Matthew 5:1 - Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain… And he opened his mouth and taught them…

Moses went up the mountain to hear God teach the Ten Commandments. Jesus goes up a mountain to teach the Sermon on the Mount. Moses listened as one man but now: “crowds.” No longer God at a distance but Jesus - Immanuel - God with us.

The nine “blesseds” (curiously, one short of the Ten Commandments) are followed by a very strange next thought. Keep in mind, the crowds are mostly Israelites:

Matthew 5:13 - “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.”

What if Jesus is saying, “These nine ‘blesseds’ are the elemental effects of being salt. Many of you Israelites here have lost them. You’re not these things. You’re unsalty. Remember, Israelites: You were assigned to be the salt of the whole earth - to all nations - from God’s covenant meeting with Abraham”:

Genesis 12:3 (God to Abraham) - in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

How curious the word “blessed” (same as in the Beatitudes) shows up in God’s original covenant.

The Israelites had turned inward, self-consumed, wanting their kingdom, not God’s:

Matthew 6:7 (also in the Sermon on the Mount) - “When you pray… Pray then like this: ‘Our Father… Your kingdom come…’”

Not the kingdom of Israel overcoming Rome. But God’s kingdom!

No longer salty, the Israelites were being trampled under the feet of the Roman empire. They’d once again become slaves, possibly disciplined by God for abdicating their work in the world.

This may be one reason why Jesus said:

Matthew 15:24 - “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

The Israelites had lost their way, lost the plot. And Jesus the Shepherd was trying to bring them back. Jesus wanted to restore their saltiness. But by the end of his life and work, Jesus sees the writing on the wall - they’re not going to listen and be restored - and he laments:

Matthew 23:37-38 - “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.”

See the affection and sadness of the love of God unrequited!

But now we who are part of Jesus are also part of “Israel.”

Do I care more about my kingdom coming than his kingdom?

Have we become unsalty? Jesus told Abraham that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. That sounds a lot like Jesus’ parting words to his followers:

Matthew 28:19-20 - Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Not in some dusty, mechanical, moralistic, awkward, “I-don’t-want-to-be-here-but-I-have-to-be-because-my-church-told-me-I-have-to-and-I’m-compliant” way. But with sincerity and understanding, out of overflowing naturalness.

What’s our experience of that these days? What’s our saltiness level?

So now, two millennia on, you and I are left considering if maybe we’re trampled on by the earthly kingdom we live in, dominated and angry and weary. And maybe we, ourselves, are left with Jesus’ question: “How shall its saltiness be restored?”

Who’s heard of salt losing its saltiness and being made salty again!? Elsewhere, Jesus talks of another impossibility:

Matthew 19:26 - “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God… With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

How does this happen? How can God do it in us!?

He later says near the end of the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 7:7 - “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

In a separate sermon where Jesus gave his “ask, seek, knock” teaching, Luke records him saying:

Luke 11:13 - “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

How can unsalted salt be made salty again and blessed character be restored with its reward? And the nations be glad and blessed through us? Through studying harder? Committing to target one beatitude and “focus/work” on it this week? Why would we need Jesus and this teaching for that? We already know many of these things from the Old Testament. Are the Beatitudes an elevated poetry slam?

Or is it possible the Spirit of God does the work in us to restore saltiness as Jesus came to do with the Israelites 2,000 years ago? With God, all things are possible! And maybe all we have to do is be willing to gather up to God like a baby chick to a hen and ask him for the Spirit’s power with the simple faith of a child:

Hebrews 11:6 - without faith it is impossible to please him…

Becoming salt again may not be so complicated:

James 4:2 - You do not have, because you do not ask.

Help of the helpless
Come abide with me
–Henry Francis Lyte (1847)