Matthew 5:13-20 (Year A, Epiphany V)
The one where Jesus instructs salt
The gospel reading for Sunday, February 5th is Matthew 5:13-20. This Sunday is the Fifth and final normal Sunday of Epiphany.
It’s still Epiphany for a while. February 12th is the Sixth Sunday of Epiphany but, in the ACNA, it is displaced by a new holy day, World Mission Sunday. February 19th is the Seventh Sunday of Epiphany, but it is displaced by the ecumenical holy day, Transfiguration Sunday. There just aren’t any more Sundays with “of” in their name.
It helps to know
That Jesus is still doing a Sinai. As I wrote last week, from beginning to end, Matthew’s gospel follows the narrative structure of the Old Testament. In Exodus, Moses gives the Ten Words (20:1-17), but he’s still on the mountain, and there’s a lot more to say. In Matthew, Jesus gives the Eight Beatitudes (5:1-12), but he’s still on the mountain, and there’s a lot more to say.
Salt and offerings at Sinai. Interpreters have taken “salt” to mean at least five things. According to Moses at Sinai, the primary purpose of salt was to season grain offerings to Yahweh: “You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” (Lev. 2:13)
Salt “of the earth” and judgment. In Deuteronomy, Moses warns that Yahweh will make the land of Israel “brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows on it” (Deut. 29:23; cf. Ps. 107:34). One commentator has pointed out that “salting the earth” was a common war tactic: “Salting farmland was a tactic of war, a way of cutting off an enemy’s food supplies. Abimelech sealed his victory over the city of Shechem by sowing it with salt (Judg. 9:45), and the Romans salted Palestine during the Jewish War of the late 60s a.d.”
Matthew 5:13-20
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
What I noticed
Jesus had already switched from addressing the third person (e.g. Blessed are “the poor”, “the peacemakers”) to addressing the second person (Blessed are “you”) at 5:11.
That makes vv. 11-12 a bridge connecting the Beatitudes (vv. 2-12) with his threefold second person address: you are persecuted, and blessed (vv. 11-12); you are salt (v. 13); you are light (vv. 14-16).
Taking these three words together, and understanding salt in terms of a war tactic and a sacrificial seasoning, should help us understand the flow from the Beatitudes (vv. 1-11) through the bit about fulfilling the law (vv. 17-20). This reminds me, also, of the relationship between light and judgment: that light exposes deeds of darkness.
Salt that has lost its taste is fit for being “trampled underfoot (katapateо̄)” (v. 13) by men. Later in the sermon, Jesus warns them not to throws pearls before swine, lest their pearls be trampled underfoot (katapateо̄)” (7:6). These are the only two uses of katapateо̄ in Matthew.
It is interesting that, first, Jesus identifies what is being trampled underfoot as the disciples1 themselves: salt (5:13); and that, next, Jesus identifies what is being trampled underfoot as the disciples words: pearls (7:6).
Later, Hebrews will describe those who “sin willfully” and “set aside the Law of Moses” as having “trampled under foot (katapateо̄) the Son of God” (Heb. 10:26-31).
Here are a few facts before me:
Scripture depicts Jesus as being trampled underfoot by those who set aside the law (Heb. 10:28);
Jesus has hard words for those who relax the law (Matt. 5:17-20);
Jesus describes his disciples as being insulted, persecuted, and slandered (5:11), just like he will be; and
Jesus tells his disciples to expect to be trampled underfoot under certain conditions (5:13; cf. their “pearls”, in 7:6).
From these facts, I don’t get the impression that being “thrown out” and “trampled underfoot” refers to judgment from God, but to judgment by the land, or the world.
Jesus calls them to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works” (5:14), but he also tells them to “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them” (6:1).
This isn’t too hard to resolve, if we read Chapter 6 part by part. Chapter 5:13-20 emphasizes doing good and not hiding it.
