Salt service

Christianity is probably intended to be a minority religion. I’m sure it must be someone else who suggested this to me a long time ago, but it popped into my mind and out of my mouth in the one minute extempore homily I preached at yesterday afternoon’s Baptism where the reading was just the first sentence of the Gospel for the day ‘You are the salt of the earth...’.

It could, of course, be rubbish, something simply prompted by a rationalisation in the face of decline. Nevertheless, what I found myself saying was we’ve often not been particularly good at having power (everything from the Crusades to child abuse via colluding with the ruling structures of our day), so we'd be better off not being a dominant player and not being subject to the temptations of being powerful.

Instead, it would be good to think that the real calling of any of us (including the brand new Christian before us) and of the more humble minority body of which we are part is to be the tiny thing which brings out a genuinely different flavour in the naturally mainly heathen and pagan world.

Meanwhile, the local authority chopped down a tree somewhere recently, and last week its gardeners were busy using what they told me were the chippings from it to suppress weed and preserve moisture around the roots of the hedge it is seeking to establish along the green outside St Michael’s.