Salty Christians (sermon on September 27, 2009)

Mark 9:38-50
Psalm 19:7-14

Last week at our outdoor service I preached on the passage from Mark’s gospel that comes just before the text we heard today. At the end of that passage, Jesus tells the disciples that whoever welcomes children welcomes him. What that meant was the disciples were to reach out to those people who have no dignity or respect. In Jesus’ time, that included children.

Today’s passage picks up where that conversation left off. As soon as Jesus got those words out of his mouth, the disciple John spoke up. You see, he and the other disciples had been wondering about just that question: who they were supposed to welcome into their community of Jesus followers. Just the other day they had been walking along the road, minding their own business, when they stumbled across an exorcism taking place right there in the middle of the street. And the person doing the healing was shouting to the demon, “In the name of Jesus I command you: come out!”

But here’s the thing: the disciples didn’t even recognize the guy! Here he was, healing someone in the name of their teacher, and they’d never even laid eyes on him. They were determined to put a stop to his unauthorized activity. Actually, when it came right down to it, the disciples weren’t so interested in whom Jesus wanted them to welcome; what they wanted to know was: who could they reject, who could they forbid from acting in Jesus’ name, from being a part of their community.

There’s really nothing like reading the gospel of Mark to make all of us feel better about the many ways we fail to understand and practice Jesus’ teachings. I mean, the disciples actually got to spend time with Jesus in person and they were still hopelessly thick-headed. “Welcome the children,” Jesus teaches them, and not two minutes later, the disciple John is talking about how they can forbid another believer from doing good deeds in Jesus’ name.

Of course, we really shouldn’t be surprised. After all, in last week’s passage, it wasn’t two minutes after Jesus predicted his suffering and death that the disciples got into a heated debate about which of them was the greatest. So is it really any surprise now that the disciples are suddenly concerned with drawing boundaries around their community? They want some guidelines here, they want to be able to identify who is in their group and who is out and what questions they can ask to separate insiders from outsiders. They want their club to be password protected...because their biggest concern is preserving their own position as the followers of Jesus, the disciples, the ones chosen by Jesus, hand-picked to be his followers. They felt special at least in part because they knew they had something other people didn’t.

Hasn’t just about every community of believers since the first disciples done what the disciples try to do here: figure out some criteria, some standards by which to measure who’s in and who’s out? Don’t we all want to feel that we know the ways Jesus really wants us to act and think and be, and that those who don’t aren’t in the club? For some churches it’s a particular social issue that draws the boundary -- abortion, gay marriage. For others the defining lines -- even if they’d never actually be defined -- are race or socioeconomic status. It’s no secret that we all feel most comfortable around people who are like us, so no matter how much we may insist that we welcome everyone into our church, there is still a subtle feeling among those who are different that they just don’t belong.

Well it turns out that when it comes to who’s in and who’s out, Jesus’ standards are shockingly lax: “whoever is not against us is for us.”

If we take Jesus’ saying seriously -- whoever is not against us is for us -- then we can find many examples of people living out the gospel without even knowing it, examples of God at work in our world...and, like the disciples, these people might actually have a thing or two to teach those of us who identify ourselves as Jesus’ followers.

One such person is Chuck Collins. Collins is the heir to the Oscar Meyer fortune. He is very, very wealthy. About a year ago he started a nonprofit called Wealth for the Common Good. This is a group of very wealthy people who actually want the wealthy to pay higher taxes. They believe this would move the country toward stability and financial health. It would also provide a significant portion of funds needed for healthcare reform. Collins and his supporters believe that giving a higher percentage of their earnings to the government is one way to bring economic justice to this country. They may not quote Jesus, but they certainly could. After all, when the rich man wanted to know what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him, sell all that you have and give it to the poor. Whoever is not against us is for us.

Here’s another example: in 1988, Chris Waddell, a competitive skier, broke his back in a skiing accident and lost the use of his legs. Within two years, he was named to the US Disabled Ski Team and he went on to become the most decorated male skier in paralympic history. Chris is attempting to become the first paraplegic to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania unassisted, using only a four-wheel handcycle propelled only with arm power. His goal is not just to prove that he can accomplish this incredible feat; what he really wants is for people all over the world to gain a new respect for the disabled -- and for those who are disabled to see what they are capable of. He also plans to donate wheelchairs and handcycles to the disabled citizens of Tanzania, who often don’t have access to such necessities. Waddell may not be physically healing the disabled, but he is certainly offering healing for their hearts and hope for their souls. Whoever is not against us is for us.

