If Salt Loses Its Saltiness How Can It Be Made Salty Again

Marking 9:42-50, from the Question Mark series of talks?

Everyone will be salted with fire; salt is good only if it loses its saltiness how can you brand information technology salty again?  Take salt in yourselves and be at peace with each other (v49-50).

1. Salt?

Common salt tin can lose its season!

Our central question this forenoon is: can salt which has lost its season exist made salty once again?  Jesus is at it again, challenging his hearers to visualise a surprising situation.  Can a camel go through the eye of a needle?  We might say today, can pigs fly?  A hitting image.

My dad was a Vicar in Due north Devon and he had a large font in his church.  It was so big that it took a significant amount of water to fill information technology, and y'all could totally immerse the baby existence christened.  Of grade the infant did not always appreciate that feel!

In ancient times, salt was used as an clarified, and so new built-in babes were done in salted water.  If they did non have salt, they used camel's urine! Some other striking image! Of course salt was also used as a preservative in hot countries where food would speedily become off, and dead bodies would quickly stink.  They even used information technology to confirm a bargain by eating nutrient together, sharing salt to flavour the food, which nonetheless happens today in some places.

But common salt in Jesus' day was different from the kind you find on shelves today.  It was very impure so information technology could end up losing its preserving and antiseptic properties.  Yet, if it lost its saltiness, information technology was fit only to exist dumped onto roads (Matt v:xiii).  It was only useless!  So what was Jesus on about?

2. Being a Disciple?

Following Jesus costs us everything.

Here in Mark chapter 9 we have a number of sayings and teachings of Jesus which relate together gathered in one place.  The feel of this part of Mark's gospel is a bit bumpy, with changes of subject which don't all seem to fit together.  But once you realise information technology's all about discipleship it becomes a footling clearer.  Nosotros tin can begin to piece the sections together, like a patchwork quilt or the pieces of a broken pot.

And so what is going on hither?  What does it tell us about discipleship?

• discipleship is about nurturing the faith of others, helping them to go along in their life of following Jesus and condign similar Jesus (nine:42ff).  Be careful non to impede others' walk with God, or to be the reason they get off rail.  Information technology would exist better if y'all had a grinding stone fastened to a rope round your neck, and you were flung into the sea, than to have to explicate that to Jesus when y'all come across him

North.B. little ones here is not children so much as people who believe in Jesus (fiddling ones who believe in me).  In other words ordinary men and women who are trying to follow the way of the cross, like y'all and me.

• discipleship is making certain you lot proceed on runway: if your hand or your human foot or your eye is causing you lot to sin, then get rid of them because it's more important to keep going as a disciple.  Cut it off, cut information technology off, gouge information technology out – in other words, information technology is really important to stay on track as a disciple, to go on going and not to permit anything else go in the manner of you growing closer to Jesus and becoming more than like him.  There are lots of things, both good and bad, which might prevent us from continuing in our life of organized religion.
  
• discipleship is about focusing on life: you don't want to end up in a bad identify do you? Gehenna was a valley where there had been kid sacrifice, and when that stopped it became a dumping ground for rubbish and rotting flesh on the south side of Jerusalem.  Jesus is using it to say, life without God is like this – smelly, rotten and a identify where the fires never stops burning.  No i in their right minds would swap that for life.  And that life can exist experienced here and now, says Jesus. I take come that you may accept life and have it to the full (John ten:x).

And so we come to the table salt again (ix:49-50): but this time it's about how salt was used in worship.

Every sacrifice made past the people of God was to include table salt, sprinkled on tiptop (Leviticus 2:13).  The whole of the sacrifice was to be burned upward as a pleasing odor to God.

• And then finally, discipleship will cost y'all everything.  Equally we follow Christ the sacrifices we make (to follow him) purify us, brand us useful to God, holy for him.

Justin Welby the ABC previously had a promising career in the oil industry.  After 11 years he gave it all up to railroad train for the priesthood, and now he serves the church as ABC, a hugely plush part.  Only for some of y'all the modify is no less dramatic.  Your first call is to follow Christ.

3. Being Disciples?

Jesus calls us to follow him together

The last part of our gospel reading talks near u.s. having salt in ourselves and existence at peace with 1 another.  These last 2 verses of affiliate 9 are difficult ones, but what Jesus seems to be maxim is this: equally yous follow the manner of Christ sacrificially, setting bated what is skillful but that gets in the way of your discipleship, nurturing the faith of those round you and walking with them the road of faith focused on the life that Christ offers now and in the hereafter, so you will be drawn together in peace.

The church (the group of disciples in this place) will and then be a place that is attractive to others because information technology is Christ centred, non me-centred.

The diocesan strategic priorities are well-nigh what we as a diocese think we should be focussing on at this time.  They aren't e'er easy to understand, only and so they were written by more 200 people – a horse designed by committee is a camel (the 2^nd time a camel has appeared in this sermon!).  Each parish or benefice has been asked to meet what part they can play in helping these SPs develop and bear fruit.  And today yours is going "alive", it's starting and what a great take chances that will be.

If yous want this church community to grow in number, then y'all need to guard your relationships.  How you care for one another actually does matter.  If you focus on what yous want, rather than what is all-time for newcomers, and then yous volition spend your time arguing, and people will notice there is no peace.  Only if yous commit to focusing on Christ, to developing as a disciple, to growing more than like him then people will be attracted to him at the centre of this church.  And your church building volition abound not simply in number, merely in depth and appointment.  You can really brand a difference to this local community.

So, some summit tips for you about life in the big brother house, sorry the life of your church:

• keep short accounts – apologise apace, seek to be reconciled apace to someone who upset you or whom you upset.
• Assume the best when people speak – don't assume they are being hard.
• Treat everyone with grace knowing that life sometimes makes us grumpy and curt-tempered.

We are called to journey together as disciples of Christ.  Like my friend who walked the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in the summer – he went with another Christian friend, in this example his married woman!  We actually exercise need one another alongside us, but rooting for us and encouraging us on, merely as the Holy Spirit walks with us as well.

So can salt be made salty again?

My reply is yes!  Call back the baptism promises yous made, or were made for you until confirmation?

1. Do you plow to Christ?  Do you realise you lot need assist?
2. Exercise you lot apologize of your sins?  Are you sorry and have yous turned away from those areas that tripped you up?
3. Practice you renounce evil?  Are you lot ready to surrender what is stopping you lot from following Christ more closely?

As we utilise these questions and responses, equally nosotros turn, repent and renounce, God meets us past his Holy Spirit and regenerates us from inside.  The only question is whether we are willing to be re-salted!

Amen

Reverend Phil Dykes, in St John the Evangelist, Hook. 27^th September 2015

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Source: https://www.whitewaterchurches.co.uk/teaching/question-mark/can-salt-be-made-salty-again/

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