CHAPTER ONE
THE AWAKENING

"Let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage." Matthew 5:13

The night was pitch and the wind frigid as I pulled my pickup to a stop on a lonely stretch of road on the edge of town. The only visibility came from the floodlights 300 yards down the train tracks, parallel to where I'd parked. They were the fire department's standard issue halogen, bright and dreadfully revealing.
The lights shone against the steel railings of the tracks, and I spotted several orange cones through the wooded area that separated me from the crime scene. It concerned me to see so many markers. That many cones for one dead body meant they were marking evidence.
Dispatch had relayed the information to me while I was shopping at the Parks Mall in Arlington, just a few minutes from Haltom City, my hometown. Two communities with radically different dynamics, Arlington known as the home of the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers, and Haltom City, known for nothing more than abutting Fort Worth, Texas. In a way, my life parallels these two cities. On one hand, I live the middle class existence as pastor of a local church; on the other hand, I'm on twenty-four hour call as chaplain of Haltom City Fire/Rescue. Tonight, a body had been found south of Interstate 820.
I slid into my black fire chaplain jacket and took the badge from my belt to hang around my neck. As I shut the door to my truck I grabbed a menthol drop from my pocket and popped it in my mouth. From previous experience, I'd found this to be the best way to disguise the stench of decay.
A sad looking blockade separated the rutted road in front of me from the paved street where I'd parked the truck. It was eerie to see how the area had gone to waste. On one side of the blockade sat a small quaint church and a V.F.W. Hall where veterans met regularly. The other side was overgrown with shrubs and had heaps of trash scattered everywhere.
It looked as if the city decided to formally forget this portion of the road and stamped it with a standard issue: roadblock-plastic and pathetic.

Apathy is an Idling Beast

The trees groaned for their lack of attention as the frigid wind blew through their rickety branches. As I made my way to the scene, I noticed the train tracks stood almost as high as the tree line. Rocks packed tight beneath it. On top of them sat an idling beast, a train sitting stagnant on the tracks with its engines churning above me. The wheels lurched and moved as though protesting the sudden stop.
I kept my eyes fixed on the giant halogen lights and moved swiftly through the wooded area. There was something there that made my spine tingle. I couldn't tell if it was the bursts of steam and groaning of the train or something that the twisted woods wanted to tell me.
As I climbed the rocks toward the marked area, one of the veteran cops passed by me with a stunned look on his face.
"You okay?" I said. "I don't need this," he said.
I walked passed him to check in with the battalion chief. He was standing near the accident making sure everyone adhered to protocol. He didn't say a word to me and the tension thickened in his silence.
Surveying the site, I saw a great deal of blood around the perimeter. I realized the cones weren't there to mark evidence; they were there to mark body parts. What in the world happened here?
I ambled toward the center of the train. Nestled between the tracks, lay a man's torso. There were bits and pieces of him scattered everywhere. "Where's the medical examiner?" I asked one of the firefighters working with the police to secure the scene. I knew we had to identify the man and get to the family before the media got the news. My mind raced. Did someone push this man in front of the train? What type of crime was it?

Scene of the Crime

The medical examiner walked up to me with a driver's license found lying in the brush on the opposite side of the tracks.
"I'm going to notify the family."
"Wait, what happened here?" I asked.
"Looks like train versus pedestrian," he said, glancing at the license.
I looked at him with disbelief. Train versus pedestrian meant this guy walked onto the tracks and was torn apart by the train.
"Are you sure about that?" I asked, "We can't just go telling the family this guy walked into the train without evidence."
The medical examiner looked up at me with an expression that was all business. He was textbook homicide material. Working slacks, a white shirt and black tie, all work and no emotion. I knew him from other emergencies we'd worked together over the past year. The man had a glazed look in his eyes; a thin, waxy guard that he'd formed over time to separate him from any emotion about death.
"Positive," he said.
"How do you know?"

