Wednesday, June 6, 2018
Pinch of salt
Mark 9:50
Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavour, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.
In the 1982 movie Gandhi, the British-Indian historical epic based on the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, there is a scene in which 1st Baron Irwin was being brief on Gandhi’s plan to march to the sea and make salt. This was in the portrayal of an event that had taken place in 1930 when Gandhi led a protest against the British-imposed salt tax. Gandhi led what became known as the salt march.
In the scene being referenced, upon hearing of the planned march and salt production, 1st Baron Irwin famously said, “Salt!” and then went on to add, “ Mr Gandhi will find that it takes a great deal more than a pinch of salt to bring down the British Empire.”
In the end 1st, Baron Irwin found that a pinch of salt, properly used, could change the flavour of many things. The British newscast, reproduced in the film, declared that with a handful of salt produced on the shores of the Indian Ocean, the man of non-violence had challenged the might of the British Empire. The British Empire, in the end, gave India its independence.
Chefs know the value and power of a pinch of salt. The best chefs are those who get this right. No one wants to eat a dish that is salty, nor do they want to eat a dish that lacks salt. In Guyana, we refer to food without enough salt as, “fresh.’ But that is not fresh in a good way, you need to add salt to “fresh” food to make it tasty. Salt, properly pinched and infused into the cooking, seasons it to cut bitterness where present, but, more importantly, to bring out the other flavours in the food.
The phrase, “add salt to taste,’ is, therefore, a very confusing one. When we are adding salt to food we don’t actually want to taste the salt, we want the salt to bring out the best taste from the various ingredients and flavours in the food.
Jesus used salt twice as a reference to what He required of His disciples then and of us Christians now. To many, when Jesus talks about us being salt, He is requiring of us a Christian witness in the evangelical sense. That we must preach the gospel and spread the good news about salvation that God has made available through His death on the Cross.
To others, when Jesus talks about us being salt, it was a call to social action. A challenge to engage, and if necessary confront, the culture and society to steer it away from real and perceived perilous paths.
For example, in the Caribbean at present, there is a groundswell of action in the LGBT+ campaigns for recognition and rights and churches, individually and as groups, are mounting various responses with equally varying results. In Jamaica and Trinidad there were well-attended resistance marches and in Guyana, there was a press conference calling on the government to withhold permission for a pride march last weekend.
The challenge for the church today, especially on the issue of rights for LGBT+ people, is that it is not a ‘we’ versus ‘them’ conflict as many used to be. There are persons who claim the LGBT+ lifestyle who are within the ‘Christian Community.’ They are our relatives, friends and neighbours.
The Christian Community used to be a relatively homogeneous place where we all agreed on the big social issues of the day. Today we are a very fragmented body and that is surprising given that our doctrinal differences in the past produced so many different denominations.
Pure salt has an effect on the food to which it is being applied. But on the social issues of our time, the very saltshaker has in it elements that have affected and will continue to affect the salt itself.
It is not always clear what Jesus had in mind. Both times that we have this salt reference it seemed to be added because Jesus said it but the context doesn’t help much. What is clear though is that salt could lose it saltiness and become useless.
In Jesus’ time, the salt that they used came from the Dead Sea and was full of impurities. These impurities often affected the salt, causing it to lose its flavour. Jesus had a natural parallel for the truth that He was teaching.
The philosophical, cultural, and socio-political challenges before us will not go away, in fact, from all available evidence things are going to get more intense. This is a time, therefore, where we have to be careful to ensure that we are hearing from the Holy Spirit and not moved by emotion and argument.
We also have to review how we engage with individuals and groups in our societies. It is clear that confrontation does not bring about the effect that we want. Confrontation always leaves winners and losers, creating an inappropriate context for ministry.
An absence of confrontation, however, does not mean that there is no longer clear witness of the church. Jesus Himself sometimes avoided the public confrontation in order to be more effective. The apostles also handled various contexts differently in order to avoid death and still set the world upside down with the gospel.
A pinch of salt, discretely added in the confines of the kitchen, has an impact on the many in the dining hall for the dinner. A pinch of salt all but brought down the British Empire in India. And we as salt could change the present course of history.
Think on these things:
- Have you shared the gospel of Jesus recently with someone you know to be a part of the new cultural order?
- How do you think we could approach current trends, LGBT+ as an example, in ways that show love, build trust and allow for a frank sharing of our faith in Jesus?
- What is your church doing to help prepare members for ministry in the rapidly changing context in which we live?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would be effective as witnesses for Jesus in a rapidly changing cultural and social context.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex