Fasting, faith, and focus
Commentary
Object:
Bernarr Macfadden, who once had a wide following in North America, said that everybody should fast now and then, if only for the good health that it brings. Today's lectionary reading from Isaiah's prophecy might seem to concur.
We do not seem to know what true fasting is, however. Comedian Dick Gregory, for instance, used to stage hunger strikes in protest of the Vietnam War. The mayor of Cork, Ireland, died of a hunger strike against English rule in the 1920s, giving rise to much larger protests. History repeated itself in the 1980s, when Irish political prisoners in Maze Prison, near Belfast, carried on widely publicized hunger strikes. Several died in their protests against England.
Again, during the days of the Cold War when tension tightened in the old Soviet Union, some of the Jewish people who weren't able to get exit visas went on hunger strikes. The media turned on the spotlights, and the Soviet government was forced to comply.
While it is true that hunger strikes can be powerful tools for peaceful resistance in our societies, especially where they have "religious" motives, biblical fasting is actually something else.
Nor is fasting essentially a form of sacrificing for others. Some social justice organizations call for people to stop eating for a while, and then give the cost for your usual meals to hungry folk elsewhere. While the idea is noble, that is not what fasting is about. But our Old Testament reading today is a great opportunity to bring faith back into focus through fasting. The other readings provide great follow-through.
Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)
In the world of Isaiah's day there were three specific reasons why people fasted. The first was repentance. You fasted because you sinned. You fasted because you did something wrong. You fasted to say to God: "I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!"
Great King David fasted after he did his thing with Bathsheba. He was up on his palace roof one summer's evening. The day had been hot, and he wanted to catch a breeze as the sun set. Then he saw her! Beautiful!
So he arranged to have an affair with her, and he cleared her military husband from the picture in a strategic move of battle. "Send Uriah in on a suicide mission!" he ordered Commander Joab. Next thing you know Bathsheba is living in his house, pregnant as the day is long. He's the king! He can get away with it! It all belongs to him anyway, right?
But kings can stumble and even great kings can sin greatly. When God checked in with David through Nathan the prophet, David collapsed in grief. "What have I done?" he wept. "How did I get myself into this? Where did I sell my soul to turn this corner?"
That's when David fasted. He fell on the floor of his room in prayer and repentance, and he would eat no food until God resolved the matter with him. He knew just how deep sin sinks into our lives and that without the struggles of pain in the body, there is sometimes no struggle of agony in the spirit.
The Bible tells us of other similar fasts. King Ahab fasted in repentance before God after he and Jezebel stole Naboth's reputation, life, and property. The people of Nineveh fasted in repentance to God after Jonah shouted his warning through the city streets. Fasting was even built into the regular rhythm of Israel's life as a nation. There was the annual Day of Atonement, when the whole nation fasted and prayed. They had a sense that it was possible to flit through life too carelessly, without taking stock of the grit of sin that sticks to the soles of our feet, as the writer of Hebrews described it, and the tether of evil that snags our hearts at inopportune moments.
The second reason people fasted in Bible times was to remember. When King Saul and Prince Jonathan died in battle with the Philistines, David, who took up the reins of power, called the nation of Israel to a day of fasting because something tragic had happened. When tragedy strikes only the careless and the cowardly and the callous are unmoved.
Daniel fasted when he remembered the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of his people's homeland. And in Jesus' day there was an annual fast to remember the holocaust that nearly wiped out the Hebrew race when the hordes of Babylon swept down from the hills of Ephraim.
Fasting showed solidarity. Fasting declared shared involvement. Fasting said: "What happened was tragic, and I will not forget the pain of it!"
The third reason people fasted during the times of Isaiah was to rivet attention on God. This is the primary focus of today's passage.
When Queen Esther had to go to her husband, Persian King Xerxes, to plead for the life of her people, she asked her friends to fast with her. She couldn't do something like that without getting in tune with the spiritual dimensions of her soul.
In a similar incident, when Ezra was about to lead a contingent of Jews across the desert wastes to Jerusalem, they prepared well, gathering food for the journey, obtaining letters of legal documentation, and organizing the travel groups. But when they had finished their other preparations they fasted together for several days, riveting their attention on God, whose leading they hoped to follow.
Jesus fasted for forty days before he started his public ministry! Can you imagine that? The very son of God fasted in order to get in touch with his own father!
