30 September 2012/Proper
21B - Mark 9:38-50
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Timothy’s School for
Girls, Stevenson Maryland
Salted With Fire
What starts out with the disciples trying to score points
with Jesus for stopping someone who is doing the work of the kingdom – healing
and casting out demons – ends with Jesus telling us all to be salted with fire!
In between there is all this talk of stumbling around and lopping off limbs,
tearing out eyeballs and being thrown into “hell”: All in all a fun day with
Jesus on the road to Jerusalem.
This is all a part of a longer section of Mark’s gospel
concerned with discipleship – faithful discipleship. That is, What is expected
of those of us who would call ourselves Christians? This really is a question
about what it means to be human. We are to be spiced up, healed and purified by
fire and salt. Oh yeah, and stop stumbling around.
Fire in the ancient world was used to purify things. Still
is. Get rid of that deadly e. coli bacteria with fire, lots of fire. Just as we
were all eating our spinach fresh and loving rare hamburgers, now we are told
to boil the spinach to death and go back to “well done” burgers.
Which bring us to salt. Salt was used to preserve foods,
extend shelf-life if you will. It was also used to spice things up. And finally
salt was used medicinally.
Altogether these sayings on fire and salt suggest several
things. Healing within the community of
Christ is necessary to be a disciple of Jesus - especially healing that is
reconciliation rather than division and challenging one another’s credentials.
(We might note the vast difference in meaning between Jesus’ “Whoever is not
against us is for us,” vs. the more popular, “You are either with us or against
us.”) Further, the salt that flavors us distinctively as Christ’s own people is
meant to keep us from blending in with the surrounding culture. This distinctiveness implies eliminating –
lopping off – those things that cause us to stumble (skandalon) – things that get in the
way of being good and faithful disciples so that we can all do the work of the
Gospel. The contribution of Christians to the health of the world depends on
our own wholesomeness. The life of the world depends on us.
Another metaphor for all of this might be pruning. We need
to prune away those things that block us from following Jesus and fulfilling
our Baptismal Covenant so that we can grow in those ways that make us more
human. The Christian life is a life of following and pruning – pruning and
following. This pruning is not so much for our sake as for the sake of the
Gospel.
Most of what needs to be pruned away is a modern world that
teaches self-centeredness and self-reliance (independence) as the key to the
fullness of life. Whereas Jesus calls us to be those people who dare to say
that the secret of life – and death – is giving oneself away: reaching out to
others, to the world and to God. It is a call to a radical dependence on God,
and radical interdependence upon one another. Some may call it collectivism,
but from beginning to the end the Bible outlines God’s Dream
that we would depend upon God alone, and take care of one another. “The earth
is the Lord’s and everything therein.” Psalm
24 If it is all God’s, we are God’s
appointed stewards of everything. And “everything” is to be used for the common
good of the whole human community – nothing is to be set aside for personal
gain. Going way back to Manna Season, God envisions a society in which
everyone has enough, no one has too
much, and if you try to accumulate too much it sours on you. It is God’s Dream
of Shalom – justice and peace for all people, respecting the dignity of every
human being.
For the consequences of accumulating and withholding goods
that are to be used for the collective
common good, a close reading of Joshua 7:1-16 (The Sin of Achan), and Acts 5:
1-11 (The Sin of Ananias and Sapphira). Using the wealth and goods of the whole
community to be redistributed to those in need is a Biblical imperative with
grave consequences for those who act otherwise.
God has gifted us with himself – the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us – and if we wish to achieve fulfillment, we, too, must give
ourselves away. Moral progress comes only as we learn to acknowledge life as a
gift – not earned or achieved – but given.
To be wrapped up in ourselves, self-centered and autonomous,
says Jesus, quite simply is hell. In the text the word is actually Gehenna –
which is a place. Gehenna is a valley outside Jerusalem which to this very day
is a burning, worm infested garbage dump. It also used to be the site for human
sacrifices to the god Molech. There is always fire smoldering in this valley, and
over time it became a geographical metaphor for what happens to those people
who have little regard for others, the environment and the God of Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and Jesus.
It is interesting to note, that Gehenna in the real world is
a product of our own creation. People go to the edge of a cliff and toss all
their personal refuse over the cliff. I don’t care to enumerate all the times I
dump my personal stuff on others, on the earth and on God. This dumping is sin.
Sin, says our Baptismal service, is those things that corrupt and destroy the
creatures of God, including God’s creation.
Sin is related to temptation. So, when gas is cheaper so think we can go back to pouring even more
pollution into the earth’s atmosphere and pay less for the privilege! Hell, it
turns out is of our own creation and is determined in the here and now. Hell is
not some future destination. We manufacture hell every day for those who are
hungry, those who have no health insurance, those who suffer from disease
fostered by toxic pollution, the capability of nuclear arms to destroy this
planet and so on.
And Hell is not a condition that affects just the
individual; Hell exists collectively in human society as well. Hell is the
drive toward self-reliance, self-autonomy, whether of individuals, communities,
churches, governments, or nations. The Anglican priest and poet John Donne says
it best some 360 years ago, “No
man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a
part of the main…”
So, the answer to the question, Why is Jesus talking about
Hell and cutting off limbs and plucking out eyes? To impress upon us the
importance that what we are doing right here and now matters. That all that we
do and all that we say has eternal consequences. We can choose to create Hell,
or become purified by fire and seasoned with the salt of Jesus. We can squabble
over who is the greatest and who can or cannot heal and cast out demons, or we
can welcome everyone who does the work of Christ who has already redeemed the whole
world on the cross. We can be those people who hold on to all we have, or
become those people who give ourselves away. We do this not for our sake but
for the sake of the Gospel, for others and for the world.
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