September 30/October 1, 2006
Proper 21B

Mark 9:38-50: Of Road Trips and Salt

It's fall again already. The kids are back in school, the autumnal equinox has been marked, and those summer road trips are growing smaller in the rearview mirror as we shift gears and resume life in the fast lane. Some road trips keep us warm all winter with memories that delight. Others we're happy to let drop into the sink-hole of vacations we'd rather forget.

I wonder how God remembers the road trip Moses and his people took through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. Oy! All the whining, all the crying...no matter what God did, the food was never right. Gave 'em manna and they demanded meat. Gave 'em quail and they got bored with it! At times even Moses was on God's case. In this story from the book of Numbers, Moses sounds like Dad in the car on the way to Yellowstone talking crossly to Mom over the din of the kids fighting in the backseat: "Do something with these kids of yours. You feed and carry them all the way to beyond the Jordan if that's where you want 'em. I've had it. This is the last time I'm taking you people on a 'vacation.'"

Seeing that Moses was poised for a meltdown, God offers to get him some help...which comes in the form of a committee of 70 guys who are ready to share the workload of leading this pack of complainers forward.

Having experienced family road trips ourselves, we can imagine Moses' relief at receiving some fresh drivers. But before he can get them behind the wheel, the kids are at it again. This time it's Moses' chief of staff, Joshua, who's got his nose out of joint. Eldad and Medad weren't on the approved list of prophets and he's darned if he's going to share the front seat with a couple of outside consultants without so much as a driver's license.

We read the story in Mark about the turf war over exorcising demons and we might even feel a bit sorry for God. Or, in this case, Jesus...It's déjà vu all over again.

Earlier the kids were arguing about who was the greatest. Then they couldn't get rid of a spirit convulsing a boy. Now they are perturbed that an outsider is succeeding where they have failed. They would rather stop someone who shows them up than have the suffering of the possessed come to an end.

Another day, another turf war. Another argument about who's in and who's out, who's best. It must give God a headache to hear it all.

Jesus suggests another way. And it is no stroll through a meadow of wildflowers. Jesus' way is intensely difficult for creatures like us - socialized to be aggressive, to save ourselves, paranoid about how we measure up, driven to lord it over others, desperate to be winners.

Rearrange your thinking, Jesus says, and follow the opposite path. Lose your life for the sake of the Gospel, stoop to be servant to all, seek the welfare of others at the risk of your own.

To get our attention, to jolt us but good, he uses the rhetoric of disaster: "Jump overboard! Cut it off! Tear it out!" He might have used his "inside voice" and urged us to hold the branches back for those on the path behind us, keep our hands to ourselves, watch where we're going, and fix our eyes on the prize.

But gentle words would have been swallowed up in the din of the back seat.

Jesus wants us to hear him loud and clear here: "Sin is serious business! The consequences last a lifetime and more. Stop choosing teams, choose life. And be salt. Gather yourselves for worship and a meal. Then go, scatter, and season the world. Be salt and be great."

That's my sermon tonight/this morning in a nutshell: Be salt and be great.

How can we be great and be servants at the same time? Stoop and excel. Lose and still win?

"Have salt in yourself, and be at peace with one another." It will take being great to season this world with the peace it groans for.

The desire to be great is not in and of itself bad. In fact, the desire to be great is part of being alive. It's biological. Plants and animals are driven to persist and thrive. In humans it's more complex. Like tomatoes and dahlias and moose and squirrels we are hard-wired to want to survive and to grow. But we want more. We want to be important, valued, attended, adored. The desire to be great drives us to evaluate all opportunities in terms of whether they will promote us or at least avoid making us smaller. This happens on an unconscious level, mostly.

But our urge to be great is our favorite project.

If you are feeling skeptical about now, consider the games we play, how much we like to win. Our culture thrives on competition. We are heavily invested in the drive to be great. It gives us a rush, gets us up on Monday morning, and gets us through to Friday. It helps us provide for our families, gives us Twins baseball in October and material for the annual Christmas letter.

I will never forget - and wish I could - a conversation I had with a young nephew of mine at a softball game in which his cousin Emily played. St. Olaf had lost a string of games in the spring training tournament, but in the game we were watching they were in the lead and cruising to victory. "It's a lot more fun to win, isn't it, Richard?" I said triumphantly. He turned to look at me, his forehead in a knot and said, "No, Aunt Kristie. It's just fun to play." At that moment, I felt the weight of a millstone 'round my neck.

We like to win because it makes us feel great - even if the victory really belongs to someone else and we enjoy it vicariously.

We strive to be great because we feel we are not great.

What we really want is to fill the hole in our middles that is empty. This hole cannot be filled by our straining for greatness, protecting our turf against competitors. But we keep trying. We may sense that this is the wrong strategy, but we aren't sure what is the right way.

The right way, suggests teacher John Shea, is to go "into the hole... [which] is really the entranceway into the kingdom [of God]. If we can dwell there, purified by its liquid fire, it will become salt." The greatness God puts in us at conception, calls forth in baptism, and nurtures every day of our lives will emerge as a gift. "This is the truth that drives us but which we never quite grasp. We desire greatness because we are already great. It is not a quest for what we do not have; it is a quest to become conscious of what we already are."

Blessed to be a blessing. Drowned and raised with Christ to be first fruits of the Spirit in this wilderness. Salted by fire to become salt.

Activist Marianne Williamson writes about this, too, in her book A Return to Love, which is quoted in the movie "Akila."

I will close with her words. Hear them speak to you, wherever hole you are sitting in today. Let God use them to address your hurts and hopes, your ideas about winning, your fears, your dreams of greatness, your gifts and talents and passions, your drive to excel.

Marianne Williamson:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."