Fire Starters

A common occurrence in my life is when my wife Tara is the one to cook dinner and she’s getting close to finishing it, she asks me to try a bite. After taking said bite, Tara inevitably wants to know what I think, so she asks, “Well, do you like it?” And it is then that I will often say, “It’s good, but it needs more salt.” And it’s true, Tara is notoriously conservative with salt when she cooks because she always reminds me, well you can always add more salt, but you can’t take it out.

I always roll my eyes when she says that, but she’s right. There’s a lot of truth to that statement. Salt is one of those ingredients that can’t be undone. I mean really, once the salt has left the shaker, there’s no going back because after something has been salted, how can it lose it’s saltiness? I’ve never figured it out, but if I did, I could probably have saved a few of the dinners that I have personally prepared in the past, and I wouldn't have to stomach these over-salted meals trying to save my ego claiming to Tara who knew better than I that no I really DO like these over-salted mashed potatoes.

And it’s experiences like this with salt that have me scratching my head today because something losing its saltiness is so impossible in my mind it makes me wonder what the heck Jesus was talking about in today's Gospel when he says, "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

So THAT’s what we’re working with right off the bat today in Matthew’s Gospel. This odd metaphor about salt losing its saltiness that doesn’t even seem possible, it has confounded me for so long, even though we use this term salt of the earth in our everyday conversations to describe humble, hardworking people, but that still left this metaphor unresolved for me until this week.

This week I had a breakthrough with this text. I came across a social science commentary on today’s gospel that explained that the salt Jesus is referring to here might not be the same salt that we are thinking about. This isn’t food salt, but rather salt as it is used in chemistry to describe chemical compounds consisting of an ionic assembly of cations and anions.

And in Jesus’s time, this kind of chemical salt would be applied to these plates that would then be placed into ovens and lit on fire so people could cook food. It was the salt on these plates that would spark the fire. Now the ovens themselves were not stainless-steel appliances in kitchens, but earthen ovens formed from the dirt and clay outside. So if we put these things together, the salt of the earth Jesus is referring to here is the salt used to spark fires in earthen ovens.

Talk about an epiphany! This text has always seemed like a warning to not lose our saltiness which always seemed like an impossibility, but maybe instead this text is asking of us to light some fires. And with this understanding it’s make’s sense that the salt that fuels the fire for these ovens can be spent or lost. But I think the call is to not burn up or burn out, losing our spark, but to always retain some of that salt that allows us to light some fires here today on this earth.

And since fire also gives off light, this igniting, combustible way of understanding the salt of the earth metaphor then connects us to what Jesus says next about light. He says, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Salt, fire, light. These images make sense together in the context of the earthen ovens used in antiquity, and it got me thinking about people in my life and in the world who embody this kind of salt of the earth identity, people who start fires for the sake of creating sustenance or shining their light before others. And with this being black history month, we could obviously point to some of the more famous black fire starters from Martin Luther King Jr. to Ida B. Wells, but I wanted to dig a bit deeper, and discover some of the African American history we have left out and overlooked, and it’s been purposeful. Dr. Melvin Chapman, an educator from Detroit once said, “"It is not an accident that there is a blackout on the Black man's contributions in America."

And he’s right, and that reality lit a fire under me to do some research to find a lesser known salt of the earth hero of black history. The light of that fire eventually led me to an article by African American food journalist Donna Battle Pierce, about a woman who knew her way around an oven named Freda DeKnight. The name Freda DeKnight may not ring a bell for you because it was only in the past two years she even received the most basic of 21st century acknowledgements, a Wikipedia page.

But despite being all but forgotten, she is one of those hidden figures of Black history whose story must be told. She was born in 1909, and spent much of her 54 years collecting, protecting and celebrating African American culture and traditions in the years after World War II up to the civil rights movement. As the first food editor for Ebony magazine, DeKnight wrote a photo-driven monthly column that offered her home economist's tips, as well as regional recipes from the black community of home cooks, professional chefs, caterers, restaurateurs and celebrities.

Jessica Harris an educator, culinary historian and author of a dozen books about African-American culture said of her, “Freda DeKnight was one of the first who brought international attention to African-American food. ... She was a trailblazer.”

And we all know a trail can’t be blazed without some fire and light to lead the way. And blaze a trail she did, In 1948, seven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, and 16 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, DeKnight published her only cookbook, A Date With A Dish: A Cookbook of American Negro Recipes. The book became a national best-seller and that 1948 edition that remains the most significant, becoming an heirloom, passed down through generations of black families and described by today's black food writers and historians as among the most transformative recipe collections published in the 20th century.

After her death, DeKnight's obituary appeared in the August 1963 issue of Negro Digest. It was titled "Tribute To A Lady Titan." Noting her role in revamping the image of African Americans in the public sphere, the writer called DeKnight "a familiar figure at professional food and fashion gatherings where Negroes had been seen before only as servants."

Wow, that’s what it means to be the salt of the earth. And the spark that set Freda’s salt fire ablaze is nothing short of the spark of the divine, the spirit of the living God. And that same spark is what lights our own fire, so let the light of your fire shine bright for all to see, loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke, share your bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into your house, when you see the naked, cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn! Hallelujah. Amen.