September 29, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
For everyone will be salted with fire.
Jesus keeps trying to help them get it, parable after parable. He is warning them now how not to go to hell and how to be prepared for the “refining fire”, that place where everyone will be salted with fire or transformed.
“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.” “And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell.”
I have been thinking all week about hell and fire and salt and what to say to you, how to understand what it means to be salt and why this is important.
As a person who spent years trying not to use too much salt because of heart disease in my family, I must say I was initially confused about why having salt in ourselves is good and that this will be beneficial, actually needed, when we go through our refining process. Then I realized it’s not about having salt in us but being salt.
Dear Ones, here is what I’ve learned about salt as both a real substance and as a metaphor. However, before this I want to remind you that Mark’s audience is the early church and many of his listeners were keenly aware that being burned alive was the cost of their discipleship. Jesus adds salt to his story because it is the salt that will transform their sacrifice into something transformative.
Back to Salt. Salt is a mineral of preservation and an agent of transformation. It melts snow, makes firecrackers go boom and when added to food it brings out the flavor. It is also an agent of purification and is used in chlorine and soap. It also preserves food.
In Leviticus we learn that every acceptable sacrifice must be sprinkled with salt to be acceptable and that this salt must be roasted first. From the Geneva Notes, I learned that “We must be seasoned and sprinkled by God so that we may be both acceptable sacrifices unto him and also that in our being knit together we may season one another.”
Dear Ones, how has God seasoned you? Or how have you been seasoned by someone else? Who are the great leaders of the world whose lives were on fire with justice?
Let me tell you about one who though Hindu also read the teachings of Jesus. His name is Mahatmas Gandhi. And ironically, this is a story about salt. Remember that salt was used for preservation of food. The poor people who lacked refrigeration needed salt to preserve their food, but the British put a high tax on their salt from their own land. Gandhi, like Jesus, was committed to nonviolence so he led thousands of Indians to the sea to protest Britain’s occupation and in particular the high salt tax. When he marched to the sea, he was going against imperial authority. When he picked up a hand full of salt he broke the law for the freedom of his people. Dear Ones, this act of civil disobedience was the savor that made the salt have taste even though many were physically beaten. This final nonviolent action allowed the world to see the cruelty and injustice of Britian’s colonial rule. India shortly won her freedom after this march to the sea.
In a similar spirit a few years ago when I served in Palestine there was another march to the sea, to the Dead Sea this time. It was a march to reclaim a de-populated Canaanite village called Ein Hejleh. The nonviolent direct action was called Melh- al Ard or the Salt of the Earth Campaign. The Palestinians were using the same tactics as the Indians to call attention to the unjustness of their illegal settler colonial occupiers.
Over 250 people from all over Palestine, including politicians and bishops gathered at this village in ruins to witness for justice and freedom. They also literally did what the prophet Isaiah asks all of us to do: to rebuild the ancient ruins, to restore the streets, and to become repairers of the breech, the sacred covenant we have with our justice demanding God.
Against the threat of permanent expulsion and being uprooted for military firing zones, these brave resisters—women, children, and men cooked together, planted olive trees, and sang songs around bond fires.
For seven days the light of this holy experiment in the salty flats of the desert broke forth in the heart of the darkness of occupation.
In addition to rebuilding the ancient ruins including a Greek Orthodox monastery, they rebuilt the spirit of popular resistance by staying the course until the 7th day when they were violently evicted. They showed the world what nonviolent resistance looks like and that in spite of the huge amount of force to expel them, or teach them a lesson, these daughters and sons of Palestine, proved to the world that they were indeed steadfast and salt of the earth whose savor was strong.
Dear Ones, we Christians are called to not only be steadfast but on fire with the Holy Spirit too. Steve Garnaas-Holmes in Our Prayer of the Heart says we must ask God to “Salt us with your fire.” We are called to stay salty; to have salt in ourselves so we can be at peace with one another and offer it to our world ablaze now with the burning of fossil fuels that lead to climate catastrophes like tropical storm Helene.
Dear Ones, each one of us is called to bless, transform, and renew ourselves. I invite you today to allow yourselves to become God’s salty agents. We are called to stay seasoned, to not be afraid of the heat so that we can work for the preservation of peace in a world that has forgotten or remains ignorant of the ways that make for peace. Let each of us find the path that blazes inside of us that only we can go. Let us together become welcoming fires in a world that needs our illumination. Let us live lives salted and singed with God’s Holy Fire.
*‘salted and singed’ comes from Jan L. Richardson Blessing of Salt and Fire