For almsgiving, the instruction is not to hide your almsgiving, but just not to blow trumpets. For prayer, the instruction is to pray in more natural places: your home rather than a street corner. For fasting, we have to remember that fasting itself isn’t the kind of “good work” that Jesus, and Scripture more generally, have in mind. Isaiah had described what makes a fast count as a “good work”:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
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 him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isa. 58:6-7)
These are the good works. The first few, like light, involve exposing wickedness and oppression, which is the opposite of hiding. Isaiah even emphasizes “not [hiding] yourself” from the naked. The consequence of these works also has to do with light: “Then shall your light break forth like the dawn” (58:8).
My point is that the secrecy described in Matt. 6 does not cancel out the publicity of being the light of the world described in Matt. 5. Rather, doing true righteousness publicly befits the light.
Jesus also discusses light (5:14) and lamps (5:15) at 6:22.
The disciples simply “are” light, and their light breaks forth, when they do good. They are supposed to be seen. But the primary purpose of light, or lamps, in the Sermon on the Mount, is to give light to the whole body: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light” (6:22).
By being the light of the world, the disciples aren’t supposed to destroy the world—even as they salt its crops to death—but to restore its vision. That’s the other reason not to hide your good works. The world may not have ears for your holy words (7:6), and they may treat you bad (5:11-12), but they deeply need to see Goodness. Seeing it, they will glorify God (5:16).
What to do? Be chill about your piety; don’t seek accolades; don’t judge; but do truly good things in front of people.
This has me thinking…
Those of us who, like Matthew, live by the words that come from Jesus’ divine mouth (Matt. 4:1-11; 5:1) and earnestly love the law (Matt. 3:13-17), are the True Israel. The True Israel are Persecuted for loving and embodying Jesus; they are the Salt that kills bad fruit, and they are the Light that restores the world’s vision.
They are the ones who repent and believe the gospel (3:1-12; 4:17-22). They are beloved sons of God (3:13-17; 5:9) and true sons of Abraham (3:1-12). They see a relationship between fulfilling the whole law (5:17) and fulfilling all righteousness (3:15).
They are the salt of the earth. The God who would cast fire to the earth (Luke 12:49) would also salt its fields, killing its wicked fruits. Per Peter Leithart, “When a nation’s chief domestic product consists of greed, lust, oppression, cruelty, and lies, it needs to be salted until every green thing has withered.”
Their love of the law and love of righteousness kills, undoes, and de-escalates. Their obedience to Jesus contradicts the institutions and conventions within which they live. They’ll be persecuted here, and great will be their reward in heaven (5:11-12).
To lose this love, and to regress back into rote, moralistic law-keeping, is to lose your saltiness. Such a loveless moralist is still salt, but tasteless salt. You’re no good to God (unable to season a sacrifice; cf. Lev. 2:13), and no good to the world (killing bad fruit, and not making anything taste better). The world will throw them out and trample them; both their persons (5:13) and their words (7:6). Jesus may even take away your lampstand (Rev. 2-3).
In these last few days before Lent, we can prepare to go full Jesus. True repentance. Counter-cultural. Visible good. Whole law. All righteousness.
Lectionary resonance
2 Kings 22:8-20 tells the almost redemptive story of Hilkiah finding the book of the Law. Shaphan reads the words (vv. 8-10), Josiah repents for his fathers’ sins (vv. 11-13), and Yahweh says disaster is coming anyway. What kind of Light and Salt can Josiah be? He’ll keep the Law, but he won’t save his kingdom.
Psalm 27 is about seeing. He desires “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” in his temple and knows that he “shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (vv. 4, 13). That’s the visual faith that Salt, which has a ministry of destroying bad fields, has to have. You can’t minister death in good conscience without a belief in resurrection.
Paul knows, like Josiah, that “the rulers of this age… are doomed to pass away” (1 Cor. 2:6). Paul also understands the bit casting pearls before swine (Matt. 7:6). He puts it this way: We speak “words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God” (vv. 13-14).
I don’t have a firm view here. Jesus says “you”, which I could see being taken to refer to the disciples alone, by the crowds and the disciples together. Either way, this being Christian Scripture, the entire Church is invited to identify with the “you” whom Jesus addresses. For the purposes of this essay, I’ll just use the word disciples.