Blessed to Be Salty

Whenever I am going to the store to pick up just a few things, and have a list that I am trying to remember without writing it down, an echo will reverberate through my thoughts, “a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.” It was a line drawing sketch on Sesame Street with a mother and daughter in yellow dresses and a yellow bow in the little girl’s hair. The mother goes over the list and the little girl sets out to the grocery, repeating the list the whole way. She gets the loaf of bread, the container of milk, and then she forgets…and thinks again from the start, imagining her mother repeating the list “a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and (oh, yeah) A STICK OF BUTTER!”

Repeating helps us remember. Sometimes, if I have a longer list, I group things, I need 2 things for the bathroom: toothpaste and cotton balls, 3 things to clean: Pledge, Swiffer cloths, and 409, and 2 things for the kitchen: sandwich bags and dish soap. And then I go into the store and I remember, 2 for the bathroom, 3 to clean, 2 for the kitchen. At this point, it is probably easier to tell Alexa or tell Siri to put it in my reminders. But for most of my life, if I didn’t have a piece of paper and a pen handy, it was easier to just remember it.

That’s what is going on in this passage of Jesus’ teachings on community. Either Jesus taught them in this order to help people remember or they were put in this order as a device to remember them. Mark wrote them down together. It is possible that he arranged them in this order, but I think it is more likely that he is remembering the list as it was told to him: name, stumbling, fire, salt; name, stumbling, fire, salt.

Name. Who is allowed to use Jesus’s name? The disciples saw an outsider, not one of the community, using Jesus’s name to heal, and John steps forward to report it to Jesus. Two stories immediately precede this exchange that are relevant to help us understand the disciples’ concern and Jesus’s response. When they arrived at Capernaum Jesus asked them what they had been arguing about along the road. They were too embarrassed to admit to him that they had been arguing about who of them was to be greatest. Now, they have seen someone, not one of them, doing great things in Jesus’s name. What if it was NONE of them that was the greatest? Because just after Jesus admonishing them that the least will be greatest, he had been teaching and took a child from his mother’s arms and held him, facing out, in the crook of him arm. “Whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me, and not just me, but the One who sent me,” he told them. Name – 3 times, Whose name will be the greatest? The least. Who welcomes a child in my name, welcomes me. Who heals in my name? The disciples want to draw a circle of insider and outsider; those allowed, trained, mature enough, ready, commissioned to use Jesus’s name. And Jesus says, “You can’t use it for evil purposes. It won’t work. It only has power to accomplish God’s will.” And anyone who gives a cup of water, sustains, meets needs, who offers help, because you bear my name, will not lose their reward.

This disciples came to Jesus trying to protect their territory. “Hey, Jesus, this person who isn’t one of us, who hasn’t been recruited and trained and commissioned is using your name to heal!” Mind you, if this person isn’t part of the system, there is no way to hold them accountable, there will be no reporting of restorations and healings or of gifts and donations. Jesus will have none of it. They won’t be punished for doing the right thing, for believing enough to trust Jesus’s name.

And then he “and furthermore’s” them. You know what I am talking about? You get the whole speech from your mom and you think “whew, that was bad, but she’s wrapping up” and then she says, “And furthermore!” There’s more. “Remember that child I was holding the other day,” asks Jesus, “not only do you welcome me when you welcome the least, when you start drawing lines and trying to create a ruckus about them, if you cause them to stumble (name, stumble), if you get them off track, if you introduce doubts in their faith, it would be better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown into the sea.” Millstones weighed between ¾ ton and 1 & ¾ tons. They could be as much as 5 feet in diameter. There is no way to survive the consequences of causing one of the least to stumble.

So, not only is it ok for those who are outsiders, the little people, the least, who believe in Jesus to claim the power of Jesus’s name to save, the insiders risk being sunk to the depths if they trip them up. And if your hand, or your foot, or your eye causes YOU to stumble, if a useful member of the body, an important insider in the community, is causing the whole to falter, cut it off, cut it out. It is better for it to burn in Gehenna than the whole body.

