You ARE the Salt

"You are the salt" not "You should be the salt"! The disciples are given no choice whether they want to be salt or not. No appeal is made to them to become the salt of the earth. Rather they just are salt whether they want to be or not, by the power of the call which has reached them. "You are the salt" not "you have the salt." It would diminish the meaning to equate the disciples' message with salt, as the reformers did. What is meant is their whole existence, to the extent that it is newly grounded in Christ's call to discipleship, that existence of which the Beatitudes speak. All those who follow Jesus' call to discipleship are made by that call to be the salt of the earth in their whole existence.  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

Matthew 5: 13

What a restful, sabbatical thought Bonhoeffer's is.   I do not have to strive and strain to become salt.  I do not have to work and plot to throw the salt around the world.  I am simply called to BE what Grace has made me to BE.  Salt.  I can lose my saltiness.   Where does that saltiness come from?   It comes from Him, the Great I Am.   Saltiness comes from being with the Great Being.   

My anxious heart still wants to come up with its own salt-making strategies: ten steps to making salt or my five-year plan to becoming more salty.  Jesus says, "Come."    Joining an institution, becoming a spiritual person of note or learning a new skill for ministry is the way to be salty.  Jesus says, "My burden is light."  What should I be doing Lord?   Nothing I do matters.  Jesus says, "And I will give you rest."

Does my heart yearn for significance or for Him?  I am already salt.  I have been given saltiness.   I am already potent.  When I've lost direction, when I am lost, when I am sad, when I feel small, I have not lost a mission or a purpose. Instead,  I have lost my saltiness, my Savior and my Lover.  The only task then is to do what Jesus did to go away to a lonely place and pray.  Meditate on His words to me like "salt". My joy and my saltiness made new.   He promises to make my journey potent with the Kingdom.  

Letting Go of the Collar

But that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.'  So his fellow servant fell down and and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.'  He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

Matthew 19:28-30, New English Standard Version

Whenever I read these verses from the story of "The Unforgiving Servant,"   I see in my mind's eye, my imagination, a man holding another man by the collar.  As the one in need of forgiveness falls, the unforgiving one holds him by the collar.  The one needing forgiveness is relaxed, broken, on-his-knees; the unforgiving is bent over him threatening, angry, muscles full of strain and tension.  Contrition and confession is a relaxed posture, a posture of one held.   Anger and unforgiveness is a tense and taxing posture.

Struggling with angry memories of past hurts and thoughtless words, I became aware of this image.  I was still bent over these people my spiritual muscles taught and tired. The Holy Spirit urged, "Let go."   Realizing in that moment how much work, how heavy a yoke that spiritual posture was, I let go.   In that moment, the Holy Spirit allowed me to imagine all those debtors of mine falling away and into His arms.   As the tension and strain of holding on to those people released, I felt light and joyful.

You cannot live the Sabbatical Life, the life of rest, if you hold on to collars.   The burden of unforgiveness is like trying to hold the weight of another human being for days, weeks, years or decades.   Unforgiveness requires a life of tension and strain; confession and forgiveness relaxed, broken, on-your-knees and in-His-arms.  Practicing a life of  confession and forgiveness is the easy yoke Jesus calls us to bear.  It is the relaxed work of the Kingdom.   Let go of collars; enter into the Sabbatical Life.