Children’s Sermon

Matthew 5:13-20

Shake That Salt!

By Dr. Carol J Miller

Salt! Now that’s a weird thing to call anybody! Jesus called us salt. He said his disciples were salt for the whole world. Let’s think about salt. What do people use salt for? [Respect all answers]. For flavor, yes. Especially on popcorn.

Any other uses? I’ll give you two more. They were used in Jesus’ day. First, salt could be used as money, right––money! Good clean salt was hard to find. You couldn’t just go to a supermarket and buy a box of salt. Today, salt doesn’t cost much money––but in Jesus’ day good clean salt was so precious that people sometimes used it as money.

Second, salt preserves foods. That means that if you prepare certain foods with a lot of salt on the outside, it will last a long time, without any refrigerator. Just so you know, the people of Jesus’ time did NOT have refrigerators or anything like them. So it was important to have salt––it was the only way to make meat and some other foods last a long time.

So now we know that salt was used for flavor, for money and for keeping things. What does that have to do with us––Jesus’ modern disciples. Well, we do add flavor to the world. We celebrate God, we help people who are hurt or sad and we make them feel better. We don’t walk around feeling bad about ourselves. We know that God loves us because God is good––that’s tasty! Christians do a lot of helping and a lot of celebrating; that adds flavor to life.

What about money? How are Jesus’ disciples like money? [Accept all answers]. We collect money––there will be some in our offering plates soon. What do we use money for––a lot of it goes to pay for all the people and things a church needs, but where does the rest of it go? [If you have mission flyers and pictures from your congregation and/or denomination, show them to the children. Only use 2-3 at most; food pantries, hospitals, kits for emergencies, whatever your church is involved in]. So we are like money; in fact we collect it and use it to help people.

The last one is tricky. How do people who follow Jesus preserve something? Well, the most important thing the Church has is the Good News about God’s love for us. How do we keep the world from forgetting the Good News? [Accept all answers. Remind them that pastors preach the Good News and teach the Good News—so does Sunday school. Add whatever else your church does]. So we make sure Jesus’ Good News is not forgotten. We use money to live the Good News; and we make the world a more interesting, a more tasty, place. Salty Christians.

Where is salt kept? Right; in a shaker. So now all of you stand up and show us for 5 seconds how you would look as salt getting shaken out of the shaker. [Give them 5 seconds; then––hopefully––stop them].

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible