Being Salty People

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Mark 9:38-50


The time of canning in our household has come to an end. We have stocked our larder full of tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato juice, jam (sometime tomato jam)…This year we ventured into pickling. We grew a few rows of Boston pickling cucumbers. What the weeds didn’t kill off left us a nice “mess” of cukes to turn into dill pickles. We also tried sauerkraut from our cabbages. Who knows how they’ll turn out? We haven’t been brave enough to try it yet.

Until we started pickling, I didn’t know there was such a difference in salt, or so many types of salt. Do you know how many types of salt there are? Ordinary table salt, sea salt, rock salt, pickling and Kosher salt (the best salts for pickling, mind you). Then I went into Mountain People’s Co-op the other day and discovered black lava salt, red alaea salt, Himalayan pink salt, and smoked sea salt.

I guess I’m destined to love pickling because I love the taste of salt. And since “dark chocolate” is not a taste, but balances on the fence between sweet and bitter, I’d have to say that salty is probably my favorite taste. I guess that’s why this part of the scripture stood out to me.

Of course, the entire reading isn’t about salt. There are three distinct parts. The other two are a bit more difficult to deal with. The first talks about demons and exorcism, and brings to us the politically volatile cliché of “are you with us or against us?” This seems to overshadow the nicer image that follows—an image of bringing a cup of cold water to drink. The second part of the scripture seems to prescribe amputation for sinfulness, and suggests cutting off hands and feet, plucking out eyes. It leaves us with a disturbing teaching that it is better to enter heaven maimed rather than leading others astray.

What happened to the little child that Jesus was embracing in the verses that are just before, the child we looked at last week? I certainly hope Jesus covered the little one’s ears, or sent him back to his mother before he began in with all of this…. Demons, self-mutilation, salt… Pass the salt, please. I’ll leave the rest for another time.

But unfortunately, Jesus’ teachings are hard to pick apart that way. They are more like a big gumbo rather than a child’s carefully picked over plate of food: don’t touch the carrots with the pasta or the macaroni and cheese with the peas. No, sometimes it seems Jesus’ teachings are more like throwing in all different ingredients in a pot and letting them stew. You can still recognize the vegetables, the meats, the grains, but they also have a flavor of everything else. You just can’t easily separate them. Demons and self-mutilation, seemingly extreme in word and tone, are thrown together into a big gumbo, finished off with a dash of salt. But to pick apart the pieces briefly might help make it a more palatable option.

The disciples again are fighting over place and rank. Should just anyone who is doing good deeds in Jesus name be allowed to? To which Jesus says, don’t be so conceited. Just because you don’t know this person, because they are not part of our crowd, doesn’t mean they can’t do what I’m preaching about. Maybe it is this in crowd/out crowd distinction he sees the disciples beginning to draw that moves him to a warning about their own agenda, the whole cutting off bits of your body saying. Think about what you’re doing. What are the consequences? Once you have deceived, or misjudged, or caused another to sin, can you live with the costs? This extreme hyperbole invokes Jesus’ intensity: essentially, the stakes are high when it comes to your behavior.

Instead of doing these things, he encourages, be salt... salt, refined by fire. Being salty may just be the anecdote for the temptations Jesus laid bare.

If you were starting a new kitchen and could only have one spice, what would it be? I’m sure there are the few exotic cooks among you, that if you just had cumin, or cardamom, or ginger you could make the tastiest dishes in the world. But I think if we only had one choice, most of us would probably choose salt. Salt is, and has been, a staple throughout time and cultures. It doesn’t just make food taste salty, it makes food taste better…it brings out the flavor.

It’s true that we Americans have too much salt in our diet, but no one would dispute the essential presence of salt in our everyday lives. Which is likely why Jesus used this as a metaphor. Salt had importance in religious life, often used in rites of purification and ritual offerings. Jesus says salt is good, have salt in yourself, don’t loose your saltiness. When Jesus uses metaphors such as this, he invites us to think creatively--deliciously--about how we can move from bland living into tasty discipleship.

