Sunday, September 29, 2024
/Proper 21 (Year B)
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29; Psalm 19:7-14; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50
The Rev. Clint Brown
In 2003, the author Mark Kurlansky published a book called Salt: A World History.[1] Although I have yet to read it (in fact, it’s been sitting in my Amazon cart for quite a long time), for obvious reasons it came to mind as I was preparing for today’s sermon. Its publisher’s blurb describes its subject like this:
The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions.
Salt features, too, in numerous phrases in English which you’ll no doubt recognize.
· “Salt of the earth” we know well, as it originates from Christ himself. These days it is understood to describe someone who is very honest, kind-hearted, and reliable. It is the very preciousness of these qualities that suggests the link to salt as an ancient commodity.
· “To rub salt into a wound” means to make a person suffer more from something that is already bothering them. Its origin is ancient Rome, when it was thought a good practice to open any wounds on the body and clean them with salt. You can imagine how that felt!
· To be “worth one’s salt” is to deserve your job, position, or financial income. This is because you work hard at it and are good at it on your own merits rather than owing it to relationships or special treatment. This expression again points to Rome. “Sal” in Latin means “salt,” and “salarium,” meaning “salt money,” is where our word “salary” comes from. Roman soldiers were paid a “salary,” you see, a sum of salt money, so that they could buy this precious mineral and stay physically healthy on their long treks across the empire. At times, they were even paid directly in salt. So a soldier not worth his salt was one who, literally, had his salary reduced.
· To take something “with a grain of salt” we say when we know not to take it seriously or believe it completely, perhaps because we know (or can sense) that it may not be trustworthy or accurate or adequately reasoned.
· An “old salt” is an aging, experienced sailor who, from his leathery skin, squinty eyes, deeply etched face, and no-nonsense handling of a boat, you know just from looking that he needs no instructions and commands your full confidence.
· To say that someone is “salty” is to describe their anger or annoyance about something, e.g., “The clerk was very salty about me paying with a check instead of cash.” I had a friend in seminary who would advertise his saltiness on a daily basis by posting images on his door. They covered a range of saltiness from congenial, salt-free tap water to reduced sodium soy sauce to regular soy sauce to, at the very top of the scale, a picture of the Dead Sea. It was his way of saying, If any living thing dares to swim in these waters, it will surely die!
· A “covenant of salt” you’ve perhaps never heard of before. This is an agreement or arrangement that lasts a long time. Its basis is the use of salt as a preservative. “There is a covenant of salt between the two companies that they will not compete with each other in some markets.”
· Finally, to say that you are being sent “back to the salt mines” means that you are returning to work and that you are not too happy about it. In ancient times, the salt mines were places of dangerous, often deadly hard labor and so this work was reserved for those of the lowest ranks, such as convicts, slaves, and prisoners. The salt mines were not where you wanted to be.
These are but a sampling[2] of some of the unique ways in which salt has impressed itself into our culture, even into our language. What salt lends as an image are the key ideas of valuableness, the quality of being a preservative, and the notion of pungency, or the fact that salt, once added to a dish, gives itself unmistakably away.
If I were to take all these ideas and try to find an application for us, I think that what Jesus is getting at when he talks about salt is that the Christian life is meant to be good for something, not good for nothing. Salt must have an effect whenever it is used. That is its nature. In the same way that salt seasons a dish so that it is qualitatively different, we are to make an impact on our environment. If salt preserves, we ought to promote justice and peace. If salt is precious, so are the Christian virtues. In short, I think that God’s vision for our lives is that we be part of the solution, not the problem. We are meant to be out in the world as a force for good, flavoring it with our good works, improving it with our industry and our virtue, preserving it with our peace. “Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets!” (Numbers 11:29), cried the prophet Moses. That charge is upon each of us.
Think of the many contexts in which you move – your family, your work, your school, your clubs and organizations (your church!), your gym, your friend groups, your walking through the grocery store, your driving down the street. How can you season any or all of these contexts and make them better than you found them? Your enemy, you will find, is not your belief that this is a worthy pursuit, but your forgetfulness, your apathy. It will be to move through the world as we are so prone to do absorbed in yourself and miss the opportunities all around you to be the salt of the earth.
You ask how important this is? Well, Jesus suggested that it would be better to cut off a part of your body rather than see it cause someone to stumble. You are responsible for both your action and your inaction. So let’s be salty! Not the annoyed and always put out kind of salty, but the pleasant and helpful kind. Remember, we are meant to be part of the solution, not the problem. There are things that we can do. We are meant to flavor the dish. So go be salty.
[1] Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (Penguin: New York, 2003).
[2] For more about the ones I’ve mentioned and to read about others, see the website https://eslvault.com/salt-idioms/.