“He’s the salt of the earth!” That’s a common expression. We all know what it means. It means that the person is “grand guy, one in a million.” It is a badge of honor, an accolade reserved for someone we admire tremendously. And it all got started in Jesus’ words to His disciples.
I. ACTUALLY, AS IT APPEARS IN MARK’S GOSPEL, THE SAYING IS A BIT CONFUSING. Commentators have been tearing their hair out for centuries trying to understand what the verse at the tag end of Jesus’ harsh saying about radical surgery means. What on earth does “For every one will be salted with fire” mean?
It may be, as William Barclay says, that Jesus often dropped pithy little sayings along the way which stuck in people’s minds. Often, while they could remember the saying, they did not remember the context in which it was said. The result is that we sometimes get a whole bunch of disconnected sayings of Jesus stuck together because they stuck in the writer’s mind in a certain way. That seems to be the case here. Mark got off on a tangent about salt, one thing led to another, and he strung together everything he could remember that Jesus had ever said about salt. The result is several very confusing sentences!
On the other hand, a textual variant (noted in the footnote in the RSV) may help to explain it. It is possible that some early scribe put a reference to Leviticus 2:13 concerning preparations for ritual sacrifice in the margin, and a later copyist simply took them over into the text. According to Jewish Law every sacrifice must be salted with salt before it was offered to God on the altar. The reference to ritual sacrifice would be obvious to Mark’s readers. It may also reflect the early church’s experiences of persecution and sacrifice at the hands of a pagan world in which they tried to be “the salt of the earth.” Mark may have meant to tell us that the hardships which the earliest disciples were to undergo in their faithfulness to Christ were like the fire of sacrificial offerings that purifies, or like salt which stings and smarts but has a preservative effect.
The idea of actually sacrificing something for one’s faith is a novel idea to many of us. A lot of contemporary Christians seem to be like salt...in that they hesitate to venture outside on a Sunday morning if there is a little rain, for fear that they might melt. They would never understand the first Christians who braved “peril, fire, and sword” for the privilege of gathering together in worship every Lord’s day. Wild horses (and wilder emperors) couldn’t keep them away! Such an idea is so foreign to most of us as to be almost laughable. In his book on the Parables of Jesus, Presbyterian David Redding writes: “Consider the Connecticut Yankee and his bicycle factory. It will take more than strikes and taxes to put him out of business. Foul weather and flat tires won’t keep him from work. A houseful of company can’t make him stay home at night if he’s needed on the job. Competition doesn’t break his spirit; he will make do, think of something, try everything, even to working on Sunday, and he will simply ‘never say die.’ But imagine some Presbyterian excommunicated. He would simply turn over in bed and become an Episcopalian or Methodist. Watch the weather’s tyranny over church attendance - it is worse than on baseball. House guests literally paralyze Christian production. Saturday night sabotages Sunday morning. This is the way the church died, not with a fight, but a sniffle.” (“The Parables He Told,” Westwood, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, Co., 1962, pp. 111-112) One wonders just how a Presbyterian might go about getting excommunicated. My observation is that it would be practically impossible to get kicked out of almost any mainline church these days. I have heard supposedly devout members from several different denominations espouse positions antithetical to everything that Jesus said and did; and yet, they consider themselves good, pious Christians. As the King in the musical “The King and I” used to say: “Tis a puzzlement.” But I digress.
Jesus told His disciples that they were “the salt of the earth.” In doing so, He was paying them a high compliment. In the ancient world, salt was a valuable commodity. It was so scarce that it was actually used as currency in some countries...even into modern times. During an invasion of Ethiopia in the late 19th century, Italian soldiers found blocks of salt stored in bank vaults along with other forms of currency. Jesus was paying His students a high compliment when he called them salt.
