Light and Salt / Matthew 5:13-20 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday February 8th 2026/ Season of Epiphany / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday February 8th 2026: Season of Epiphany/ Matthew 5:13-20 “Light and Salt”

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends in our Gospel reading today from the Gospel of Saint Matthew we have the continuation of the Sermon on the Mount from Jesus, last week we looked at the Beatitudes and today we’ll look at two statements that Jesus makes in this Sermon:

1) “You are the salt of the earth” and,

2) “You are the light of the world.”

Part I: First let’s look at: “You are the salt of the earth”

Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” Salt is good for many things: For your body it’s crucial for life itself, salt plays a critical role in nerve impulse transmission, in your muscle contractions and relaxations, and in your fluid balance. Not enough salt, too much salt both become a problem. In food it can improve taste and texture and under certain conditions salt can be used to preserve food to make it last longer and it can even kill certain bacteria. And if it’s no longer good for any of those things you can always put salt on roads and sidewalks to trample under feet and the wheels of vehicles to break down ice or keep ice from forming. Without salt you have no life, without salt you will be physically dead. If you’re dead it won’t matter what things taste like or how well food is preserved or whether the roads or sidewalks are safe.

Perhaps a good question is to ask ‘How does salt lose its taste?’ Salt can lose its saltiness if it’s contaminated with is impurities or if it’s exposed to moisture causing the sodium chloride to dissolve and wash away, leaving behind a bland and tasteless residue. Interestingly when Jesus warns you about lose of taste, lose of saltiness, as He describes you as “the salt of the earth,” the sorts of things that could cause this stack up nicely with the effects of sin, impurities, contaminations, unsuitable environments. The very things that lead to loss of taste, loss of saltiness, describe sin. Saint Paul teaches that “the wages of sin is death,”[1] and apparently for the Christian the path to death is paved with a loss of taste and saltiness.

Now let’s zero in on the question Jesus asks: “If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” Saint Paul explains how on our own we are “dead in our trespasses” and the body of one who is dead can do nothing for themselves. They cannot move, they cannot think, they cannot speak or see or hear. If someone was about to trample on them they could not move out of the way or object, they can do nothing. But when Saint Paul says that we are “dead in our trespasses” this is part of something bigger that Paul is preaching, the full quote from his letter to the Ephesians explains how it is that “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—.[2] So, “If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?,” only by grace and only in Christ Jesus. To help illustrate this consider this familiar passage from the Old Testament, from Ezekiel chapter 37.  

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And He led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And [the LORD] said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, You know.” Then He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD.”

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then [the LORD] said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” So I prophesied as [the LORD] commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”[3]

The bones of Ezekiel chapter 37 were dry and dead they were not going to bring themselves back to life. They were like salt that had lost its saltiness. And, “if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” The LORD will restore it. Now you might ask ‘How will the LORD do this?’ The answer is just as you heard from Ezekiel chapter 37; The LORD will do this through the preaching of His Word; by the power of the Holy Spirit He will do this. He does this in Christ Jesus, in Jesus’ life and death and resurrection from the dead. What did Saint Paul say in our Epistle lesson this morning from 1st Corinthians? Paul said, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”[4] A preacher worth his salt will preach to you Christ Jesus and Him crucified. This same Saint Paul when he said “the wages of sin is death,” continues to say, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,”[5] this is what the Christian preacher who is worth his salt preaches, what the Christian tells others.

Part II: Now let’s look at: “You are the light of the world.”

Jesus says, “Let your light [so] shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” These are very familiar words, we hear them at the end of baptisms when we light a candle and hand it to the one being baptised, or to one of their parent, or godparents. What do these words mean for us as Christians in our daily life?

When you hear Jesus say “your light?” what do you think of first? Is this a light that you generate in your heart, by your will, by your own gumption, by your own power? Some might say ‘yes’ but truly the answer is ‘no.’ When Jesus says “Let your light shine before others,” remember also what Jesus says in the Gospel of Saint John when He says, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of Life.”[6] Putting these teachings of Jesus together the question emerges ‘Who then is “your Light?”’ Dear ones the answer is that Jesus is. He is “your Light.” Jesus also says this about Himself, “I have come into the World as Light, so that whoever believes in Me may not remain in darkness.”[7] And in the verse just before that Jesus says, “Whoever sees Me sees Him who sent Me.”[8] And who is it that Jesus says has sent Him? Jesus says that it was His heavenly “Father who sent [Him].”[9] With the Light who is Christ Jesus shining upon you, shining in you, you no longer need to sit in the dark unable to see.

So again what does Jesus say to you today, “Let your light [so] shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” In faith, in your baptism, Jesus is not just the Light of the World but He is your light, He belongs to you and now you belong to Him, and because of your adoption into the family of God your true Father is your heavenly Father—your Father in heaven—just as Christ Jesus is likewise now your older brother, the older brother who has paved the way ahead of you, lighting the way of the very path for you to walk in, giving you His footsteps to walk in.

Essentially Jesus — who is your Light and your Life — is the one who shines before others through the God pleasing things you do and accomplish, so they would know to whom the credit really belongs to. Good works then are not ours to do apart from Christ Jesus, and they are not done for our benefit but for the benefit of others, so we should ever be careful to deflect praise to Christ and away from ourselves. For example, a couple of years ago after our Saint Michael and All Angles Divine Services I remember standing with our Director of Domestic Missions Reverend Jacob Quast as we greeted people. He had a good sermon that night, he was our preacher, and as people came out and complimented him on the Sermon he deflected and said, “thanks be to God,” or “to God be the glory.” This is a good lesson. And lesson we need to learn over and over and over again because the first thing we often think to say when someone compliments us is “thank you,” or “you’re welcome.” It’s second nature to pile up credit for ourselves. We all need to learn to give credit where credit is due … And there you have it, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” It’s often hard to do this, but work on giving glory to God, and avoid taking credit when complimented. It is a mark of humility to, “consider others more significant than yourselves.”[10]

Last week we talked about the beatitudes and how they were perfectly, without fault, accomplished through, and by, Jesus. We talked about Jesus’ perfect completion of them being what makes us free to be gracious and meek and merciful towards others; His accomplishment of the law then makes us free from worrying whether the World think we are poor in spirit because we look after those who the world look down upon. In Christ we become free from worrying if we will be persecuted because of Him, because Jesus made peace between us and His heavenly Father. In Christ we then are free to work at being peacemakers, and we are free to work at keeping a pure heart, we are free to embrace a thirst and hunger for God’s word, for a righteous life. And when we fail at living in this way, we then are made free in Christ Jesus to return to the Father and ask for His forgiveness.

Dear ones, people will also take notice when someone takes responsibility for their sin and honestly desires to do better; people take notice when someone is able to forgive and is able to be forgiven. This too, along with good things like meekness and mercifulness in all that we think, do and say will be noticed and if anyone praises you for these things remember who your Light is and remember who you’re your Light Jesus, God the Father Almighty. For the one who wonders at the Light they see in you, cross the ‘T’s’ and dot the ‘I’s’ for them and help them to see that you cling to Christ and this same Christ lifts you up:[11] This is why you can say that Jesus is “yours.” Remind them that the Light they see in you, “your Light,” is Him not you. At the beginning of the Gospel of John we hear that in His incarnation Jesus, “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the World. He was in the World, and the World was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.”[12] Remember the theme of the season of Epiphany, this season is about the revealing of Jesus to the World, about the surprise that Jesus is to a World shroud in darkness. Jesus was in the World, and the World was made through Him, yet the World did not know Him: How does the World get to know Jesus today? The World gets to know Him through you, and the good works that you do, to the glory of your heavenly Father. Remember what Saint Paul teaches us, “we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”[13]

As we close today the thing to remember about this part of the Gospel of Saint Matthew is that in it Jesus is preaching a sermon to you. With these words Jesus breathes new life into you. The preacher who stands on God’s Word can trust that God’s word shall not return to the LORD empty, it shall accomplish that which the LORD purposes, and shall succeed in the thing for which the LORD sent it.[14] How does the light of Jesus shine on a dark and bland and tasteless World?  Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans asks, “How then will they call on [Jesus] in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”[15] This week we have another beautiful pair of feet making His final steps to come to us here at Mount Olive. Let us all keep Pastor Basil Christi in our prayers as we together hear God’s Word, and let us endeavour to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified, letting our Light, who is Christ Jesus, shine before others, so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven; and when we’ve lost our saltiness trusting that it is God in Christ Jesus, by His grace and mercy, who will make us salty again as we live out the Light of our faith in dark and tasteless the World in desperate need of Salt and Light. Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Romans 6:23a
[2] Ephesians 2:4–5
[3] Ezekiel 37:1-10
[4] 1 Corinthians 2:2
[5] Romans 6:23
[6] John 8:12
[7] John 12:46
[8] John 12:45
[9] John 8:16
[10] Philippians 2:3
[11] Psalm 63:8
[12] John 1:9-10
[13] Ephesians 2:10
[14] Isaiah 55:11
[15] Romans 10:14-15

Photo Credit: Main photo composit of sea salt from pxhere and light bulb from popsci.