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Sunday, January 30, 2005
Rev.
Dr. Harold E Kidd
“You are the salt of the
earth, but if salt losses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” It is
good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Matthew 5: 13
For the time that is ours,
let us consider the theme: “CHURCH UNUSUAL.” I want to acknowledge the
contributions of Rev. William Watley in a Lecture given at the Hampton
Minister’s Conference which shed some new light on this text that is before us.
One of the characteristics in Jesus' ministry that made it as effective as it
was is that Jesus knew his audience. Amen.
Jesus knew his audience. He
taught them in parables using common illustrations, language, and scenes
familiar to their living. A sower went out to sow; I am the vine, you are the
branches. Yes, He knew the audience he was trying to reach.
In the day and culture into
which Jesus was born, the uses of salt as a sacrifice, as a symbol of
purification and seasoning, and as a preservative are well known to a number of
us. Jesus knew his audience, and so his language using salt as a metaphor had
meaning. And as we consider this metaphor of salt in our own time, and in
relationship to
communicating Christ in this
21st century.
How do we live out the
meaning of the implications of being the Salt of the Earth as servants, as
seasoning, as expressions of sanctification, of salvation to a generation that
has stopped eating salt?
What if our problem is not
that the salt has not lost its savor or its
saltiness, but that our
audience has simply had a change
of diet. How do we faithfully live out the meaning of being the
Salt of the Earth, not just to our own generation and to those who faithfully
come to the Lord’s House Sunday after Sunday, but being salt to those living in
our communities who have stopped eating salt … because they’ve had a change in
diet? Let me see if I can make it plain from a generational perspective.
I was born in 1950, and so I
like some of you are part of the baby boomer generation that has now become
middle-aged. And if you were born prior to 1940, I’m certain your recollections
of how it was then and how it now is bring even further clarity to the impact
generational change has had upon our society and with it, the challenge of the
church to be the Salt of the Earth.
My generation for the most
part grew up in an era of working fathers and stay-at-home mothers. Going to
church was part of the landscape for a majority of families, and going to
church usually meant an all day experience. For those of us over the age of 50
our earliest recollection of high technology was that of a 12-inch
black-and-white television with 3 primary channels -- ABC, NBC, CBS.
In my generation college
tuition at San Francisco State College was $78 a semester, minimum wage was
$1.40, a brand new Cadillac Coupe De Ville went for $3500. Groups like the
Temptations, Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the 4-Tops, the
Beatles, Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes,
and Earth, Wind & Fire sang music with lyrics centered around love and
unity rather than sex and violence.
Generation X on the other
hand has grown up in an era of the World-Wide Web as distinct from either color
or black-and-white TV absent fathers as distinct from working fathers, day care
as distinct from at-home mothers. Many of them have grown up in families where
Sundays have been devoted to the mall, the movies, or some other recreational
outing rather than worship in a church.
Generation X grew up in an era of body-piercing and tattoos, CDs as distinct
from LPs, and hip-hop as distinct from rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues, or
Bach and Beethoven.
From the Baby Boomer
generation to Generation X, our society changed, And from Generation X to
Generation D our society and the world in which we live has changed to an even
greater degree, and with it the market and tastes of those we are called to
reach. So we ought not be surprised that a generation has stopped eating our
salt.
When it comes to Generation
D, those born in 1980, the change has become even more radical and thus their
worldview and tastes are distinctly different from ours. They were too young to
remember the space shuttle blowing up. The Persian Gulf War had already been
waged before many of them reached puberty. Their lifetime has always included
AIDS. Bottle caps have always been screw and plastic. Milk is purchased in the
supermarket and not delivered by the milkman in glass bottles to their front
door. The Vietnam War is as ancient to them as World War I is to my generation.
As beautiful as is the song
“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, they have never heard and do not know what
an 'Ebenezer' is. And some of us may
not know what it is. Popcorn has always been cooked in a microwave oven. The CD
was introduced when they were one year old. They have always had cable. They
never heard ”Where’s the beef?” or
“De plane, De plane.”
The message of the gospel
has not changed, but how we choose to communicate it in order to reach this 21st
century is in need of some changes. The message of the Gospel has not changed,
but the times in which we live have. Amen. His word is the same yesterday,
today, and tomorrow, but the ways through which we communicate his Word may
need to adapt to the times in which we live.
Churches serious about reaching
the 21st century population will have to be willing to go through
serious change. Churches serious about reaching in effective ministry those of
the 21 st century will have to be churches that are not your typical
church, but unusual churches, churches that are willing to take deep risks in
discovering new ways of being the church without compromising the message of
Jesus.