II. I IMAGINE THAT YOU HAVE HEARD MANY SERMONS ABOUT THE WAYS IN WHICH WE CHRISTIANS CAN EMULATE THE PROPERTIES OF SALT. For one thing, salt preserves. In ancient times, before refrigeration, it was regularly used as a preservative. The Greeks used to say that salt acted like a soul in a dead body. Dead meat left to itself goes bad, but pickled in salt, it retained its freshness. Salt seemed to put a kind of life into it. Christians are supposed to be those who put zest into life. In ancient times salt defended against rottenness and corruption. Jesus says that His disciples were being sent into the world to do something for that world. It was a pagan, heathen society and the disciples were supposed to be salt in it. Preserving it. Saving it. And they were.
Salt also seasons. An old story has the proverbial “Johnnie” being asked by his teacher, “What is salt?” To which he replied, “Salt is what spoils the potatoes if you leave it out.” Not bad. It is what leaves life flat and tasteless when it is omitted. Folks on a salt-free diet can attest to that! Kenneth Wilson, editor of the Christian Herald some years back, noted that Jesus nowhere said “You are the potatoes of the earth,” but “You are the salt of the earth.” This was not only because potatoes are not one of the cash crops of the Holy Land, but that potatoes are the things that are acted upon, not the thing doing the acting. He says, “We usually act as if we had been commissioned to be potatoes, rather than to be salt.” (p.90) What does he mean? Salt is supposed to do something to something else. It is supposed to serve, rather than to be served. (This gives the concept of a “couch potato” whole new meaning!) The world seems to be filled with Christian “couch potatoes” who lay around all day waiting for someone to get the Gospel to them; when Christ’s call is for them to help get the Gospel out to others.
There is one more thing that needs to be said about salt. This is an insight which has only come to me recently. Salt has a “bite” to it. If you ever have the opportunity to swim in the Dead Sea - don’t. Not if you have any open sores or cuts anywhere on your body. Boy, does that smart! The Dead Sea is 25% solids, and has approximately five times the concentration of salt than the oceans. Salt smarts. It stings. It reminds us of our sore spots. Salty Christians do that, too. Their very presence is a rebuke to our laziness and selfishness. They don’t even have to say anything. Their lives of quiet faithfulness to the Gospel shame us all. They make us uncomfortable. Sometimes we need that. One of my all-time favorite authors, Halford Luccock once wrote: “There are many more endearing characters than the professional ‘radiator’ of goodness. Too much sugar is not good for the body...continuous good cheer and uplift can be hard to take. Maybe that is the reason why one man said he never liked the clergy ‘in bulk.’ Tea is improved with a little lemon; and a squeeze of the lemon, a bit of sharp, astringent tartness, adds much to the interest of life and conversation.” (LIKE A MIGHTY ARMY, New York: Oxford University Press, 1954, pp.21-22)
“You are the salt, not the sugar, of the earth,” said Jesus. I am not arguing for obnoxiousness. We have had our fair share of that. You know: the kind of Christians whose perpetual expression is a frown of disapproval. Jesus had His problems with people like that, too. But I think that equally offensive in Christ’s eyes are those nice, sweet, harmless Christians who have the very best of intentions but never get around to doing anything or making any difference or upsetting anybody. Jesus called on His disciples to be the salt of the earth. III. BUT THEN HE ASKED, “WHAT GOOD IS SALT IF IT HAS LOST ITS FLAVOR?” What Jesus is saying is: “What good is it to be a follower of mine if there is nothing whatever distinctive about your life? If by following me you make no real contribution to life, what’s the use of calling yourself by my name?” Of what value are our values if they are not different from the values of those around us? What good is our parade if we do not march to the tune of a different drummer? What good is our professed faith in Jesus if, when the crowds about us are clamoring for something that is diametrically opposed to everything Jesus stood for, we can only say, “Me, too!” Of course, Jesus’ ethic is hard. Nobody ever said that it would be easy. And none of us live it fully. But the questions is: are we even trying?
Frank Sosienski was a letter carrier in Louisville, Kentucky, who got tired of lugging around all of that mail. And so, over a six year period he squirreled away 15 tons of it in 1200 bags in his attic. When the mail was finally discovered, he was charged with delaying mail intended for delivery. A letter-carrier’s job is to see that the mail gets through. What good is a mailperson if he or she doesn’t deliver the mail? What good is salt if it doesn’t season? If all that it does is lie there in the salt shaker day after day? What good is our Christianity if it never gets outside of these walls? What good are Christians who are reluctant to even try to follow their Lord?
