Reading:
Mark: 9-49-50: For everyone will be salted with fire and every sacrifice will be salted with salt. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you restore its saltiness? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.
This is perhaps one of the most difficult passages in the Christian Scriptures to understand. Theologians for literally hundreds of years have tried to ascertain what exactly did Jesus mean by these words. Salted with fire? Salted with salt? Restore saltiness? Salt in yourselves? Be at peace?
I am sure that my words today will not unravel the mysterious meanings that others before me could not unravel. But there are some things that others have explored that I believe, are important for us as Unitarian Universalists to grasp an understanding.
To put this passage in context, In the Mid-1800s German Theologians and later Methodist Theologians[i] recognized that this passage begins with the disciples arguing who is the greatest among them. Jesus’ response to them was whoever wants to be first must be last and servant to all. Jesus uses the example of welcoming the child as one welcoming Jesus. In other words, one was to give equal attention and affection to those without power as they might to someone, in authority, whose actions could benefit their standing in the world. The passage continues with disciples telling Jesus that they stopped a stranger from exorcising demons in Jesus name, because the stranger was not a follower of Jesus. Jesus said, whoever is not against us is for us. In other words, just because a person does not look like us, does not mean they do not share the same values we share. Jesus then goes into an exhortation of things that would lead a person to burn in hell: placing stumbling blocks in the way of those without power; Hands, feet, and eyes causing us to stumble. Would be better to chop off or pluck them out and enter the realm of heaven; than to have both hands, feet, and eyes and be thrown into hell where the fire is never quenched.
All of this context is placed directly before Jesus says, For everyone will be salted with fire and every sacrifice will be salted with salt. Salt is good; but if salt has lost is saltiness, how can you restore it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.
The passage comes full circle referring to the beginning when the disciples were arguing who was the greatest.
Most conservative Christians believe this salt passage refers to the fires of hell and damnation. Fire is all consuming, it destroys. Salt preserves, therefore will be a protective from the fires of hell. If you do not have salt, ie belief, then you will perish in hell. The difficulty with this interpretation is the use of the word Everyone or literally in the Greek, All. Which may have a larger connotation than just people.
Some Roman Catholic theologians have believed this passage refers to the concept of purgatory because it says “everyone will be salted with fire.” Fire also is used as a means of purification. We have the phrase refining fire to refer to this process of purification. Fire is used to purify ore to extract the metal from it. But this is also a difficult reading because if the person has lost their saltiness, how can they be purified?
The phrase every sacrifice will be salted with salt, refers directly to the Mosaic Law of salting the sacrifices before they are presented to God. Salt was used as a preservative against decay and corruption. The salt of sacrifice refers to the covenant that was created between the people of Israel and God. The covenant between Israel and God was also considered “incorruptible, undecaying, indissoluble.”
When they sacrificed animals and birds, they would salt the carcass to draw out the blood before it was burned on the altar. This ritual made the sacrifice holy to God. This salt of sacrifice declared the covenant holy, declared the people holy in relationship with their god, who is holy. Be holy for I am holy. Salt symbolized this holiness with its character to preserve from decay and corruption. It also denoted the ability of salt to cleanse, to purify. Salt has been used to cleanse wounds. And today, sterile saline solution is used to irrigate wounds and kill infesting bacteria at the wound site[ii].
Salt, in the Middle East, has long been a symbol of friendship, harmony, and of covenant agreement. We also have the idiom of saying someone is the salt of the earth, which implies a person of integrity, of sound character.
A few years ago, while I was visiting family in Florida, we visited a restaurant that placed on the table a variety of different dishes of salt. They were of different colors and each had a distinctively different salt taste. There was a Hawaiian sea salt which is red, and Himalayan salt which is pink, a grey sea salt and Portuguese sea salt which is a very fine grain white salt. There were others that I do not remember. We were told that certain salts would enhance the flavor of certain foods.
The last 70 days or so, our nation has seen some major saltless changes. Our president has created a cabinet that is majority white male. The executive orders he has signed has ended services for the poor, removed anti-discrimination protections for transgender youth in schools; LGBTQ in government employment; rounded up non-criminal immigrants; removed water protectors from Sioux lands; ended student loan forgiveness programs; removed funding at healthcare centers for women, and repealed anti-pollution regulations allowing for coal ash to once again defile our water supplies.
This was going to be the bulk of my sermon. I was going to spend most of this sermon on how returning to 1930s invisibility of the broad diversity of people hurts our society. How our palate is better when we can taste the diversity of humanity and find ways to respect our individual and collective stories.
