Salted

Children’s Sermon

8 February 2026

Hey, guys. Ready for St Valentine’s Day? Gotta get some of the candy in before Lent starts.

So, question for you: Do you like salt? Salty foods, like french-fries or pizza or bacon? They say that kids especially enjoy eating salty stuff because your bodies need it in order to grow. I’m a long way from being a kid, but I still like it probably more than I should.

See, the neat thing about salt, is that it’s supposed to enhance other flavors, to make sweet things sweeter and savory things more savory. You wouldn’t want to eat salt just by itself. Bleh. But if you put a little bit on other foods, then it helps those foods to taste better.

Now, back in Jesus’ day, they didn’t have refrigerators or freezers, did they? Nope. If you caught a nice fish, or you had some good fresh meat, or maybe you wanted to make some milk into cheese, guess how you could keep all that from going bad. That’s right: salt.

People needed it to preserve food, to preserve life. So salt not only keeps things good but it also makes things better. Kinda cool for a rock. At least I think so.

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus tells His disciples—that would be all of us, too—that we should be like salt. We should preserve good things. We should protect life, and feed people. And we should always remember that when we follow Jesus, we work for other people’s good.

Just being Christian for ourselves would be like trying to eat a big ol’ spoonful of salt. That would not be fun; nobody’s askin’ for that. But when we follow Jesus for our neighbor—by loving other people as though they were Jesus Christ—then that just makes life better, for everybody.

So when Jesus tells us to go and be salt for the earth, what do we do? We help people. We try to make life better, not just for us but for all. Because Jesus loves you very much, and through you He loves your neighbor.

Sound good? Okay. Let’s pray.