What strikes me about these metaphors is their distinctiveness from what they season, preserve, or illumine. Salt is able to do its work because it is something very different from food. So too light is distinct from the world in which it shines. Both do their work because they are different from the earth and the world Jesus says they are to salt and illumine.
I grew up in a time when being a Christian was simply part and parcel being a citizen. There was little about it that spoke of a distinctiveness, that transformed and gave life to what it touched. Instead Christian faith became about maintaining the status quo. Not that churches did not do a great deal of good, good that sometimes had powerful, life giving impact and so was salty. But being Christian was often simply about fitting in, about being like everyone else.
But Jesus says we are to be different in ways that give life to the world. We are called to be distinct, to be an alternative to the world around us. Not in some holier than thou way, and not in a way that says, "You'd better become like us or you're gonna get it." We are called to be different and distinct in the manner of Jesus, who enjoyed, perhaps even preferred, the company of the poor and the outcast. We are called to be like Jesus, who gave himself for the sake of others, with little thought as to whether or not they deserved it.
Come to think of it, following just these two examples would probably be enough for a Christian community to look very different from the world around it, and so to be salt and light.
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