You Are the Salt of the Earth: Let Easter Rekindle Your Flavor

Sermon by Olivier Comtesse (Momentum), Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026.

On Easter morning 2026, Olivier Comtesse puts a blunt statement on the table: "You are eagles, not chickens. You are the salt of the earth, not something that carries no importance." In other words, on the day the Church celebrates Jesus's victory over death, you are called to remember who you have become because of that victory.

The text is short, just one line: "You are the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13). But if you're honest, you sometimes live the opposite. You feel anonymous. Your testimony seems small next to the ones you hear about. You struggle to talk about your faith at work. Maybe you live with a spouse who shares none of what you believe, or in a setting where calling yourself a Christian carries real stakes. And yet, says the preacher, simply being a child of God brings something distinct to wherever you are. Your presence is a safeguard. Your smile is a safeguard. This is part of your very essence: it has nothing to do with your strength, your knowledge of the Bible, or how your spiritual week has gone. It's simply tied to the fact that you are a child of God.

This article follows the outline the pastor laid out: three qualities of salt that speak to your identity, then three ways to be truly "salty" in your everyday life.

1. Salt is incorruptible: keep your flavor in the middle of the dish

The first quality of salt is that it's incorruptible. You can put it in a bowl of noodles, and it will never become a noodle. It blends in without taking on the taste of the dish. "Our great struggle," says Olivier Comtesse, "is to never become noodles."

Living in a world whose values sometimes differ radically from your own is hard. That's not a reason to reject everything: there are remarkable people around you, there is good worth recognizing. But you also know what you see around you: a flood of images, ideas, and attitudes that can seep into you. Paul writes it this way: "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2). It's an ongoing inner battle so that your thoughts don't become the world's thoughts.

The preacher's father had a beautiful image for this: the Church is a boat sailing down a heavily polluted river. The goal isn't to keep the water from getting in (you can't do that), but to keep bailing so the dirty water never settles inside. Bailing means taking seriously everything that comes in through your eyes, your ears, your emotions: the anger stirred up by injustice, the inner storms that sometimes make you say or do things you regret. The guilt that follows is a poison that's hard to shake.

The great weapon for bailing is your relationship with God. It's your prayer. And praying, the preacher points out, isn't just describing your life's circumstances to God. It's telling him what those circumstances have produced in your heart and soul. That's when the Holy Spirit comes and cleans house.

2. Salt is transparent: you're in the dish, not above it

Second quality: salt is transparent. Once it's in a dish, you can't see it anymore, except when you happen upon a crystal of fleur de sel in Breton butter. Then you notice it, and it's delicious.

A Christian is a bit like that. You don't wear a label. You blend into society. You work, you earn your paycheck, you have your joys, your sorrows, your conflicts with neighbors, your marriage struggles like everyone else, your frustrations like everyone else. You're in the dish, and you belong there. You're neither an outsider nor a revolutionary. Pass someone on the street, and no one would guess you're a Christian.

And yet, being around you does people good. A peace, a joy for life, some small extra something makes people naturally come and tell you their troubles. You always wonder why. The answer: because you are the salt. And the power of salt isn't in being seen. It's not banners and slogans. It's its essence.

3. Salt only works once it leaves the shaker: come out of your fears

Third quality, and this might be the spark you need: the only condition for salt to add flavor is that it leaves the shaker. Sitting in the container, it's useless. It has to fall into the dish.

What do you need to come out of? First, yourself. Your fears, your anxieties, your hang-ups that whisper: "How could I possibly add flavor? How could I possibly make an impact?" Step out of your boat, step out of your fear. Look at tomorrow and tell yourself: "Okay, I know who I am, and I'm going to bring flavor to my surroundings."

The preacher shares an encounter that marked him. As a student, he lived in a retirement home. There was a quadriplegic woman there, Chantal. She could neither speak nor move. She wrote poems using a mouth-stick, tapping on her keyboard. He would stop by her room and sit beside her. "This woman," he says, "is one of the rare people I've ever met who was able to stop time." No gesture, no word, just her gaze. She would still the mill of your thoughts, your worries. She was a crystal of salt, a nugget of salt. Nothing kept her from being one, and nothing keeps you from being one either. Nothing, except the way you look at yourself.

4. Being salty means being interesting: let your words carry the weight of your actions

From there, Olivier Comtesse moves to three concrete ways to be salty. The first comes from Paul, who writes to the Colossians: "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt" (Colossians 4:6). Being salty means being interesting.

Being interesting starts with being understood. If someone speaks to you in German and you never retained a word of your German classes, however fascinating they are, you won't understand a thing. Your faith needs to be audible to the people around you, spoken in their language, not in insider jargon.

Being interesting also means being consistent. The moment your words and your actions line up is the moment you truly catch people's attention. The preacher notes that we're shaped 80 to 85 percent not by what our parents told us, but by what we saw them do. "A salty Christian is someone who tries as hard as possible to be consistent. Maybe a few less verses quoted, but a little more love shown."

5. Being salty means being human: a Christian who weeps, who stops, who gives

Second way: being human. We live in a deeply dehumanized society, and sometimes our churches place so much rightful emphasis on the spiritual dimension that they forget we are human beings first. The very principle of grace is to turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26): to give your heart back its human status.

Look at Jesus. He weeps over Jerusalem: "How often I would have gathered your children together" (Matthew 23:37). At Lazarus's tomb, he knows he's about to raise him, and yet he sits and weeps with the family (John 11:35). He interrupts a funeral procession to stop beside the widow of Nain, who has just lost her son (Luke 7:11-17). When his disciples turn the children away, he corrects them: "Allow the little children to come to me" (Mark 10:14). And he tells the Pharisees: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). Jesus is surely the most human person who ever lived.