Evidence of a Shattered Soul

The most I got out of him was a small twitch in his cheek that told me he was annoyed. We're on opposite sides of the spectrum in our profession. He embraces emergencies with a logical and hypothetical outcome, stiff and as inviting as the cold steel of an examining table. I, on the other hand, embrace these situations with everything I can muster emotionally. Families don't want logical answers; they want someone who has a connection to some sort of "higher power." I'd found that when a loved one dies, there's nothing more appealing to people than God, whether you blame Him for the death or not.
"Maybe we should identify the body first just to make sure this is him," I suggested. "We don't want to go to a family's house in the middle of the night and give them a scare."
The medical examiner walked me to the side of the locomotive. He pointed towards the front of the train near where I'd parked.
"We found some pretty convincing evidence at the front of the train and it coincides with the conductors story."
"What's the story?" I asked.
"Well, ironically, according to the conductor he walked straight into the train head first. I couldn't identify him from his teeth because they're scattered across the front of the train and his hat is stuck to the grill right above that."
My mind tried to wrap around the idea that someone would do this to himself. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, Steve, we're sure," he said as he grated the license over his knuckles. "The conductor said the point of impact was near the bridge."

Determined to Die

The bridge crossed over Interstate 820. If what Bob said was correct, then this guy made sure his death was going to happen no matter what. The Interstate was a nonstop loop around greater Fort Worth and had a constant flow of traffic all day and most of the night. If he jumped out of the way of the train he would've fallen to the cement below, and if that didn't kill him then the oncoming traffic would have.
"I'm going to his house," the examiner said, "are you coming?"
"No, and you're not going either," I said, nabbing the license from him. "We need to identify him first."
This whole conversation was out of control. A man's torso was lying on the train tracks and the rest of his body was scattered over a large area. What would I tell the family? How would I explain this? I didn't think a textbook death notification would be appropriate, and I didn't work that way anyway. The truth is I didn't know what would work because I was baffled that anyone would have the audacity to walk into a train.
The fire department decided to spray the tracks down in case anyone showed from the media. The medical examiner's people had bagged the remainder of the gentleman and loaded him into the death van. I finally convinced the medical examiner that contacting the family could wait until the next day when a positive identification could be determined. It turned out that the license was in fact the victim's, but the home address was incorrect.
The detectives had wrapped the case up as a suicide, but I couldn't leave the scene. Something stirred inside of me. I felt an ache for this man and wanted to know more about his situation.
Why couldn't someone prevent this? Didn't anyone care enough for him to see it coming? Where was the church? Where were the Christians? Where was I?

Invisible People

How many times had I walked by him, or someone like him, and not acknowledged that he existed? The teachings of James haunted me:

"Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup--where does that get you? Isn't it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense? I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, "Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I'll handle the works department," James 2:14-18.

I walked down the steep rock embankment. The road ahead was very dark. There were no lights to guide me to my truck. I could hear branches snap and I picked up my pace. I wanted out of there.
The train involved in the incident was rolling west and I could hear the next train approaching. The large engine was grinding to pick up momentum. The whistle shrieked, a resonance that could be heard for miles. As I walked, I recalled what the conductor had told the police. The man's hands remained in his pockets and his head bowed down, as he purposefully walked into the train. This man was determined to die, and there was no one in his life to stop him.

The Horror of Homelessness

As the next train in line approached, I could hear the pistons grind. The light flashed through the wooded area. I looked along an opening toward a ditch opposite the train track. There was a makeshift bed and what looked like a small cover made of old plastic and discarded trash. I later discovered that this was where he'd lived. The man had recently lost both his job and his apartment. The day before his death, his son had visited him in this creepy setting he called home, but even that touch couldn't stop him from completing his mission. In the dead of the night, I felt the weight and responsibility of the death of a homeless man I didn't even know.
The blockade wasn't far, and across from it sat a perfect little church and V.F.W. Hall. Surely someone must have seen him. Certainly the church had to know this hovel was here. Why didn't he seek the church's help? Isn't that what we're here for? Somebody should've been awake enough, cared enough, had "faith with good deeds" enough to have touched this man's life long before he decided to take it. I got in my truck, and headed back to the church. I was rattled. While sorting out what I'd just seen, my mind began to drift and I asked myself some pretty tough questions:
Can I really love and serve others? Can I unconditionally love without irritability, complacency, jealousy, pride or demanding something back? Can I step away from the church programs, pageants, and timetables to be the Good Samaritan that Jesus has called me to be? Can I honestly make a difference?
I certainly had fallen short many times. And in the city where I live, this meant a dead man lay disembodied on the train tracks, so convinced that life wasn't worth living that even after seeing his son, he walked into an iron fist the size of a building. Would I have noticed him if he'd walked by me on his way to die?