Now, this image is gruesome, and it is important that we understand what the disciples knew. Gehenna is the name of the valley that ran along the southwest corner of Jerusalem, just outside the city walls. All of the garbage of the city was thrown into that valley and burned. The fire never went out, it smoldered day and night, and there were always flies and maggots in and on the heap. It is better for you to enter the Kingdom of Heaven missing a critical part of you, if it was going to cause all of you to be corrupt and wind up on the garbage heap, cast into Gehenna where the worm does not die and the fire is never quenched. If we asked Jesus whether he was talking about an individual or the community, I think his answer would be “yes.” He doesn’t mean for us to literally cut off body parts and send them to the garbage dump to be incinerated, but he does mean for us to realize that letting sin go unchecked in one area of our lives will corrupt our whole life, and eradicating that sin may require painful action, action that feels like you are cutting off a part of yourself.

Name, stumbling, salt, fire: Fire and salt are both purifiers. “You see,” says Jesus, “everyone will be salted with fire.” He is referring to the Levitical law that says that meat offered in sacrifice to God must be salted before it is put in the fire. This teaching comes in the midst of Jesus trying to help the disciples understand that he has to sacrifice, twice he has told them that he will suffer and die and be resurrected on the third day. So, now he says, the kingdom is breaking in and everyone will have to sacrifice, everyone will be salted with fire. Everyone’s lives will be offered to be used for God’s glory.

Jesus’ followers are to be the salt of the earth. “Salt is good,” says Jesus, “but if it has lost its saltiness, how can you season with it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.” Again, Jesus is talking about both our lives as individuals and the life of the community. What happens when you have a liquid with a high concentration of salt and you add a liquid with no salt? The saltiness is diffused. In the same way, when believers live and spend their time mostly in relationship with non-believers their saltiness will be diffused.

Name, stumbling, fire, salt –

Name: there will be outsiders to the community of believers who use Jesus’s name to bring about healing and wholeness. When we took the flood buckets that we packed to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance in Little Rock, there were pallets of buckets ready to be loaded on the truck that was coming that afternoon to take them to Texas. There were labels on many of the buckets. Some said Church World Services, some said UMCOR, some said PDA. They were going to be passed out by the Salvation Army. All were going in Jesus’s name to bring about healing and wholeness. Who gets credit doesn’t matter.

Stumbling: causing a new believer or a vulnerable person to stumble in faith has serious consequences, and if you or the community of believers have a sin that is causing you to stumble, address it even if it is painful because sin will cause death and decay and whatever parts of the body die as a result of sin will be destroyed like garbage in a fire. But the fire can also purify what is offered to God as a sacrifice. It can be salted, preserved, to transform the world. But that transformation requires care that the salt not be diluted.

We are living in a time that can cause us to lose our saltiness. We have been dispersed, unable to gather, to truly interact and study, to offer our service to God. And it is those things – gathering together for fellowship coffee and for meals together, decorating the church for Advent and Christmas, playing games after Wednesday Night Dinner and watching grandparent-aged believers confer with the youngest for their answer, sitting down and eating with our guests at Room in the Inn and then being invited by them to a game of Chess or dominoes or Scrabble. The life of the community of believers infuses all our lives with salt, and we need salt to live.

It seems to me that we are in a critical time of creativity in the life of the church. We remember those gatherings that seasoned our lives, but we don’t know when we will be able to safely return to them. At the same time, we know that for many of us, our schedules didn’t allow us to participate regularly in them. Even so, our lives need to be salted and offered to God. How will that be done in the coming months? How will that be done in 2022 and beyond? Will we have smaller groups that meet for study and prayer and fellowship and service? Some that may meet online? Others that meet at the church or at a park or on someone’s patio?

Just like the sketch on Sesame Street, we tend to forget…things are going along well, Name (we serve in partnership with others), Stumbling (we strive to remove anything that would cause someone to stumble or be tempted), Fire (we know that God calls us to be living sacrifices for his glory), …SALT! We may take it for granted, we have been blessed at Farmington to be a salty community of believers. In this time, we cannot forget the salt! Farmington, how will we maintain our saltiness? How will you maintain your saltiness?