Being Salt and Light

My apologies in advance. Sometimes I get distracted by something I find interesting. This is one of those times.

I stumbled across a phrase in the Old Testament. Two passages, actually. One in Numbers, one in Chronicles. Both referencing something called “covenant of salt.” I went down the rabbit hole. Not just reading the passages themselves but trying to understand what they meant, why salt, what salt was even doing in ancient Scripture. It didn’t make sense to me at first.

What I found is that salt has a layered and complicated presence in Scripture. It shows up in sacrificial offerings, in purification rites, in the language God uses when he wants to describe something that holds. Scholars who study these texts note that when God wanted to communicate the permanence of his most enduring commitments, the ones that wouldn’t shift or become something different over time, he reached for salt as the language. Not because salt is dramatic. Because salt was the ancient world’s most reliable picture of something that preserves, that purifies, that keeps things from falling apart.

I want to be careful about overstating this. I am not a biblical scholar, and the connection between these Old Testament passages and what Jesus says in Matthew 5 is something scholars find interesting but don’t all agree on. What I can say is that something about this language stopped me. And I found myself wondering if it was humming somewhere underneath the words of Jesus on that hillside, when he sits down, looks at his disciples and the crowds gathered around him, and says this.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

I’ll just say I want there to be a connection between all of this. I want that connection to be about healing and love. I want it to mean something about the kind of presence we are called to be for each other in a world that is, if you haven’t noticed, desperately in need of both.

John Wesley devoted an entire sermon to these verses, and his central claim was one I keep returning to. Christianity, he said, is essentially a social religion. To turn it into a solitary one is to destroy it. Salt only does what salt does through contact. It cannot season from a distance. It has to be present, embedded, actually touching what it is meant to affect.

And then he said something that has stayed with me. Love cannot be hidden any more than light. Which means salt and light aren’t really two separate things Jesus is asking of us. They’re the same thing described two ways. The quiet, embedded, faithful presence that heals and seasons, that’s salt. And when that love becomes visible, when it starts to show in what we do and how we show up, that’s the light. One doesn’t switch off when the other turns on. They come from the same source. Wesley even says the light isn’t something we generate. It’s something we stop covering up.

So, when Jesus says you are (not you should try to become, not you might eventually be), he’s saying something about what is already true, waiting to be lived out.

This is where I get tangled up. I so want to be the salt of the earth. I want to be a healing presence to people in this terribly divided and hurting world. I want the love and light of Christ to shine through me. But sometimes wanting to be those things sounds very abstract and difficult, because I don’t know where to begin or what exactly to do. The need is so large. And I am so ordinary. One person, in one place, doing what I can with what I have, and not always sure it’s enough.

That’s the other thing nobody tells you about this calling. You rarely know if it’s working. There’s no dashboard. No metric. Only rarely does anyone send you a note that says your presence this week was genuinely salty, and I’m better for it. You just show up, do the next thing, love the person in front of you, and go home not entirely sure any of it mattered. I think that uncertainty is part of the calling. Salt doesn’t observe itself seasoning things. It just does what it’s been made to do. Which, in a world that is loud and fractured and exhausting, turns out to be quietly radical.

What does it actually look like, being salt and light right now, today, in the specific life you are living? I don’t think it looks like a grand gesture. I think it looks like kindness. In what you say and what you don’t say. In the words you choose, when you could choose sharper ones. In the action you take when doing nothing would be so much easier. It looks like showing up with humility instead of certainty, and authenticity instead of performance. It looks like saying something true instead of something impressive. It looks like healing rather than harm, in moments so small they don’t even feel like moments.

That doesn’t trend. It doesn’t get applause. Most of the time, no one notices, including you. You just do the next small thing and trust that salt does what salt does, even when you don’t get to see it.

Maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe Jesus wasn’t describing a strategy. Maybe he was describing a posture. A way of moving through the world that is so consistent, so embedded, so genuinely present to the people around you, that it stops being something you do and starts being something you are. Most days, I feel more like someone who wants to be salt and light than someone who confidently is. But I keep coming back to the present tense. You are. Not when you get it right. Not when you feel spiritually prepared or emotionally available or adequately rested. Now. Here. As you are. Blessed are you who are trying.

You who sent the text you weren’t sure anyone needed. Who chose the gentler word when the sharper one was right there and honestly would have felt so satisfying. Who stayed in the hard conversation a little longer than was comfortable. Who showed up, again, for someone who may not have noticed. Blessed are you who don’t know if any of it is working. Who go home wondering. Who do the next kind thing and then the next one after that, without a scoreboard, without a sign, without anyone pulling you aside to say that mattered. You are making a difference. Please keep going.

Blessed are you living in this specific, difficult, beautiful, exhausting moment in history, this world that is so loud and so divided and so desperately in need of people who will choose, imperfectly and daily, to heal rather than harm. To be humble when the culture rewards performance. To be authentic when the world keeps asking you to be more.

That is salt. That is light. Not the grand gesture. Not the viral moment. The ordinary, faithful, often invisible work of being genuinely present to the people right in front of you. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Jesus said so first. And he has not changed his mind about you.