Salt Saves Lives

I pulled my truck into the parking lot of the church where I pastor. I sat for some time with the engine idling. The words that Jesus spoke in Matthew 5:13 resounded in my heart. "You are the salt of the earth."
It seemed as though the Lord was equating this suicide with salt - or rather the lack of it - in my city.
I'd read it in the Bible and preached that we are to be the "light of the world and salt of the earth" many times, but tonight was different. A man had just taken his own life and I somehow knew, deep within the core of my being, that salt could have made a difference.

"You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it useful again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless." Matthew 5:13 (NLT)

As I made my way through the front door of the church and slipped into my office, a passion to find the meaning of salt burned in me. I wanted more than pat answers and Christian clichés. Jesus could have told us to be the cinnamon, pepper or paprika of the earth, but He didn't. He said to be salt and I was determined to find out why.
I settled into the chair behind my desk, grabbed my computer keyboard and propped it on my lap, pulled up a search engine on the Internet, and typed in the word "salt." In twenty-three hundredths of a second, I had over 159,000,000 hits.
Salt, I learned, is essential to life. The human body can't survive without it. Salt must be replenished daily to sustain life. Just the taste of salt triggers the production of saliva that's necessary for the digestive system to function properly.
If the natural human body can't live without salt, what about the spiritual body?
How many people have lived their entire lives without a grain of supernatural salt being sprinkled over their spirit? Just a smidgen could create a divine thirst for God. Maybe that's what the psalmist David meant when he proclaimed, "Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see--how good GOD is. Blessed are you who run to him" (Psalms 34:8).
Without heavenly salt, I concluded, our spiritual hearts would expire long before natural death occurs. Jesus told us to be salt because He knew the world could live without cinnamon, pepper or paprika.
Not only will salt soothe sore throats and freshen breath, it helps the body heal. A mixture of salt and water relieves the pain of bee stings, chigger bites, poison ivy and open wounds. Could it be that supernatural salt, mixed with the "water of life," will ease the sting of divorce, the heartache of wrong choices and the weariness of a life filled with broken promises and dreams?
My mind raced. When Jesus said we're to be the salt of the earth, it meant more than I realized. The running theme of salt became evident:
In the correct dose, salt makes whatever it comes into contact with, better.

Healing Waters

I turned off my computer and picked up my Bible. With fresh vision I read the account in II Kings 2:19-22 that describes a time when a well that supplied water to a city became polluted, no longer fit to drink. The leaders called for the man of God to heal them.
Elisha didn't call a fast or pray a fancy prayer. He said, "Bring me a bowl full of salt, please."
Not cinnamon, not pepper, not paprika.
That little bowl of salt healed the water forever.

Pass The Salt, Please

Jesus said it and I finally apprehended His meaning. You ARE the salt of the earth.
I realized that if I was to become salt in my city it would not be within the confines of my church or my comfort zone. Salt must be sprinkled and I'm afraid I'd turned into a saltlick, waiting for people to stumble into the church and get a lick or two and go on their way as I decreed, "be warmed and filled." I'd become a man who placed
more priority on getting people inside the church than on reaching those outside, beyond my own congregation.
I acknowledged the need to make a concerted effort to reach beyond the security zone I'd created. I also realized how powerful a little salt can be. It doesn't take but a pinch of the stuff to flavor a whole pot of stew. As insignificant as that pinch is, without it, the stew would be bland and tasteless. Significance, I realized, is found in the power of the pinch, not the size of the saltlick.
I went to bed that night mourning the loss of a man I'd never met. His death had launched me on a new spiritual journey. I lay awake in the dark and begged God to teach me how to become salt in my city.