Proper 21B
In the name of God: Creator,
Christ, and Spirit. Amen.
It’s been said that when you go
on a road trip, if your snack supply doesn’t look like a nine-year-old boy was
let loose in a convenience store with an unlimited budget and no
accountability, then you’re doing it wrong.
Well, Michael and I love a good
road trip, and I’m only a little bit ashamed to say: we tend to do it exactly
right. There’s something about being
trapped in a car for hours on end that just makes things like chips and candy
and all that other “bad” stuff that we don’t get most other days seem so right.
One of my favorite bits of road
trip fare is beef jerky. I almost never
eat it any other time, but for some reason, it’s practically required on a road
trip. If you look on the sides of those
little overpriced bags that you buy at gas stations, you’ll see a list of
unpronounceable ingredients, but originally, jerky was pretty simple: it was
just meat, salt, and sun. The salt would
keep pathogens from growing on the meat as it dried, and the sun would dry it
to keep them from growing down the line.
Meat would be preserved in this way so that it could be kept for leaner
times, or so that the initially uneaten pieces wouldn’t spoil in a world that
lacked artificial refrigeration and food storage.
The funny thing about beef jerky,
though, is: it represents both sides of the dichotomy of salt. It can either preserve and purify, or, if
ingested in excess, it can practically poison.
Because, as we all know, too much salt, over time, isn’t good for you.
In the church, one of the ways
that we bless water and declare that it is holy is by salting it and praying
over it. People sometimes use this
salted water as a tool to direct their prayers for healing, both for themselves
and others. But at the same time, our
popular culture talks about “salt in wounds” – an expression of exacerbating
pain.
Salt can be good, or it can be
harmful – it all just depends on what you do with it.
The same is true for us. Our inherent nature doesn’t place us
automatically on the side of the righteous or on the side of the damned. We aren’t, without effort, either aligned
with the cause of God or opposed to it.
The determining factor isn’t who we are, but what we do with all that
we’ve been given.
The disciples 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.”
But Jesus would have none of it.
We shouldn’t automatically include or exclude people, just because of
their affiliations, or lack thereof.
That’s not the point. It’s not
about what church you go to, or who your friends are, or the country club where
you play golf. Your resume doesn’t
impress God. What matters is what we
do. If we’re doing our level best to
make the world a better place than we found it – better for tomorrow than it
was today – then we’re on the side of the righteous.
But in the same breath, when we
hurt people; when we make life harder; when we impede them from reaching their
full potential; THAT’S when we’re working against God. That’s when there’s hell to pay.
God wants every aspect of our
being working to build up the realm of God in the world around us. Those bits of ourselves that work against the
will of God are better off left behind.
Instead, focus on bringing our best selves to every moment.
Because that’s the real mission
of Christ – to bring us all to God; to demonstrate that God isn’t far off and
removed and unattainable, but right here with us: in our every breath, in our
love, in the expressions of kindness that we share and receive. The real mission of Christ is about building
the relationship between God and humanity that the example of Christ as
God-with-us revealed.
The letter of James says it
clearly: are you suffering? Then
pray. Are you cheerful? Praise God! Are you sick?
Receive anointing and prayers for healing.
In all things – no matter your
condition, or what you’re experiencing, or how you’re feeling – in ALL things,
the best aim is a deeper relationship with God.
That’s why Jesus walked among us. That’s why we, ourselves, strive to be more like Christ. Because each day we have a choice: to use all that we’ve been given to make the world better, or to ignore that calling and just get by.
Earlier this week I saw a
video. The man who mentored my father in
ministry and who baptized me when I was a baby is now 92 years old. One day, not too long ago, after a
thunderstorm had passed, he heard the sound of children laughing as they played
outside. He’s a talented writer and a
talented painter, but even so, he knew that no words he could assemble and no
colors and shapes he could bring together could match how he felt in that
moment; but he also knew the moment needed to be shared. He’d never played the piano before, but,
somehow, he knew that music could express all that his words failed to
capture. So he sat down and started to
learn. Eventually, patterns emerged and
he began to make sense of it all, and later, now in his 90s, he composed his
first piece of music. Because he had
experienced a complex kind of joy that was so pure and beautiful that he had no
choice but to find some way of sharing it.
That’s a life that’s salt. It’s not inherently good or bad. It’s just striving to make the best of every
moment. It’s trying to use all that it
has for the best in any given moment.
May we all be just as salty. May we all have salt in ourselves. Amen.
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