(Salted with Fire by Jan Richardson)
Settle back while I tell you a bedtime story
Scandinavians tell their children…
One day a sheep and a pig decided to build a house that
they could live in together. So
they began a long journey to find just the right place to make their home. They came upon a rabbit who asked them
where they were going. “We are
going to build a house,” said the sheep and the pig. “May I live with you?” asked the rabbit. “What can you do to help us?” they
answered. The rabbit replied, “I
can gnaw pegs with my sharp teeth and I can put them in with my paws.” “Good,” said the sheep and the pig,
“You may come with us.” A little
farther on the three met a goose who asked, “Where are you going?” “We are going to build a house.” “May I live with you?” asked the goose. “What can you do to help?” The goose thought for a moment and
said, “I can pull moss and stuff it in the cracks with my broad bill.” “Good,” said the three, “You may come
with us.” Farther still the four
met a rooster who asked where they were going. Once they told him the rooster asked if he could join
them. “I can crow very early in
the morning; I can awaken you all.”
“Good,” said the sheep, the pig, the rabbit, and the goose, “You may
come with us.” The five went a
long, long way until they found a place to build their house. The sheep hewed logs and drew
them. The pig made bricks for the
cellar. The rabbit gnawed pegs
with his sharp teeth, and hammered them in with his paws. The goose pulled moss, and stuffed it
in the cracks with her bill. The
rooster crowed early every morning to tell them that it was time to rise. And they all lived happily together in
their little house.
So here is the question raised by the story; it is,
in fact, the same question Jesus poses at the end of this morning’s Gospel
reading: What can you do that is useful?
Jesus gets at this question through the imagery of
salt and three statements about it.
The first statement is this: “everyone will be salted with fire.” It has
been described as one of the most enigmatic expressions Jesus uttered. It is not at all clear what it means,
but general consensus among biblical scholars is that it relates to animal
sacrifice. Prior to being offered
on a fire, a carcass was rubbed with salt to draw out the blood. Once this was accomplished it was
roasted over a fire and offered in sacrifice or served for human consumed. The salt was useful in this process,
but once used it lost the qualities that made it such leading to the second
statement: “how can saltiness be restored?” The final expression, ‘have salt in yourselves, and be at
peace with one another,” is an imperative to be useful in all our
relationships.
So again I ask you: what do you do that is useful?
No doubt, your answer changes based on the context
where your find yourself. You are
useful one way at home, another way at work, and still another way here at
church. There may be common
threads that connect the various ways you are useful or they may be quite
independent of one another.
How is your usefulness recognized? Are you paid for it? Is it a great deal of money or is it
just a little? Or perhaps your
usefulness is acknowledged only with a thank you. Some times we are the only person who knows our contribution
while other times we are the last to suspect just how useful we are. As you ponder your usefulness, are you
thinking about things that you do?
Do you cook meals for the family or keep the cars in good repair or make
sure the books are in order at the office or get the kids to practice on
time? When thinking of our
usefulness most often we think of things we do.
A few weeks ago I was having lunch with a colleague
when he said to me with admiration, “Keith, you seem to be at peace with
yourself and with the world around you.”
Well, the warring factions within me started a raging argument that
still carries on. One voice shouts
“if he only knew” while another voice tattles “you are such a hypocrite” and so
on. But a new voice has been
gaining traction in my inner the debate.
This voice reminds me that usefulness is not confined solely to what we
do, but it also involves who we are.
Thomas Merton wrote that “we are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and
no imagination left for being.”
As a result, he said that we are valued not for what we are but for what we do and for what we have. Jesus might say that we have confused
salt with saltiness. It is not how
much salt you have that matters, it is how salty your life is becoming. Or, to put it another way, our being,
when grounded in God, is useful to others.
Saltiness. Last month Laura
Cook asked me to meet her at the farm where she kept her horse. She asked me to say prayers with them
the day before she was going to have her horse put down. Debbie Askew had been in conversation
with Laura about this difficult decision and agreed to join us. When we gathered I offered some prayers
from a liturgy. I am useful that
way. But Debbie was useful from
her being; comforting Laura from the vast reserves of her experiences with
horses and reassuring Laura her that she was making the right decision. It is a moment that stays with me
because it highlights how each of us has something useful to offer in this
glorious thing we call God’s kingdom here on earth.
The gospel reading begins with one of the disciples complaining to Jesus
that someone else – someone not of their little band – was invoking Jesus’ name
to effect healings. Shouldn’t that
person be stopped, the disciple wondered.
Today we might say that he wanted to micro-manage the situation. Jesus responds that the healer should
be left alone because what he is doing he is useful. He was helping other people.
From there Jesus launches into a series of teachings that, if taken
literally, encourage self-mutilation.
But played against the question of usefulness, they ask a very sensible
question: What are you doing that is destructive – either to you or to others? If our call is to be useful - to be
salty - then we also need to ponder how and when we have the opposite
affect. What in our doing and what
in our being is detrimental to our usefulness? Perhaps you complain too much. Maybe your usefulness is tarnished by selfish ambition. Do you always have to get your
way? Are you overly critical of
yourself, demeaning who you are and what you do? If so, that aspect of your personality needs to be
removed. It needs to die on the
Cross so that God may bring about a resurrection of new and more useful life in
you.
This
morning we celebrate the usefulness that we can offer to the world in which we
live. When done in Christ’s name
it becomes a part of what it means to be a steward. It is one way we offer in God’s service all that we are and
all that we have to contribute to the project of life and living. The tale of the sheep, the pig, the
rabbit, the goose and the rooster reminds us of something Jesus said long ago:
there is always some way for you to contribute, every contribution is
important, and no contribution goes unrecognized by God or unrewarded. Have salt in yourselves!
