You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. (Matthew 5:13)

Today is 9/11.  Like many of you, this date and where I was when I saw the Twin Towers fall will be forever etched in my brain.  I was still working at Kingston Psychiatric Hospital at the time, and every tv in every sunroom played the same news reels over and over again; planes hitting the towers, the towers slowly imploding, a plane downed at the Pentagon and a 4^th on downed somewhere in the New York State countryside.  The hospital, normally humming with activity at that time of day was eerily quiet, with staff and patients huddled around screens trying to make sense of what we were witnessing.

My two kids were at daycare, just across the parking lot from my office.  I left my desk at lunchtime and went over to see them.  They were just confused that I was there and were even more confused that I was just there to hug them and to be with them in all of their warm, somewhat sticky handed innocence.  I cried into the tops of their heads. I didn’t really know why I was crying.  Maybe it was because I knew the world had tilted for them, and they were now being raised in something that was darker and uglier.  A world that I wasn’t sure I had what it took to protect them from.

Later that afternoon, all managers were called into an emergency meeting and we were being asked to set up for ‘overflow’ from the hospitals in New York state that bordered Ontario.  We had about an hour of a flurry of activity; workstations and beds being moved into common areas, the cafeteria readying for an influx of demand for meals and the pharmacy requesting medical supplies that psychiatric facilities normally don’t carry but are necessary for more acute care.

Then the call came to “stand down”.  Stand down because there wouldn’t be any overflow from upstate New York.  No overflow because there weren’t that many patients.  There weren’t that many patients because there weren’t that many survivors.

As I write this, I can feel the same sobering dread that I felt that day.  The dread that I carry with me when I see the casualties in Gaza, or following the latest school shooting, or the systematic dismantling of human rights that we see happening all around us.  The same dread came over me when I heard of the assassination in Utah of Charlie Kirk; a man who’s politics and values I totally disagree with, but I know that his assassination will simply polarize our world even more – Right against Left, Ideals against Ideals, with bodies lying in between as casualties to this unseen war.

Then this morning, when I was looking at scriptures to lie as foundation for this blog, I read this passage from the Book of Matthew:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. (Matthew 5:13)

I think we have forgotten the depth of our call to be the ‘salt of the earth’.  You see, way back when Jesus was talking about salt, he wasn’t just calling us to be a little more flavouring in the world.  Salt was used to preserve food.  Salt was necessary for the well-being of all people in the community.  Salt protected us from all sorts of food borne illnesses because it prevented food from

Rot.

You see, we are more than simply a nice flavouring to a fancy meal.  We are being called to protect the world from rot.  We are what is standing in between death and disease (or dis-ease).  We are what will stop the rot of violence, hatred and the abuse of power and control.  In the name of Jesus, who we also call our Saviour.

Who we are as Christians, and what we are called to is HUGE.  It feels daunting.  It feels ‘beyond our scope’.  And so that’s why we gather together.  In Jesus’ name.

To be salt.

And to protect the world.

Blessings today my dear Bethel Friends.  Hug your loved ones and go be salt.  Remember that you are Loved.

~Rev. Lynne