Maybe our problem is not
that what we have to offer has lost its savor or saltiness, but that the tastes
of our audience have changed. I was reading an interesting article the other
day which focused on the new Acura. Acura discovered that a name can either
make or break sales. You remember the Legend, Integra, and Vigor, cars all made
by Acura. Well, in 1994-5 Acura discovered that sales were down, products were
aging, and the brand was losing its distinct image. And what they also
discovered was that it was not about the quality of the car but the name.
The taste in cars by the
consumer had changed. Their research concluded that buyers tended to relate
luxury vehicles with the alphanumeric system as opposed to actual names; hence,
we see the emergence of names like Audi A6, BMW 540, Infiniti G35. So Acura
changed their naming system: Acura 32TL Type-S …, and since 1996 Acura has enjoyed
a double-digit increase in sales.
We are called to provide
salt to a generation whose tastes have changed in music, in worship, and in
their understanding of theological language. We are challenged to make relevant
theological ideas to a growing population where 54% of American adults,
according to church sociologist George Barna, are either functionally or
marginally illiterate. So to sing a simple praise song like “God is so good,
God is so good” might have more meaning and relevance to them than “A mighty
Fortress is our God.”
I’m not putting down the
great hymns of the church, for I believe they are a part of who we are as a
people of faith and should be a mainstay in giving our congregations a balanced
musical diet, but by the same token, we must also keep it simple and give it
some rhythm if we want to reach this present generation. Our audience has
changed and, with it, their tastes.
As we consider the words of
Jesus, “You are the Salt of the Earth”,
how do we provide salt to a people who have stopped eating salt?
Perhaps we provide for their needs first and then explain to them its
theological meaning. Just because someone has stopped eating salt does
not mean they do not need salt. For salt cleanses the palate as well as
flavors the food; it gives clarity to our taste buds.
Generation D as well as
Generation X needs salt as much as anybody else. When Jesus fed the five
thousand, He first provided for their need, he fed their hungry bellies … then
he explained to them its theological meaning, “I am the Bread of Life”.
In other words, give those
who have stopped eating salt, who do not know what salt is, give them the salt
in a manner which they will eat it, then explain its theological meaning.
(repeat) Be the Church Unusual. How do we communicate a need to people who do
not know what they need? We provide for their need first and then we explain to
them, what it is we have provided.
And how do we provide for
those who have stopped eating salt? We
show them, and then we tell. The early church grew not simply because of the
Gospel they proclaimed but because the world noticed a different quality of
life in those who were the followers of the Lord Jesus. We live in a visual
world -- cable TV, computers, the Internet, video games, Palm Pilots -- wherein
people are more influenced by what they see than by what they hear. Which says
to us, before we can tell them about the Lord, we’ve got to show them.
They see enough flashiness;
they need to see some faithfulness. They see enough drama, they need to see
some dignity. They see enough violence, they need to see some virtue. They see
enough selfishness, they need to see some service. They see enough cruelty,
they need to see some caring. They see enough money, they need to see some
meaning. They see enough entertainment, they need to see some excellence. They
see enough hell, they need to see some heaven. They see enough gold on people,
they need to see some God in people.
And as I prepare to take my
seat, one of the qualities of salt not mentioned but that we are well aware of
is that enough salt in the diet will make one thirsty for water.
Amen. I once went to a good preacher
friend of mine seeking to find some insight into the difficult challenges of
pastoring God’s people, of our church taking seriously the Lord’s mandate to be
the Salt of the Earth to those living in our community, and I said to him,
“Howard, we can lead people to the water but we can’t make them drink.” Howard
had been raised in the country and was well acquainted with the raising of
livestock, and he said to me, “No, but you can make them thirsty.”
Jesus said, “You are the
Salt of the Earth”. He referred to us, his disciples, as Salt, but he never
referred to himself as Salt. He is the great I AM, He is our High Priest, He is
the Sweet Rose of Sharon, He is the Bright and Morning Star, He is the one
Mediator between God and Humanity, but he never claimed himself to be the Salt
of the Earth. … But I do recall over in John 4, in meeting that Samaritan woman
who had come to draw water from Jacob’s Well, declaring himself to be the
Living Water. If I understand it right, our task as the Salt is not only to act
as a spiritual and moral preservative within our society but to whet people’s
appetites, to get people thirsty enough to where they will cry out like this
Samaritan Women, "Give me this Water." Where is this Water?