Salty Life?
I love Jesus' down-to-earth ways of saying things. Too bad we have lost that in our pious readings of what he's saying. But you can't miss out on too much of the earthiness in this passage:

"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other."

We Christians are to be salty. We are to make the world a spicier place. All those things that we have heard said in sermons ad infinitum. My own included. But I don't think I ever thought very much about the process that made the salt turn into, well, non-salt.

William Loader in his first thoughts on the Gospel says:

It is not so much that salt ceases to be salt but that it becomes contaminated by additions over time, dirt, stones, etc, so that it becomes useless. He links salt with peace. In the context salt is an image of integrity and wholeness. Being at peace with one another is about wholeness in community-

Hmmm. A blob of salt that is still salt will still be salty. Put a salt-lick out in the field for the deer and it will remain salty to the last little bit left. It's saltiness doesn't disappear and leave a white, saltless blob. Something has to invade it. Something has to contaminate it. Which is what Loader says. Salt is about being whole. Staying together as community.

Sadly, this can be taken into a lot of different directions that may very well end up in MORE contamination and separation than perhaps it should. We'll start a contamination hunt. We'll look for purity instead of community, missing the fact that it is when the community is BEING a community that the saltiness has its most strength. When we break down into individuals, and the "Jesus-and-me" approach to faith, is when we have broken apart the salt of the earth.