Sermon - "Are You Salty?)

Note to reader: I tend to write to be spoken - not read. Tried to clean it up!

Mark 9: 38-50

38John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40Whoever is not against us is for us. 41For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
42“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.
43If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
45And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.
47And 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, 48where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
49“For everyone will be salted with fire. 50Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
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someone once said: :You can divide the world into two groups of people.
Those who believe you can divide the world into two group of people,
and those who don't.
Jesus' disciples belong to the first group; Jesus belongs to the second

And so the disciples see the world divided into them and us – but Jesus says don’t worry about them. Worry about yourself!
Looking at this text – one of the things I noticed was how many times in 5 verses – Jesus uses the word YOU or YOUR – 10 times in 4 verses – which leads me to conclude that this text may be saying this to us
Discipleship is The road to Self Examination – in other words look at YOURSELF
In these 4 verses that 10 times say you – they 4 times use the word stumble.
And it is saying this – beware of becoming a stumbling block that is going to trip up others.
Do no harm – don’t get in the way of the faith and maturity of another.
Because we are all connected and we affect each other.
Frederick Beuchner describes humanity as an enormous spider web, "if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling…The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops…"

So beware of becoming a stumbling block. I would like to suggest three ways in which we can cause people to stumble.
First is our anxiety. Anxiety can be almost contagious.
We have concerns about the future and the instability and insecurity of life that can stop us from living in the present
Our worries about the future can cause us to live closed off lives – afraid to take risks.

And the anxiety we have for others may be rooted in love. some of you might have experienced that as parents. I have watched my daughters make all kinds of decisions – entering into relationships and leaving them, taking jobs, quitting jobs, going to school, leaving school.
And I have to watch it all the time. My anxiety about their future can cause me to encourage them to take what seems to me to be the safe plan….which may not be God’s plan. But I don’t want to be a stumbling block stopping them from living out their life

Some of it is rooted in Experience. Watched people lived through the depression have the same thing – you don’t understand how hard it can be. I have lived through times of want – I don’t want to risk the church’s future. Churches with great big endowments – afraid to spend them on things that would grow the church because of their anxiety about the future. Anxiety is a stumbling block

Second – our judgements can be a stumbling block and shut people down. Part of the human condition – to look for the speck in someone else’s eye and ignore the log in our own. And we may have grown up with people who did that. John Powell writes: “when we were little kids playing with our toy cars or dolls, we heard our parents talking about others. We heard them talking about the people with whom they worked and the people in the neighborhood. Their messages, expressed and implied were recorded in our parent tapes. And of course, we engage in the same behavior.
And there are so many ways in which our judgments cause other people to stumble –

Third our own character flaws can get in the way of other people’s faith. We may be the only sermon some people see.
And if they look at us and they see someone they can’t count on
Someone who gossips with your back is turned
Someone who pretends to be one thing in front of you and someone else when you are not around. Hypocrites.
Someone who is a perfectionist – who has set the bar so high – that they can never be satisfied and no one else is either.


The text is saying – look at yourself and are you a stumbling block for others.
This interrelationship that we have means that our life is not our own – and not only are we damaging ourselves – but we are damaging others in the way we are living our lives

And so the text ends with a different image – of salt so that the question is – are you becoming a stumbling stone or are you becoming salt. Salty!
And let me talk about three qualities of salt that we can demonstrate
1. Bring healing –It kills most germs on contact. It burns when it hits a raw spot, but is very effective in cleansing a wound so it can heal. Becoming an element of therapy and healing because in the days of Jesus salt has been used as a means of medication and as a means of healing diseases and infirmities.
There is power in the name of the Lord – power to heal – power to bring people into a greater place. When we are the salt we potentially bring healing into every situation that we enter.
People need to know the reality that broken lives can be made whole again in Jesus Christ. There is healing for the spiritually sick who need Jesus.
2. Add Flavor It brings flavor and taste. That means that salt brings taste to the tasteless and flavor to something that does not have any flavor.
Picture popcorn without salt– needs a little salt – brings the flavor, enhances the flavor. We are called to bring out the “God flavors” in life– the flavor that we bring is a flavor of joy and love and peace.
We - meaning people as individuals, we - meaning the church the comes and enhances the culture. We bring flavor – that is harmonious. And salt makes everyone and everything taste better.
3. Act as a Preservative Salt has also been used as a substance of preservative through the ages to maintain and keep; things live longer. preservative. Our ancestors used salt to cure food to be used later. Country Ham, Corned Ham, Beef Jerky, and salted fish were staples of their diets. In the time that Jesus spoke there were no refrigerators to store the meat and it was very hot. The meat could spoil in the heat so salt was rubbed on the meat to preserve it. The salt prevented the meat from spoiling.
And we too are here as the salt – as people of hope who know that God preserves, that God endures, that our help comes from the Lord. We know that there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God.


So the question – are you a stumbling block or are you salt? The disciples divided the world into two groups – but Jesus does not.

Because the answer is – if we are honest with ourselves – we are both. At times we are a stumbling block – not only to the faith of others but to our own spiritual growth. Our anxiety, judgments, character flaws do us in. Without a doubt. And we experience what you can only call hell on earth

And other times we are salt – we are full of God’s spirit and those who are near us experienced God’s love and light and joy.
The text also expresses how one becomes salt.
This verse – Everyone is salted with Fire – the fire not of hell but of refinery. The fire through which we learn – (like Psalm 124) that Our help is in the name of the Lord.

And we don’t learn that through a good sermon or Sunday School or Bible study. We learn it through some hard experiences in life – when the enemies attacked us, when we were afraid the flood would sweep us away, when we felt like we were prey for the enemy. And we learned that God was there – was our rock and our redeemer.

Times like that are the refiner’s fire. In the Christian Century this month Christine Bartholomew writes about living with cancer and lupus.
She writes this: “sickness can make your relationship with God stronger in the strangest of ways. Sickness can give us permission to be mad at God. We can scream, yell and kick our legs until we’re blue in the face. The great thing about getting mad at God is that God is big enough to take out anger. He does not run from our angry words or turn away in pain. God is big enough to take our sorrows and empathize with our pain.
He takes anger and finds ways to show us love. It may take us a while to give ourself permission to yell at God for what has happened to us, but God will love us through our anger, even when we scream. Then God can hug us and wrap loving arms around us. This is the power of God shown in sickness……

Sometimes he uses our weaknesses as a way of refining us and making us able to walk a little closer with him. “For everyone will be salted with fire.” Through the fire of pain and suffering we gain our depth, our flavor, our salt.

Through our suffering, we receive the gift of God’s undeniable presence. God’s Spirit walks into hospital rooms, sits beside our bedside and holds our hand. And sometimes, of course, it is the body of Christ – the church, the salt, who embody our Lord.

We will all go through the refiner’s fire – but not everyone will become salt. Some continue to be more stumbling blocks than salt – self protective, self centered, self pitying. That’s a mystery to me

All I know is this – we are here because we have heard our Lord call us – to be disciples of Christ to continue to walk with Lord
Continue to do self examination and continue to look to the Lord – knowing that our help is in the name of the Lord

End with one more quote from Christine Barthalomew

God is constantly refining us with fire, whether that fire be conflict, persecution or sacrifice. These events can change us and draw us closer to God. This is a work of sanctification, not salvation. We may walk into heaven suffering, limp and lame, but we will walk tall.
Amen