In Acts 13 we find Paul and Barnabas fasting and praying, and the whole congregation at Antioch with them, in order to find the future direction of the ministry God was calling them to. Fasting helps people get in touch with God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
During the time of the Reformation John Foxe of England was impressed by the testimony of the early Christians. He gleaned the pages of early historical writings, and wrote a book that has become a classic in the church: Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
One story he tells is about an early church leader named Lawrence. Lawrence acted as a pastor for a church community. He also collected the offerings for the poor each week.
A band of thieves found out that Lawrence received the offerings of the people from Sunday to Sunday, so one night as he was out taking a stroll they grabbed him and demanded the money. He told them that he didn't have it, because he had already given it all to the poor. They didn't believe him and told him they would give him a chance to find it. In three days they would come to his house and take from him the treasures of the church.
Three days later they did come. But Lawrence wasn't alone. The house was filled with the people of his congregation. When the thieves demanded the treasures of the church, Lawrence smiled. He opened wide his arms, and gestured to those who sat around him. "Here's the treasure of the church!" he said. "Here's the treasure of God that shines in the world!"
Lawrence was echoing Paul's testimony to the Corinthians.
Matthew 5:13-20
Think of the crowd to which Jesus was speaking. It wasn't a gathering of the United Nations. It wasn't a conference of the superpowers. It wasn't a sitting of Congress or Parliament, or even an assembly at City Hall. It was a crowd on a hillside in a tiny spot of land called Palestine. It was a group of common people with no high ambitions or positions. In fact, they were under occupation! They couldn't make their own laws! They couldn't plan their own futures! They couldn't determine their own destinies! Yet Jesus says to them: "You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world! You make a difference in this society!" It's an amazing assertion, isn't it?
Tony Campolo told about a friend of his who was walking through the midway at a county fair when he met a tiny girl. She was carrying a great big fluff of cotton candy on a stick, almost as large as herself! He said to her, "How can a little girl like you eat all that cotton candy?"
"Well," she said to him, "I'm really much bigger on the inside than I am on the outside!"
That's essentially what Jesus is saying here. "You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!" Why? Because of your great power? Because of your positions in government? Because you are so smart or so strong or so gifted? "No!" Jesus would say. "It's because you belong to me!" On the outside you may seem to be nothing, but on the inside you're as big as the kingdom and the power and the glory of your God! You can make a difference!
"You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!" You can make a difference in life! That's what Jesus says. But he adds a second thing to it. "If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?" asks Jesus. "It's good for nothing, and you throw it out into the streets."
Yet can salt lose its saltiness? Is it really possible for salt to become unsalty?
Not really. Any chemistry teacher will tell you that. Sodium chloride is one of the most stable compounds in the whole of the universe. It doesn't change. It doesn't lose its character.
Still, there is truth to what Jesus is saying. Much of the salt used in Palestine came from the area around the Dead Sea, which, at more than a mile-and-a-half below sea-level, is the lowest land area in the world. The waters of the Sea of Galilee flow into the Jordan River and run down there to the bottom of the earth. Once they get there, it's the end of the line. There's no place to go. The hot desert sun evaporates the water and leaves behind a chunky white powder made up of a combination of salts and minerals.
That powder contains enough salt to season meat or to add a little flavor to soup. For that reason the people of Palestine have always scooped it up to use in trade and in cooking. But the salt is mixed with minerals. It's not pure sodium chloride. Indeed, it is possible, under certain circumstances, with a little dampness in the air, for the salts to be dissolved first and leached away.
You may not notice it. What you have left looks the same, yet the taste is gone, and people throw it out. There may be a little salt left, but it isn't enough to make a difference; so the whole batch is chucked out into the street.
The comparison point Jesus makes, in essence, is that strength is found in community. A single grain of salt may make a slight difference, but it takes the concentration of a cluster of them to make a real impact. Similarly, one disciple with a sense of purpose may make a statement in the world, but it's the community of Christians that turns the world upside down.
It's hard sometimes to imagine just how important community is. We like to think of ourselves as independent and strong, full of personal vitality. Still, the first thing we hear from the lips of someone who is experiencing problems is often "Nobody cares! I'm all alone!"
The community is gone and with it went the power. The strength of their Christianity in testimony and witness has disappeared. When they talk about it they sound tired. They can't be salt anymore. They can't light up their world. They're alone and slowly dying, spiritually.
