Out of the Compost Pile and into the Ground (I of II)

Luke 14:25-35
Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.

“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

This story is familiar enough to most of us, but something stuck out and left me puzzled. Stated as a question, it goes like this: "What was that again about the manure pile?"

I have a water softener in my house, and it uses vast quantities of salt. When I clean the retaining tank out on my driveway, the place where the salty gook flows to quickly becomes an agricultural wasteland. No shock, right? Salt is well-known as a great way to ruin farmland. So... come again about that manure pile? Why on Earth (this turns out to be a pun) would I put salt in a manure pile?

Well? Shoot. You tell me! If it's a pile with no intended use, why would I bother salting it? And if it's going to be used as fertilizer, why again would I throw salt into it? That would make it useless as fertilizer!

Thus began the investigation. My first discovery was that googling things like Jesus salt of the earth is not going to give you any satisfactory answers. I find that gap a bit puzzling, seeing it doesn't require a rocket scientist to ask this question. But let's digress for a moment and look at the ordinary explanations you'll find. They start and end with comments like this: "Salt is also important as a preservative and a seasoning." Even my NIV Bible says that. ONLY that. On and on. Here's a screenshot of the kind of stuff you'll see near the top a google search...

So this repeated mantra regarding preservatives and seasoning is all great—so far as it goes—but it says absolutely nothing about Luke's manure pile.

Why?

I think the short answer to that question is that everyone is working primarily with Matthew's version of the same text. Here's how it reads:

Matthew 5:13
“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.

We talk seasonings and preservatives because these interpretations still suit modern sensibilities, and Matthew's text conforms to the interpretations we understand. Salt. Taste. Surely Matthew is talking about table salt, right? Of course! And so from this text we arrive at these sorts of images and expressions...

Those of us who were exposed to Christian books in the eighties might even remember a pretty popular book titled Out of the Saltshaker and into the World. It was a good book, but where salt is concerned it only reinforced the prevailing understanding as captured in the above image and text.

But is table salt the whole story? Not even Matthew can be reconciled (only) to that interpretation, because we don't throw table salt gone bad out onto the roads and pathways where people walk. What do we do with that part of the verse? Enter the preservative angle. The notion that salt can be used to keep food from going bad is still with us, even if the practice disappeared with the advent of the refrigerator. (The phrase "salted pork" hasn't left the English language just yet!) Several of the disciples were fishermen, so perhaps Jesus was imagining a scene from a local fish market?

And that is where our creativity comes to rest. We presume that Jesus is saying that we are, by extension of the analogy, a source of preservation and/or seasoning for our culture and the world around. That's the understanding I grew up with, and that's what you'll find on Google if you don't refine your search.

End of story? No! Luke doesn't make this reading of the text very easy to arrive at. Luke mentions manure and soil. That ain't fish and salted chips. What on Earth is Luke talking about? Let's not settle for those other answers. Let's keep digging. (Ya gotta love these earthy puns...) Here's what me and Google found out together on the deeper dive...

Jesus calls us to be the manure of the Earth.

(Ironically, the above article came out just a few weeks ago! No planning on my part with that. I was just reading the gospel of Luke...)

Yes, that's right. We're not a dainty enhancement to the dinner table. We are not a preservative for dinner meats. No, my friends. We're an additive to manure. The details behind that realization are kind of boring—the stuff only a farmer could love—but here's a paragraph from that link that sums it up well enough for our purposes:

An old article in the journal Biblical Archaeology, “Salt, Soil, Savior,” stands the test of time. Eugene P. Deatrick, former head of the soils department at West Virginia University, argued that in Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:50, and Luke 14:34–35, Jesus was speaking not primarily of salt’s household use but of its agricultural use. According to Deatrick, several kinds of salt are found in Palestine that are different from the kind we’re familiar with. There is rock salt, salt evaporated from Dead Sea water, salt pits (Zeph. 2:9), and more. Additionally, Deatrick writes that “agricultural literature abounds in references to the use of salt as a fertilizer.” In quoting another source, he noted that “the value of salt in small quantities appears to have been known in ancient times—Cato, Virgil (and others) record its power of improving herbage of pastures.”

Let's digest that thought one more time. Jesus didn't say we are a good table spice nor even a good preservative. He said we are good fertilizer, a valuable addition to the manure pile. And once we've made our peace with that aromatic conclusion, the phrase "salt of the Earth" makes even more sense than it did before. It becomes plain English instead of poetic license. (And oh-by-the-way it also reads fine with Matthew's rendition. The fertilizer that isn't useful? It gets spread around underfoot and walked on by farm workers. So much for table salt and fresh fish.)

Does the fertilizer imagery change our takeaway from this passage? Absolutely! Jesus wasn't really talking about food, but about life, and as God's fertilizer we are now not merely agents of preservation and improvement of life. No, it's more than that. We're God's agents to bring forth new life where there was no life before. That should be a great encouragement for all of us because life doesn't always feel very much like a banquet. Frequently it feels more like a desert. It's comforting to me to remember that some soil brings forth life only after the arrival of manure.

Becky Pippert should have titled her book Out of the Manure Pile and into the Ground. It doesn't sound as catchy (and the book-cover artwork would prove problematic!) but that would have been a lot more accurate. And let's face it. In light of what Jesus said in the verses that precede Luke 14:34-35, why should we be surprised? If we're carrying crosses, turning our back on family allegiances, and counting the cost... did we really expect to be on display in a beautiful glass saltshaker, sitting on a clean table?

So here's to the faithful work of manure, my friends. Fertilize the ground where you're laid.

1 Corinthians 3:7 (with a bit of poetic license of my own)
So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters [nor even the one who fertilizes] is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

Postscript: I hadn't planned on a follow-up to this reflection, but as it turns out, I have something more to say on this topic!