The Greek word used in the New Testament to express God’s love for us and the love we are supposed to have for each other is “agape,” spelled a-g-a-p-e. I once heard of a delegate to a church assembly who kept hearing that strange word and had no idea what it meant. He did not want to show his ignorance by asking, so he went to a dictionary and looked it up. There it was: a-g-a-p-e, and the meaning: “with mouth wide open.” That’s the way it is so many times - our mouths are wide open, but our eyes, ears, hands, arms, are not. One cynic said:
After two thousand years of saying mass,
We’ve got as far as poison gas. Or, as Harvard humorist, songwriter, and mathematician Tom Lehrer put it in a song titled “Who’s next?”
“The Lord’s our shepherd,” says the psalm.
But, just in case, we better get a bomb.
Today (and yesterday) is designated as “Peace Sabbath” in churches and synagogues in our community. If there is any one area in which we Christians have compromised with the world’s values more than this, I don’t know of it. Polls regularly tell us that there is basically little difference between church members’ attitudes towards war and peace than those of the general public. In fact, church members tend to be a tad more bloodthirsty than the public at large. I watched Bill Moyers’ interview with Isaac Asimov last Monday evening on PBS with great interest. Asimov explained all the the reasons why he was not “religious” in any formal sense (although science seems to have become his religion). But one thing struck me: he said that if you take a look at those nations which are religious and those which are not, you can discern little difference between them. Violence and crime and plain dishonesty does not seem to be any less. In other words, there isn’t much saltiness left in the salt. I would like to have asked Dr. Asimov to make a distinction between “religion” and “Christianity,” but then I remembered my Christian history. Down through the centuries from the time of the Emperor Constantine onward, most Christians have acted more like attack dogs than apostles of the Prince of Peace. The government (any government) says: “Kill!” and Christians obediently say: “Tell me who.” They don’t even stop to ask: “Is this what Christ would do?” Or better, “Is this what Christ would have me do?” We are much like the fellow I saw in a cartoon many years ago. It showed a historical scene, the runner from the Battle of Marathon bringing news of the victory to Athens. A group of Athenian city fathers was waiting in strained anxiety. The runner arrived, carrying a torch, and gasped out, “I’ve forgotten the message.” Many times throughout history we’ve forgotten it, too. Or mislaid it. Or misunderstood it. Or purposely ignored it.
William Howard Taft’s great-granddaughter was asked to write her autobiography in the third grade. This is what she wrote: “My great-grandfather was president of the U.S., my grandfather was a U.S. senator, my father was an ambassador, and I am a Brownie.” God meant for the church to be a great force for peace in the world. The church carries, like that third-grader, the genetics of greatness. But it rarely fulfills its promise because so many of its members would rather be potatoes than salt. We have the notion that the church is here to serve us (it is, in a sense); but even more it is here to equip us to serve the world, in the name of Christ, the Servant Lord of us all. A certain popular comedian used some pretty salty language following his heart attack awhile back. I’ll clean it up a bit for use in church. He said something like this: “I have a great heart, but my arteries aren’t much good.” The church has a great Gospel, a great heart, but the arteries which are supposed to get the lifeblood out into the world have broken down somewhere along the way.
Several years ago there was a PEANUTS cartoon in which Schroeder, that piano-loving intellectual, was interrupted as he often is by his infatuated admirer, Lucy. Lucy asks Schroeder, “Schroeder, do you know what love is?” Schroeder abruptly stopped his playing, stood to his feet and said precisely, “Love: noun, to be fond of, a strong affection for, or an attachment or devotion to a person or persons.” Then he sat back down and resumed playing his piano. Lucy sat there stunned and then murmured sarcastically, “On paper, he’s great.” SO ARE WE, on paper. There are some 1500 members of this church, on paper. There’s nearly ten million United Methodists in this country, on paper. On paper, Christians make up the majority of folks in our country. How about on performance? Why don’t we make more of a difference? “But if the salt loses its saltness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”