Blog

Reading in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘You are the salt of the earth….but if the salt has lost its savour…….it fails to be salt.

.

In a culture that celebrates, even adulates, success, it can be devastating to fail. Young people aiming for University, or a career opportunity, have their life chances calculated on unforgiving exam grades. Hard working people, in all kinds of jobs, are evaluated, assessed, reviewed, all on the basis of ‘development’, or efficiency, or value for money to the organisation. Elderly people whose lives have been spent believing that National Insurance contributions and income tax would ensure a modest but sufficient income for everyone in later years, face means tested supplements. Schools fail, companies fail, social services fail, football teams fail. Fail. The word is loaded with negativity, unrelentingly judgemental, betraying a view of life that majors on performance and function, rather than on human growth and fulfilment.

One of the temptations the church faces at a time when it is seeming to lack presence and impact on the lives of ordinary people, is to try to be what it isn’t, in order to succeed, in order not to be seen to fail. The irony is, when the church buys into the values and attitudes of the surrounding culture in the search for success, it is the more likely to fail where and when it matters most; in its mission as the body of Christ in the world. Core values of the Christian community such as peacemaking, forgiveness, loving acceptance, justice-seeking and identity with the vulnerable, each provide correctives, alternatives, reminders, and yes even counter-arguments, to the assumptions and values of our success addicted  society.

.

Salt is now regarded as a health risk. Too much of it in our food and we are asking for trouble. But when it comes to human community, the cultural and  social world in which we all live, the problem isn’t too much salt, it’s too little, far too little. ‘You are the salt of the earth’, Jesus told his followers. Salt used medically in past days to cleanse open wounds, causes pain as it cleans. It is astringent, it hurts so much that part of us might prefer to take our chances with infection. Salt as a seasoning or preservative stops food from going off. In the absence of freezers, vacuum packing, and tins, people of Jesus’ day knew the importance of salt. Whether used medically or in the kitchen, salt only works if it hangs on to it’s saltness, its essential character and flavour.

Likewise the church. ‘If the salt has lost its savour it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out’. Amongst the most reported performance indicators demonstrating the failure of the church are falling attendances, closing down buildings, mounting deficits, shortage of ministers and leaders, a burgeoning supermarket of spiritual alternatives. Who knows what the future holds in the light of such signs of institutional failure.

That such crisis indicators need radical thinking and even more radical action is obvious. Perhaps the most radical response of all, though, is for the Christian community to recover its saltiness, its astringent quality of creative critique. In a society that worships success and condemns failure, to go back to the core truth of the faith, Christ crucified, is to regain saltiness. The idea that the power of God was revealed in suffering love, in the shame of public failure, in order to demonstrate once and for all God’s love for the powerless, the vulnerable, the people who struggle with the cost and failures of their lives, is unbelievable, incredible, and for Christians, true. In the power of that truth, whatever the future for the institutional church, Jesus still calls his followers to be the salt of the earth, those for whom failure is not final, and whose judgement of others is not performance related, but on the dignity of each human being as a child of God.

.

The picture is of an antique saltshaker – (one description of the church in a success driven world – antique saltshaker? Hmmm?) You can see more of these over here at the atique saltshaker site

Can you be a Christian and drive a car?

Of course you can.

Can you be a good Christian and drive a car ?

Well, sometimes.

I have a theory about driving as a Christian’s moral training ground to see if we’re serious, practical and non-selective about Jesus’ teaching.

When someone makes a mistake, instead of light-flashing and horn sounding, you forgive as you hope to be forgiven. When someone is about to reverse into the same parking space as you intend to take, your parking space, let the last be first.  If someone cuts in and makes you slow down, be slow to anger. If the person at the petrol pump is taking an inordinate amount of time to fill up, then buys half the garage shop before joining the long queue to pay by card to the one attendant, do not worry, because, as I have proved, it doesn’t add a single inch to your stature.

Well, I can wish. But the way people drive their cars is a fairly accurate index of  their attitude to other people. How is it that calm, pleasant, community-conscious people get behind a steering wheel and are transformed into aggressive, abusive liabilities? Has it something to do with the way a car cuts us off from real contact, and face to face relationships? In the privacy of the car we don’t have to take the other person seriously as the human being they are.

The old-fashioned word courtesy describes an attitude that I think at its root is Christian. In fact it was used by Julian of Norwich to describe God. It means to respect and to love, to treat kindly and considerately, to look after the interests of the other person. So when those lit up motorway signs say optimistically to the hurtling traffic – or grid-locked commuters -‘Be a courteous driver’ – I wonder if their script writer had read Julian of Norwich. Nah!

I still wonder though if Christians are more considerate, courteous drivers? Does the Gospel make a difference to my road manners? It should. Used to be a bumper sticker that said ‘Honk if you love Jesus’. How about a more radical one, ‘Don’t honk if you love Jesus’.