"You can make a difference!" says Jesus. "But you can do that best together, as a community, like the flicker of a thousand lights in the city on the hill or the powerful taste of a spoonful of salt in the potatoes. You can make a difference together!"
There's a third thing that Jesus tells us in these words. He tells us, "You can make a difference together in the world!"
Besides the power of flavor, there was an even greater strength of salt in the world of Jesus' day. Salt was used to confirm agreements, to seal treaties, and establish covenants. If you ate salt with someone, you became blood relatives. You had a stake in each other's lives. You were part of the same family.
King Abijah, in the Old Testament, reminds the people that they made a "treaty of salt" with David, and therefore they can't break it. The enemies of the Jews in the book of Ezra write a letter to King Artaxerxes of Persia, telling him that they will be his servants forever because they have eaten salt from his treasuries. They are his servants, confirmed by eating his salt.
In Arabic, the word for "salt" is the same word as the word for "treaty." Similarly, in Persian, the word for "traitor" means "someone who is faithless to salt." Not that many years ago this was all proved again in the modern state of Jordan. Informants for the king uncovered an assassination plot and discovered and reported to the king the name of the man who was supposed to kill him.
In response, the king devised an ingenious plan. Rather than sending his soldiers out to arrest the man, foiling the plot with guns and weapons, he invited the traitor to the royal palaces for a dinner! Since it is impossible to refuse a royal invitation, the man was obligated to enter the territory of his mark.
The king made certain that the meal was heavily salted. At that point things changed, because once they had eaten salt together there was a bond between them. The assassin became a brother, and he couldn't kill the king! They had eaten salt together!
Such a picture resonates with what Jesus gives us here. "You are the salt of the earth!" he says. You are the essence of God's relationship with the world around you. The church isn't just a little community off by itself somewhere. It is the confirmation that God still has an interest in our world!
The apostle Peter picks up that same theme (2 Peter 3). He says there is enough evil in society, enough wickedness in our world, for God to let loose the fires of his judgment. But he's not going to do that yet, says Peter, because he has people living throughout the whole world, and they make a difference. They confirm his relationship with his world. They are the salt of the earth!
And, of course, that brings us to the last thing that Jesus says to us here. "You can make a difference together in the world for God!"
It's not enough to be socially active, socially responsible, socially concerned. "Let your light shine before men," says Jesus here, "that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven!" Turn people's thoughts toward God, says Jesus. No mind is truly enlightened until it is flooded with the glory of heaven. No body is truly healed until it is touched by the power of the Creator. No person is truly set free until there is freedom of the Spirit of Christ.
William Carey was a pastor of a small congregation in Leicester, England. In 1792 he preached a powerful sermon called "Expect Great Things from God; Attempt Great Things for God!" People would remember it for years. His message not only moved hearts in his congregation, however; it also came home to challenge Pastor Carey's own soul. The next year he set sail for India and what he did in that country was simply astounding. He began a manufacturing plant to employ jobless workers. He translated the scriptures and set up shops to print them. He established schools for all ages helping people find a better place in society. He provided medical assistance for the diseased and the troubled and the ailing. He was nothing short of a miracle for the people of India.
Why did he do it? Because Jesus told him: "You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!" And when he lay dying, these were his last words: "When I have gone, speak not of Carey but of Carey's Savior."
There was only one reason for it all: "... that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven!"
Application
There's a marvelous little story tucked away in the pages of Edward Gibbon's seven-volume work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It tells about a humble little monk named Telemachus living out in the farming regions of Asia.
Telemachus had no great ambitions in life. He loved his little garden and tilled it through the changing seasons. But one day in the year 391 he felt a sense of urgency, a call of God's direction in his life. Although he didn't know why, he felt that God wanted him to go to Rome, the heart and soul of the empire. In fact, the feelings of such a call frightened him, but he went anyway, praying along the way for God's direction.
When he finally got to the city it was in an uproar! The armies of Rome had just come home from the battlefield in victory, and the crowds were turning out for a great celebration. They flowed through the streets like a tidal wave, and Telemachus was caught in their frenzy and carried into the Colosseum.
He had never seen a gladiator contest before, but now his heart sickened. Down in the arena men hacked at each other with swords and clubs. The crowds roared at the sight of blood and urged their favorites on to the death.
Telemachus couldn't stand it. He knew it was wrong; this wasn't the way God wanted people to live or to die. So little Telemachus worked his way through the crowds to the wall down by the arena. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he shouted.