The preacher tells a story that stayed with him, set in Soviet-era Bulgaria. One winter, early in the morning, a child wanders the streets. Little to eat. He stops in front of a bakery and stares at the window: bread, pastries, doughnuts. He has no money. A man walks by, a soldier in a black overcoat, goes into the shop, comes back out, hands the child a doughnut, and walks on. He feels a tug on his coat. He turns around. The child looks at him and says one thing: "Sir, are you God?" And the preacher concludes: "We never look more like God than when we give."

Prayer is an extraordinary weapon when paired with action. Faith is a gift, but James reminds us: "Faith apart from works is dead" (James 2:17). The more dehumanized, selfish, and hard society becomes, the more meaning and value the salt you are will carry.

6. An invisible but indispensable salt: the value we don't see

Here's what's unfair about salt: we only notice its value when it's missing. No one compliments the cook because the meat is well seasoned. But when the seasoning is missing, people say so. Being salt means living with that unfairness. It means doing a whole lot for others, giving of yourself, offering yourself, without anyone noticing, and living with the frustration that produces, because we all need recognition.

But remember: no one saw the widow's two small coins in the temple treasury. Jesus did (Mark 12:41-44). No one counted the five loaves and two fish belonging to that little boy. Jesus did, and he fed five thousand people with them (John 6:9). What can you do with a small flask of oil? Nothing, from your perspective; everything, for the prophet Elisha and for the widow who was able to pay off her debts (2 Kings 4:1-7). What can you do with a stone picked up from a stream? Nothing, from your perspective; but for David, it brought down Goliath (1 Samuel 17:40-50).

You give your heart, you give your time, and like salt, no one sees what it does. You belong to that great company of unnamed people who make up the Church and who, without anyone realizing it, change society. But your God sees. And he uses it. He uses the two coins, the flask, the five loaves. He uses the few minutes you give within your day. He uses them to advance his kingdom in your life, in your heart, and to bless the men and women around you.

In closing, says Olivier Comtesse, it's a shame we wait for funerals to tell people their worth. The Church is also a laboratory where we can learn to recognize the crystals of salt living beside us and to tell them the good they do us. You are the salt of the earth. This Easter morning of 2026, let that phrase rekindle your flavor.

Key takeaways

• You are the salt of the earth by nature, as a child of God: it has nothing to do with your strength, your Bible knowledge, or your spiritual performance.
• Salt is incorruptible: keep your flavor by "bailing" your heart through prayer, telling God what circumstances produce in you.
• Salt is transparent: don't seek to be visible; be in the dish, live in society, let your essence do the work.
• Salt only works once it leaves the shaker: step out of your fears, your hang-ups, your reluctance to testify.
• Being salty means being understood, consistent, and human, the way Jesus wept, stopped, and gave.
• Your action is often invisible to people, but God sees it and uses it.

Personal application

1. What "boat" in your heart needs bailing this week? What anger, what guilt, what image, what buried emotion? Take ten minutes to tell God not just the facts, but what they've produced in you.
2. What "dish" has God already placed you in (family, office, neighborhood, circle of friends) where you can simply be present instead of trying to stand out?
3. What fear, specifically, do you need to step out of this week to stop being salt stuck in the shaker? What's the first small action that would drop you into the dish?
4. Where do my words and my actions fail to line up? On what point do I need to grow in consistency so my faith becomes audible around me?
5. Is there a "crystal of salt" around you (like Chantal, like the widow, like the boy with the five loaves) that God is inviting you to thank or encourage, before it's too late?

Verses cited

• Matthew 5:13 · "You are the salt of the earth."
• Colossians 4:6 · "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt."
• Romans 12:2 · "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
• Ezekiel 36:26 · "I will give you a new heart."
• Matthew 23:37 · "Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered your children together."
• John 11:35 · "Jesus wept."
• Luke 7:11-17 · The widow of Nain.
• Mark 10:13-16 · "Allow the little children to come to me."
• Mark 2:27 · "The Sabbath was made for man."
• James 2:17 · "Faith apart from works is dead."
• Mark 12:41-44 · The widow's two small coins.
• John 6:1-14 · The five loaves and two fish.
• 2 Kings 4:1-7 · The widow's flask of oil and Elisha.
• 1 Samuel 17:40-50 · David's stone and the fall of Goliath.

FAQ

Why does Jesus choose the image of salt rather than something more "impressive" to describe my calling?
Precisely because salt is humble. It doesn't need to be seen to be effective. By choosing this image, Jesus shifts the question about your testimony: what matters isn't visible greatness, it's your essence. You can be anonymous, quiet, invisible in your neighborhood or your office, and still keep the dish from spoiling and give it flavor, simply because Christ lives in you.

What does it actually mean to "bail out my heart"?
Bailing means recognizing what's coming into you (anger, wounds, jealousy, guilt, lingering images) and refusing to let that dirty water settle. The prayer Olivier Comtesse describes isn't first a list of circumstances, but an honest look at what those circumstances produce in your heart. You move from reporting to confessing. And that's when the Holy Spirit can clean house.

If no one notices what I give, how do I keep going over the long haul?
By remembering that God sees and God uses. The widow's two small coins, the boy's five loaves, the oil flask of Elisha's widow, David's stone: none of it was impressive. But God used it. The effort you give today (invisible to people) is noticed, used, and multiplied by him to advance his kingdom.