September 30, 2012
Pentecost XVIII
Fr. Philip D. Eberhartclick here for audio
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
“Grant us the fullness of Your Grace” was the petitionary
portion of our opening collect, our opening prayer this morning…” that we,
running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly
treasure.”
Lord, that is indeed our prayer – for the Fullness of Your
Grace – in our lives, in our church and in our land, today and in the days that
follow, as we LIVE from the place of GRACE, and we pray, so let us be Salt and
Light to those around us, that we may be known to shine Your Light and to be a
people who bring Your Presence wherever we go.
In Jesus Name we ask it.
Amen
Living from the place of grace
I’m not sure that
I’ve ever connected Grace with “salt” before in my thinking, but as I studied
the scriptures this week, a link became more and more clear.
Salt is an ancient,
ancient symbol. It is, in the OT, a
symbol for the covenant that God’s people have with the Living God. (Num 18:19;
2 Chron 13:5) It is used to seal the making of covenant and to symbolize the
keeping of covenant, with each sacrifice, as salt is added to the
sacrifice. Salt is added to the grain of
the offerings, not to preserve it, but to symbolize the ongoing nature of the
relationship out of which the sacrifices come!
Salt is still today,
an important part of the symbolic items that Near Eastern peoples use to
signify commitment to one another and continuity of relationship. It is an emblem of fidelity and friendship,
when you “eat of a person’s salt.”
In the NT, Jesus
takes up the symbolic meaning and fills it in a bit more. He uses it in his teaching to refer to the
believing community itself (Matt 5:13ff);
He uses it to refer, in our reading from Mark this morning, to the
character and condition of our hearts.
In Jesus teaching, it is symbolic of the kind of spiritual health and
vigor essential to real Christian virtue and its ability to counteract the
corruption of the world.
So how can such
attributes be seen as connected somehow to “grace?”
Paul actually makes
the connection, in his letter to Colosse.
Verse 6 of chapter 4 says, “Let
your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you
will know how you should respond to each person.”
In our readings this morning, both from the OT and in the Gospel we see this grace on display in Moses and Jesus attitude toward those who were accused by, shall we say, the “insiders.” Both Moses and Jesus set an example of “letting their speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt”
Moses answer was, “Would
that all the LORD's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his
spirit on them!"
Grace and mercy
triumph over judgment in each of these examples, as the teacher in each case,
draws a wider circle by Grace; one that includes those others who may not have
come into the kingdom by our prescribed method or who are working in the
kingdom, apart from our prescribed group!
Jesus, in fact, here
gives us a stern warning against that kind of judgment – the kind that becomes
a stumbling block for someone who is innocently following Jesus, doing His works,
and believing in His Name.
This kind of thing
is, in fact, one of the mainstays in the modern critique of the church – that
we are judgmental and fake, having given up the necessary character and
authenticity to speak with authority in our society and culture! The Church has lost its voice!
Jesus asked the
question of his followers, in fact, early on, in using the metaphor of
salt! In our reading, Jesus puts the
question: “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."
In the Matthew
account of this same exchange, Jesus adds, “it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be
trodden under foot of men.”
And that is exactly
the experience of the modern Western church that has been enculturated and that
seeks to be more and more accommodating to the whims and whispers of the
culture, rather than to the Words and Ways of God.
So, where does salt come from?
Where does the kind
of inner “salt” that Jesus speaks of in these accounts come from? How does one get “salty?” What does that even mean?
I was struck by that
phrase when I first heard it – someone described as “salty” - a
“salty Christian.”
I asked one time,
when a friend used that turn of phrase – she said: “Its when you’re around someone and you come
away from them thirsty for Jesus!”
YEAH! That’s what I want Lord!!
It became a kind of
cry of my heart. And I think that that
is the kind of cry that God hears and answers!
Look back with me at
our Psalm for today:
Verse 10 is the chorus of the song we sing from these verses:
More
to be desired are they than gold,
Yea than much fine
gold,
Sweeter also than the
honey,
In the honeycomb!
From Here: (The Bible)
From the Word of God
Listen again to what
we just read:
7
The law of the LORD is perfect
and revives the soul; *
the testimony of the LORD is sure
and gives wisdom to the innocent.
and revives the soul; *
the testimony of the LORD is sure
and gives wisdom to the innocent.
8
The
statutes of the LORD are just
and rejoice the heart; *
the commandment of the LORD is clear
and gives light to the eyes.
and rejoice the heart; *
the commandment of the LORD is clear
and gives light to the eyes.
9
The
fear of the LORD is clean
and endures for ever; *
the judgments of the LORD are true
and righteous altogether.
and endures for ever; *
the judgments of the LORD are true
and righteous altogether.
Listen to the
descriptors David uses:
Perfect
Sure
Just
Clear
Clean
True
And to the effects:
Revives the Soul
Gives wisdom to the innocent
Rejoice the Heart
Gives light
to the eyes
Endures
forever
Righteous
altogether.
Salt anyone?
“By keeping them is your servant enlightened (or warned)
And in keeping them there is
great reward.”
And so we pray with
the psalmist:
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in your sight, O LORD,
My strength and my redeemer!”
So what exactly is
the Salt that we are to get inside of us?
The Law of the Lord
The Testimony of the Lord
The Statutes of the Lord
The
Commandment of the Lord
The
Fear of the Lord
The
Judgments of the Lord
In Psalm 119:9, at
the beginning of what is the greatest chapter in the Bible on the Bible itself,
David asks a simple question:
And he answers: “By
keeping it (his way) according to Your Word.”
And in the two verses
that follow:With all my heart I have sought You; do not let me wander from Your
commandments.Your Word I have treasured (hidden) in my heart, That I may not sin
against You.
That word “to
treasure” means to hide or to store up.
Like “buried treasure.”
“Have salt in yourselves!”
Where does the salt
come from? HERE, the Word of God
And how does it get
inside us? “Hear, Read, Mark, Learn, and
Inwardly Digest” to use the phrases of the prayerbook.
Friends, if we are
serious about our personal walk with God, about our corporate life as the
People of God and about our National Life, as “One Nation, Under God”
Then this is where we
must turn.
We live in the most
biblically illiterate culture in the world.
How is that possible?
With the Bible being the best selling book of all time, so much so that they don’t even put it on the best seller lists, cause nothing else would ever even get a look in.
Every family and
household in America has an average of 6 bibles.
And to quote a dear
saint who will remain unnamed, “I have a stack of these things at home, but NO
ONE ever told me I was supposed to read it!”
Read it friends!!
This Bible is the salt
mine!!
Amen.
From the collect that
I mentioned before, Let us pray:
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