For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt 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.
—Mark 9:49–50
Australian theologian Sally Douglas considers Jesus’ teachings about power:
In Mark 9, we hear about an argument between Jesus’ male disciples. They have been disputing amongst themselves which one of them is the most important (Mark 9:33–34). The author of Mark makes it very clear that they really haven’t been listening to Jesus’ words for some time….
Jesus responds to their power plays by drawing their attention to a child. Jesus brings the child to the centre, a little one, considered entirely unimportant in the patriarchal and hierarchical worldview of the Common Era. Jesus then goes on to proclaim the unthinkable:
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the one who sent me (Mark 9:37).
Here Jesus is effectively saying, “Look, the one you think of as the least important, is where you will find me and where you will find God. Get your heads checked.”…
In response to the male disciples jostling for status and privilege, Jesus does not seek to sooth their insecurities but instead, disrupts their understandings of power … in the place they least expect it, with those considered the least important in society. Jesus then goes on to affirm the centrality of honouring the little ones and being at peace with one another. It is here that living in peace is linked with saltiness.
Jesus connects using our power to honor and protect others with being a transforming presence or “salt” in the world.
When we keep in mind the context of this whole passage in which the disciples have been jostling for power and Jesus gives stark warnings to those who misuse their power (Mark 9:33–48), we discover a piercing challenge. Here, the gathering together of imagery of being “salted with fire,” ideas of sacrifice and the challenge to live peaceably together, may reflect ideas about being purified and refined for peace. That is, in the process of allowing our lives to become a salty offering, no longer driven by power plays, but instead focused upon honouring and protecting others, especially the “little ones,” our ego-driven agendas are burned away. Like the fighting disciples, this will be a costly process of having our assumptions about power deconstructed, so that we may actually be able to embody God’s peace together….
When Jesus communities embody structures in which the last are first and the “little ones” (including children and vulnerable adults) are honoured, safe and included, we become a salty, seasoning gift, sprinkled across our global village. When Christians live in authentic peace, no longer sniping, competing or lording it over one another, we offer a spicy alternative to the dominant models of power in our global village that are commonly shaped by coercion, fear, exclusion, and violence.
Reference:
Sally Douglas, The Church as Salt: Becoming the Community Jesus Speaks About (Coventry Press, 2021), 126–128.
Image credit and inspiration: cal gao, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We move—from “I” to “we”—honoring each other’s gifts, sharing skills with reverence, and weaving our strengths into a whole greater than any one alone.
Story from Our Community:
A few months ago, I witnessed an image of the Trinity. I was in Victoria B.C., and I saw two people in animated conversation in a language I didn’t know. One person was speaking and laughing: the other speaking and responding to the laughter with more of their own. The words between them, the joy and laughter, flowed out to everyone around them.
—Margi C.
