Salt that has taste

Sermon for Pentecost XIX, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: Mark 9:38-50

A while ago, a Facebook friend of mine posted a question, “Why does my box of salt have an expiration date on it?” There were several responses, one being “it’s an FDA thing; any food item has to have an expiration date,” and another response was actually a question “can you still use it past the expiration date?” I finally posted “I’m still working on how salt could go bad.” Chemically, table salt is one of the most stable things we have to eat. You don’t have to worry about getting it wet, you don’t get bugs in it like you do with sugar or flour, and you can’t burn it. There's bourbon smoked salt, sure, but have you ever seen fire-roasted sea salt on the grocery shelf? Even at Trader Joe's? So, when I read in this morning’s Gospel where Jesus asks how can you use salt that has lost its saltiness, it stood out to me. How can salt not be salt, and not taste like salt, unless it isn’t really salt? What does Jesus mean when he talks about being salted by fire?

In learning to cook, I found that adding just the right amount of salt, like a pinch, brightens the taste of what you’re making. It clarifies what was a muddy mix of flavors into a kaleidoscope of taste, each herb and spice and ingredient fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle to make a beautiful dish. The trick is to not use so much that you taste the salt itself, but use just enough to make the tastes blossom and make eating a religious experience, if you will. If you use too much, it overpowers the flavors and then all you can taste is the salt. Too much salt, or too much of a number of other things in cooking makes the dish all about that one thing to the detriment of other important ingredients, and you end up with a poor meal and a poor eating experience. You miss the contributing flavors and the reason for how the food is cooked.

The disciples complaining to Jesus that someone not in their group was casting out demons in his name had too much salt in themselves, so that their reaction was not of amazement, but of jealousy. “Look at what he’s doing - he’s not part of us. It’s not fair!” And Jesus responds, “be at peace with one another.” The flavors of love, compassion, and recognition of the Holy Spirit at work were drowned out by the salt of control and self-righteousness in the disciples. What the disciples saw in the person casting out demons was different from what that person was actually doing, so they assumed that the other person was wrong. In their conceit, they didn't see, or want to see that Jesus’ ministry could be done by someone else because they wanted to be the good guys, the heroes, the standard of Jesus’ work in the world. They were so wrapped up in their own sense of righteousness that they couldn’t see the good that the other person was performing. Their discontent is reminiscent of the discontent and irritation we experience today when we encounter people of faith doing things differently than we do.

The salt that Jesus speaks of is holiness, rather than the salt of conceit that the disciples had. This holiness is not from our own righteousness, but from the humble, servant nature he talks about elsewhere in the gospels. There isn’t much difference between the humility of the first being last or the greatest being the least, and recognizing people who are different but not competing against us. Those examples of humility turn our expectations upside down and expose our selfish desire to be Jesus’ favorites, our desire to be the standard of what faith should look like. The fire that Jesus mentions along with salt is a reference to a much older practice of offering food to be sacrificed on an altar by burning it. Levitical law says that food to be sacrificed should also be salted, so there is a connection between the holiness of a sacrificial fire and salt. But as with cooking in a kitchen, too much salt, or too much holiness leads to it being the only thing prominent in us, hiding the humility that prevents self-righteousness. From there, it is a short step to that self-righteous attitude that is suspicious of anyone else’s faith and actions.This is where the disciples were heading when Jesus called them out, pointing them toward holiness through humility.

Regaining holiness is important, and perhaps that is too obvious to mention. Holiness is not just for us personally, but for our nation, too, and it is lacking at a time of fractured politics and a culture war. All-or-nothing attitudes, apocalyptic views of opposing ideas from all sides, and legislation of a particular line of morality have all come from a sense of self-righteousness, which I believe is driven by fear of changes that have become visible. There is also a subtle jealousy that pervades our conversations, jealousy from people who never recovered from the housing depression in 2009, or from seeing others benefit from the American Dream, or from the loss of privilege perceived as unfairness or reverse discrimination. To add more insult to that jealousy is to blame them for their own situation, or tell them that’s just the way things are. Jesus’ call to be at peace is for all of us to hear and to work toward, to find ways in which we can recognize the legitimate reasons people we disagree with have for their call to action. It is a call to recognize the real struggles people have and to remove the stumbling blocks that keep them from living a full life. This call to peace is to accept that Jesus’ gift of grace to us is to be shared, and when it is shared, some is not taken away from us or anyone else. Someone else’s prosperity does not automatically mean that something was taken away from us, any more than a believer’s healing took something away from the disciples’ ministry.

There is not enough salt in our country at the moment. Our holiness has been washed away by anger and conceit that we are exposed to in social and traditional media, in conversations, meetings, and slogans. That leaves us with the question of how do we regain that salt of holiness, how do we find the peace of God that Jesus calls us to? It starts with us, being aware of our attitudes and emotions, and adding just enough salt to our daily and spiritual lives to make holiness and humility blossom, rather than adding too much salt that leads to self-righteousness.