Salted with Fire

Mark 9: 30-49

Redeemer Lutheran Church
Jerusalem

September 27,2015

For everyone will be salted with fire.

Salt is good, but if it has lost its saltiness, 
how can you season?

Have salt in yourselves 
and be at peace with one another.

Mark 9:49-50

Everyone is going through a refining fire sooner or later,

but you’ll be well preserved; 
protected from the eternal flames.

Be preservatives yourselves.
 Preserve the peace.

The Message

     Jesus keeps trying to help them get it, parable after parable. He is warning them now how not to go to hell but at the same time how to be prepared for the “refining fire”, that place where everyone will be salted with fire.

     “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.”

     So 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 have salt in ourselves and why?

     As a person who spent years trying not to use too much salt because of heart disease in my family and who was recently told now I should take in more salt for my low blood pressure, I must say I am equally confused about what it means to have salt in ourselves not to mention why are we all going to go through a refining process? Couldn’t some of us skip that part and just go directly to heaven?

     So here is what I learned. Salt is a symbol of preservation and an agent of transformation. It melts snow and makes firecrackers go boom. It is also an agent of purification and is used in chlorine and soap and finally it brings flavor to life.

     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 something called 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.” I like this being knit together.

     The great German mystic Hildegard Von Bingen also talks about sacrifice and fire this way:

Be not lax in celebrating

Be not lazy in the festive service of God

Be ablaze with enthusiasm

Let us be alive, burning offering

before the altar of God.

 Before the altar of God we are to be burning sacrifices. I believe we are also called to season each other with the call for justice.

Mahatmas Gandhi was all about this when he led thousands of Indians to protest Britain’s occupation and in particular her salt tax. When he marched to the sea and dared imperial authority by picking up a hand full of salt he broke the law for the freedom of his people. This civil disobedience was the savor that made the salt have taste even though they were physically beaten. It was this final nonviolent action that allowed the world and maybe even Britain herself to see the fangs of her own oppressive behavior. India shortly won her freedom after Gandhi’s march to the sea. 

In a similar spirit last year here in Palestine a call for justice went out through the Popular Resistance Movement.  It too was a march to the sea, the Dead Sea, 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.

Over 250 people from all over Palestine, including politicians and even Bishop Hanna Attallah from the Greek Orthodox Church, gathered at this village of ruins to witness for justice and freedom.

The village’s new residents 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.

 And so 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.

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.

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 7^th 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 is strong.

     We Christians are called to not only be steadfast but on fire with the Holy Spirit. We are called to stay salty, to have salt in ourselves so we can be at peace with one another.

         This past week one of the leaders in my church, Rev. Hagler from Washington D.C. demonstrated what it means to stay salty. He is a well-known civil rights leader and pastor with the United Church of Christ. He was invited to speak at Colgate Divinity School in Rochester, New York and by Friends of Sabeel to speak about the connections between African Americans and Palestinians in a lecture called “Connecting the Dots: from Ferguson to Palestine.”

     Rev. Hagler came here last year as part of a Carter Center delegation to witness first hand the kind of abuses Palestinians face under Israeli occupation.

      Days before he was to travel to Rochester he was dis-invited to speak due to pressure by pro-Israel groups. He also received death threats from Christians United for Israel, the organization founded by Pastor John Hagee.

     But Rev. Hagler did not stand down instead he told the crowd of over 250 gathered at the historic German house that “We have to stand up and tell the truth: Black lives matter, Palestine matters; we need to demand justice.”

     The salty fire of this preacher brought the leadership from my denomination, Christians Witnessing for Palestine, and Jewish Voices for Peace together to issue a collective statement of condemnation.

     Sometimes this seasoned with fire and salt is more of a private affair that helps people lead lives faithful to their true selves. One of my favorite stories about salt comes from one of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. Van Gogh had just been let go as a preacher and was examining what to do about the great fire still burning inside him. Soon after writing this letter he discovered painting and found an outlet for his great salty fiery spirit. From his letter:

And then you say, how long, O Lord! Well then, what can I say: does what goes on inside show on the outside?

Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it; and passer-byes see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way.

So now what are we to do, keep this fire alive inside, have salt

in ourselves. Wait patiently, but with how much impatience, await the hour, I say, when whoever want to; will come and sit down there, will stay there, for all I know.”

     Each one of us is called to bless, transform, and renew ourselves and the world. I invite you today to allow yourselves to become God’s salty agents, for your own self preservation and for the world, become warming fires in a world gone cold and dark with imperial violence. We are called to stay seasoned, to not be afraid of the heat so that we can be at peace with one another, 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.

In the name of the fire

and the flame

and the light

May courage

cause our lives to flame