After Jesus starts to collect quite the crowd, he begins to preach a tough sermon.
Jesus’s most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount is tough to hear. He begins with the Beatitudes, then digs into a vibrancy of faith, of living, and sharing with the world. The kind of response that is bound to get people excited…as long as we’re on his good side.
I also find that many of us get lost in the details at this point. In part because we want to understand Jesus right. And also because we kinda want to wiggle our way out of it being all that meaningful for us.
Being compared to salt is kind of weird. Light; we like that better.
But the invocation of necessity, that we are to keep our saltiness, not hide our light, much like Jesus’s own testament: that he has come, not to abolish the law, but fulfill it: is tricky and distracting.
And yet, it is also essential, generous, and full of hope. If we’re willing to acknowledge it is so.