Salty Helpers in the Nest

I love to cook. I’m good at it too, as my friends will tell you if you ask them. Like Gladwell’s ten thousand hours theory, I’ve learned over time that cooking, which is equal parts art and science, relies on experience. I started cooking as a child, at my grandmother’s right hand.

But my best salt story comes from adolescence. I remember we were living in Pearl City, Hawaii, so it would have been 1965 or so. I remember making a peach pie for the family for dessert. That’s not all that simple a thing, so I must have been fairly accomplished at that age if I was making pies regularly. I don’t remember much about the construction of it, but it was really a thing of beauty—golden crust, all piled high with the bright orange-yellow peach filling. It looked and smelled delicious. We all couldn’t wait to have a piece for dessert. Proudly I served the slices all around the table. Then, fortunately, my mother and I took the first bites simultaneously. I say fortunately because it was inedible and we were able, despite nearly choking, to stop my siblings from taking a bite. It was all salt! It turned out, I recalled, as I reconstructed having followed the recipe, that I had mixed up the salt and sugar, using a cup of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. Oh well …

Too much salt spoils the pie, and everything else too. A friend complained on social media a couple of years ago about having been to several restaurants where salt seemed to be an ingredient in all of the dishes. I replied that it was supposed to be seasoning, not an ingredient. Salt works chemically in several ways but primarily it is best used for enhancing flavor, which it does by causing things like onions to give up their harsh acidity and leaving behind a more intense and sweet-savory onion flavor. That’s why so many dishes start with sautéing onions with a dash of salt and pepper (the pepper adds intensity too; but neither salt nor pepper should be recognizable as ingredients in the finished dish). I’d better stop before I get too far out on this limb—I’m a good cook but I’m no food anthropologist or chemist.

But if your restaurant dish tastes like salt you should send it back, but be explicit why. It probably got—like my pie—too much salt in the “season everything on the way to the table” step.

In Matthew 5:12 Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. He says this to his disciples, but of course, in full ear of a large crowd too. It is a layered metaphor, not unlike the way a cook learns to layer flavor with the judicious use of salt. The metaphor for uselessness comes from the fact that salt, when too watered down, loses its ability to cause the flavorfully necessary chemical reactions. In other words, you—God’s children—are meant to add flavor to God’s kingdom by gently teasing out the goodness around you. You do this by showing the love of God that is in your heart. But if you let that love get too watered down—primarily by self-centeredness—it is no longer helpful to anybody.

Ah, here we are back at love again—and you thought this was going to be about salt. Well, love is one interpretation of salt here. If you lose your salt it means you have become so focused on your own self that you have quit giving love. You have become so watered down you no longer add flavor to your relationships with the people you love.

The tricky part is, and you all know this, first you have to take care of your own self. If you have lost your salt you are of no use to anybody. But once you have some back, it attracts more to you. Like love, a little beginning can add up to a lot. So it is your responsibility to get your salt back. Try giving a little bit of love. The rest will take care of itself.

There is another metaphor here in Matthew’s Gospel, about a light shining. It is mirrored in Isaiah where it is a metaphor for justice, which is a wonderful form of love, and in the Psalm, where it is a metaphor for righteousness, which is also a wonderful form of love, and in 1 Corinthians, where it is a metaphor for wisdom. My goodness—layers and layers and layers of metaphor. Just like seasoning.

The key to the light metaphor is to understand that light helps us see things as they really are. Shining light shows the difference between giving love and the absence of love. Shining light shows how love reveals justice, springs from righteousness and comes from wisdom.

There is a bio-sociological theory that homosexualities are necessary for just this purpose—that lgbt people are necessary to reveal the true power of love in creation. Sometimes called the “helpers in the nest” theory (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26089486) the idea is that we are here as light shining in society through the love we share, which in turn reveals the true power of love given freely. I most like this theory because it resonates with my own experience as a pastor—I’ve seen over and over the “light” and “salt” added to a congregation by its lgbt members.

You see, light and salt are our job. Love, love and more love—give love. Let all creation know that love is in your heart and salt is in your blood. As Jesus said: let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

 

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)); Psalm 112:1-9, (10); 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16); Matthew 5:13-20

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Get your salt on*

People are mean. Really mean.

