments as early as the 1920s and are now standard practice for military aircraft. Mid-air refuelling, simply put, means that you get refuelled without having to land. You can continue on your journey, but with a whole new lease of life.

This wasn’t a metaphor available to Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, but it seems a fair approximation of his take on salt and saltiness. Salt, like aircraft fuel, runs out of power after extended use. It loses its effectiveness. It ceases to fuel personal and social change. If you can’t find a way to recharge it, you will, in due course, lose your flavour - or if you’re Alan Cobham, drop out of the sky. How do you re-fuel in mid-flight? How can tasteless salt be reinvigorated? This is a question relevant to all involved in ministry. Our leadership is about giving-out. We serve. We love. We do our best for others. But what if, in doing so, we run short on fuel? How can we regain our strength?

The answer Jesus offers is contextual. The Sermon on the Mount is his response to the problem of refuelling. What can we learn from this great sermon about our own needs to be tanked-up mid-flight?

Your salt is what you are, not what you do

The greatest danger in ministry is that we come to define ourselves by what we do. Our skills and actions, our competencies, become our calling card. But the flavour we bring to the party doesn’t come from what we do; it comes from who we are. Your skills are the vehicles by which you share yourself

with others, but the fuel tank is buried much deeper. It is within you. If the Sermon on the Mount is nothing else, it is a call to give attention to your inner life. What proportion of your time is given to your personal development? What have you learned in the past 12 months? How have you changed? These questions get harder to answer the further you move on in ministry. The model we have grown used to comes from several centuries of university education: invest your early years in learning to maximise your earnings in later years. We fill up our tanks with training and hope it will sustain a lifelong journey. This model was never entirely satisfactory and is now completely broken, not least because the world you work in will have completely changed within five years of you qualifying. A fast-moving culture demands continual personal growth. You won’t survive in ministry today without a plan for in-flight refuelling. What rhythms do you have in place for own ongoing growth?

You can’t give out what you haven’t taken in

Continual personal development also calls for continued learning. We need to be regularly re-salted. The Sermon on the Mount is an object lesson in the renewal of learning. Jesus revisits key themes of Jewish law and history, touching on ideas familiar to his audience. But in every case he takes them somewhere new. Let’s shift our focus, he says, from the fruit of behaviour to its roots: why do you do the things you do? Let’s look not at the letter of God’s law but at its purpose. What does God want from you?

The sermon is both faithful to tradition and radical in application. I haven’t come to change the script, Jesus says, but to fulfil it. Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is credited with fulfilling the promise of Psalm 78: ‘I will speak to you in parables. I will explain things hidden since the creation of the world.’ The Psalm is about renewing the story of God in each new generation: not so that they will be like their parents, but so that they won’t! The very goal of our calling in passing on God’s story is to see it re-framed and renewed in each generation. How can we be involved in such work unless we ourselves are open to fresh truth? If we are not receiving new insights into the character of God, how can we inspire them in others? The Sermon on the Mount demonstrates that the truths of God are never static. There is movement, growth and development in God’s story. To speak of God as unchanging is to celebrate his character. He is faithful. He will always be to us the loving parent he has promised to be. But in the application of his truth to our lives, in the shaping of culture, he is anything but unchanging. We need continual re-training if we are to keep up with the Holy Spirit in his work. What opportunities do you have to learn anew what God requires of you? How are you refreshing your approach to his truth and to your ministry?

Re-salting has to be intentional

The analogy of in-air refuelling is helpful in making saltiness our focus. Unless you plan for re-fuelling, the chances are you won’t achieve it. Staying salty requires time and resources. The energy you give to continual re-training will be energy you cannot, at the same time, give to others. There will be times of stopping; times of taking stock. Perhaps you need to do this every week, or every month. Perhaps there is a greater need: a call to lay down tools for a season in order to re-salt your life and work. The Sermon on the Mount is God’s gift to you. It tells you that time invested in re-salting isn’t wasted; that your development matters. It gives you permission to re-fuel. There are rhythms of prayer implied in the sermon to help you know if you are coming to a pit-stop. Do you need the courage to admit that you need input? Is it time to refuel for a new season?

When Jesus once suggested that getting some people to repent was like squeezing a camel through a needle’s eye, his disciples were shocked. How can anyone be saved, they asked, if it’s so hard? Jesus told them not to worry. This may seem impossible to you, he said, but God is in the business of making the impossible possible. The same is true here. Jesus’ first audience would have heard his salt question as rhetorical - you can’t squeeze flavour back into dead salt. You may as well throw it away. But God is in the business of doing the impossible. Even if you’re flavourless, burned-out and as dry as dust, he can renew you. Even if the culture appears to have run away with you, even if the young people you are now meeting seem to come from a planet that didn’t exist when you trained, even if the questions they are asking overwhelm you. You can be re-salted. God’s dream for you is renewal; saltiness; flavour. He wants to re-fuel you. Will you let him slow you long enough to try?

TAKE AWAY

Two easily-digestible tweet-sized bites

THOUGHT: God has never planned for you to fill up once on fuel then start flying. You will only get where he is sending you if you can find a way to stop, en-route, for fuel. What actions is God urging you to take for your own re-salting?

PRAYER : Where my taste is dull, re-salt me God. Where my energy is low, re-fuel me God. Renew, reset, revitalise me. Reboot me for the journey still to come.