Preserving the salt of family in a time of political division

Scripture reading: Matthew 5:13-20

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The words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount often feel like they belong in a quieter world than ours. When he tells us we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, it sounds like a lovely compliment. But Jesus was speaking to people living in a pressure cooker of political occupation and deep religious tension. For those of us in the Presbyterian Church (USA), these verses are a direct challenge for how we handle the rifts that are currently tearing our own living rooms apart.

Right now, many of us are carrying the heavy weight of silence. There are daughters who haven't spoken to their mothers over a period of time because of a fight over political party lines. There are fathers and sons who can no longer sit at the same table because their views on immigration or LGBTQ people feel like an immovable wall. We see siblings divided by how they understand race, diversity, or even the way they practice their faith.

In these moments, it feels like the world is rotting from the inside out, and the family is the first thing to go.

Jesus uses the image of salt for a reason. In the ancient world, salt was the primary way to make food last longer. It was a preservative. When we are called to be salt, it means we are called to be the element that stops the decay of our relationships.

But salt only works if it stays salt. If we become just as angry, just as dismissive, and just as mean-spirited as the loudest voices on the news, we have lost our flavor. We aren't preserving anything; we are just adding to the bitterness.

The late Frederick Buechner, a voice many of us in the PCUSA have leaned on for decades, once shared an anecdote that captures the exhaustion of these family fractures.

He spoke of the "terrible wall of silence" that can exist even when people are in the same room. He described the pain of a family where everyone is "polite" but no one is "present." He noted that we often think we are being righteous by holding onto our anger, but in reality, we are just starving ourselves of the very love that God intended to sustain us.

Buechner reminded us that to be a saint, to be salt and light, is not to be perfect, but to be "human" enough to admit that the wall hurts us as much as it hurts the person on the other side.

Adding to this, the Evanston, Illinois-based Black theologian Esther Acolatse, who has written deeply on the intersection of pastoral care and the powers that divide us, reminds us that these rifts are often more than just "differences of opinion."

Dr. Acolatse speaks of the "psychological and spiritual warfare" that occurs within families when external ideologies take up residence in our hearts. She points out that we often treat our family members as symbols of the "other side" rather than as flesh-and-blood people. She notes that in many households, the "power of the air,” the constant noise of partisan rhetoric, acts like a wedge, convincing us that to love the person is to betray the cause.

Her work suggests that being salt means actively resisting the urge to turn our loved ones into enemies, recognizing instead the spiritual forces that are trying to keep us isolated and afraid.

Then Jesus tells us to be a light. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, and neither can the way we treat a family member who has hurt us or offended our deeply held beliefs.

Putting your light under a bushel is what happens when we let our anxiety and our need to be "right" keep us from being "kind." The light of Christ isn't a spotlight used to point out everyone else's flaws. It is a steady lantern that helps us find the path back to one another.

However, we must be honest. Sometimes being salt and light isn't a magic wand. For many, the anxiety isn't just about a "hot button issue." The anxiety comes from the realization that someone you love holds a view that seems to deny the very image of God in others.

When a daughter looks at her mother’s positions and sees something that feels fundamentally unloving, or even unchristian, the difference doesn't just feel like a disagreement; it feels like a betrayal of the Gospel itself.

In these moments of irreconcilable differences, being "salt" means preserving your own integrity and your own faith in the face of a position you find toxic. It means deciding that while you may not be able to change your mother's mind, you will not let her position change your soul into something bitter or hateful.

Jesus was remarkably honest about the fact that the Gospel is a disruptive force. In Matthew 10:34-36, he says, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother."

This tells us that sometimes, the "salt" stings. When one person chooses the way of Christ, prioritizing the marginalized or affirming the dignity of LGBTQ people, and another person in the family rejects those values, the resulting split isn't a failure of faith. It is often a consequence of it.

For some people at Edgewater Presbyterian Church, the deepest pain of these rifts is fueled by a terrifying theological fear: the idea that if we are divided on earth, we will be divided in heaven. We worry that if we cannot bridge the gap now, we are looking at an eternal separation. But it is vital to remember that in Reformed, Presbyterian theology, this is simply not true.

We believe in a God who is the Great Reconciler. Our earthly fractures do not have the power to dictate God’s eternal Kingdom.

The "fulfillment" Jesus speaks of in Matthew 5 is about God’s ultimate project of healing, not just for the law, but for all of creation. In our tradition, we trust that the sovereignty of God's grace is far more powerful than our political disagreements or our family feuds.

In the resurrection, we aren't just the same people with the same arguments. We are transformed. The "unchristian" hardness of heart we see now, the prejudices we carry, and the walls we build are exactly what God’s light is meant to burn away.

We believe that what is broken here will be made whole there, not because of our own efforts to agree, but because of God's effort to redeem.

If you find yourself in a place where the differences feel irreconcilable, remember that you are not failing at being a Christian. You are experiencing the cost of a faith that takes the "light" seriously.

We hold the boundary on earth to protect the truth, but we rest in the Reformed hope that the grace of heaven will bridge every gap we cannot cross.

A prayer of entrustment

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we come to you with heavy hearts, carrying the weight of chairs left empty and phone calls left unmade. We lay before you the rifts in our families: the silence between mothers and daughters, the anger between fathers and sons, and the walls built between siblings.

Lord, you know the pain of being misunderstood and the grief of seeing love rejected. We especially lift up those of us who have had to step away for the sake of our conscience, our safety, or our faith. We confess that it hurts to be the "salt" when the sting is all we feel, and it is exhausting to be the "light" when the darkness in our own homes feels so thick.

We honestly admit that we cannot bridge these gaps. We cannot change hearts that are hardened, and we cannot force eyes to see the justice and mercy of your Kingdom. So, we entrust these loved ones to you. We release our need to be the ones who "fix" them, and we place them into your wide and capable hands.

Protect us from becoming bitter. Do not let the "unloving" stances of others turn our own hearts into stone. Keep our flavor salty and our lamps lit, even if we must shine from across a great divide. We trust that in your time, and in your way, you are fulfilling the law of love and reconciling all things to yourself. Until that day, give us the peace that surpasses understanding.

Amen.