“A Taste of Salt”

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

February 8, 2026

Video: Rev. Dr. Terry Hamilton-Poore

Isaiah 58:1-9a

Matthew 5:13-20

Children’s Message:

Taste-testing. Does salt really change bitter to better and sweet to sweeter?

Message (by Rev. Dr. Terry Hamilton-Poore):

When Yosuke Matsuoka was a little boy, his father’s business went bankrupt, and the family fell into extreme poverty. So to save their son from starvation, Matsuoka’s parents sent him from Japan to live with family members in Oregon. This was in 1893. While the move may have saved his life, it had other consequences as well, because while he was welcomed by a few, he suddenly found himself submerged in a larger culture that treated him like he was nothing. He went to school, he learned English. He eventually graduated from the University of Oregon, working his way through by waiting tables at a country club.

But everywhere he went, he was subjected to both overt and subtle racism. The casual put downs of both him and his homeland, the almost unconscious assumptions that were conveyed over and over of the superiority of whiteness and of the supposed right of the US to dominate the world by the time Matsuoka returned to Japan as an adult. He had a fine-tuned hatred of things American. He went on to serve in the cabinet of Emperor Hirohito, a post from which he helped to propel Japan's entry into World War II against the advice of the Japanese military and spearheaded his nation's attacks on the United States of America.

If you've ever eaten anything bitter you know how the taste lingers. It's as though it sticks to the edges of the tongue and it won't go away. That seems to have been how Matsuoka's experiences stuck to him. How they built up in him as he endured insult after demeaning insult until the bitterness turned to venom, and the venom turned to war.

Jesus today calls us to spread a different kind of taste--the taste of salt. He adds that puzzling statement about salt losing its flavor, but that's not actually a possibility. Salt is salt. Its saltiness is an essential aspect of what it is.  The only way to lose the taste of salt is to withhold it--to bottle it up and store it away.

But the thing is, we need salt. Humans and other mammals need salt to control our fluid balances and to keep our muscles and nerves functioning. We need salt to preserve many different kinds of foods. We need salt to melt ice on slippery roads.

Just as the human tongue has special receptors for bitterness that make us want to spit it out, we also have special receptors for salt. Without it, food tastes flat. And here's an interesting thing: salt can actually counteract the taste of bitterness. It somehow adheres to the bitter compounds in foods and takes away their potency. And at the same time, salt magnifies the taste of sweetness. If you've ever accidentally omitted that pinch of salt from a cake recipe, you know the difference it makes. It doesn't take much salt to neutralize the bitterness or boost the sweetness in food. Just a little sprinkle, and what you could barely stand to swallow before becomes delicious.

So when Jesus says you are the salt of the earth, he's telling us that we are essential to the functioning of the body human--we help to preserve life, we help to melt ice, and we transform what was bitter into something sweet. Or we can do all these things if we are willing to pour ourselves out. And if there was ever a time that the world needed salt, it is now.

Imagine, if you will, the bitterness of having to flee your home to save your life--swimming rivers and crossing deserts with your child on your back--only to be rounded up like a criminal, detained behind barbed wire and have your child ripped from your arms. Imagine being deported back to the same country from which you've just escaped or to a country that is completely strange to you. Imagine the bitterness you would take back with you.

Or imagine the bitterness of being an American citizen born of citizens for hundreds of years back, only to be treated as less-than from the moment of your birth because of the color of your skin--to be told that you're not a real American. Imagine paying the same tax rate with everyone else, only to have the institutions for which you are paying--education systems, healthcare systems, banking systems, public safety and legal systems--either denied you or used against you day after day after day.

Or imagine being someone living on the margins, barely getting by and having the SNAP benefits on which you depend abruptly cut off, all while being able to watch construction going forward on a gilded ballroom. And imagine the bitterness of rural America left to languish while innovation goes elsewhere; the bitterness of the inner cities where there's never enough money for services but always enough to build stadiums; the bitterness of laborers whose hard work gets them nowhere while CEOs get handed a golden parachute for performing poorly. I could go on, couldn't you?

And the bitterness of all of these people adheres to them and gets stuck to the people around them. It's making the whole world angrier and angrier and more and more dangerous. We need salt. In this case, of course, salt is a metaphor. But a metaphor for what? What exactly are we to do to counteract the bitterness that's poisoning our world?

Jesus lodges the answer in righteousness--righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees. Their righteousness was based on dividing people up--Jew versus gentile, clean versus unclean, insider versus outsider. Jesus's righteousness was based on removing those divisions and on loving everyone, including one's enemies.

Isaiah also offers a recipe to counteract the pious hypocrisies and exploitive systems that had God ready to spit them out as a nation. Stop praying and fasting,” he says, “while you profit from injustice. Loose the bonds of injustice, undo the yoke of bondage, and let the oppressed go free. Treat workers fairly, share your bread with the hungry, welcome the homeless, clothe the naked, care for your family.”

So he's speaking both of addressing the symptoms of injustice by feeding and sheltering and clothing those who need it. But also of addressing the unjust systems that create those symptoms--the systems that exploit and oppress so that people can't find a way out. Because that's where bitterness really takes hold.

I think we can all see that bitterness taking hold throughout the world. I feel it myself some days--angry and bitter and all bottled up. But we are not called to be bitter; we're called to be salt--to do everything in our power to counteract the causes of bitterness, to pour ourselves out in order to amplify the sweetness in the world.

What if Yosuke Matsuoka had encountered friendship rather than bullying, respect rather than disdain? We can't say that befriending Matsuoka would have prevented Pearl Harbor, but we can't say for sure that it wouldn't have. And we can't know no for sure what wars and bombings and mass shootings, or what addictions or eating disorders or suicides might be prevented by treating our fellow citizens and the citizens of this world with decency and kindness and respect. But I think we can say for sure that that's what's being handed out right now is one big bitter pill, and it is poisoning us all.

“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus says, so don't bottle yourself up. Stand up to the systems of oppression. Listen to those who have been made voiceless. Reach out to those who have been alienated and ostracized. And on the smaller level, sprinkle kindness. Sprinkle decency. Sprinkle respect. Sprinkle justice. Let's pour the best of who we are out on this bitter world and make it sweet for everyone.

Presented on this day by Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE