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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
Jamuary 26, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
The second in the sermon series inspired by the elements of baking, we will talk about everything from the history of salt in the shaping of civilization to the Christian scriptures’ admonition to be the salt of the earth.
Chalice Lighting
We light the fire of Truth and ask to be clear, wise, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. We kindle the warmth of community and ask for open heartedness and patience. We are grateful to the Spirit of Life and ask to learn the secret to loving and being loved.
Call to Worship
Israelmore Ayivor
Don’t be a pepper on the eyes of people; Rather be the salt on their tongue and make a difference that influences their sense of belonging to the earth.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Meditation Reading
THE SWEETNESS OF SALT
Cecilia GalanteShe reached for a tiny white dish on top of the stove. “Oops, and salt. I almost forgot salt.”
“Salt?” I wrinkled my nose, and then widened my eyes. “Is that your secret ingredient?”
Sophie laughed. “Salt isn’t a secret ingredient, doofus. Besides, you just add a pinch. Salt brings out all the flavors.” She paused. “It’s weird, isn’t it? How something so opposite of sweet can make things taste even better?” “How does it do that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Sophie answered. “It just kind of brings everything together in its own strange little way.
Sermon
A few years ago I read a book called “Glass Paper Beans.” The writer, Leah Hager Cohen, was sitting in a coffee shop drinking a glass of coffee, reading the newspaper. She found herself wondering where the coffee beans came from, and what the process was by which they came to this place. The glass, too. How is that made? And the paper…. It’s made from wood pulp, we all know, but how is the wood harvested? How is it made into paper? The book was interesting. Here, years later, I was baking baguettes, whose only ingredients are water, flour and salt, and I thought I didn’t know much about any of the elements of baking. Heat and Transformation was the first one, two weeks ago, and this past week I’ve been researching salt.
Since I was raised in the Christian church, one of the things that came to mind was Rabbi Jesus saying “you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, it is good for nothing but to be cast out and trampled underfoot.” This saying has never made sense to me because there is salt in the earth, but where there is salt in the soil nothing will grow there. Enemies used to salt the fields of the people they conquered to ruin their ability to live in that place any more. Salt of the earth doesn’t sound like a good thing. Also, salt doesn’t lose its saltiness. It’s salt. So it tastes salty. So I started reading about salt.
Where does it come from? Dry lake beds, salt flats, the ocean, and mines. In some mines, people go underground to chop it out of the eart, and in others, a well is dug, fresh water is forced down into a salt deposit, and when it comes back up it’s salty. Then they evaporate the water. Most kosher salt is sea salt. Much of our table salt comes from the wells that force water into the ancient oceans’ salt deposits.
In ancient China, the history of salt can be traced back over 6,000 years. Salt was such a valuable commodity that many battles were fought for control of the area and access to the dry lakes’ salt flats.
The first known Chinese treatise on pharmacology, the Peng-Tzao-Kan-Mu, written more than 4,700 years ago, lists over 40 different types of salt and their properties. It also describes methods of extracting it and preparing it for human consumption.
It was widely traded in pottery jars which, according to ‘The Archaeology of China’, served as a form of currency and ‘standard units of measure in the trade and distribution of salt’.
Maybe you have a pink salt lamp, or pink salt for cooking. Himalayan rock salt was first laid down more than 500 million years ago, the history of Himalayan rock salt starts with Alexander the Great in 326 BC. Alexander was recorded resting his army in the Khewra region of what is now northern Pakistan. His soldiers noticed their horses started to lick the salty rocks in the area, a small surface part of what is now known to be one of the world’s most extensive underground rock salt deposits.
Today, the Khewra salt mine in Pakistan is the second largest in the world and famous for producing culinary pink rock salt and Himalayan salt lamps. The Egyptian salt trade, especially with the Phoenicians and early Greek Empire, contributed significantly to the wealth and power of the Old and Middle kingdoms of ancient Egypt. Furthermore, the Egyptians were also one of the first cultures known to preserve their food with salt. Both meat, and particularly fish, were preserved by salting.
Salzburg, a city in Austria, translates to ‘salt city.’ It was also an important center of salt trade in ancient Europe. Today, the Hallstatt salt mine near Salzburg is still open and considered the world’s oldest operational salt mine.
In the Iron Age, the British evaporated salt by boiling seawater in small clay pots over open fires. Roman salt-making entailed boiling the seawater in large lead-lined pans. Salt was used as currency in ancient Rome, and the roots of the words “soldier” and “salary” can be traced to Latin words related to giving or receiving salt. During the Middle Ages, salt was transported along roads built especially for that purpose. One of the most famous of these roads is the Old Salt Route in Northern Germany, which ran from the salt mines to shipping ports.
Salt taxes and monopolies have led to wars and protests everywhere from China to parts of Africa. Anger over the salt tax was one of the causes of the French Revolution. In colonial India, only the British government could produce and profit from the salt production conducted by Indians living on the coast. Gandhi chose to protest this monopoly in March 1930 and marched for 23 days with his followers. When he arrived on the coast, Gandhi violated the law by boiling a chunk of salty mud. This march became known as the Salt March to Dandi, or the Salt Satyagraha. People across India began making their own salt in protest, and the march became an important milestone in the struggle for Indian independence.
Salt production also played a significant role in early America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony held the first patent to produce salt in the colonies and continued to produce it for the next 200 years. The Erie Canal was opened primarily to make salt transportation easier, Salt continues to be important to the economies of many states, including Ohio, Louisiana and Texas. Grand Saline is the saltiest town in Texas, and it has the Salt Palace to prove it. Calling the visitors’ center a palace may be stretching it, but the Northeast Texas town is literally sitting on a mountain of salt, 20,000 feet deep, left there when Texas was a sea bed. Apparently you can’t lick the court house, but you can lick city hall.
OK, so what does being the salt of the earth mean? Since one of salt’s earliest uses was to preserve food, which enabled people to travel, not as they had traveled before, to find more food, but for other reasons, to go somewhere, to visit someone, to go on a sales trip to sell the salted food, or pottery or jewelry or grain or animals or people to sell. Salt enabled travel and trade.
Old time preachers seized on this and said what Jesus meant was that people who followed him were supposed to be a force to prevent moral decay and moral corruption.
I would love for us to be a force to prevent moral decay and corruption. I don’t think I share their views of what moral decay looks like. I think it looks like people in cages, treated cruelly, for-profit prisons, pay-for-play politics, super-rich people facing a completely different justice system than the poor. That’s what looks like moral decay to me. And corruption? Most of the governments of the world run on it. So maybe that’s one meaning. The old rabbis said that every passage in the Jewish Scripture has at least 300,000 meanings, and I think the same is true of the Christian Scriptures.
I think about salt, and I think we come from the sea, there is salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. If your body salt gets out of balance, you’re in trouble. In the hospital, you get a saline solution to restore your balance. Medicines are suspended in saline. You can help your cedar fever by squirting saline solution into your nostrils.
Another thing salt does is magnify the flavors of food. Your tongue has salt receptors along its sides, near your salivary glands, and close to the bitterness receptors. Sometimes you can put salt on something bitter, like coffee or grapefruit, and it occupies those taste buds so that it cuts the bitterness. A pinch of salt in cookies makes the sweetness deeper and more layered. You have to get just the right amount, though. They say, cooking pasta, that the water should be salted enough so that it tastes like the ocean. If you eat something that is less salted than you like it, it tastes bland and flat. If something is over-salted, it can be ruined. So, if you’re the salt of the earth, you have to spread that saltiness out. Too much salt of the earth on salt of the earth, it burns you. Tastes awful. How might salt “lose its savor?” By trying to stick to its own kind. Salt can’t salt salt.
Salt is essential for baking, for industry, for manufacturing, for preserving and cleansing and health. I still don’t really know what Rabbi Jesus meant, but here’s what I think today:
If we are salt of the earth we apparently need to spread out, to be about other people. If I’m sitting with you, and I’m in a good spiritual place, I’m going to be thinking “How can I enhance your flavors? How can I help you be a delight to this conversation, to yourself, to this group, to the planet?
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