The Yellow Wallpaper

Chapter 16 - Salt

Preached at the Opening Eucharist of the Synod of the Diocese of Perth on 20 October 1994, at which worshippers were presented with a little sachet of salt as they arrived.

Around 1992, I received a visit from a man who, when the appointment was made with my secretary, said that he needed some advice about immigration and permanent residence in Australia, and about setting up a business. He gave his name as Snobar. S-N-O-B-A-R. I think I was expecting somebody from Norway.

It turned out that he was a displaced Palestinian Christian who had been living with his wife and family in Amman. (Snobar is apparently a fairly common Arab name.) His wife was the daughter of a former Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, and I guess this ecclesiastical link was the reason why they chose to call on me. They told me that they had already obtained permission to migrate to Australia, and were on a reconnaissance visit to Perth to determine whether or not they could establish a viable branch of their business in Western Australia. It was about the future business that they really wanted advice from me.

I said that I would gladly help them settle in Perth and asked them about their business. To my astonishment, the business for which they sought advice had to do with the marketing of salt. But this was not just any salt, but salt mined on the shores of the Dead Sea which is, of course, unusually salty. Mr Snobar held one of only two or three local government licences for the gathering of salt at the Dead Sea, which his business packaged and sold as 'bath salts'. When I asked the Snobars why they thought Australians might be interested in bathing in Dead Sea salt, they pointed out that these were natural, unperfumed bath salts, and that they could be expected to have a unique appeal in an environmentally correct way.

I was not able to give them much help about Dead Sea bath salts, but I did give them some advice about purchasing a house in Perth and what suburbs they might look at so as to be close to a church school for their children. They were happy enough with that and left, and I heard nothing more from them. Perhaps their own market research was not too encouraging; perhaps the dramatic changes for the good in Israeli/Palestinian relations at the time meant that the pressure to migrate was not so intensely felt. Then a couple of years ago the delightful Snobars turned up as members of a local parish. When I asked about the business they said they were into computers!

At any rate I still have, sitting at the end of the bath, a complimentary packet in an orange, yellow and black striped drawstring bag labelled 'Dead Sea Bath Salts'. This is a regular reminder to me, not just of the Dead Sea, Palestine, and the Snobars, but also of the Gospel saying about salt, 'You are the salt of the world.' For our Lord's reference to salt is almost certainly geographically connected with the Dead Sea, the most prolific source of salt in the Holy Land in his day, as it still is in ours.

Given the biblical reference of today's Gospel (Mark 9: 42-9), I am now tempted to open the Snobar's bag of natural salt crystals and taste them to determine whether or not, after all this time, the salt has lost its flavour. For it strikes me as odd that salt should be thought to have a shelf-life. The little packets of salt with which you have been furnished carry no use-by date. Indeed, the more I think about Jesus talking about salt losing its saltiness, the stranger it becomes. After all, salt in the ancient world, apart from being used to give added flavour to cooking, was valuable as a preservative. In the days before modern refrigeration salt was so valuable as a preservative that it was often used as currency. People in the Roman world would be recompensed for their labour, not just with cash but with a regular bag of salt, hence the term 'salary'. If salt itself is a preservative, isn't it somewhat odd to suggest that over time it could lose its saltiness?

Perhaps Our Lord was speaking of a theoretical, notional possibility, rather than of something that might actually happen. Perhaps he meant that bland cooking can be livened up with a pinch of salt but if the salt itself were to become bland, what would season the salt?

Whatever the exact meaning of that statement, that is not the end of the story. Mark gives a slight twist to the 'you are the salt of the world' saying. That is actually Matthew's version of the text. Mark has, 'Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.'

'Have salt in yourselves.' In literal terms, of course, that is hardly good advice. My wife is constantly telling me that salt is not good, and that I put too much salt into myself. In fact, she says that it could be the death of me rather than something life-enhancing and good. When Jesus said that salt was good and advised his disciples to have salt in themselves, he was surely speaking metaphorically, exhorting them to vitality in their Christian life rather than a bland and flavourless life of mediocre commitment. In other words they were to be at pains to avoid the charge that is so often levelled at us Anglicans - the charge of being the bland leading the bland! By having salt in us and by being salt to the world we can contribute to the quality of life in the world - to revitalise it and give it a distinctive flavour, the flavour of eternity.

