19 Now the men of the city said to Elisha, “Behold, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord sees, but the water is bad, and the land is unfruitful.” 20 He said, “Bring me a new bowl, and put salt in it.” So they brought it to him. 21 Then he went to the spring of water and threw salt in it and said, “Thus says the Lord, I have healed this water; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.” 22 So the water has been healed to this day, according to the word that Elisha spoke.

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We pause just days away from the Winter Solstice and we look out our windows at what used to be bright mid-afternoons and see now only the lengthening shadows of dark winter. Some may reflect that the lengthening shadows are apropos of our the situation facing our community. Things are “pleasant” enough as we are told they are in Jericho in the text. And yet, there is this dis-ease among us arising from the unfruitfulness of the land. What are we to do?

Elisha would tell us to pour some salt in the water. Now, you may be thinking that we do not have access to enough salt to pour into Lake Macintosh to make the situation of our city better, but we do if we just shift our gears a little bit. Sadly, while we may still testify to the sweetness of the living water that is Jesus, too many of our neighbors have encountered imitation “salt” and let it poorly flavor the taste of the living water. Far too often, this imitation “salt” has forgotten the fact that salt is meant not simply to flavor, but to impede and limit the work of death, in other words it’s a preservative. Unfortunately, rather than allowing grace, mercy, love, compassion, and all the other attributes of God that true “salt” is to embody, the imitation “salt” has failed to preserve lives because of hate, prejudice, unreasonableness, gracelessness, and all the remaining attributes that are foreign to the character of God.

Beloved, yesterday we were reminded that we are to be light and now we hear afresh the other half of that call, to be salt. Salt that is true to the character of God and the mission of Bethlehem’s babe, salt that preserves and yes heals. We must pause and reflect on how unfruitful we have become and ask God to revive our saltiness so that by our new found witness we may enable our neighbors to once again taste the living water of Jesus and find that the Lord is good. By doing so, we change the scene outside our window from the bleak mid-winter, to the bright promise of spring. We change the situation of our city from simply pleasant to magnificent and reap the abundant fruit that will grow from soil nourished by the living water.