Nobody heard him, so he crawled up onto the wall and shouted again: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" This time the few who heard him only laughed. But Telemachus was not to be ignored. He jumped into the arena and ran through the sands toward the gladiators. "In the name of Christ, forbear!"
The crowds laughed at the silly little man and threw stones at him. Telemachus, however, was on a mission. He threw himself between two gladiators to stop their fighting. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he cried.
They hacked him apart! They cut his body from shoulder to stomach, and he fell onto the sand with the blood running out of his life.
The gladiators were stunned and stopped to watch him die. Then the crowds fell back in silence, and for a moment no one in the Colosseum moved. Telemachus' final words rang in their memories: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" At last they moved, slowly at first, but growing in numbers. The masses of Rome filed out of the Colosseum that day, and the historian Theodoret reports that never again was a gladiator contest held there! All because of the witness and the testimony of a single Christian!
An Alternative Application
Isaiah58:1-9a (9b-12). Why should any of us fast? The word of the Lord through Isaiah suggests at least two reasons. The first is this: When I fast, I declare the religious truth that I am not merely a consumer. There's something more to me than just my appetites.
There's nothing wrong with wealth. But the danger of our society is to say that if you can afford something you like, you deserve to have it! You need to buy it!
Why are we "consumers"? Isn't it because the strength of our passions is so great? We desire, so we take! We want, and we have the wherewithal to make it happen, so we do! We're hungry, so we eat!
But fasting stops us. Fasting puts the brakes on. Fasting pulls us up short, because there is no greater craving of our souls than the hunger for food. Our days are organized around it: our coffee breaks, our lunch breaks, our supper hour, and our snacks. Our lives are organized around eating.
Only when we stop eating for a while do we make a religious statement. We say that there is more to us than just our appetites. There's something left of our wills. There's something bigger about our spirits.
Can you wear less than you can afford? Can you drive less than you have the means to buy? Can you develop a relationship with someone else without jumping into bed before marriage? Can you do it?
You won't know until you've tested your soul the way that fasting tests the hunger of your body. You and I are gripped with powerful diseases of the flesh beyond which we're often willing to admit, and the medicine of fasting is one way to check out just how deep the cancer cuts.
There's a second reason why we need to fast: We fast in order to find the contours of our personalities.
Who are you? Do you know? Yes, you are your ambitions. Yes, you are your abilities. Yes, you're even your relationships.
But you are also your no!'s. You and I are found, at least in part, in the no!'s of our lives. G.K. Chesterton put it this way: "Art and morality have this in common -- they both know where to draw the lines!"
When you know where to draw the lines on the picture, it begins to have beauty and meaning. When you know where to draw the lines on a building, it begins to have definition and purpose. And when you know where to draw the line in your life, you begin to have character.
The person who will stop at nothing will say yes! to anything! The man who has no limits also has no identity of his own. He robs it from the victims of his cruelties! The woman who doesn't know how to say no! will never be able to say yes! to the things in life that matter most. And the child who isn't taught the boundaries of behavior grows up to be an adult without a conscience.
But lines are hard to draw, and character is difficult to fashion. Limits are tough to set, especially when society laughs at the pointlessness of it all.
Fasting is a spiritual discipline that takes us back to our roots and sets us down in the company of the great ones of the past teaching us the mastery of God over self and helps us find our way back home. Our identity is found, at least in great measure, exactly at the points in our lives where we will say no. The yes! of my life falls precisely within the limits of my no!, and fasting will test those limits for me.
Some years ago People magazine interviewed Dolly Parton. At one point the interviewer asked, "Where do you ever get such a strong character?"
Dolly said it came from her family and her Christian faith. "I quote the Bible real good!" she said.
What about psychiatry asked the interviewer? So many people find the need to get counseling, especially in the stresses of show business.
"No," replied Dolly, "I don't see a psychiatrist. I fast instead."
You what?
"I fast!"
Is that like a diet?
"No!" said Dolly. "I do it to get in touch with God! Sometimes I'll... fast 7, 14, or 21 days... I don't drink nothing but water and I don't ever say when I'm on a fast -- scripture says you're not supposed to" (People, January 19, 1981).
Then she went on to say that she's never made a major decision without fasting and prayer. The interviewer was astounded, so much so that she made a point of it in the article.
