Fifth Sunday inOrdinary Time
February 6, 2005


What is the most difficult food that you have eaten?

visual – take two pieces of bread out of a loaf of bread, open a can of Morton Salt and pile it over the bread, put the second piece on top, and bring it to my mouth…)
Have you ever eaten a salt sandwich? …mmm yummy. We just don’t do that, do we?

It doesn’t happen because salt doesn’t work by itself. The purpose of salt in food is to enhance the flavor of the food. Not to stand out on it’s own, but to make what is there more flavorful. [I remember one time blindly salting some of my mom’s chow mein –that she had already over salted… woof… It makes this sandwich look appealing. And I had to eat it… I never salted again until I had tasted the food first) Salt does it’s thing while being invisible. It works best by drawing attention away from itself.

You are the salt of the earth. And because of that, guess what, folks? It’s not about you. It’s not about you. Nor is it about me. It is about what happens between us. It is about what we flavor- the relationships we enter into and lives we pour ourselves out in. It is about being what Isaiah hinted at today – sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed, clothing the naked, not turning your back on your own. Those are all descriptions of what happens between and among us. So, it is not about us at all, but about the loving and the giving.

Salt becomes useful only when it is mixed with other things. We are not plain salt, Jesus tells us. We are salt of the earth. We should be mixed up with the reality that is around us. The place where we flavor things, where we work on things is right here in Normandy Missouri, in the Bellerive Residence hall, in Seton and Villa and LaGras residences, in our classrooms and apartments and all the places where we live and move… This is what we are salt for.

Perhaps another way to hear this truth comes from the latest piece of internet ‘wisdom’ that has been sent to me at least 10 times. It is a story about a wise mother and her adolescent daughter who was struggling through a lot of hardship and issues. “Come with me. So they went into the kitchen. Without another word, she put three small pots on the stove, each filled with water. Into one she put a carrot, an egg and some coffee beans. Then she let them boil for twenty minutes. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what you see."
"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?" Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity, boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water. The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. "Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond?

Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?" Or as Jesus would ask – are you salt for the earth and light for the world? If so, then there is work to be done…