Last night (I usually write these posts on Saturday after dinner and then hold them until I’m ready to post them on Sunday, after pondering what I’ve written) I wrote a long rant about the unpleasant womanin the supermarket, older than me (if you can believe anyone could be older than me), who pushed me and my cart three times and almost knocked me over because she couldn’t be bothered to WALK AROUND ME a foot or so while I was picking up a dozen eggs and checking that they weren’t broken. And I included the two unpleasant women talking on cell phones WHILE TAILING ME IN SUVs 20 MPH OVER THE SPEED LIMIT in a SNOWSTORM. And then I wrote: still, this is Milwaukee–imagine, in Philadelphia, it would have come to gunfire long before anybody got to write about it.

So we pray this Sunday and this week that God will set us free from the bondage of our sins. Do you understand what that means? I didn’t think so.

Sin, of course, is whatever you do that separates you from total union with God. Most sin has nothing to do with sex or chocolate. Most sin has to do with being selfish, with setting yourself up as God of your own universe (like the *#*#*#* who needed me not to be in her supermarket …. etc., etc.). That is sin. It is not a thing that you do, it is what is in your heart that let’s you do it.

Sex and chocolate are both good. Not to worry.

And both have salt in them. Jesus said what good is being salty if your salt has lost its flavor?  Well, I didn’t make that up, look at Matthew 5:13. The idea is, of course, that you must be true completely to who you are, to the person God created in you. If you are glbt and closeted you have lost your saltiness. At least until you come out, and regain the light of the world that God gave you the salt to be. Well, that’s a pretty mixed metaphor, but try to understand. God created you to be who you are, and God created you gay to be gay in God’s image, and to be gay in God’s image to light the world. No hiding, no compromising.

So those mean people I experience everywhere, it really is kind of tough to be around them. My sin is becoming angry when I encounter them. I know, Jesus never said “be a doormat” and that’s not the point of the Gospels, but the point is what is in my heart. And the real point is that I have to work at changing my own sin-ful-ness. When that anger rears itself in my heart I have to change. It’s tough, I know, that old lady really pushed all of my buttons ….

Well, that’s a simple Christian message.; best I can do today.

It’s a mixed week in the news. In Nigeria, the good news is, instead of executing gays, they’ve taken to beating them with whips (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/world/africa/nigeria-uses-law-and-whip-to-sanitize-gays.html?_r=0). This is to “sanitize” themselves. Sounds like genocide to me. Sounds like danger to me. Don’t think you can ignore what is going on on the other side of the world.

In Russia, thousands of heterosexuals have pretended Russia did not pass laws against homosexuality, and are attending the so-called winter olympic games and spending billions to prop up the homophobic regime.The so-called olympic games are a sham, because the olympic movement is all about ending genocide and repression. Genocide is genocide, even when the victims are gay.

On the other hand, millions of married gay Americans now have double-trouble, happily, figuring out how to file taxes as married people. And the Attorney General has just announced new rules enforcing federal marriage law to be applied to same-sex couples, despite whether they live in backward states (like Wisconsin).

As I said, it is a mixed week. Ask God again to set us free from the bondage of sin, meaning help us overcome our fear of who we really are.

Get your salt on boys and girls, Jesus said so!

*Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; Matthew 5:13-20)

©2014 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Salt*

I love to cook. And I have had high blood pressure since I was a teen. So I have had a life-long battle about (not with, but about) salt. I’m told to give it up, and then I’m told no I need it, and on and on. I did for about a decade to go completely without salt—none in my cooking and I did not eat packaged foods in that era. You know what, food was fine, I got to learn what real things really taste like. So I recommend it. And you know what else? It didn’t have any effect on my blood pressure—giving up salt was useless as a technique to control my blood pressure.

Jesus has to deal with his disciples all the time, just like you and I have to do. And they’re always messing up. In this lesson they try to stop people who are actually healing with God’s Holy Spirit just because those people aren’t in the band of Jesus’ disciples. Jesus calmly corrects them. But then he sort of reads the riot act to his own disciples. And in the end is this bit about salt—“salt is good.”

