There are a lot of ways to think about salt and saltiness. Before the days of refrigeration our ancestors for thousands of years would use salt to keep meat from going stale and spoiling. Still what they do in Mongolia, as Linnea told us.
Salt Cellar, Athens
5th Century b.c.
Many of us will have a salt cellar on the dining table to add a bit of spice and flavor if our food seems a little bland. Here in Pennsylvania we may be quite free in the winter to spread salt to break up the hard crust of ice after a snowfall and to keep our driveways and sidewalks as open and safe places to walk. Or we talk about pouring salt in a wound, which might be antiseptic but will also sting like crazy. The Romans ploughed salt into the fields around Carthage, to assure themselves that it would be a good long time before anyone returned to that corner of the world. The ordinary, unpretentious man has always been “the salt of the earth.” And of course my grandmother was always pretty clear that salty language had no place at the family dinner table. (I guess that comes from the idea that sailors were particularly colorful in their language. “Old salts.”)
So anyway--this morning, Mark 9, the 50th verse: Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.
Salty Christianity. Salty Christians. That’s what we’re about in Mark this morning. Have salt in yourselves. This of course is Jesus talking about the Church, and thinking about the two different parts of the reading. In the first we’re just rolling forward from that conversation on the road, when the disciples were talking about who sits where around the Kingdom Conference Table, who is the most important, and so on. And now here in verses 38-41 they’re expressing some anxiety about the Church as a membership organization. Here we have people who never applied to us for membership and who haven’t asked our permission and who are using the name of Jesus and teaching and healing and performing exorcisms and all the rest entirely beyond our supervision and control. They’re not paying dues. They’re not following the appropriate channels. Deep down, the unvarnished reality is that they’re threatening our turf. And all kinds of defensiveness erupt in just these few words of dismay.
But Jesus pushes back. He says he wants the doors open. He’s not afraid of those unregistered fan clubs and undocumented fellow travelers. Probably they’re doing some good. And even if they’re not doing some good, at least they’re building up some name-recognition for the Kingdom movement. If they’ve been representing themselves as disciples, they probably will turn out to be on our side if the conflict gets hot down the road. The whole deal just seems wide open. Maybe this is related thematically to the Parable of the Sower—reminds me of that--as he walks along the road reaching into his bag and tossing great handfuls of seed into the wind, not paying attention to where they will land. Certainly also an image to threaten those of us who are Northern European Introverted Males, who like things done decently and in order, with a plan and a “Plan B,” and with appropriate oversight. This is, like, crazy, Jesus. No quality control out there. Who knows what might happen?
And maybe that gets their stomach churning a little. Does for me, anyway. What kind of an operation is this? Anything goes? Let it all hang out? I mean, more people just like us—sure, that sounds fine. But what happens if the doors are open and some of those other types start wandering in? I mean Jesus, what about the people I joined this particular Church in order to get away from? Aren’t we going to have any rules?
But then we just barely catch our breath, if we do that, and Jesus flips it all again. If some of us have been made incredibly nervous by this image of Church as free-for-all, probably some others have sat back with a contented smile. But he doesn’t let them off the hook either. Let’s say, to mangle a phrase, “what’s salt for the goose is salt for the gander.” He refers us back to that little child he had set in their midst in the lesson we read last week. And he says, by the way: don’t make any mistakes. One false move, one step which leads astray even one of the most vulnerable, and you will pay for it in ways more costly than you can imagine in your wildest dreams. In your wildest nightmares. If you thought getting things exactly right was important in brain surgery and rocket science—the stakes here are way higher. Getting it wrong can’t be an option. Preachers and Sunday School teachers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors, all of us—all of us: the door may be wide open, but Be careful. Be careful.
This all about life on the edge. About power to transform, to cure, to redeem, and to spoil. Nothing, good disciples, that you should ever be able to get comfortable with. If your Church becomes only a club for the self-satisfied, a mutual admiration society, a self-reinforcing circle. If the cross becomes only a decoration, an architectural ornament, a piece of jewelry. If you thought friendship with Jesus would be like having another really cool “friend” on Facebook. If you thought being a member of his Church would be like being in the Rotary, or the Parks Conservancy. If you thought you could let him into your life, and that then he would leave you alone to be who you were before. Think again.
It’s a challenge—salt is. As we are all a challenge to one another. As he is salt for us: as he challenges us, inspires us, guides us forward, pulls us back. Knocks us off track from time to time. As he heals us and preserves us, seasons us, cleanses us, breaks the cold ice that can encircle our hearts, and restores us to life in him. As he would work through our lives to bring blessing and hope, and to renew the life of the world.
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.
Bruce Robison
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