But the truth of it remains: God expects us to fast, and when we do we find the contours of our souls. We find the definition of our characters. We find out who we really are.
We do not seem to know what true fasting is, however. Comedian Dick Gregory, for instance, used to stage hunger strikes in protest of the Vietnam War. The mayor of Cork, Ireland, died of a hunger strike against English rule in the 1920s, giving rise to much larger protests. History repeated itself in the 1980s, when Irish political prisoners in Maze Prison, near Belfast, carried on widely publicized hunger strikes. Several died in their protests against England.
Again, during the days of the Cold War when tension tightened in the old Soviet Union, some of the Jewish people who weren't able to get exit visas went on hunger strikes. The media turned on the spotlights, and the Soviet government was forced to comply.
While it is true that hunger strikes can be powerful tools for peaceful resistance in our societies, especially where they have "religious" motives, biblical fasting is actually something else.
Nor is fasting essentially a form of sacrificing for others. Some social justice organizations call for people to stop eating for a while, and then give the cost for your usual meals to hungry folk elsewhere. While the idea is noble, that is not what fasting is about. But our Old Testament reading today is a great opportunity to bring faith back into focus through fasting. The other readings provide great follow-through.
Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)
In the world of Isaiah's day there were three specific reasons why people fasted. The first was repentance. You fasted because you sinned. You fasted because you did something wrong. You fasted to say to God: "I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!"
Great King David fasted after he did his thing with Bathsheba. He was up on his palace roof one summer's evening. The day had been hot, and he wanted to catch a breeze as the sun set. Then he saw her! Beautiful!
So he arranged to have an affair with her, and he cleared her military husband from the picture in a strategic move of battle. "Send Uriah in on a suicide mission!" he ordered Commander Joab. Next thing you know Bathsheba is living in his house, pregnant as the day is long. He's the king! He can get away with it! It all belongs to him anyway, right?
But kings can stumble and even great kings can sin greatly. When God checked in with David through Nathan the prophet, David collapsed in grief. "What have I done?" he wept. "How did I get myself into this? Where did I sell my soul to turn this corner?"
That's when David fasted. He fell on the floor of his room in prayer and repentance, and he would eat no food until God resolved the matter with him. He knew just how deep sin sinks into our lives and that without the struggles of pain in the body, there is sometimes no struggle of agony in the spirit.
The Bible tells us of other similar fasts. King Ahab fasted in repentance before God after he and Jezebel stole Naboth's reputation, life, and property. The people of Nineveh fasted in repentance to God after Jonah shouted his warning through the city streets. Fasting was even built into the regular rhythm of Israel's life as a nation. There was the annual Day of Atonement, when the whole nation fasted and prayed. They had a sense that it was possible to flit through life too carelessly, without taking stock of the grit of sin that sticks to the soles of our feet, as the writer of Hebrews described it, and the tether of evil that snags our hearts at inopportune moments.
The second reason people fasted in Bible times was to remember. When King Saul and Prince Jonathan died in battle with the Philistines, David, who took up the reins of power, called the nation of Israel to a day of fasting because something tragic had happened. When tragedy strikes only the careless and the cowardly and the callous are unmoved.
Daniel fasted when he remembered the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of his people's homeland. And in Jesus' day there was an annual fast to remember the holocaust that nearly wiped out the Hebrew race when the hordes of Babylon swept down from the hills of Ephraim.
Fasting showed solidarity. Fasting declared shared involvement. Fasting said: "What happened was tragic, and I will not forget the pain of it!"
The third reason people fasted during the times of Isaiah was to rivet attention on God. This is the primary focus of today's passage.
When Queen Esther had to go to her husband, Persian King Xerxes, to plead for the life of her people, she asked her friends to fast with her. She couldn't do something like that without getting in tune with the spiritual dimensions of her soul.
In a similar incident, when Ezra was about to lead a contingent of Jews across the desert wastes to Jerusalem, they prepared well, gathering food for the journey, obtaining letters of legal documentation, and organizing the travel groups. But when they had finished their other preparations they fasted together for several days, riveting their attention on God, whose leading they hoped to follow.
Jesus fasted for forty days before he started his public ministry! Can you imagine that? The very son of God fasted in order to get in touch with his own father!
