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Luke 14:25-35 Give it a read before we chat!:https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2014%3A25-34&version=NLT
We can never accuse Jesus of pulling a bait and switch. He invites us to follow him. He tells us that when this life is over, the reward of membership in his kingdom is unlike anything we can imagine. But he also warns us it won’t be easy living here in the meantime. The kingdom of God is present in those who believe in Jesus, and yet, for now we are exiles in a foreign kingdom. It can often be a hostile kingdom.
Jesus explains, the kingdom of God is a prize worth everything we could ever own or dream of. Admission to the kingdom is a free gift from God because of what Jesus did for us. But accepting that gift and joining the kingdom can still be very costly.
There is a path between here and the kingdom that will be full of trouble. Jesus tells his listeners, and he tells us, that the journey to the kingdom must be our greatest passion. Following Jesus isn’t just some casual choice that doesn’t really affect our day to day life. It needs to be our obsession. Compared to any other treasure or priority in our life, following Jesus will have to be given absolute primacy. Anything that holds our attention or adoration more than God and his kingdom needs to be burned to the ground or it will get in the way of our path to the kingdom.
The kingdom of God is worth far more than any earthly fortune, and it’s possible that we may have to lose our earthly fortune to hold onto it. If anyone tries to sell us a gospel that offers prosperity and freedom from pain, it’s not the gospel Jesus offered. He made that pretty clear!
I want to linger on the last two verses about the salt. More than one of the gospel writers recall Jesus describing his followers like salt. I’ve heard speakers talk about how salt preserves and heals, or even how it kills a fertile field when it is poured over the soil. But in each reference Jesus talks about salt being salty. In each case he says it is utterly useless if it loses its flavour. I don’t think we need to stretch the metaphor too far. The essence of being salt is that it is salty. It makes the stuff around it salty. It gives flavour. Ask me about the cinnamon buns I accidentally made last week with unsalted butter. I have been given the world’s best cinnamon bun recipe. If you can’t come for coffee you’ll just have to trust me. That tray of cinnamon buns went to the chickens. It was tragic, and I really don’t want to talk about it, but I share this deeply wounding episode in my life to illustrate my point. Much like the yeast and the mustard seed, a very little bit of salt makes a very big difference. But if the salt I put in my cinnamon buns wasn’t salty, it couldn’t make that difference.
But isn’t this a weird thing to say? How does salt lose its saltiness? It’s a chemical compound. Saltiness is one of its essential properties, isn’t it? Well, yes. But if you do a quick online search you will find people complaining that their salt doesn’t taste salty. I know what you’re thinking and I agree. People are crazy. Regardless, are you as curious as I was? Apparently if under some conditions salt gets moist, it can dissolve. When it evaporates it leaves behind something that looks like salt but isn’t salty. So there ya go, no longer salty salt. And I can tell you right now. It would ruin a good batch of cinnamon buns.
I think the point is that followers of Jesus are supposed to have an essential property that flavours them and their surroundings. A very little bit makes a very big difference, and that flavour is what we are created to be and do. If we aren’t doing what we are created to be and do, we are useless to the kingdom. I think Jesus might be warning us to be sure we are salty. If we don’t have a flavour unlike anything else in the world and if we aren’t influencing our world, are we even salt? Followers of Jesus are salt. If we aren’t salty, we aren’t salt. We might be the residue left behind as our parent’s faith was watered down and eventually evaporated, but we aren’t salt. Has your faith essentially changed who you are? Only belief in Jesus and his death and resurrection can essentially change a person. There were a lot of people following Jesus around the outskirts of Jerusalem but many were only there to be entertained. Jesus warned them that a kingdom member didn’t just look the part in public, they were essentially changed in the deepest place of their identity. They were salt and they flavoured their environment with their presence. And, quite frankly, being anything less was a total waste.
