Salted with Fire; Living Peace
17th After Pentecost (Proper 21 B RCL)
27th September 2009
Congregation of the Good Shepherd, Beijing China
10:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Word without Communion
Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50
17th After Pentecost (Proper 21 B RCL)
27th September 2009
Congregation of the Good Shepherd, Beijing China
10:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Word without Communion
Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50
God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
In today’s Gospel in Mark 9, Jesus is having a bad day. The disciples have just argued about who was most important (Mark 9:33–37). Just after this story, they will start to argue again when James and John ask Jesus for promotions (10:35–45). In the middle of all this, John comes to Jesus and complains about an otherwise unnamed healer who is casting out demons in Jesus' name.
"He is not one of us," the disciples whine, "so we told him to stop." They presumably want Jesus to tell the man to stop, and maybe punish him in some way. After all, he is using the name Jesus to perform the healings.
Why are they so concerned about this stranger doing unauthorized healings? It is clear that Jesus’ uncanny ability to heal was what attracted the large crowds to him to hear his message of the arrival of the kingdom of God. Healing was part and parcel of his proclamation. “If by the spirit of God I cast out demons” and illness, he says, “then the kingdom of God has come within your midst” (Matt 12:28, Luke 11:30). When he gives instructions to the twelve he has chosen to send out to spread his joyous proclamation wider, he gives healing the sick and casting out demons as their principal work (Mark 6:6-13).
The disciples thus see themselves as defending the integrity of Jesus’ core ministry. In modern commercial terms, they are complaining about this strange exorcist because he is encroaching on their market niche by infringing on their trademark. They are worried about brand integrity and don’t want anyone claiming credit for deeds of power done in Jesus’ name without a proper connection to them. They see themselves as Jesus’ exclusive agents, the sole proprietors of the franchise.
Mark portrays their complaint somewhat ironically: the disciples have just failed to drive out an evil spirit from a boy afflicted since childhood (Mark 9: 14-28), but this interloper seems to be succeeding just fine.
Many of us recognize the dynamics of the scene instantly. When Elena and I were raising our four kids, we often had one or another of them coming to us indignant, complaining of some misdeed by a sibling, with the outraged and sometimes tearful demand, “Punish him.”
Most of us who are managers of workers have had the experience of being mediators between quarreling employees, trying to get people to make nice with each other, to restore the calmness of the group, if not its peace, so it can get back to productive work.
You would think that Jesus would see the logic of the complaint.
But no, says Jesus, don't stop this man. Don’t stop interlopers at all. Just using Jesus’ name might bring the stranger closer to the announced kingdom. “Whoever is not against us is for us,” he says, adding, “after using my name and successfully driving out the evil spirit, the stranger certainly won’t speak ill of us.”
This inclusive attitude of Jesus clearly did not find universal welcome among his followers. Some probably thought it was altogether too naïve. The early source of Jesus sayings used by Matthew and Luke (Q), for instance, has Jesus actually saying the opposite: “whoever is not with me is against me” (Matt 12:30; Luke 11:23). To his credit, Luke also includes Mark’s story of the strange exorcist together with its version of the saying (Luke 9:49-50), while Matthew drops the whole story as inconsistent with what he believed Jesus would have said.
The story as told in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, however, preserves what almost certainly was Jesus’ position: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Mark’s version of the story places these words in the context of several other sayings of Jesus that Matthew and Luke put in other contexts or delete. In Mark, Jesus comments on the strange exorcist and adds that even a simple kindness like giving someone a sip of water advances the kingdom. And petty nastiness, sticking out your leg to trip up any of Jesus’ “little ones” will lead to worse things than being drowned in the ocean.
The Greek word used for “place a stumbling block before” here is skandalizo or “scandalize.” In Matthew’s separate use of the same saying, it refers to non-believers tripping up Jesus’ disciples (Matt. 18:6). Here in Mark’s context, it refers to the offense caused by Jesus’ own over-zealous disciples running roughshod over the feelings and sensitivities of people like the unnamed healer and the people he has successfully healed.
And then comes one of the so-called “hard sayings” of Jesus. None of these are more macabre than the command to pluck out one's eye, or cut off a hand or foot (Matt 18:8-9; Mark 9:42-48). The image is so grotesque that Matthew, who normally follows Mark when he uses material from that Gospel, reduces it from Mark's seven verses to two, while gentle Saint Luke omits it altogether (cf. Luke 17:1-4).
Origen (but not St. Origen)But the context in which Mark places this harsh command gives a clue to its most likely meaning on the lips of the historical Jesus. This answer about cutting members off is indeed cutting: an ironic and overstated argument that if you want to call for punishment, then you must remember that all deserve to be punished, including you.
“Bad people?” says Jesus, “You want me to punish them, to cut them off?” “Well, then, if it’s punishment you want, it’s punishment you’ll get. And not just of those for whom you ask it. Cut those people off? You might as well cut your own body parts off.”