In Acts 13 we find Paul and Barnabas fasting and praying, and the whole congregation at Antioch with them, in order to find the future direction of the ministry God was calling them to. Fasting helps people get in touch with God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
During the time of the Reformation John Foxe of England was impressed by the testimony of the early Christians. He gleaned the pages of early historical writings, and wrote a book that has become a classic in the church: Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
One story he tells is about an early church leader named Lawrence. Lawrence acted as a pastor for a church community. He also collected the offerings for the poor each week.
A band of thieves found out that Lawrence received the offerings of the people from Sunday to Sunday, so one night as he was out taking a stroll they grabbed him and demanded the money. He told them that he didn't have it, because he had already given it all to the poor. They didn't believe him and told him they would give him a chance to find it. In three days they would come to his house and take from him the treasures of the church.
Three days later they did come. But Lawrence wasn't alone. The house was filled with the people of his congregation. When the thieves demanded the treasures of the church, Lawrence smiled. He opened wide his arms, and gestured to those who sat around him. "Here's the treasure of the church!" he said. "Here's the treasure of God that shines in the world!"
Lawrence was echoing Paul's testimony to the Corinthians.
Matthew 5:13-20
Think of the crowd to which Jesus was speaking. It wasn't a gathering of the United Nations. It wasn't a conference of the superpowers. It wasn't a sitting of Congress or Parliament, or even an assembly at City Hall. It was a crowd on a hillside in a tiny spot of land called Palestine. It was a group of common people with no high ambitions or positions. In fact, they were under occupation! They couldn't make their own laws! They couldn't plan their own futures! They couldn't determine their own destinies! Yet Jesus says to them: "You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world! You make a difference in this society!" It's an amazing assertion, isn't it?
Tony Campolo told about a friend of his who was walking through the midway at a county fair when he met a tiny girl. She was carrying a great big fluff of cotton candy on a stick, almost as large as herself! He said to her, "How can a little girl like you eat all that cotton candy?"
"Well," she said to him, "I'm really much bigger on the inside than I am on the outside!"
That's essentially what Jesus is saying here. "You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!" Why? Because of your great power? Because of your positions in government? Because you are so smart or so strong or so gifted? "No!" Jesus would say. "It's because you belong to me!" On the outside you may seem to be nothing, but on the inside you're as big as the kingdom and the power and the glory of your God! You can make a difference!
"You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!" You can make a difference in life! That's what Jesus says. But he adds a second thing to it. "If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?" asks Jesus. "It's good for nothing, and you throw it out into the streets."
Yet can salt lose its saltiness? Is it really possible for salt to become unsalty?
Not really. Any chemistry teacher will tell you that. Sodium chloride is one of the most stable compounds in the whole of the universe. It doesn't change. It doesn't lose its character.
Still, there is truth to what Jesus is saying. Much of the salt used in Palestine came from the area around the Dead Sea, which, at more than a mile-and-a-half below sea-level, is the lowest land area in the world. The waters of the Sea of Galilee flow into the Jordan River and run down there to the bottom of the earth. Once they get there, it's the end of the line. There's no place to go. The hot desert sun evaporates the water and leaves behind a chunky white powder made up of a combination of salts and minerals.
That powder contains enough salt to season meat or to add a little flavor to soup. For that reason the people of Palestine have always scooped it up to use in trade and in cooking. But the salt is mixed with minerals. It's not pure sodium chloride. Indeed, it is possible, under certain circumstances, with a little dampness in the air, for the salts to be dissolved first and leached away.
You may not notice it. What you have left looks the same, yet the taste is gone, and people throw it out. There may be a little salt left, but it isn't enough to make a difference; so the whole batch is chucked out into the street.
The comparison point Jesus makes, in essence, is that strength is found in community. A single grain of salt may make a slight difference, but it takes the concentration of a cluster of them to make a real impact. Similarly, one disciple with a sense of purpose may make a statement in the world, but it's the community of Christians that turns the world upside down.
It's hard sometimes to imagine just how important community is. We like to think of ourselves as independent and strong, full of personal vitality. Still, the first thing we hear from the lips of someone who is experiencing problems is often "Nobody cares! I'm all alone!"
The community is gone and with it went the power. The strength of their Christianity in testimony and witness has disappeared. When they talk about it they sound tired. They can't be salt anymore. They can't light up their world. They're alone and slowly dying, spiritually.
"You can make a difference!" says Jesus. "But you can do that best together, as a community, like the flicker of a thousand lights in the city on the hill or the powerful taste of a spoonful of salt in the potatoes. You can make a difference together!"
