Pass the Salt

Mark 9:38-50
October 1, 2006

Our society talks a lot about salt. Somehow, we've come to regard salt as something that could kill us. As a result, advertisers push their products as virtuous because they're "low in sodium." Fast food restaurants prove their legitimacy by proclaiming too much sodium. But salt also has healing qualities. I never learned it until I was married, but whenever I'd get a sore throat my wife would encourage me to gargle some warm, salty water ("Don't swallow it!") and sure enough, though it wasn't a cure, it sure would help. And it's true, too, that when you put a little salt on some food, it can enhance the taste. When used correctly, salt makes things better. This passage in Mark ends with Jesus telling his disciples that they are to be like salt, in the sense that salt can affect things in a manner that brings out the best in them, preserves them, and even heals them.

Connie Toliver discovered the joy of cooking in the tenth year of her marriage to Jerry. Up to that point, with no children and a two career marriage, they had always come home, popped a Stouffer's in the microwave. Then came three children in rapid succession. They decided that Connie should stay home with the kids. Since the frozen stuff from the grocery was proving quite expensive even for an attorney's family, Connie decided to learn how to do some quality cooking on her own. In the process, she learned all about herbs and spices, about gourmet dishes. But a little problem developed.

Connie would work diligently on a specific dish, have the kids orchestrated after their eating, and when Jerry would come in, she would lay the meal out on the table. It always would have beautiful color combinations and be arranged gorgeously. The sauces always had the right mixture of spice and in some cases the right proportion of cooking sherry or wine mixed in. But invariably, Jerry would bow his head, say a blessing -- always including a word of thanks for his fantastic wife -- and then say, "Pass the salt." As Connie watched, he'd shake out what seemed to be a half ton of salt. And for months it had been building inside her. There wasn't any way he could possibly appreciate the sage, thyme, parsley, oregano, cumin, etc. that she'd measured in to bring out the natural tastes of the meat or vegetables. It irked her.
Finally, one day she couldn't contain herself. "Jerry, I've already seasoned the food. It doesn't need salt. You haven't even tasted it to see if you like it without salt."
Jerry looked a bit bewildered. "But I like salt. You cook great, Connie, but you just don't have the same taste buds that I do."

Well, Connie wasn't convinced. Besides, she had been doing some reading. "You know, Jerry, Dale Carnegie used to take potential employees out to eat before he'd finally hire them, and if they salted their food before they tasted it, he wouldn't hire them."

"Why not?"

"Well, Carnegie reasoned that if they salted their food without testing it, that they would probably make snap business decisions without testing the specific situation."
Jerry looked at Connie in silence for a moment and then said, "Lucky for me I don't work for Carnegie, 'cause I like salt."

Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth, so be salt." Conservatives and liberals can't agree on much, but they do agree on this: the world around us is getting to the point to where it tastes pretty bad. For many people, it's gone past bland to downright unpalatable. In the midst of all this bad taste which society continues to serve up, wouldn't it be great if the world's knee jerk reaction were to think of us Christians and say, "Pass the salt" because they were confident that by adding us to the mix, things would taste better and wouldn't go bad? Wouldn't it be great if we Christians really were that kind of – social seasoning?

We have to do a little digging to appreciate fully the weight of this salt analogy which Jesus chose. Certainly the disciples used salt the way Jerry Toliver did, to make food taste better when they sat down to eat, but there was more to salt than that. You see, in those days, they didn't have refrigeration, so preservation was done with salt. Fish was salted to preserve it for later use. All sorts of meat were salted for transport. Even vegetables and grain had salt sprinkled in to keep them from spoiling. When Jesus said to his disciples, "You be salt," he meant, indeed, that his disciples, his followers would make the world a better tasting place, so to speak, but he certainly had in mind this preservative quality, as well. The disciples were to live in such a manner that the world wouldn't go "to the bad" to take a phrase my mother always used to use.

But there was more to the significance of salt in the Hebrew mind than even that. In several Old Testament books, you come across the phrase "salt of the covenant," or "covenant of salt." Whenever sacrifices were offered at the temple, whether they were meat or grain offerings, the priests were commanded by the Law to sprinkle salt into the fire along with the incense as a sign of God's covenant with God's people. In other words, salt reminded the Hebrew people that their lives, in making the world better and keeping it from spoiling, were always to reflect God's priorities, God's dreams, God's intentions for the world. If their lives were to cease being centered on God's timeless principles, then they had "lost their saltiness." When Jesus told the disciples to be salt, he was reminding them that God had made an eternal promise to them, a commitment that would not be broken. And they had done the same. The salt in the sacrifices, and the fact that they were now the salt themselves was so they would never forget that who they were was dependent on whose they were.

