Matthew 5-7: The Sermon on the Mount (4)
Identity and Vocation of Israel (5:13-16) Jesus details the passions that ground God’s people in faithfulness, a flourishing life, in the Beatitudes. In the short section that follows he addresses their identity and vocation (vv.13-16), their deepest convictions about God, themselves, and their calling in the world, their priorities. “Jesus is calling the Israel of his day to be Israel indeed, now that he is there. What he says here can now be applied to all Christians, but its original meaning was a challenge to Jesus’ own contemporaries. God had called Israel to be the salt of the earth; but Israel was behaving like everyone else, with its power politics, its factional squabbles, its militant revolutions. How could God keep the world from going bad – the main function of salt in the ancient world – if Israel, his chosen ‘salt’, had lost its distinctive taste?” [1] Wright’s reference to “chosen” salt gives us the clue we need. Chosen here means covenant. Salt, th...