And indeed it is. Salt is required for the body to hold water, which is the thing that hyrdrates the tissues, which is the thing that makes our biological engines tick. And salt is a chemical that makes the ticking work. So yes, salt is good.

But too much salt is deadly. As is the absence of salt. As is the pretense of salt when none actually is present. Imagine that … a risotto with no salt. But what could be worse? A risotto with a chef pretending to salt it, setting up that expectation in your taste buds when it all is a lie.

So that my friends is what Jesus means about this business that if salt has lost its saltiness how can you season it.

Even better is the part about “everyone will be salted with fire.” And we know this is true. This is where the lesson from James comes in:

“The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.”

LGBT people are here to provide the salt in society. If we lose our saltiness, how will society be seasoned? Yes, there in that tiny little periscope is a bit of lgbt liberation theology. We are called by God to be gay, and because of that we are called to salt, and even to be “salt of the earth.” Be whom God has made you to be, be that person with salt, because we all are salted with fire. Are you suffering? Pray. Are you cheerful? Sing and pray. Are you sick? Ask for prayers.

But we are here to salt our world with love.

*Proper 21 (Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50)

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Salt of the Earth*

A year or so ago my husband gave me a book about salt. I was a little curious when I opened it (it was a Christmas gift) but I trust his judgment and he was right. It was both interesting and important. It is the sort of book you can read on a long flight, and since I had a few trans-Atlantic flights going on then, that’s exactly what happened. I read about salt as I flew back and forth from Philadephia to Amsterdam.

It was interesting all on its own. And although I had never seriously considered the role of salt in the history of humankind, I began to see its importance emerge from the narrative. This was very well-written history; compelling even. And what’s more, I began to recognize salt I knew! Those salt flats at the southern end of San Francisco Bay for instance. We’ve all flown over them landing at San Francisco International Airport. But those of us who grew up in California have driven past them for decades. When have you flown in there, or driven there? I first drove past them in 1964 en route to Hawaii (on the USS Lurline). Next when we flew back from Hawaii in 1967 and drove south to Monterey. And then over and over en route to San Francisco, but especially when I flew to New York to take conducting lessons when I was 17, and then again, and again, and again as I flew back and forth from Portland Oregon, where I went to college. And then more. So that was exciting. And it turned out I knew other salt flats as well. But the real thrill came for me when I was on the train through Belgium, when I began to think to myself “my, this looks like how the salt flats were described” and then whoa, there they were …..

So this Gospel is great because Jesus is equating being salty with keeping your light shining, and that is exactly correct physiologically speaking. But how else is it correct? Remember, the body is mostly salt and water; if we subtract the water, what’s left is salt. If the water is the electricity that makes the engine run, the salt is the substance on which and from which and within which it runs. Sounds like the soul to me.

Never thought of your soul as salt, huh? Well, take a shot at it. Isaiah says shout out your love of God, don’t think all that posturing with candles and vestments and pretty language is convincing God of your love … God knows better, God sees through you, God knows your salt because God knows you’re salt. Paul says the same thing to the Corinthians; he says “we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God.” He means, we have received our salt—our souls—from God. And that is how we are the children of God. And like orphans everywhere, it is up to us to recognize God our Father as our Creator, and to acknowledge that love that made us and makes us and is in us.

God my friends wants to be with you in your saltiness. I think this is a terrific message for gay people. We’re always being accused, usually by other gay people, of being too gay—“oh my gosh you will mess it up for us if you keep being SO GAY.” Well, my friends, God wants us to be gay, and salty to boot. And God wants us to be gay because it is how we lift the boats, it is how our salty souls provide a place for the whole world to relax and see that sexuality is not freakish, it is of God.

That means of course that sin is irrelevant. How many times have you  been told you are a sinner because you  are gay? Well, that is always wrong, wrong, wrong. Sin is how you disconnect yourself from God. Isaiah’s prophecy is all about how to stay connected to God. Love each other, respect each other, help each other; for heaven’s sake (literally), participate in creating the kingdom in your own midst.  Because you my friends, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, you are the salt of the earth.
*5th Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12); Psalm 112:1-9, (10); 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16); Matthew 5:13-20)

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.