Last month my mother and mother-in-law and I had a women’s afternoon out and excitedly went to see the new movie Julie and Julia. This movie follows two separate, but true, story lines. The first follows the world famous cook Julia Child as she begins to uncover her passion and talent for cooking. Beginning to dabble in cuisine in her mid-30s when she and her husband lived in France, Julia found her life’s calling, which included cookbook writing, the first of which was the mammoth, 752 page book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The second story line follows Julie, a contemporary thirty-something who is feeling lost, and decides to give herself a challenge to spice up her life. In the span of one calendar year she attempts to cook all 500 plus recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking – a feat, even for Julia Child.

What happened was that Julie started blogging about her experience, writing about it and publishing it on the web. She gathered a large following, wondering what little Julie would take on each night, wondering when she might collapse from the enormity of cooking outlandish French cuisine in her tiny Queens, New York apartment. But when Julia Child’s editor, the editor of the Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook, arranges a dinner date with Julie, she can hardly believe it.

Julie frets over making the perfect meal: boeuf bourginon, a tasty beef stew. She even skipped work in order to get it just perfect. But when mealtime arrives, she receives a call that her coveted guest had to cancel due to the weather. So what to do with such a meal? Well, eat it of course. And as Julie’s supportive husband attempts to buoy his wife’s dashed spirits, he digs into the wonderful, the time consuming…boeuf bourginon. As he continues talking and eating, he stands up, gets some salt, and begins dumping it on…

Julie is indignant and with disgust she spats, “I’m sorry. Is it bland?” Her husband tries to backpedal, but all Julie can focus on is that he would let her serve bland boeuf bourginon to the editor of Julia Child’s cookbook. All that time, all that energy, worry and sweat…and it still needed salt. It was, at least in her husband’s taste, a bit bland.

I like thinking about what salt actually does and seeing where it can translate into our lives, especially when we are feeling a bit spiritually bland. Aside from adding salty taste, salt draws out moisture from food, allowing it to absorb more flavors. When Torin makes his wonderful eggplant parmesean, he always sprinkles the eggplant slices with salt to draw out the water. He then smothers it in sauce which can more easily seep into the cracks and crevices of the eggplant, into the places that were once filled with tasteless water.

Being salty disciples can be a process of pulling out of ourselves the stuff that takes up space, the watered-down aspects of our life that are dull and tasteless. Being salty disciples means we can open ourselves up to new flavors of life, new ways of experiencing God. Maybe we recognize that new flavors, new people, new ways of thinking needn’t be feared. The disciples were fearful of someone doing acts in the name of Jesus, but Jesus said there was no need to fear this new flavor.

Salt also acts as a preservative, an important function of salt in Jesus’ context. Before refrigeration, people would use salt to preserve meat and vegetables. It kept things. It helped them “live” longer, so to speak. Maybe being salty means we know what keeps us. We know what gives us life. Being salty means we know the difference between what really sustains us and what just fills the void.

And how many of you put salt in your sweet desserts? Nicole Kaplan, a pastry chef in New York City, says that they are putting a lot more salt in sweet things these days. Apparently salt helps bring out the sweetness, rounding it out while not being overwhelming.[1] I like this metaphor for Christian discipleship. If we are salty we round out the flavors in our world, enhancing those which need enhancing, tempering those which need tempering. All in all, salt brings out the essence of the food and enhances the flavor.

In a world where we are tempted to draw the line of who is in and who is out, like the disciples did, Jesus calls us to be salt, inviting us to bring new flavors into our lives. When we are tempted to fall into patterns that separate us from the Body of Christ causing ourselves and others to stumble, Jesus calls us to the table again. When our living feels bland, he invites us to be salt for the world. Absorb the flavors of God’s creation, know what it is that sustains us, and enhance the good in the world.

What salt do you have in your life that enhances the beautiful world God has created? What salt would you like to add to your life to more fully absorb God’s goodness? In this time of waiting worship, I invite you to reflect on how you can receive salt from God and give salt to the world.

[1] The Rise of the Salt Tooth, www.chow.com