There's a third thing that Jesus tells us in these words. He tells us, "You can make a difference together in the world!"
Besides the power of flavor, there was an even greater strength of salt in the world of Jesus' day. Salt was used to confirm agreements, to seal treaties, and establish covenants. If you ate salt with someone, you became blood relatives. You had a stake in each other's lives. You were part of the same family.
King Abijah, in the Old Testament, reminds the people that they made a "treaty of salt" with David, and therefore they can't break it. The enemies of the Jews in the book of Ezra write a letter to King Artaxerxes of Persia, telling him that they will be his servants forever because they have eaten salt from his treasuries. They are his servants, confirmed by eating his salt.
In Arabic, the word for "salt" is the same word as the word for "treaty." Similarly, in Persian, the word for "traitor" means "someone who is faithless to salt." Not that many years ago this was all proved again in the modern state of Jordan. Informants for the king uncovered an assassination plot and discovered and reported to the king the name of the man who was supposed to kill him.
In response, the king devised an ingenious plan. Rather than sending his soldiers out to arrest the man, foiling the plot with guns and weapons, he invited the traitor to the royal palaces for a dinner! Since it is impossible to refuse a royal invitation, the man was obligated to enter the territory of his mark.
The king made certain that the meal was heavily salted. At that point things changed, because once they had eaten salt together there was a bond between them. The assassin became a brother, and he couldn't kill the king! They had eaten salt together!
Such a picture resonates with what Jesus gives us here. "You are the salt of the earth!" he says. You are the essence of God's relationship with the world around you. The church isn't just a little community off by itself somewhere. It is the confirmation that God still has an interest in our world!
The apostle Peter picks up that same theme (2 Peter 3). He says there is enough evil in society, enough wickedness in our world, for God to let loose the fires of his judgment. But he's not going to do that yet, says Peter, because he has people living throughout the whole world, and they make a difference. They confirm his relationship with his world. They are the salt of the earth!
And, of course, that brings us to the last thing that Jesus says to us here. "You can make a difference together in the world for God!"
It's not enough to be socially active, socially responsible, socially concerned. "Let your light shine before men," says Jesus here, "that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven!" Turn people's thoughts toward God, says Jesus. No mind is truly enlightened until it is flooded with the glory of heaven. No body is truly healed until it is touched by the power of the Creator. No person is truly set free until there is freedom of the Spirit of Christ.
William Carey was a pastor of a small congregation in Leicester, England. In 1792 he preached a powerful sermon called "Expect Great Things from God; Attempt Great Things for God!" People would remember it for years. His message not only moved hearts in his congregation, however; it also came home to challenge Pastor Carey's own soul. The next year he set sail for India and what he did in that country was simply astounding. He began a manufacturing plant to employ jobless workers. He translated the scriptures and set up shops to print them. He established schools for all ages helping people find a better place in society. He provided medical assistance for the diseased and the troubled and the ailing. He was nothing short of a miracle for the people of India.
Why did he do it? Because Jesus told him: "You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!" And when he lay dying, these were his last words: "When I have gone, speak not of Carey but of Carey's Savior."
There was only one reason for it all: "... that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven!"
Application
There's a marvelous little story tucked away in the pages of Edward Gibbon's seven-volume work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It tells about a humble little monk named Telemachus living out in the farming regions of Asia.
Telemachus had no great ambitions in life. He loved his little garden and tilled it through the changing seasons. But one day in the year 391 he felt a sense of urgency, a call of God's direction in his life. Although he didn't know why, he felt that God wanted him to go to Rome, the heart and soul of the empire. In fact, the feelings of such a call frightened him, but he went anyway, praying along the way for God's direction.
When he finally got to the city it was in an uproar! The armies of Rome had just come home from the battlefield in victory, and the crowds were turning out for a great celebration. They flowed through the streets like a tidal wave, and Telemachus was caught in their frenzy and carried into the Colosseum.
He had never seen a gladiator contest before, but now his heart sickened. Down in the arena men hacked at each other with swords and clubs. The crowds roared at the sight of blood and urged their favorites on to the death.
Telemachus couldn't stand it. He knew it was wrong; this wasn't the way God wanted people to live or to die. So little Telemachus worked his way through the crowds to the wall down by the arena. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he shouted.
