22,23 Feb -- Like Salt?

Readings for Thurs 22 & Fri 23 February are -- Gen 11:1-12:20; Ps 5:1-6; Prov 1:15-16; Mt 5:13-32.

"You are the salt of the earth." I've preached on and referred to that many times. But here is a new perspective (to me at least). It comes from a book I read last month while on holidays -- "A Way through the Wilderness" by Jamie Buckingham (1986).

Salt is a sign of precious and sacred covenant, for covenants are never entered into without a sign. Each time God entered into a covenant with man, there was a sign. With Noah, it was a rainbow in the sky. With Abraham, it was accompanied by circumcision....
In common life, salt was a symbol of covenant relationships. Salt contained the power to strengthen and preserve it from putrefaction and corruption. In the sacrifice this meant the unbending truthfulness and loyalty between between God and man. Thus it was commanded that the Levites present salt in the grain offering and add it to all the other offerings as a sign of continued loyalty and purification. (See Numbers 18:19; Leviticus 2:13) It is stated that, in the time of David, his kingdom was established by a covenant of salt (See 2 Chronicles 13:5) ....
Salt represented covenant relationships. Even in the desert today when Arab men get together, they may express their loyalty and devotion to one another by saying, "There is salt between us." When Jesus told His disciples, "Ye are the salt of the earth," He was speaking of this covenant of loyalty. Many of us have heard sermons on that passage from the Sermon on the Mount, pointing out how salt preserves, purifies, seasons, even creates thirst. All are true points. But they are merely incidental to the central theme of the biblical concept of salt, for salt represents covenant. It represents covenant between men, and between men and God.
Salt means loyalty. When Jesus emphasized the imperativeness of saltiness, He was referring to the necessity of walking out the covenant with God and with one another.

Maybe I ought to preach again on "You are the salt of the earth".