Bitterness Subsides

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

by Lindsey Cornett

“Salt and Light,” by Lindsay Sherbondy

Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12) | Psalm 112:1-9 (10) | 1 Cor. 2:1-12 (13-16) | Matt. 5:13-16

For several years in high school and college, I went through a major Foot Network phase. Every afternoon, I’d let Giada and Ina be my soundtrack while I studied or wrote papers. One summer, laid up from back surgery, I spent countless hours with those celebrity chefs and plenty of recipes I never even attempted. Luckily, my freshman year roommate didn’t mind having Food Network playing on our dormitory television… except for one complaint.

“Why do they always say salt adds flavor?!” she bemoaned. “Salt only adds one flavor–saltiness!”

As any good cook (or television watcher) knows, salting food is an essential and frequent step, so she and I had this conversation a lot. Most of the time, I’d just shrug. As someone who hadn’t done much cooking myself, I thought she had a valid point. At the same time, you weren’t going to hear me complain. I liked salty food! Go ahead, Ina, I thought. Salt away. It was only years later–after actually clocking some hours in my own kitchen cooking for my family–that I realized the error in our thinking. It’s not that salt itself is the flavor a cook is after. Rather, salt enhances the flavor of every other ingredient.

Thanks to modern food science, we know that taste receptor cells can experience multiple flavors simultaneously, and different ingredients play off one another. Salt, in particular, decreases bitterness while strengthening and bringing our attention to sweetness (salted caramel, anyone?) and even umami. It enhances what good, desirable flavors already exist in the dish.

In her cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, chef and writer Samin Nosrat illustrates it this way: “Though we typically turn to sugar to balance out bitter flavors in a sauce or soup, it turns out that salt masks bitterness much more effectively than sugar. See for yourself with a little tonic water, Campari, or grapefruit juice, all of which are both bitter and sweet. Taste a spoonful, then add a pinch of salt and taste again. You’ll be surprised by how much bitterness subsides.”

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The Gospel reading in this week’s lectionary texts is Matthew 5:13-16, in which Jesus also seems to be considering the flavor of salt. In Matthew’s accounting, Jesus is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. He has just finished offering the Beatitudes when he says to the listening crowd, “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.”

For many years, my primary understanding of what it meant to be the salt of the earth was to behave differently. I grew up in the American evangelical culture of the 1990s and early 2000s. Every year was marked, not by the seasons of the church calendar, but by the scheduling of Acquire the Fire and Rock the Universe and See You At the Pole. What it meant to “let your light shine before others” was to pray in public, dress modestly, and avoid whatever music was playing on 93.3FLZ. The vision of a Christian life we were given was one in which we needed to amp it up. Stand out. Be noticed.

When I look back on these formative experiences with a generosity of spirit, I can assume that I internalized this way of thinking on my own, more than it was explicitly taught. Either way, I assumed that to be “the salt of the earth” meant to make every circumstance I entered and every person I encountered more salty–that is, more like me and the (very narrow) image of Christianity I understood.

What does it mean, instead, to love others in a manner similar to how salt functions in a recipe? What might it mean to be the ingredient which enhances and amplifies all that is already good?

To answer this question, we can turn to the Old Testament readings for this week: Isaiah 58:6-9 and Psalm 112:1-10. Just as Jesus draws a contrast between salty and unsalty (or rather, useful salt and salt which has lost its utility), the writers of both Old Testament passages are drawing contrasts; In Psalm 112, it is between those who fear the Lord (verse 1) and the wicked (verse 10), and in Isaiah, the prophet contrasts false worship and true worship, fasts that are “acceptable to the Lord” (58:5) and those that are not.

These contrasts elucidate what it means to be the salt of the earth. The writers describe a life of faith that is in keeping with the ethos of the Sermon on the Mount.

Here is what Isaiah says in 58:6-7:

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

To loose the bonds of injustice

To undo the straps of the yoke,

To let the oppressed go free,

And to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

And bring the homeless poor into your house;

When you see the naked, to cover them

And not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

Invoking a very similar tone and sentiment, the Psalmist says,

“[Those who fear the Lord] rise in the darkness as a light for the upright;

They are gracious, merciful, and righteous,” (112:4) and “They have distributed freely; they have given to the poor; their righteousness endures forever,” (112: 9).

Recall Jesus’ words just a few verses before the “salt and light” passage: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are those who mourn…blessed are the merciful…”

The psalmist and the prophet Isaiah and Jesus himself all reiterate God’s same concern for the poor and needy and oppressed. Because God’s dream for creation is shalom–a pervasive and abiding wholeness, all people in reconciled relationships with themselves, their neighbors, the creation, and the Divine. God has invited us to participate in the creation of this reality–to contribute to the flourishing of every person we encounter, to create goodness and beauty at every turn, to restore and reaffirm the dignity of every person we encounter.

We savor, enjoy, and create more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Simultaneously, we work to ensure that every other human being is free and empowered to do the same. We shine like a city on a hill to illuminate the beauty and goodness in every direction.

In our current moment, the world tastes of bitterness.

But we are called to be salt, thanks be to God.