Sermon: Salty Jesus People
Date: August 3, 2025
Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16
Guest speaker: Nicole Marble

After giving us the Beatitudes, Jesus then immediately begins talking about being salt and light. Salt & light people inhabit the way of Jesus to be a radical alternative to a darkened world. Both salt and light are images for impact on something else: salt impacts, for instance, meats, while light impacts darkness. It is important to understand that for Jesus, to be salt & light is to inhabit the blessings and characteristics of the Beatitudes. Too often, in the history of God’s people, the church has redefined salt & light through things like nationalism, partisan politics, culture wars, individualism, consumerism, and militarism. As a result, the church just looks like the rest of the world instead of a people who have something distinctive to offer the world. Our call is to embrace the salty & light-filled way of the Kingdom as an alternative to a world bitter with hate, sickness, disease and strife. This is our call.

Desired Outcome: To explore what it means for followers of Jesus to be a radical alternative in our darkened and decaying world.

Quotable Quote: “To be salt, to be made light for the world requires the church to be visible. For the followers of Jesus, to flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which was to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him.” - Stanley Hauerwas