Attics of Salt
The Living and the Dead
But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him.”
God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
1 Cor 2:7-13
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, 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 in heaven.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks 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.”
Matthew 5:13-20
In our reading from Paul today to his friends in Corinth, he makes a reference to Isaiah. But I couldn’t help but think of one of my favoritee psalms: “I have spent my life Seeking all that’s still unsung; Bent my ear to hear the tune and closed my eyes to see; When there were no strings to play, You played to me.”
No, that’s not a psalm that’s in the Bible, but a song called “Attics of My Life” by the Grateful Dead, lyrics written by Robert Hunter. I would have sung it for you, but it’s a notoriously tricky song that even the Dead did not sing often in their thousands of live shows, structured like a hymn with multi-part harmonies.
I don’t listen to nearly as much Grateful Dead music as I used to, but Bob Weir’s passing had me dabbling again. As a Deadhead, I always thought “Attics” was a love song, and it is—but I missed that it’s really a love song to God.1 While not a Christian, the lyricist Hunter would say it’s a song about grace: “When I had no wings to fly, You flew to me.” “It’s not a song about being stoned,” he said, “But a song about the soul.”
In the attics of my life Full of cloudy dreams unreal Full of tastes, no tongue can know And lights, no eye can see When there was no ear to hear You sang to me.
This is almost exactly what Paul echoes from Isaiah to his friends: “As it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’.”
The full 1 Corinthians 2 passages above is a great example of Scripture we are invited to read Scripture slowly, for reading these words in a quiet place is like being marinated with a mystery. It is like being sprinkled with a dash of God’s holy salt, a salty wisdom that Christ would also try to spread like seed, sowing a taste of the kingdom in anyone who really tries to follow him.
While Christ (including through Paul) sprinkles this dash of a vision of heavenly realms, this unworldly wisdom that cannot be seen and cannot be heard and really cannot even be dreamed, the paradox is that he also wants us to actually live a life in this world. He wants us to take that salt and mix ourselves into creation. Along the way, we ought never forget the sacred mystery that is utterly beyond us, nor should we forget the sacred mysteries of the creation and the love of God present among the people of this world. After all, salt and light do not exist for themselves, but to bring tastiness and illumination to the things they touch.
When we meditate on that famous saying of Jesus, “You are the salt of the earth,” we may not know what this would have meant to his Jewish followers he first preached to. The covenant that God established with Israel was sometimes called the “covenant of salt” (Num 18:19, 2 Chron 13:5). Salt was not merely a preservative of meat in a pre-refrigerated time, but according to the Levitical law, salt was something that was to be mixed into every offering (Lev 2:13). Everything that went on the altar before God was an animal of his creation, and everything that went on the altar before God also needed a dash of salt. Why?
While Jewish theologians have wrestled over this (and there is never a singular meaning to biblical symbolism), perhaps salt is present in sacrifices because there is something intrinsically transcendent and incorruptible about salt; if salt “loses its taste,” it is not because the salt has broken down, but because it has been diluted with too much non-salt. So to enter into a “covenant of salt” means to hold onto a unique, everlasting, absolutely sacred bond God has offered to us and not dilute it with the other spices of the world. Yet also to be salt is to not exist for ourselves, but to be mixed in with the world. This is a narrow gate.
To be salt of the earth (and light of the world) is affirming, as Paul does, that you have been given something holy. You have the mind of Christ, the Spirit somewhere within you that can understand God’s wisdom. You have something that the powers of the world don’t have, for if they had it, they wouldn’t have killed Christ thousands of years ago or keep killing Christ today. You have been sprinkled with God’s mystery.
But before you go around strutting, “Look at me, I’m salt of the earth, I’m the light of the world, or maybe before you feel crushed by that (“I don’t want to be salt, I can barely get out of bed”), note that this isn’t about us as individuals. Jesus is speaking to his followers together and speaks to us as a collective body of Christ, just as God was speaking to his covenant of salt as a covenant with a whole people. We have a part to play as individuals, but you cannot be a city on a hill by yourself; there is no city of one person. And you cannot add taste to anything if you are salt by yourself. It’s not all about you.