Then an announcement of a Unitarian Universalist Association Southern Regional Lead hire was made and they were not moving into the region. Then it surfaced that there was a qualified person of color within the region who was not hired. There was talk about “best fit” which has been seen by people of color over the decades as code for “people who look like us.” Stories started to surface about the decades long pattern of favoring whites over people of color. Our denomination had made a commitment to become an anti-racist, anti-white supremacist organization and here was evidence that this was not happening. There was a letter from our President, Peter Morales, a person of color, who used language in the letter that called those who were making the claim, hysterical. Again, terms that are traditionally used in a white supremacist culture. People responded poorly to this letter. And then on Thursday, Peter Morales, resigned from his office with only three months left to serve in his term. He apologized for his insensitivity and stated that he no longer saw himself as the leader who could lead us forward through this process of reviewing hiring practices. You can find his letter on our congregation’s group Facebook page, as well as several other letters.
Everyone will be salted with fire and every sacrifice will be salted with salt.
With all that is happening on the national scene what happens in Boston might not seem like it is worth attention. But it is precisely because of what is happening on the national scene that makes what is happening in our denomination take on a far more urgent status. It is far more urgent because this congregation is a microcosm of the larger whole. As Captain Obvious would say, this congregation is predominantly white.
As we see more and more people who had gained visibility and protections in our nation begin to lose those protections, what happens within our congregations becomes vital as a form of resistance. This nation is less safe today for people of color, women, and LGBTQ people than they were last year. How our denomination and our individual congregations responds to the national storm that is brewing is urgent.
As a congregation are we a safe place for people of color? We have a few people of color in this congregation but does that mean we are a safe place? There are people of color in our denomination who despite their vast accomplishments, despite their degrees, despite their standing in the community, despite their years as a Unitarian Universalist, still find their voices dismissed within their congregations. Members should not have to work at justifying their being one of us and valued for who they are. Their accomplishments, their degrees, their standing in the community, or their years as Unitarian Universalists should not even matter to their value to the congregation. Would we welcome a shift in culture if this congregation began to mirror the nation’s population? Would they know they have a voice within these halls? Would their voice carry power? Or would they be met with a white centered culture and find their voice silenced and dismissed?
As a congregation are we a safe place for those who are struggling to make ends meet? If they lose their federal or state assistance, SNAP, TANF, VA benefits, medical coverage, would they know they have a voice within these halls? Would their voice carry power? Would they be able to invoke cultural change here to ensure that this place is safe for them? Or would we simply shake our heads and minimalize their experiences, their concerns dismissed, or worse tell them to raise themselves up by their bootstraps.
Rev. Sean Parker Dennison in response to Rev. Peter Morales letter wrote: We must be constantly vigilant that our culture and practices are consistent with our core values and not overshadowed or coopted by other forces that have great cultural power. White supremacy, sexism, heteronormativity, ableism, and other forms of power-over are constantly disguising themselves. Our movement is rooted in BOTH the ideals of religious freedom and justice AND the culture of privilege and supremacy. To assert that there is an unassailable core that is immune from critique is just plain wrong and flirts with dogmatism. There is no more important work than the careful cycle of work and reflection … We must all be open and willing to reflect on our mistakes and the ways we have become complicit with injustice. If we do not do this, we risk all credibility when we tell others that our values call us to counter oppression and injustice[iii].
To be a congregation where everyone truly feels safe will mean that we will need to create an even more inclusive culture. A culture where no one “cultural, ethnic, or racial group dominates the church’s style of ministry[iv]” in music, structure, or activities. It would mean that whiteness is not in the cultural center but off to the side to allow Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous people to rise as equal and strong pillars of the congregation. It will mean that we will need to examine where our stumbling blocks are that would hold others back from being fully embraced in community. It will require more listening to others and holding their words, their experiences in our hearts and not responding with white fragility. That uncomfortable feeling that somehow hearing about another’s experience is a personal affront that needs defending.
It is craving salt in a saltless society; the salt that each person uniquely and collectively brings to the table. A desire to affirm the diversity and plurality of our many paths collectively. It is a reaffirmation of our covenantal faith, that we[v] walk together in the ways of truth and affection, as best we know them now or may learn them in days to come, that we and our children may be fulfilled, and that we may speak to the world, in words and in action, of peace and good will.
The salt of sacrifice is our willingness to uphold our covenants with one another as a sacred trust. It is our striving to be holy as life is holy. It is to have salt in ourselves so we may be healing balms to cleanse our wounded-ness and short comings, as preservatives of all that is just and right, and creating a covenant of relationship so that we may be at peace with one another. May it be so. Blessed Be.
[i] The Methodist Quarterly Review, Volume 32; G. Lane and P.P. Sanford, 1850
[ii] http://woundcaresociety.org/salt-water-make-wounds-heal-faster
[iii] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5XxfpPKfHEkaU5jdm1uQi04Nkk/view
[iv] http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/201201/201201_ejo_multicult_ch.cfm
[v] From UUCTuscaloosa’s Membership recognition service
A Unitarian Universalist Minister in the South 