But a problem had developed: the disciples had indeed become more concerned with the "who" than the "whose." In other words, they were more enamored with the status they imagined Jesus imparted to them than with the function he in fact had assigned them. How had this happened? They had been distracted by the glitter and glamour they thought accompanied being in company with the Messiah. They were preoccupied with the rights of membership. Look what John says, "Lord, we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us." Do you not see the irony in that statement? Only a few verses back, John -- along with the rest of the disciples -- had confronted a man who had begged them to drive just one demon out of his beloved son, and they couldn't do it! Instead of reflecting further on why they had failed at something important, John, complains about someone else who was succeeding at it. Never mind that someone was beautifully meeting someone else's needs. Never mind that in the meeting of that need, Jesus' name was being honored. Never mind that someone else evidently had decided to join Jesus' movement. John missed all of that and focused instead on the apparent fact that this successful miracle worker, whoever he was, hadn't first asked for membership in their club.

I think John had committed a very basic and timeless sin: he was an ideologue. He was a control freak. He grew tremendously upset if something took place over which he had no influence. He didn't want to admit that people other than his narrow little clan could recognize truth and exercise skills which he didn't possess and that Jesus would value. To John, things had to be done their way by them. The form things took, the appearance they projected, and who was doing it was of far more concern to John than the quality of what was being done or for whom. John . . . was a denominational loyalist.

Jesus shoots a hole in that kind of thinking right away. "If somebody's doing something good for someone, don't stop him! Look, if he's doing something in my name, then we're on the same team! I don't care who he is, or what group he belongs to, or what accent he might have, or what he does or doesn't wear, including ear rings: if he does something good for you in my name, he'll be rewarded, whether he's got a membership card to your club or not!"

Then Jesus lays his finger on the heart of the issue: John and the rest of the disciples, including those of us in the 21st century, don't comprehend the diversity and flexibility in how God works because we're profoundly distracted. He then uses some mighty powerful imagery to drive home the point that we had better get rid of whatever distractions result in driving people away from him. Does your hand cause you to sin? Well then, cut it off. Better to enter heaven maimed than to go to hell with a great body. Does your foot cause you to sin? Cut it off. Better to limp into heaven than swagger into hell. Does your eye cause you to sin? Pluck it out! Better to wink at the angels than stare at the demons.

Obviously, folks, Jesus spoke hyperbolically at this point. He never meant for us to take these words literally. When I was a chaplain on the psychiatric ward at University Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, I met a young man with schizophrenia who had gouged out his left eye because he had difficulty staying away from pornography. Jesus wasn't talking about literally lopping off body parts but he was telling us that we had better get rid of every distraction that causes us to do harm to his cause, however dear that item may be to us. It scares me to think what a list of distractions might include, but I'll toss out one very real scenario. Would it not do Christ's cause a world of good if the majority of those who claim his name knew well the documents that tell his story and expound his teachings? Nothing could be better! Now, do you call yourself a Christian? If you do, I won't challenge that. But I will ask you this in light of this passage: measure the hours you spend watching TV and compare them to the hours you spend studying scripture and in prayer. The time you spend with something determines the master of whom you are a disciple.

I would wager that there are those in this room who spend much more time emoting over pro and college sports, for example, than how to carry out the practical implications of Jesus' teachings. In fact, for some, when it comes to cutting off the Redskins, they probably would rather cut off a hand!

I don't know the specifics of what may be distracting you. Even you may be unclear about that. But I will guarantee you this: if you would become salt, and if you open your being to the living, present spirit of your Christ, those things will become clear, and God will stand by you as you cut them out of your life. And then you'll become someone who makes the world better. You'll be salt.

During the closing months of 1865, the ravages of the Civil War were still painfully evident all around Richmond, Virginia. Worshippers going to the downtown Episcopal church still walked past ruins of that lost conflict. One Sunday morning, as worshippers were preparing to go forward to take communion, a freed slave dressed in the fine attire of a successful businessman walked to the front and knelt. Others who were rising to go forward at that moment stiffened in hostility. The wounds were too fresh, perhaps, but nevertheless, the tension was almost physically palpable. Then an elderly white gentleman clad in gray rose, stepped into the aisle, walked to the front with purpose and knelt beside the black gentleman -- and all in the congregation found their jaws hanging. Soon, most of the people in the church that morning went to the front to kneel at the altar and take communion with the black man and that elderly gentleman – Robert E. Lee.

As a matter of fact, in the estimate of the author Charles Bracelen Flood, no one person in the United States in the years after the Civil War did more to reunite the country and heal the wounds of that monumental conflict that Robert E. Lee. He did it even though he was never a part of the official diplomatic club and even though he was never recognized by the government -- until this century -- for his efforts. He did it because he stuck to his time honored principles which were indeed centered in Christ. He wasn't distracted by whether or not he or someone else was in the right group. With the greater good in mind, he simply went about doing the right thing. He had been salt.

The world will continue to serve up unpalatable dishes. We will continually run up against people, events, and circumstances which we will find hard to stomach. Let us live in such a manner as followers of Christ that as our world threatens to make us and others sick and spoil the good, that those who know us might reflexively cry out, "We know where there's help. Call in some Christians! Pass the salt!"