Fire and Salt
27 September 2015
Proper 21B
Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, Ph.D, SCP
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.
Amen
Yikes! “Hack off your foot, poke out
your eye, chop off your hand—if any of these cause you to stumble!” How in the world to preach this saying of
Jesus? It is not only harsh—insanely
so!—but doesn’t even make sense. If your
hand makes you stumble, maybe you
should shorten your arm, not cut off the hand!.
Of course, stumble here is
simply a metaphor for moral failing, for sin.
But even as a metaphor, this is one of most macabre “hard sayings” of
Jesus. The image is so grotesque that
Matthew (18:8-9), who normally follows Mark when he uses his material, reduces
Mark's seven verses to two, while gentle Saint Luke omits it altogether
(17:1-4).
Taken literally, this saying actually
led third century Church father Origen to cut off body parts that had gotten in
the way of his efforts at chastity. As a
result, Origen—one of the age’s best preachers and scholars of scripture—was
never named a saint or a doctor of the Church. In fact, one of the first canons
of the Council of Nicaea was to ban such self-mutilators from the priesthood.
The saying thus is not an
announcement of divine law, but a vivid and sarcastic reply to the
disciples’ complaint that starts the reading: “Jesus, look at that guy
there! He is not one of us, but he uses
your name to heal people. We told him to stop but he won’t. You make him stop.”
They have just failed to drive out
an evil spirit from a boy afflicted since childhood (Mark 9: 14-28) and this
interloper seems to be succeeding just fine.
They want to be sole
proprietors of Jesus’ franchise, to defend their market niche and brand
integrity.
Jesus replies, “Don't stop him. Just
using my name might bring him closer to the kingdom. Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Clearly, not all of Jesus’ followers
agreed. The oral tradition turned the
saying into its opposite “whoever is not with
me is against me,” and this twisted
form of the saying shows up in both Matthew (12:30) and Luke (Luke 9:49-50; but
cf. 11:23).
The historical Jesus was more
welcoming and inclusive, less controlling and hierarchical than his followers. “Punish that competitor!” they say. He
replies, the strange exorcist is actually on their team! 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. This as a warning
to keep Jesus’ own over-zealous followers
from running roughshod over people like the unnamed healer.
My son Charlie, when he was in 8th
grade and suffering all the slights and insults an insular and clique-ridden
group of American middle schoolers could dish out to a stranger who had grown
up in China and Africa, hung a poster in his room given to him by an older
sibling. It declared, simply, “Mean
People Suck.”
That’s what Jesus is saying
here. “Mean people suck. Especially when they’re mean in my name. That strange healer is one of my little ones
whether you like it or not, whether he recognizes it or not. And doing harm to him is worse that being
drowned in the ocean. You want me to
stop him, to control him, cut him off?
Well if it’s cutting off you want, you should start cutting off your own
body parts.” Elsewhere he says it less
gruesomely, but still in vivid, grotesque imagery: “If you see a speck in someone’s eye, don’t
try to remove it until you have removed the log stuck into your own eye!” If your want to give someone hellfire and
punishment, think about what you just might be attracting for yourself by so
doing!” “Judge not, lest you yourself be
judged.”
Jesus concludes, “Everyone will be
salted with fire.” The two great means
in the ancient world of purification and preservation, salt and fire, are going
to be the lot of us all. How to be saved
from suffering in that fire or drying up by that salt? You yourself must be
salt for the world, leaven for the loaf, light in darkness. “Have salt in
yourselves, by being at peace with one another.”
He is saying, We
need to live in peace with each other, and not constantly go about seeking the
punishment or correction of others. Purification
is a serious business, getting rid of faults is too. The only way we can do it
without being destroyed by it is by gently caring for others. Be a light, not a judge.
For Jesus, God is not a mere tribal
deity, not a petty partisan. God makes the sun rise on and 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, salt to give flavor to and preserve the world (Matt.
5:14-16). God is not just for Jews, not
just for Jesus’ authorized franchise-holders, but for all. Because we are all in God’s hand, we must
accept diversity.
That ultimately is what the parable of the wheat and the weeds is all
about—don’t worry about which plants are good or bad, because if you pull up
the bad you’ll surely kill good ones as well. Wait until the harvest comes, and
God will sort it out (Matt. 13: 24-30).
It is also what the Hebrew scripture
is about: Moses’ deputies come to him
and ask him to silence the two commoners prophesying in the camp. They do not know that the two were part of
the 70 chosen to have God’s spirit but who failed to show up to meeting. “Silence them?” replies Moses, “Oh I wish
that all of the people were prophets like these two!”
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 here says the strange exorcist is one of his own
“little ones” in need of protection from being tripped up.
Living 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 just get along.” It is
about honestly addressing real problems.
It is about doing so in a spirit of shared endeavor, of mutual effort to
let shared desires and aspirations force us to listen carefully to the other
party.
I think one of the reasons that the
Bishop of Rome’s visit to the United States this week was so powerful, why it
spoke to many who have not listened to anything from the Pope in years, is
this: Francis is a gentle soul, who
leads by example. His words have special
power because he tries to model them in his life. And he is careful not to assault or berate
those who may have differing views. I
think he would understand Charlie’s poster: “Mean people suck.” Note
the four Americans he held up before Congress as the leading spiritual lights
of the American Experience: Lincoln,
Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King Jr. All were stalwart lights who did not shy away
from honest difference and controversy in proclaiming the truth, but all were careful to not condemn and
demonize others, even those who persecuted them. They too, modeled their message, and were
prophets running within the camp.
Jesus calls us to be good yeast
leavening, bright fires enlightening, and tasty salt enriching and preserving,
the world. He calls us to be prophets
running through the camp alight with the flame of God’s word. He does not call us to demonize, exclude, judge,
or ostracize.
God alone will bring this world right. We all will be rubbed through and
through with God’s salt. We all will be put through God’s fire. And because of
this, we must live humbly and simply, praying for each other, including our
enemies, and seek to help each other, work for justice, and live in peace.
In the name of God, Amen