Remember that even when the saying appears in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is arguing for a moral law far beyond the human norm, as if to underscore the point that it is only with God’s help that we can live as we should, and that there is little hope for any of us if “Rules are rules, law is supreme; no exceptions, mercy, or grace allowed.”
Jesus wraps up the little speech here in Mark with the curious expression, “"For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
This image, so puzzling at first glance, draws on commonplaces well known to the people in Jesus’ culture.
Salt and fire were powerful images, both related to the idea of change and stability. Another powerful image in this complex of ideas was that of yeast, or leaven.
Any of us who have made bread know how amazing yeast is. If you don’t add the right amount and give it adequate time and sugar for food, your bread will come out flat, heavy, and ruined. Without any yeast at all, it will simply be a hard, inedible clump of baked dough. Spread out thin that way, it might make crispy crackers; but unleavened bread is not really what most people call bread. Too much yeast, or too long a rising time, makes the dough sour and turn bad. Adding salt for a tastier bread slows down the yeast; if you add too much salt, it kills the yeast altogether.
The whole process seemed somewhat mysterious to the early Hebrews, and this almost magical agent of change was early on identified with the processes of change and resistance to change that they saw as evidence of their God’s ongoing creative work in the world. It was akin to the mysterious difference between a living animal and a dead carcass, that so quickly would turn bad and rot.
Matzos (unleavened bread) and WineAnimals being sacrificed in the Temple must be killed quickly in ritually prescribed ways that of themselves delay the process of decay. Salt, that great preservative and inhibitor of decay, is added to all meat sacrifices. They are to be put into the fire almost immediately, and the parts of the sacrifice that are not to be burnt up wholly are to be eaten by the priests and Levites quickly after the rite.
Fire itself—able to change things totally by reducing them to ashes—is also seen as purifying, since it seemed mysteriously to inhibit change and decay after it had touched an object. (Obviously, after Louis Pasteur, we recognize that many of these qualities of yeast, salt, and fire seen by ancient Jews as mysterious relate to the encouragement or inhibition of microbial activity.) But for the people who wrote the Levitical Code, fire meant purification either through radical change (things burnt to ashes) or through its ability, like salt, to preserve against change seen in the process of fermentation and rot.
Salt, seen also as purifying, was seen as a symbol of steadiness and unchanging stability. So sharing it at table was the ultimate sign of friendship and hospitality. Often a ritual sharing of salt sealed covenants and promises.
The ancient Jews realized, to be sure, that not all change was bad or in the direction of decay. They also liked their leavened bread and wine. It was in this spirit that Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to a little lump of yeast in a large mass of flour dough—only a little bit would make the whole loaf rise (Matt. 13:33; Luke 13:20-21). But those welcoming the Kingdom were for Jesus also the salt of the earth—what would make it tasty and pleasant, but also what would preserve it from overall rottenness (Matt. 5:13). But leaven for Jesus could be bad also, as when he told his followers to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15).
Saint Paul also used the image of yeast in both ways—good leading to nice bread and bad leading to rottenness—when he advised the Corinthians to discipline a notorious sinner in their midst whom he saw as likely to corrupt the Church (1 Cor 5:1-8). Using the image of cleaning out leaven from the house before the Jewish celebration of the Passover, he wrote, “Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch . . . Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Valley of HinnomSo when Jesus in Mark says, “Everyone will be salted with fire, therefore live in peace,” he is saying this: We need to live in peace with each other, and not constantly go about seeking the punishment or correction of others who may seem to differ from us or not meet the standard we think God has set. And why? Because purification is a serious business that must touch all of us, and eventually will touch all of us, regardless of who we are or what group we now appear to belong to. Purification will come to all, either through preservation or destruction, either through saving change for the good or damning change for the bad.
As C.S. Lewis said, in the end, there will only be two groups: those who say to God “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God finally must say, “Alright, then, have it your own way.”
Why is that a warrant for living in peace? Is this just another way of saying “Do not say to your neighbor ‘you have a speck in your eye’ while you ignore the log stuck in your own eye” (Matt. 7:3)? No, there is more to it than that.
Jesus’ demand that the disciples accept marginal believers or even possible competitors is rooted in his understanding of God.
God is not a mere tribal deity. God is not a petty partisan. God makes the sun rise on ands sends the clouds to rain on both the righteous and the wicked (Matt. 5:45). He is Israel’s God, to be sure, but only so that Israel can be a city on a hill, a light on a candlestick (Matt. 5:14-16). As the unshakable Rock, this God provides the reliable unmoving ground for pathetic creatures caught up in the confusion, decline, and suffering they see about them. And that, not just for Israel, but for all. Not just for Jews, not just for Jesus’ authorized franchise-holders, but for all. Because we are all in God’s hand, we must be tolerant of difference.
That ultimately is what the parable of the wheat and the tares (or the wheat and the weeds) is all about—don’t worry about which plants are good or bad, because by pulling up the bad you’ll surely kill good ones as well. Wait until the harvest comes, and God and his angels will sort it out (Matt. 13: 24-30).
