Between Sundays for the Week of February 9, 2026
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world, Jesus says. This is who you are created to be. So don’t lose your saltiness or hide your light.
In the middle of one of the coldest winters on record in Rochester, I hear Jesus’ words about salt and light differently this year. Even though salt can’t actually lose it’s taste, it can be diluted to the point where it cannot be tasted and it can be rendered ineffective in certain environments. (For example, salt sprinkled on a road when it’s 0 degrees outside does nothing to melt the snow and ice!) So if we are the salt of the earth, as Jesus says, then where we show up matters.
February 1 marked the 66th anniversary of four students sitting at a “White’s Only” counter at the Woolworth’s Diner in Greensboro, North Carolina. Although they were refused service and worse, they continued to show up in the days and weeks that followed. Other people joined them and organized sit-ins across many states to challenge the injustice of segregation. It took until July, but that lunch counter at Woolworth’s was finally de-segregated.
Those four students – and the hundreds and thousands who joined them in the days and months to come – were created to be salt. And by spilling out into the world, rather than staying in their socially-prescribed shaker, by choosing to sit at a lunch counter where they were not welcome, they seasoned their community with God’s justice that values the worth and dignity and humanity of every single person.
We are beloved children of God, blessed by God, created to be the presence of God in the world today. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Nothing we say or do – and nothing anyone else says about us or does to us – can change that. But the world is changed when we refuse to be diluted or hidden away. The world is changed when we show up.
And we can only show up to change the world and make the kingdom of God a bit more visible with the guidance and help of God. So we pray (as we did in worship yesterday) with the words from a prayer that dates back to the 7th century:
Lord God, with endless mercy you receive the prayers of all who call
upon you. By your Spirit show us the things we ought to do, and give us the grace and power to do them, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
Faith Connection at Home
Ponderings
Author, scholar, and journalist Amy Frykholm writes, “So many people I know, including myself, have expressed hopelessness and helplessness during this past year, a sense of paralysis, a loss of knowing how to act in a world that seems unrecognizable. We are debilitated by the pace of change. But these passages, collectively, let us know that our sense of helplessness is a mirage. We carry with us, as the whole of our tradition teaches us, a responsibility to our neighbors, to strangers, and to our enemies that lies just outside our door. I can’t answer for you what it means to be a “repairer of the breach, a restorer of streets on which to live” (Isaiah 58:12). Here where I live, however, I know I am relying on the example of others, including the people of Minnesota.”