In all this we have a clue to understanding our relationship as Christians with the world. At the beginning of the decade of evangelism in the 1990s we became increasingly conscious of the need to develop new-member ministries. In order to grow congregations we needed to develop strategies to ensure that people were welcomed and cared for and integrated into the life of the Church. We needed to avoid the experience of having them come in the front door and disappear out through the back door! Getting more people into the life of the Church by evangelism might, indeed, be thought to be the chief thrust of our mission in the world.

But the message of the salt is a little different. For it is not the purpose of salt to try to turn the stew into more salt. Rather, it is there to heighten the vitality and the flavour of the stew. There is a parallel in Jesus' saying about the leaven in the lump. The role of yeast in dough is not to turn the dough into more yeast, but to distribute itself through the dough to lighten its texture and fluff it out of its heaviness.
Perhaps the Church's chief purpose and role, as a minority ingredient in society, is to give life and flavour to the whole, raising up and transforming the quality of it, rather than trying to turn more of the world into the Church.

Of course, if we do our work of service well, with enthusiasm and vitality, there will be a proportion of the world that will respond to the invitation to join us in our mission. Evangelism will go hand in hand with our ministry of service and care; by our fruits we will be known and others will want to join in the work of transforming the world. But the role of the Church is primarily to serve the world rather than to serve its own interests by getting a bit more of the world into the pews.

To think otherwise is to fall into the Constantinian fallacy. This is the fallacy of yearning to recreate the position of the Church as it was early in the fourth century when, after the conversion of Constantine, to be a citizen of the Empire was to be a Christian, just by being born into it; and to be a Christian was co-terminus with being a citizen of the Empire. By contrast, our calling may be to live in the world as a minority movement, as a minor ingredient in a greater whole. It may well be that it is God's intention that we shall always be so, but called to work for the whole as the salt of the world.

In his journals the Danish existentialist thinker Soren Kierkegaard often distinguished between being salt and being just part of the crowd. For Kierkegaard, to be salt is to resist being neutralised by the world; to be in the world, serving the world but not being drawn into it in such a way as to take on its values and accommodate oneself to its standards of behaviour. Even the highest standards of behaviour, such as living a reasonably decent life or being a paragon of civic virtue, fall short of the Christian ideal. That, indeed, is precisely when salt loses its savour. And in relation to this, Kierkegaard points to Mark's preceding verse to the call to 'have salt in yourselves'. It reads, 'Everyone will be salted with fire' (Mark 9.49) and some ancient texts go on to read 'and every sacrifice will be salted with salt'. For Mark, fire, sacrifice and salt go together. Can it be that, if one gives oneself unconditionally, genuinely and passionately serving others, it follows that one will necessarily suffer oneself to be consumed as a sacrifice to God? Such a commitment will involve loving mercy, doing justice and walking humbly, but not without fire in one's belly. To be salt not crowd means to preserve one's radical Christian identity so as to bring it to the transformation of the otherwise flavourless whole.

We all know that it is only too easy to use our religion as nothing more than bath salts - to become languid and passive, and to be soothed as we lie back and luxuriate in it. We allow our religion to work on us as a cosmetic, as a superficial addition to a life of uneventful blandness.

Even worse, we can use our religious commitment as a kind of preservative, you might say as the brine of life. As a kind of pickling solution in which we immerse ourselves so as to 'preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life' (as the 1662 service had it). We can become essentially inert, self-involved and lacking in vitality, drive and purpose - just hanging on to a very bland, domesticated kind of life, serving time until our own use-by date comes up.

It is in the face of this kind of very real alternative that we hear again Jesus' words as a Word of address to us, 'Have salt in yourselves!'

Copyright © 2001 Archbishop Peter Carnley