Sermon Archive

“Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another!”

Through the accident of a famous acronym, the principal association between “salt” and “peace” in the minds of most of us modern Americans is probably the SALT II treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States, back in the bad old days of the cold war. SALT, you’ll remember, is the acronym for Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. The negotiations for SALT II began in 1972 and concluded in 1979, at which time the treaty was signed by Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev. SALT II sought to establish broad limits on the 2 nations’ strategic offensive weapons systems, particularly on both nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery vehicles. The U.S. Senate never did ratify SALT II, but both nations voluntarily abided by its terms through the treaty’s stated expiration date of December 31, 1985.

Intriguing as this association may seem—the association between the linking of “salt” with “peace” by Jesus and SALT II, the treaty—SALT II was not, of course, what Mark was envisioning when he included in his gospel this puzzling saying by Jesus: “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another!” So what was the link in Jesus’s mind, and in Mark’s mind, between salt and peace?

To discern this, it’s helpful to trace what it is that’s associated with salt in the Old Testament, which was, of course, Jesus’s Bible.

Salt’s primary association is, naturally, with food—but not with the food of ordinary persons, for salt was too expensive, but rather with the food of the temple and its sacrificial offerings, with the holy food of the temple’s sacred meals. (Lev. 2:13; Ezek. 43:24) And when Ezra gives a list of the essential supplies needed by priests in the temple, it features wheat, wine, oil, and salt. (7:22; 6:9)

Salt’s second association is with healing and new life. This association doubtless derives from salt’s use as a preservative, as an agent for preventing spoilage. In English, we can say that meats are “cured” with salt. And salt’s association with healing may also derive from a simple home remedy that I used with benefit just this past week—treating a sore throat with a gargle of hot salt water!

The residents of Jericho once complained to the prophet Elisha that the water in their spring was bad, a source of death. (II Kings 2:19–22) Elisha told them to give him a brand-new bowl filled with salt. He took the bowl, went to the spring, and threw in the salt, proclaiming, “I have healed this water; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.” In the people’s mind, it was the salt that had made the spring healthy, that had brought forth life from death.

Salt’s linkage with health and new life seems also to have underlain the ancient Jewish custom of rubbing salt on a newborn child. (Ezek. 16:4)

Salt’s third association is with covenants, with the compacts that God graciously sealed with the priests and with King David. Israel used both the expression “the salt of the covenant” and the expression “a covenant of salt.”

“The salt of the covenant” (Lev. 2:13) describes the salt that was added to the grain offering, part of the sacred meal that God shared with the priests and their families so that they might be fed.

And “a covenant of salt” (Num. 18:19; II Chron. 13:5) uses the word “salt” to emphasize the permanence of the covenants that God had graciously sealed with the priests descended from Aaron and with the kings descended from David—God’s compact with the priests to always provide food from the offerings for them and their families; and God’s compact with King David to provide a perpetual line of successors to the throne.

Salt’s ancient association with a permanent compact of sovereign graciousness, as well as with food, seems to explain the reference in Ezra (4:14) to people who owe a response of loyalty to the Persian king because they have shared “the salt of the palace,” that is, the graciousness of the sovereign’s covenant.

In summary then, ancient Jews associated salt with covenants originating in God’s sovereign graciousness, with sacred meals that included wheat and wine, and with the power to heal and give new life.

“Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another!” Now Jesus’s statement makes sense, particularly in the context of our celebrating World Communion Sunday, in the context of our joining with more than a billion other people around the globe in sharing the wheat and wine of God’s sacred meal, the meal of God’s gracious, new covenant sealed for us in the blood of Christ, a meal that has the power to heal and give new life, a meal that, figuratively speaking, is salt for us.

You see, in Mark 9:50b, Jesus is saying to us, “Receive within yourselves my salt of healing and new life, and be at peace with one another.”

Jesus is saying, “Receive within yourselves the salt of the new covenant sealed in my blood, and be at peace with one another.”

Jesus is saying, “Receive within yourselves the salt that accompanies my sacred meal of wheat and wine, and be at peace with one another.”

Jesus is saying, “The salt of my covenant has the power to heal and transform you, first, so that you can attain peace with one another, and next, so that you can attain peace with all the earth. So receive within yourselves my salt of the new covenant!”

When we gather today both at the table of Christ set for us in this room and at the figurative table of Christ set for us worldwide, we sit down with people who come from extraordinarily diverse and sometimes divisive backgrounds.

We come as persons of different genders and races and ethnic groups and social classes and denominations. Gathered here is a far more diverse and tension-prone group than we would ever invite to our own homes for dinner.

Christ is our host for this meal, and he has prepared a table for us, even in the presence of our enemies (cf. Psalm 23:5). Christ has summoned us to this table to receive within ourselves the salt of God’s new covenant, the salt that accompanies this sacred meal of wheat and wine, the salt that offers healing and transformation and makes for peace, a peace of salt.

William J. Carl, III, a Presbyterian pastor in Dallas, Texas, tells this story about one particular communion service that healed and made for peace (see The Living Pulpit, “Peace,” October-December 1998, p. 35):

“Twenty years ago, I spoke to American military troops who gathered from all over Europe … for a retreat in Berchtesgaden, Germany. We stayed in the same hotel where Hitler had gathered his high command.… On the last night we shared communion together around one table, and I couldn’t help thinking … how two words ‘Sieg Heil’ had echoed through those halls—two words that … once ‘bloodied the face of Europe.’ But on this night, and perhaps for nights and nights to come, [these two words] had been overcome by older words, more powerful words—‘This do in remembrance of me.’”

And Presbyterian theologian Robert McAfee Brown has written this description of some of his experiences of Holy Communion (see Making Peace in the Global Village, Westminster, 1981, pp. 106–107, order slightly revised):

[I have experienced at the table of Christ a healing and a making of peace that overcomes the realities of our diversity and division.]

“I have experienced this in seminary chapels where denominational, racial, and sexist lines are truly overcome; with German POW’s on an American naval base in World War II; …in East Berlin [at the height of the cold war] at a Eucharist celebrated together by East and West Germans, French and Scots, Americans and Poles; … in a New York City dining room where a group of Protestants and Catholics, divided by a doctrinal discussion, suddenly found that the sharing of bread and wine had brought them unbelievably close to one another; … in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, just two weeks before its fall, as three Americans, a German, and a Japanese—enemies in [World War II]—were together trying to embody the message of reconciliation in a Cambodia at war with itself[; and] in South Africa, [at the height of apartheid,] where black and white shared a common cup … and a common loaf, the only public meal in that scarred land … they [could] share [together.]”

The Lord’s Supper—a sacred meal of wheat and wine, accompanied by the salt of the new covenant, a banquet for the healing of the nations and for the bringing of peace and good will on earth.

Today, as the sun makes its way around our world, Christians are celebrating the Lord’s Supper in Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Jerusalem, Rwanda, the Sudan, Yugoslavia, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, the United States, Samoa.

Today, we pray separately and together that through the healing grace of God given to us in this sacred meal we Christians may come to have salt within ourselves and to be at peace with one another and all the earth, a peace of salt!

Let us pray: