Saturday, October 03, 2009
Have salt in yourselves
It’s been a while since I posted a blog on my faith blog. Things haven’t been bad, they’ve just been busy. I guess for that I can say that I’m blessed to have a job and friends that occupy my time. Being busy isn’t always bad if it means you have people who love you and an income to keep you running.
So I took some time today to have a longer quiet time and contemplate something from church last week. I went home to Pennsylvania to visit my family and went to church with my mom to old Thorncreek United Methodist Church. I feel bad about my old home church. Their attendance has diminished so much that even when combined with another church in the area they have half the crowd they had when I was going there as a child. It’s also worth noting that I easily was in the youngest group of people there. It makes me wonder if this is a problem occurring across the board for mainline denominations in the US. Most Christians I know are tired of the traditional club-like “membership” mumbojumbo that comes with so many of the old time protestant lines. Non-denominational churches often present a much more welcoming, warm and contemporary environment that appeals to folks like me.
Anyway, the pastor’s teaching was on Mark 9:38-50. I took notes on my Blackberry but forgot to save them before leaving church. So I don’t recall the full gist of his teaching, but one verse struck me during the service and I decided to give it some thought today…
“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with each other.” - Mark 9:50
In particular, the phrase, “Have salt in yourselves…” caught my attention. In the paragraph before this, Jesus talks about cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin and gouging out your eye if it does the same. The danger of course being eternity in hell if you don’t. He ends with verse 49, “everyone will be salted with fire.”
So I looked up the cross-references in my Bible to this verse and it took me to:
“Season all of your grain offerings with salt, do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all of your offerings.” - Leviticus 2:13
“Whatever is set aside from the Holy offerings the Israelites present to the Lord I give you and your sons and daughters as your regular share. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for both you and your offspring.” - Numbers 18:19
It’s clear that in Old Testament times that the use of salt in offerings was very important. So much so that in both of these verses it’s mentioned in the context of a covenant with God. (In Numbers, it’s a covenant between God and the priests.)
I looked up the uses of salt in Biblical times and found that outside of a wide array of industrial and manufacturing uses, the general use of Salt has remained fairly consistent, though today we have much efficient ways of preserving our food. Salt had, and still has, an important use in the purification of items, from chemical reactions to water supplies. It also flavors our food and melts our ice, things it has been used for since we began using it millennia ago. So in God’s salt covenants, he is seeking to purify his people and to make them, or recognize them, as pure, through the purification of the offerings and sacrifices. Salt was used to make the offerings more pleasing to God (and of course more tasty for the Levites!)
In the context of this passage in Mark I am also struck by its location after Jesus talks about dealing with sin… we have salt IN ourselves.
When Christ talks about cutting off your hand because it causes you to sin, we know that he’s not meaning for us to literally do so. Rather we are to make the choice to sacrifice that sin - to cut off the sin from our lives. He is clearly talking about our need to make unpleasant choices in our lives in order to be purified, to be Holy. The desire for sin takes place in our mind. Our hand is only used by the mind to accomplish its purpose. So the salting of our lives takes place inside of us.
The Holy Spirit is the covenant God made with us through Christ. He is the gift of God in the world, in our lives. For the Christian, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells inside us to direct us with the very mind of God. He is the salt that God uses in our lives to make us pleasing to him and to salt the world. We can water him down and drown him out - or we can allow him to work in and through us. We can spend time in God’s word, in prayer, and be willing to be used by him, even when it means we have to make difficult choices.
This is how we have salt in us.
It’s been a while since I posted a blog on my faith blog. Things haven’t been bad, they’ve just been busy. I guess for that I can say that I’m blessed to have a job and friends that occupy my time. Being busy isn’t always bad if it means you have people who love you and an income to keep you running.
So I took some time today to have a longer quiet time and contemplate something from church last week. I went home to Pennsylvania to visit my family and went to church with my mom to old Thorncreek United Methodist Church. I feel bad about my old home church. Their attendance has diminished so much that even when combined with another church in the area they have half the crowd they had when I was going there as a child. It’s also worth noting that I easily was in the youngest group of people there. It makes me wonder if this is a problem occurring across the board for mainline denominations in the US. Most Christians I know are tired of the traditional club-like “membership” mumbojumbo that comes with so many of the old time protestant lines. Non-denominational churches often present a much more welcoming, warm and contemporary environment that appeals to folks like me.
Anyway, the pastor’s teaching was on Mark 9:38-50. I took notes on my Blackberry but forgot to save them before leaving church. So I don’t recall the full gist of his teaching, but one verse struck me during the service and I decided to give it some thought today…
“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with each other.” - Mark 9:50
In particular, the phrase, “Have salt in yourselves…” caught my attention. In the paragraph before this, Jesus talks about cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin and gouging out your eye if it does the same. The danger of course being eternity in hell if you don’t. He ends with verse 49, “everyone will be salted with fire.”
So I looked up the cross-references in my Bible to this verse and it took me to:
“Season all of your grain offerings with salt, do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all of your offerings.” - Leviticus 2:13
“Whatever is set aside from the Holy offerings the Israelites present to the Lord I give you and your sons and daughters as your regular share. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for both you and your offspring.” - Numbers 18:19
It’s clear that in Old Testament times that the use of salt in offerings was very important. So much so that in both of these verses it’s mentioned in the context of a covenant with God. (In Numbers, it’s a covenant between God and the priests.)
I looked up the uses of salt in Biblical times and found that outside of a wide array of industrial and manufacturing uses, the general use of Salt has remained fairly consistent, though today we have much efficient ways of preserving our food. Salt had, and still has, an important use in the purification of items, from chemical reactions to water supplies. It also flavors our food and melts our ice, things it has been used for since we began using it millennia ago. So in God’s salt covenants, he is seeking to purify his people and to make them, or recognize them, as pure, through the purification of the offerings and sacrifices. Salt was used to make the offerings more pleasing to God (and of course more tasty for the Levites!)
In the context of this passage in Mark I am also struck by its location after Jesus talks about dealing with sin… we have salt IN ourselves.
When Christ talks about cutting off your hand because it causes you to sin, we know that he’s not meaning for us to literally do so. Rather we are to make the choice to sacrifice that sin - to cut off the sin from our lives. He is clearly talking about our need to make unpleasant choices in our lives in order to be purified, to be Holy. The desire for sin takes place in our mind. Our hand is only used by the mind to accomplish its purpose. So the salting of our lives takes place inside of us.
The Holy Spirit is the covenant God made with us through Christ. He is the gift of God in the world, in our lives. For the Christian, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells inside us to direct us with the very mind of God. He is the salt that God uses in our lives to make us pleasing to him and to salt the world. We can water him down and drown him out - or we can allow him to work in and through us. We can spend time in God’s word, in prayer, and be willing to be used by him, even when it means we have to make difficult choices.
This is how we have salt in us.
Labels: Bible Study, Christian living
