“Salt”
Mark
9:38-50
September 27, 2009
For enlightened, highly
educated and well-informed North American Christians such as us this morning’s New
Testament passage can be difficult to swallow. What,
with its talk of exorcised demons and warnings of being thrown into hell, not to mention
multiple amputations we may find ourselves wishing for a nice parable or miracle story
instead. Even so there is a message contained
within these troubling words of Jesus that we all need to hear. Still, even as we try to grasp Jesus’ talk of
exorcisms, demons and hell we have to remember that not everything in the Bible is meant
to be taken literally.
Please listen for how the
Spirit of God is speaking through the Gospel of Mark chapter nine verses thirty-eight to
fifty found on pages 42 to 43 of the New Testament section of your pew Bible…
38John said to
[Jesus], “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.”
This
is God’s word to us…
When I was a seminary intern
working at Lakeside Presbyterian Church in suburban Richmond, Virginia the session and
pastor asked the congregation what could be done to bring new people to the church for
Sunday worship and weekly activities. I’m
sure that there were some really good answers that made a lot of sense and helped the
leadership discern what best to do for their ministry at the time, but all I can remember
are some of the more odd suggestions made by one or more people in that congregation.
For instance, one person
suggested that the church would grow if only it instituted a strict dress code of women
wearing gloves and a hat while men would be required to wear a suit and tie for Sunday
morning worship. I suppose the reasoning
behind this suggestion was that when the church was full decades earlier that was simply
how people dressed and if the leadership simply enforced such a dress-code it would stand
to reason that the church would be full once again.
Unbelievable as such a
suggestion may sound; it was another answer that relates more directly to our morning’s
passage from the Gospel of Mark. One or more
people from the Lakeside Presbyterian Church wondered why there weren’t more sermons
focusing on hellfire and brimstone. Again,
they remembered that such sermons were in vogue when the church was full and so they
suggested that the pastor spend less time talking about God’s grace and love and get
back to something more fundamental like good old-fashioned hellfire and damnation sermons.
As you might imagine, my
supervisor was polite and respected the opinions of his congregation, but kept right on
preaching the love of God and the gracious gift of the life, ministry, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. I don’t
know if those who wanted more hellfire from the pulpit left the church and the folks at
Lakeside Presbyterian Church will never know if their church would have grown if only the
pastor and his intern spent more time focusing on hellfire because both of us continued to
preach the Bible’s overwhelming message of God’s love and grace for God’s
people.
But after hearing a passage
like the one from Mark’s Gospel you have to wonder; you have to wonder what are we
supposed to think about hell? Do you want more
sermons about the unquenchable fire and threats of being thrown into hell? Is such preaching really an effective outreach
model? Along with a few of you, I have my
doubts.
Of course it wasn’t
always this way. One of the books that sits on
my shelf is “Speeches that Change the World” and among the more notable speeches
included are Moses’ delivering of the Ten Commandments, Jesus’ Sermon on the
Mount, speeches by the founding generation of American, along with speeches by the
greatest presidents of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s. Included as well and more closely related to the
subject of hell is Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon from 1741 titled “Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God.”
Listen if you will, to just
one paragraph of Edwards’ famous sermon, a text if read in its entirety would go on
for about forty-five minutes to an hour or so. Here
are just some of the words that made Jonathan Edwards one of America’s most famous
theologians and preachers:
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much
as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is
dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you
burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy
of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire. You
are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, that the most hateful venomous serpent
is in ours. You have offended him infinitely
more than ever a stubborn rebel did the devil. Yet
it is nothing but God’s hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.”
Well, what do you think? Do you want more?
Jonathan Edwards sure knew how to motivate people didn’t he? But what do Edwards’ words have to do with
living faith? Are we to remain in a state of
perpetual fear, always looking over our shoulder hoping that God doesn’t release his
grip allowing us to fall into the fire? What
does a sermon about hell have to do with the good news of Jesus Christ?
To answer some of those
questions let’s listen in to hour our passage actually speaks about the subject of
hell. This challenging little four-letter word
appears just three times in our reading. First
we hear Jesus say, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for
you to enter life maimed that to have two hands and go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.” As I read this passage again earlier this week I
was a little taken about until I remember that rhetorical flourishes like exaggeration and
hyperbole were not inventions of twenty-first century politicians. That even Jesus, in order to make a point used
exaggeration should not surprise us.
I mean upon hearing me read
those words did any of you believe that Jesus expected anyone to go around lopping off
their hands? Of course not, this is an example
of purposeful exaggeration, a point which Jesus continues when he says, “And 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 be thrown into hell.” As
with Jesus’ instruction about cutting off hands, it’s not that Jesus expects us
to all carry hacksaws with us wherever we go, because it isn’t our hands or feet that
cause us to sin, are they?
Rather it is our heart and
mind that lead us to respond to the various temptations of life. Sin is a by-product not of our extremities but of
what is going on inside of us. Jesus’
inflammatory words about what we are to do with our hands and feet and finally our eyes—“And
if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out are meant to get us thinking about how sin
gets in the way of leading the life to which we have been called.
Additionally, it may not
even be that Jesus wants us to conceive of going to a literal place called hell, rather
that those things which we choose to do and say that can be identified as sin can cause
our lives to feel like hell and that we should do whatever is necessary to get back to
kingdom living.
Whenever we see the word
“hell” in the Scriptures we really have to take the time to think about what is
meant. We need to think carefully about what
the Bible teaches about hell and not what different cultures have taught humanity over the
last two thousand years. Too often we have in
mind things like Dante’s Inferno instead of facts like the word “hell”
appears only three times in the Gospel of Mark and all three times in just this one
passage. Or we carry around misplaced cultural
fascinations of the devil and his domain instead of realizing that the Gospel of Matthew
mentions hell just seven times while the Gospel of Luke does so only once.
Meanwhile other prominent
Biblical authors do not even use a concept of hell in their writings, authors such as the
Beloved Disciple John and the prolific epistle writer Paul.
What I mean to say is that the Gospel of John talks about darkness while
Paul speaks of judgment but neither one mentions hell.
Why didn’t those key authors, one the writer of a much beloved and oft
quoted Gospel and the other the New Testament’s chief evangelist not bother to
mention hell?
Perhaps John and Paul didn’t
spend a lot of time on hell because they understood what some of us may never have
realized, that is, when hell is mentioned in the New Testament it is largely within the
context of exaggeration spoken to make a point. Jesus
uses hell in this morning’s passage to paint a picture of what life separated from
God is like. Jesus does not intend for us to
picture a literal place any more than the writer of Revelation expects us to believe that
heaven will be made up of gigantic pearls or streets paved with gold as transparent as
glass (21:21).
We are not to take such
teachings literally anymore than we take the teachings of Jesus literally when he says
that we are to cut off our hands or our feet or pluck-out our eyes to avoid sin. No, we are not to take such words literally,
otherwise we would turn into barbarians who would certainly not be living the kingdom life
of which Jesus spoke so often.
And yet, even as I’m
challenging all of you to alter your understanding of hell, let us not forget that there
will be a judgment day—of that the bible is quite explicit and far less metaphorical. But even then, what is it that the Bible teaches? What is it that we believe, that we celebrate at
Baptisms and through the Lord’s Supper? Of
that last judgment we have been told through the scriptures and through the sacraments
that even as we have sinned God’s grace and the work of Jesus on the cross will cover
our wrongdoings. There will be nothing that we
can do to merit God’s grace other than our own gracious response to the grace offered
through Jesus Christ as entrance to eternal life with God.
Maybe pastors have moved
away from sermons about hellfire and eternal damnation because they started reading their
Bibles again.
Maybe we all began to see
how the Bible is more about God’s love and grace and desire for us to belong to God
not just for an hour on Sunday morning in the trance of an effective pastor’s
proclamation, but for life eternal.
Maybe pastors actually
started to see that while hell is seldom mentioned in the scriptures the concept of “forever”
and “eternal life”—life with God—occurs more than 400 times.
Maybe we’ve all come to
realize that the power of heaven, that the power of God’s love and God’s grace
are far more transforming, enlivening, and energizing than the threat of hell ever was.
Maybe that’s why Jesus
ended this challenging passage of demons and amputations and hell with the message of
salt. “Have salt in yourselves, and be at
peace with one another” Jesus concludes. After
startling us with grotesque images Jesus ends with salt, its preservative qualities
reminded us that the community of faith is not held together by threats of fear and fire,
but by a life focused on following Jesus by avoiding sin at all costs and being
transformed for life eternal for life together with Jesus in the company of other forgiven
sinners who have been fully embraced by our most gracious and loving God.
Amen.