We certainly don’t have to go all the way to Tanzania to find people who are doing God’s work in the world even if that’s not what they might call it. In 1935, right here in Akron, an alcoholic named Bill Wilson sought the help of a physician and fellow alcoholic Bob Smith. The two ultimately co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped millions of alcoholics around the world. In Akron alone, there are 400 AA meetings each week, many of which take place in churches, including ours. Whoever is not against us is for us.

At times I think those of us who are already inside the church can become overwhelmed with all that we are called to do as we follow Jesus, just as the disciples following Jesus seemed to frequently get overwhelmed by his teachings: reach out to the poor and marginalized; give generously and joyfully of our time and talents; help care and support one another in good times and bad; deepen our own faith through Bible study, small groups, and worship; work for justice and peace in our community, city, and world; love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. No wonder we feel overwhelmed! But there are times that all we need to do is open our eyes and bear witness to the ways others are bringing love and grace to the world, whether or not they are followers of Jesus. Whoever is not against us is for us.

What this saying of Jesus also teaches us is that we don’t always have to wear our religion on our sleeve in order to do what we are called to do. You all know this already -- in September alone you have reached out to the elementary school across the parking lot with bags of supplies for the teacher; you have visited the mentally disabled at Hope Homes, bringing laughter and love into their lives; you have prepared and served dinner to over one hundred people from the local community and sent the leftovers to the Catholic Worker, which provides free hot meals; then you served one another and joined with another congregation at the church picnic last week. And now that preschool is back in session, our church provides the space and resources for families with young children to begin their children’s education away from home. You do these things because you are part of this faith community, which means you do them in Jesus’ name. And it’s perfectly okay if we don’t always advertise that fact.
What follows Jesus’ response to John’s question is a series of harsh sayings about those who make it hard for the “little ones who believe in Jesus.” Some commentators think that “little ones” refers again to children; others think it refers to new followers of Jesus, those who are still figuring out who he is and what it means to follow him. Either way, Jesus’ remarks about dismemberment show that the work of discipleship and how the disciples treat others is very serious business.

Then Jesus says a strange thing: “you will all be salted with fire.” This is strange, because salt and fire are typically seen as opposites: salt preserves while fire destroys. But what salt and fire have in common is that they can both be used to purify.

Recently I have been reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder with my daughter. This book is set in the 1870s and follows a pioneer family through the joys and challenges of life on the frontier. This family, who must hunt and then preserve all of their food for the long, cold winter, relies on two things: fire and salt. Salt allows them to preserve meat by drawing water out of it and making it inhospitable to bacteria -- thus purifying it. Salt is used to cure pork, venison, and fish so that they can have meat to eat throughout the winter. In this way, salt ensures their survival. Of course, without fire, that salt would be useless. They need fire for warmth, for cooking, for melting lead to make the bullets necessary to kill the animals they will eat, and for smoking the salted meats. Fire and salt are integral to the processes of transforming raw food into food that human beings can consume -- which is why these two elements changed and shaped human development throughout history.

Of course, salt itself can’t actually lose its flavor, as Jesus suggests here. But in his day, salt was often mixed with other minerals, so that if it got wet, the salt would dissolve and other tasteless minerals would remain. And just imagine for a moment how our recent meals together would have tasted if the salt we had used in the spaghetti sauce or potato salad or even in the pie crust had been nothing but tasteless crystals. (1)

Jesus is calling us to take discipleship seriously -- to quit bickering about who’s the greatest or who gets to be a part of our Jesus club. Taking discipleship seriously means we are going to struggle as we seek to understand Jesus’ teachings and then act on them. But that struggle is part of the necessary process of purification and preservation, of becoming more like the grace-filled, faithful people Jesus wants to be so that we can take share that saltiness with others, and so that we can support others -- especially those new to the faith -- as they confront the challenges of a living faith. The hard work of discipleship requires painful self-sacrifice because of what that work allows us to achieve by the fire of the Holy Spirit: a community where people support one another, put aside their differences, welcome everyone who walks through the doors, and then go one step further and support them as they endure the challenges that confront all of us who seek a meaningful relationship with God. This is serious business, indeed, serious business with the potential to bring to the church and the world the peace we so desperately need. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Scott Hoezee, This Week in Preaching, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=331.