But in another paradox, while it’s not all about you, you are needed. Let me say that again: you are needed. Can you believe it? Are you too depressed and crushed by the overwhelming powers and movements of the world or the long procession of time on your body to believe that? To repeat earthly wisdom I once heard from a comedian, “It’s hard to be depressed and useful at the same time.” As someone who can get depressed, it’s not always what I want to hear, but it’s also very helpful to hear, and I think it is just true.
I believe everyone who has ears to hear this has a way they can be useful in the world today. Do you know that? Do you believe that you are salt? Do you believe that the world needs you in some way? Do you believe that you are the thing which mixed in with the world can help people be a little more aware of a sacred mystery you carry?
If you do believe that even just a little bit, how do we do that?
It has something to do with how we live. It may still surprise us to hear that Jesus says that he came not to abolish the law, that not one iota of the law will pass before its fulfillment, that we must keep the commandments and be even more righteous than Pharisees. It still surprises me a little bit to read that. Note here that the Pharisees’ name means “the separated ones,” or “those set apart.” A Pharisee thinks you get holy by staying separate.
So how can we be more righteous than scribes and Pharisees? We can’t be more righteous by their standards of following the law, or by being even more separated from the world than them. No, if we are to be saltier than the Pharisees, it means mixing in with humanity just as God mixed himself in with us. It means trusting that there is something he planted in our hearts to preserve our hearts, a mysterious Spirit that is calling us to follow God’s law by following his heart, which sometimes means doing things that will not make you popular with the world yet is done for the love of the world in and among the world.
As followers of Jesus, we are in a covenant of salt. This means we, in the humblest way we can mean it, exist at the focal point of the living relationship God has with the world. We violate that by forgetting how God is calling us to be different, and we violate it the other way by forgetting how God is calling us to blend in—doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with your God. As commentator R.T. France said on this passage, disciples must be both distinctive from the world and involved in the world, neither fully assimilated nor inaccessible hermits (a temptation I still have). We must be unusual but involved, unique but mixed in. When Jesus wants us to be flavorful salt and bright light, he’s saying that you are where God is: as Israel, as a church, as God’s people, as Christ followers, you have been gifted a sacred bond with God. So act like it.
Last week I mentioned the blessing and challenge within the Beatitudes, and there it is again in these words that directly follow the Beatitudes. He just told us that blessed are those who are down and out, but just because you’re down and out doesn’t mean you are exempt from a relationship with God. As the prophets affirmed just because you are under siege in Jerusalem doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow the law. Just because you are in a hard place doesn’t mean you are out of the covenant and exempt from it. It means that no matter how low and down and outcast you may be, you are blessed, for God still has his salt in you. He still has a use for you in his world. He still has sprinkled his holy mystery in you with all the love and responsibility that comes with that.
To echo Paul again, you have a saltiness from God that is beyond totally making sense; you have a flavor of God that we can’t articulate ourselves; you smack of wisdom and love beyond what anyone can see or hear, much less something we can articulate. In those lyrics from the Grateful Dead’s unlikely psalm: in the book of love’s own dream, when there was no dream of yours, He dreamed of you. You carry the flavor God dreamed up to mix into his creation.
You can do nothing to be beyond redemption, for the salt of God is redemptive and purifying of all it touches. Personally, it is strange for me that I can find redemption in the Grateful Dead. Listening to them is often somewhat painful for the times of my life it evokes, a sad hedonia. One can easily seek pleasure all the time and remain depressed, and the Dead were often the soundtrack playing in the background of that time of my life of living for myself, seeking to have ephemeral psychedelic “wisdom” while sequestered from the world. It’s a temptation easy here in Vermont, which I think of as something like America’s monastery. It’s easy to want to retreat here away from the madness of world out there and “down there.”
But God is calling us to risk entering into the messed-up world, trusting that God’s sprinkling salt can redeem any part of his creation and that we are called to join in his work. Not by replicating the power games of the world and diluting the salt, but to share the unique taste of a mystery God has planted in you and to share that mysterious love with the world. For when you did not have a dream of your own, God thought it fitting to dream of you. Amen.
