A Reflection for Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You are the salt of the earth.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?
It is no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
You are the light of the world.
A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket;
it is set on a lampstand,
where it gives light to all in the house.
Just so, your light must shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your heavenly Father.”
After the theologian David Tracy died in late April, I spent a fair amount of time reading up on America’s coverage of him over the six decades of his prolific and influential scholarly career, including a 1995 interview with Bill Burrows. In that interview, Father Tracy commented on what he saw as the American Catholic inclination to be less of a prophetic, counter-cultural faith and more one that finds accommodation in whatever cultures it takes root. He contrasted this with evangelical Protestantism, which in many contexts was more likely to see itself as against contemporary culture than immersed in it. I’m not sure the contrast holds true anymore—this was 30 years ago—but at the time it might have made more sense.
“The sacramental life and the commitments involved in attending eucharistie worship, in baptizing and raising children and in thinking seriously about social justice issues and how one relates to the culture are more typically Catholic,” Tracy said. “It’s harder for us Catholics to be counter-cultural because our whole tradition ordinarily leads us to adopt a positive attitude toward the surrounding cultural reality and tries to find its positive elements before making judgments, especially prophetic, evangelical judgments.”
Tracy didn’t use the terms of Reinhold Niebuhr—where Christians can be seen as being against culture, in culture, above culture or transforming culture—but he was clearly familiar with the taxonomy. It addresses a key question in Christian discipleship: Did Christ want us to be of the world or to simply exist in it? After all, part of our accommodation to culture isn’t a choice, it’s just inertia, or laziness, isn’t it?
The Gospels are not of one voice on this subject: Note that Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel from Matthew seem to suggest a close engagement with the world, while in other places (especially the Gospel of John), we hear a Jesus who seems to call his disciples to flee the world.
It can make for strange contradictions. The front wall of the Jesuit residence at San Salvador’s University of Central America is a good example. Serving as a memorial to the six Jesuits and two lay people who were murdered there in 1989 by government paramilitaries, it features a quote in Spanish from John: "Si el mundo los odia, sepan que antes me odió a mí." “If the world hates you, know that it hated me first.” These words of Jesus are a fitting testament to people who died for the sake of the Christian message, but I remember being struck by a sense of incongruity the first time I saw them: They come from a larger context in the Gospel of John that suggests the world itself is an evil place.
Is it? I have a hard time imagining that Ignacio Ellacuría and his martyred companions actually saw the world itself as evil. If so, why bother to seek to bring about the Kingdom in this vale of tears?
Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel suggest that true discipleship entails being involved in the world and in the cultures in which we are immersed. His “salt of the earth” metaphor says as much:“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” What is salt, after all, but an enhancer? It’s not very useful in itself; its value comes from the way it enhances other things. As a catalyst, it speeds up reactions; as a preservative, it keeps food safe; as an additive, it amplifies the flavor of what we eat.
So too, I think, is Jesus calling us to be disciples who enhance the culture we are part of, who preserve what is good in it and who are catalysts for necessary change. Being the salt of the earth necessarily entails something for salt to act upon, to interact with. Pace our doctors’ instructions, our world needs more salt.
