19th Sunday after Pentecost
Sept. 29, 2024
Mark 9:38-50
I come from a family of salt lovers. So much so that I threatened to give my mother and sister a salt lick for Christmas one year so that they could just keep it by their place at the table for whenever they needed it because a normal salt shaker was insufficient. I mean, after all, the four most important elements to good cooking are salt, fat, acid, and heat, right? So imagine my reaction to my doctor when she suggested I might cut table salt out of my diet. You just don’t do that in my family. And there are not enough herbs on the planet to replace what salt does to food. Only salt can be salt.
I have discovered in my quest to still like my food and yet heed the doctor’s caution, that there are different kinds of salt! That blue canister of salt with the little girl holding an umbrella is not all there is. There is sea salt, kosher salt, flake salt, pink salt, red salt, black salt, and the list goes on! And they all have distinctively different flavors. Sadly, they also still contain sodium. But, salt is so influential that fire cannot burn it, it affects the fire and can change the color of flames. It might melt, but it cannot be burned. In fact, salt can be used to put out a fire. Salt is reliable.
What I really want to do, though, is tell my doctor that right here in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus specifically says to have salt in yourselves!
We are all salt. But we are different kinds of salt. Salt is essential. It preserves, it flavors, regulates our nerves and muscles, balances water and minerals in our bodies, and doesn’t allow bacteria to grow that would make us sick. We really can’t live without salt, and here’s the thing. It only takes a small amount of salt to keep the body functioning. So, as salt people we don’t need to pour out a whole lot and exhaust ourselves. Especially if we are all participating in keeping this Body healthy together, just doing our part.
This is Jesus’ point to his followers. Don’t lose your saltiness because you are vital to the Body of Christ, to your community. Your salt is vital to this world. You might be black, red, or pink salt. You might be spicy salt or table salt, but the Body of Christ doesn’t function as it should, as a healthy body, without you. Your purpose may be to preserve or add flavor, but if we lose our saltiness or hoard it, hide it away, then collectively we aren’t as healthy as we could be, we’re not functioning well. Contrary to popular cultural opinion, we are not meant to be independent. We are designed by God to be interdependent, woven together like fabric. Our purpose on this earth is tied one to another.
That takes us back to what Jesus was saying before his non sequitur about salt at the end of our Gospel reading today—if you forget that you are salt, lose sight of who you are, you’re going to stumble. If we forget that we are to be salt of the earth, then we are obstacles to the little ones. Littles ones does not mean just children. It’s all the least of these. All who are being prevented or having a tough time finding their way to the fellowship of Christ. If we lose sight that our centeredness is in Christ and get distracted from this–because let’s face it, there is a lot of noise right now–we are in danger of becoming roadblocks to ourselves and others, obstacles on the path instead of helpers.
The reason Jesus gets a little hyperbolic here about cutting off body parts is that he is very serious about this. We have to be honest, my friends. Sometimes the followers of Jesus are way too busy placing rocks on the pathway to Christ to keep some people away instead of helping folks find the path and walking with them or getting out of the way so they can find their own way to God and discover they are indeed loved. Salt of the earth people share this belovedness with others, they do not withhold it.
Even the disciples struggled with this. Hey, Jesus, they said. We found somebody that wasn’t one of us and he was healing and getting rid of evil and doing it your name! Can you believe it? WE are the chosen disciples! We need to get some control on this! And in their indignation, their egos may have been a bit bruised because earlier in this Gospel they had been trying to cast out demons and couldn’t do it! And here some nobody is able to? Well. But in the face of their indignation, Jesus is like, Great! Don’t stop him. Whoever is not against us is for us! Jesus seems to have an aversion to the kind of us-and-them boundary setting of his disciples. Jesus is essentially saying don’t worry about what others are doing, worry about yourselves. Don’t be a hindrance to those who come to me by a different road.
Rachael Keefe, writing on this scripture passage for The Christian Century, gets to Jesus’ point this way:
“Let go of what is not yours to carry, because your hands were meant for holy work. Stop chasing after what your neighbors have; your feet were meant for another road. And if you are staring into anything other than the realm of God, refocus right now—because you cannot have what you cannot envision. Stop expending so much energy comparing yourself to anyone other than the person God created you to be. You do you, as is often said these days, and let everyone else be who they are. They probably aren’t against you.”
That’s what it means to be salty.
If we forget or deny who we were created to be, then the Body of Christ becomes saltless salt, flavorless, bland. And if we lose our salt, we lose so much more than just our flavor. We lose our identity, our purpose, our value. The church becomes like tasteless grains of sand. The world does not need more sand. The world needs salt, your salt—to enhance flavors, to preserve food that will nurture us in the days to come, to keep us alive in a world that feels like it’s getting off course.
Jesus is pretty clear that we need to be minding our own spiritual business. It’s easy to forget or ignore this principle for living as a follower of Christ. Being distracted by others who are different from us but not against us is a poor use of our resources. Worse, others might stumble after us, and we’ll all end up in a big mess that doesn’t bring the realm of God any closer.
Tend to your saltiness, my friends, don’t lose it and don’t lose sight of your being in Christ. We are all salt of the earth, but with different flavors. We may be salted with fire, but fire cannot burn us away. Let us dream that we would be a church so salty that we would be missed if no longer around, that we would become part of what flavors our surrounding community. Let us dream of sowing seeds that take root and offer living sustenance with our focus not being on our success or power or importance but our hearts and minds focused faithfully on the holy work the Spirit gives to us.
Don’t forget who you are, with your own flavor. You are salt of the earth, embedded in the very soil, rocks, and water, one with all of God’s creation. You are important to the substance of who we are together, your distinctive flavor adds life to who we are. Put your salt on the table of fellowship and let’s listen deeply to where the Spirit is leading. We have some salty work to do!
Magdalena's Musings 