Nobody heard him, so he crawled up onto the wall and shouted again: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" This time the few who heard him only laughed. But Telemachus was not to be ignored. He jumped into the arena and ran through the sands toward the gladiators. "In the name of Christ, forbear!"
The crowds laughed at the silly little man and threw stones at him. Telemachus, however, was on a mission. He threw himself between two gladiators to stop their fighting. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he cried.
They hacked him apart! They cut his body from shoulder to stomach, and he fell onto the sand with the blood running out of his life.
The gladiators were stunned and stopped to watch him die. Then the crowds fell back in silence, and for a moment no one in the Colosseum moved. Telemachus' final words rang in their memories: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" At last they moved, slowly at first, but growing in numbers. The masses of Rome filed out of the Colosseum that day, and the historian Theodoret reports that never again was a gladiator contest held there! All because of the witness and the testimony of a single Christian!
An Alternative Application
Isaiah58:1-9a (9b-12). Why should any of us fast? The word of the Lord through Isaiah suggests at least two reasons. The first is this: When I fast, I declare the religious truth that I am not merely a consumer. There's something more to me than just my appetites.
There's nothing wrong with wealth. But the danger of our society is to say that if you can afford something you like, you deserve to have it! You need to buy it!
Why are we "consumers"? Isn't it because the strength of our passions is so great? We desire, so we take! We want, and we have the wherewithal to make it happen, so we do! We're hungry, so we eat!
But fasting stops us. Fasting puts the brakes on. Fasting pulls us up short, because there is no greater craving of our souls than the hunger for food. Our days are organized around it: our coffee breaks, our lunch breaks, our supper hour, and our snacks. Our lives are organized around eating.
Only when we stop eating for a while do we make a religious statement. We say that there is more to us than just our appetites. There's something left of our wills. There's something bigger about our spirits.
Can you wear less than you can afford? Can you drive less than you have the means to buy? Can you develop a relationship with someone else without jumping into bed before marriage? Can you do it?
You won't know until you've tested your soul the way that fasting tests the hunger of your body. You and I are gripped with powerful diseases of the flesh beyond which we're often willing to admit, and the medicine of fasting is one way to check out just how deep the cancer cuts.
There's a second reason why we need to fast: We fast in order to find the contours of our personalities.
Who are you? Do you know? Yes, you are your ambitions. Yes, you are your abilities. Yes, you're even your relationships.
But you are also your no!'s. You and I are found, at least in part, in the no!'s of our lives. G.K. Chesterton put it this way: "Art and morality have this in common -- they both know where to draw the lines!"
When you know where to draw the lines on the picture, it begins to have beauty and meaning. When you know where to draw the lines on a building, it begins to have definition and purpose. And when you know where to draw the line in your life, you begin to have character.
The person who will stop at nothing will say yes! to anything! The man who has no limits also has no identity of his own. He robs it from the victims of his cruelties! The woman who doesn't know how to say no! will never be able to say yes! to the things in life that matter most. And the child who isn't taught the boundaries of behavior grows up to be an adult without a conscience.
But lines are hard to draw, and character is difficult to fashion. Limits are tough to set, especially when society laughs at the pointlessness of it all.
Fasting is a spiritual discipline that takes us back to our roots and sets us down in the company of the great ones of the past teaching us the mastery of God over self and helps us find our way back home. Our identity is found, at least in great measure, exactly at the points in our lives where we will say no. The yes! of my life falls precisely within the limits of my no!, and fasting will test those limits for me.
Some years ago People magazine interviewed Dolly Parton. At one point the interviewer asked, "Where do you ever get such a strong character?"
Dolly said it came from her family and her Christian faith. "I quote the Bible real good!" she said.
What about psychiatry asked the interviewer? So many people find the need to get counseling, especially in the stresses of show business.
"No," replied Dolly, "I don't see a psychiatrist. I fast instead."
You what?
"I fast!"
Is that like a diet?
"No!" said Dolly. "I do it to get in touch with God! Sometimes I'll... fast 7, 14, or 21 days... I don't drink nothing but water and I don't ever say when I'm on a fast -- scripture says you're not supposed to" (People, January 19, 1981).
Then she went on to say that she's never made a major decision without fasting and prayer. The interviewer was astounded, so much so that she made a point of it in the article.
But the truth of it remains: God expects us to fast, and when we do we find the contours of our souls. We find the definition of our characters. We find out who we really are.
