Sermon 18th Sunday After Pentecost

Sermon:

Text: Mark 9:38-50

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who uses us as salt for the world.

In our text Jesus ends with talking about salt. “Have salt in yourself, and be at peace with one another.”

            It’s in reference to the disciples seeing other people casting out demons in Jesus’ name. As I told the kids the disciples want Jesus to stop them, but Jesus tells them to let them continue. And tells them that if they try to stop the other people they are creating stumbling blocks. They are stopping the mission of God from being carried out, simply because they think they know the only way.

            It’s a pretty common situation. We think we know the correct way to run things, or the right way to put something together. And if someone else is doing it a different way, we feel compelled to let them know. I’ve known people to stop others and not let them continue.

            It even invades churches, and religious groups. Those people over there are not worshiping the correct way, we have to find a way to stop them. Those people are feeding people in a way we wouldn’t, we have to stop them. They are encroaching on our area, make them go away.

The focus on helping others has much too often become blocked by the need to make ourselves look good. There was a story I read a few years ago about the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Now, to begin I think the Komen foundation is a wonderful foundation and does so much for helping to cure cancer in this world. Their tagline is Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Which is a great line, it is easy to remember and use, and is instantly connected to cancer research fundraising. So, much so that other groups also working to raise money for cancer research, usually much, much smaller groups, perhaps working on behalf of only one person or group of people started to use the line as well. Some are, Kites for the cure, Par for The Cure, Surfing for a Cure and Cupcakes for a Cure, and many others. The Komen Foundation decided that they needed to stop this and sued these groups for use of the phrase, for the cure, and some for the use of the color pink. All of these groups were working towards the same goal of saving the lives of those with cancer.

It can get worse, anytime competition begins to rear its head in the midst of mission people start dividing between those who are right and those who are wrong, who’s in and who’s out.

Jesus wants us to be salt for the world, but if all we do is fight, how do we season? Salt is only salty when it interact with others. You can’t taste salt if it sits on the sidelines.

            We think that we all need to be table salt. We’re sea salt, we’re water softener salt, we’re Hawaiian Pink Salt, we’re smoked salt, we’re Kala Namak Black Salt, we’re Himalayan Rock Salt. We are an endless variety of different salts, each with it’s own use and fit. Salt is everywhere and has many different uses and properties. If we think its only good for one thing or one use, we lose that saltiness. We cut off part of the body of Christ and lose our ability to expand the Mission of God.

            During the beginning of fall all the coffee shops come out with their Pumpkin Spice lattes and mochas, and well, I drink them up. But, this week I went to a Starbucks to write this sermon and got a new drink called a salted caramel mocha, very much a candy bar in a glass. It’s pretty much a regular caramel mocha, caramel and chocolate mixed with milk and added to the coffee, but this has large sea salt sprinkled in it and on top. I’d been thinking about salt all week because of our text, but I must say I didn’t think about it when I ordered the drink, it was just something new I decided to try. But on the second or third sip I got a chunk of salt, and well, it was really, really good. A bit of saltiness in a sip of coffee and caramel. A similar sensation to eating a chocolate covered pretzel, salt and sweet together, but since it was a drink the only texture beyond liquid was the salt crystal.

            I try to not have all that much salt in my diet, my dad had quintuple bypass surgery when we lived in Sweden coming up on 20 years ago this January. So, I usually think of salt as something that gives rise to blood pressure. In fact, that pretty much the only way we really think about salt these days. But, as I’m sure many of you do remember salt is much more important than we remember. It’s been used for a preservative, especially before refrigeration, so important that during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire their soldiers were paid in part with salt. It can be used as a cleaner on brass and copper. When I had my wisdom teeth out one of the things they told me to do was to swish my mouth with warm salt water to help heal wounds and keep them clean. We use it outside of food, it’s used to protect us from slipping on ice, we use it to soften our water, keeping chemicals and calcium from building up. You can use it for grease fires, keeping ants away, kill poison ivy even. It’s sort of amazing what salt can do.

           

            With so many kinds of salt, so many uses for it, why do we hold that our salt is the only one that works, that our way of using it is the best?

            This is not a competition. The act of following Jesus and working to advance the mission of God is not a game, there are not teams. If we feed the most we don’t get points, if you say you told the most about Christ you don’t get a trophy. All that happens is that we draw a line, and God’s mission is put to the side. We stop working for change in this world and we lose our saltiness.

            Jesus tells us remember to be salt in the world, and remember that your neighbor is salt as well. The miracle of Christ is that we each have our own place where we work, our own gifts that welcome. To truly move towards the kingdom of God, and advance God’s mission, Christ has given us these gifts, given us the vocations of our daily lives. We each create our own sensation in the feast that is life. We each season the world in a specific way, and through the graceful cooking of our God we interact to create a dish that feeds the world.

            So, don’t lose your saltiness, don’t block the saltiness of those around you, let God lead you to where you fit the best, let the saltiness that God has given you season the world. Let God use you for Salt for the world.

Let us pray,

            God of feeding, help us to reach out to those in need. Help us to protect those in greatest need. Help us to keep your mission first, help us to keep our own need to be important in check. Help us to keep from being stumbling blocks to those also working towards God’s kingdom.

Amen.