Jesus recognizes our common stance as God’s creatures in a world where we can say, in the words of the hymn, “change and decay in all around I see.” Jesus recognizes that God is creator and parent to all, and that we are all beggars before God. Though he sees his announcement of the arrival of Kingdom as addressed to Israel, this is so Israel can be a light to all.
All are invited to God’s great feast. All of God’s creatures are called to respond to the Kingdom’s arrival. So Jesus urges solidarity among all God’s creatures. That’s why even unbelievers’ offers of glasses of water build the Kingdom. That’s why Jesus in Mark talks about the strange exorcist as if he were one of his own “little ones” in need of protection from being tripped up.
We all have our buttons that people can push that really set us off, that make us want to go running and demand “punish him.” Even the most sterling “righteous” anger in most of us is mixed with self-interest and fear. Think about it carefully. In this messed up world, why is it that only some things cause us to lose our serenity and calm?
In my office this week, I became outraged when I saw a colleague behaving in a way that I thought was deliberately petty and hurtful toward a subordinate. This totally pushed one of my buttons. I was flummoxed and undone. I wanted bureaucratic vengeance, I wanted to beat the person into submission so he would learn to play well with others. I wanted to humiliate and make an example. I realized that this had truly upset me, and unreasonably so. I have learned as part of my spiritual discipline to identify things that throw me off as opportunities to learn about what is going on in my heart. I had a long talk with a close friend. My friend confessed that where I had a “hurtful behavior” button, he had a “that’s not fair” button. Instead of asking what was wrong in what the colleague had done (I had no problem coming up with a list for that), I asked what was it about me that made it so easy for me to lose my composure about this. Probably fear of losing my own sense of self-worth at work: I suspected that I had not adequately moved work along in a timely fashion and this had placed my subordinate in an untenable position vis-à-vis the badly behaving colleague. It was easier to get totally angry and blame the bad behavior than to realize that what motivated my emotions actually was fear rooted in my own sense of not measuring up.
But this saying of Jesus isn’t just about overcoming the buttons we have that people can push. It is about how we deal with true evil as well.
It is really hard to be magnanimous to people we know are doing evil, especially when the evil is patently hurtful to others. Our hearts rightly cry out “punish them.” Ignoring evil or making nice with it can be a subtle form of enabling such evil, and helping perpetuate and compound the harm.
With even such, Jesus says, “live in Peace.”
But living in peace doesn’t mean making nice, papering over evil, or thickening our conscience with an amoral detachment. Ask any marriage or family counselor, any labor mediator, or any mediator or negotiator in international or inter-ethnic conflict. They’ll all tell you that truly seeking peace is not easy, and not harmonious. It is not a false “let’s all forget about the past and try to make up.”
It is about honestly addressing real problems and real differences. It is about doing so in a spirit of shared endeavor, a sense of being in a common plight, of mutual desire and effort to let common desires and aspirations force us to listen carefully to our own story and the story told by the other party.
Jesus teaches us, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Wish well for those who spitefully use you. (Matt. 5:44)
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Police photograph of Solzhenitsyn, 1953. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in the Gulag Archipelago, talks about the moment during his decades in Stalin’s prison camps that he recovered his Christian faith, and began to heal even while in prison. In the chapter, “Resurrection,” he notes that he realized that no matter how tightly his interrogators pressured him, he still had some choice, however limited, however constrained. While tortured, he was always forced to tell his tormentors what they wanted, but he still could do this willingly or unwillingly, hatefully, or with empathy. This led him to realize that even his interrogators themselves were constrained. They too enjoyed, even within the constraints placed on them by their roles, small choices between good and evil.
He realized that it wasn’t an issue of good people versus bad people. The line between good and evil did not lay between interrogator and prisoner, between political parties, between economic classes, countries, or religions. It did not lay between any groups of people, however defined. It lay in that small space of choice, no matter how tightly constrained, in each person.
He writes, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Solzhenitsyn understood the principle behind Jesus’ statements here in Mark. We are all God’s creatures and all bear God’s image, no matter how we may have distorted and twisted it. We are all in this together. And that is so regardless of what we think of each other, regardless of how right or wrong we may be in our judgments of each other.
Jesus proclaimed the coming of God’s rule. Through his perfect submission to God, he showed the way for the kingdom to fully come.
He continues today to call us to be good yeast leavening the loaf of the world, bright lanterns of fire enlightening the world. He calls us to be salt for the world, effectively enriching and preserving its good. He does not call us to demonize, exclude, or ostracize. These things are bad leaven that leads to rottenness and decay. He calls us to include, reach out, and leaven the whole loaf.
God himself will bring this world right. We will be rubbed through and through with God’s salt. We will be put through God’s fire. And because of this, we simply must live humbly, pray for each other, including our enemies, seek to help each other, work for justice, and live in peace. Pray God that we may do this.
In the name of God, Amen.
