Christ Episcopal Church
September 30, 2012
21 Proper B
Several weeks ago, I was looking for a recipe that would tenderize a round steak without cooking it to pieces in a crock-pot. Basically, Don and I wanted to take an inexpensive, tough piece of meat and use the grill to produce something tender and juicy. I looked online and found a recipe that uses salt as a tenderizer. Sprinkle both sides of the meat liberally with kosher salt and let the meat sit for one hour per pound. The salt will pull the juice to the surface of the meat, then the salty juice will sink back into the meat, tenderizing it. Then rinse the meat throughly with running water and grill as usual. I am not a scientist, but the plan sounded reasonable to me. I followed the directions carefully, Don put the meat on the grill, and the result was a tough and very salty piece of meat. Don and Caldwell gamely ate theirs. I gave mine to the dog.
The disciples are having a different sort of failure with saltiness this morning. At the end of the gospel lesson, we hear Jesus chastize the disciples with the words "Salt is good. But if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." Jesus is not talking about a recipe for beef here. Jesus is talking about a recipe for discipleship. What have the disciples done that causes Jesus to accuse them of having lost their saltiness?
The gospel lesson begins with John saying to Jesus "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us." Tattle tale! But there is more to the story than John tattling on an outsider who is able to cast out a demon in Jesus’ name. Just a few verses earlier, the disciple are unable to cast a demon out of a young boy. After that experience, Jesus tells the disciples that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and a servant of all. So, in addition to being a tattle tale, and misunderstanding what discipleship is about, John is also probably a bit jealous of the person who is actually able to cast out a demon in Jesus name.
Jesus’ words to John and the disciples are harsh. The "little ones who believe in me" are not cute little children, but people on the margins of society who believe in Jesus and may even be able to do miracles in Jesus’ name. The punishment for putting a stumbling block in front of a little one, like telling that person to stop casting out demons in Jesus’ name simply because the person is not one of the 12 disciples, is so severe that the alternatives Jesus describes would be better. After hearing Jesus’ words about hands, eyes, and fee, Jesus sounds angry as he says "Salt is good but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another."’ If the disciples have lost their saltiness, how can they possible have salt in themselves and be at peace with one another?
King Ahasuerus of Persia is also angry this morning. In short, the King has had his wife, Vashti, banished for disobedience. Esther is the orphaned Jewish niece of Mordecai. Esther becomes the new queen without the King knowing she is Jewish. Mordecai discovers a plot to kill King Ahasuerus, and tells Esther, who tells the King. Haman is the King’s prime minister, and custom requires everyone to bow to the Prime Minister. Because Mordecai is Jewish, he refuses to bow to any person. So Haman plots to kill not only Mordecai, but all the Jews, who are, at this point in history, in exile in Persia. Esther finds out about the plot, so when we hear King Ahasuerus ask Esther this morning for her request, and tell her that he will grant her request, even up to ½ his kingdom, she is ready.
Esther asks the King to spare her people and reminds him of the dangers to himself should the entire Jewish people be killed. When the King hears of the plan, he is outraged and asks who is behind such an evil deed. The answer is Haman, his own Prime Minister! Haman is hanged on the very gallows Haman had prepared for Mordecai, and we are told the anger of the King abated. Then we are told that the Jews keep a feast each year, known as Purim, to celebrate the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.
The book of Esther has suspense and intrigue, and is, in places, quite humorous. But that is true of other stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. The story, like other stories in Scripture, would not receive a "G" rating from the Motion Picture Association of American, which the sermon version has to have. What makes the book of Esther unique in Scripture is that no where in the story is God ever mentioned. No where. There is no mention of prayer, or the Torah, or worship. Nothing. For all we can tell from the story itself, the Jewish people in Persia are spared strictly through the cunning and trickery of Esther. God is no where to be found.
The reading from Esther is paired with Psalm 124 in the lectionary. "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive..." While Psalm 124 can also refer to the Exodus or any of the other times God prevented God’s people from being swallowed alive, clearly we are to see God’s hand at work in the story of Esther, even if God is not mentioned by name. When we put Esther, Psalm 124, the reading from James, and the gospel reading together, we get a pretty comprehensive picture of the way God works in the world. Certainly God works through the prayer of the faithful. The reading from James tell us that the "prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective." The gospel reading reminds us that God does good works through people who may not be followers of Jesus in the way that the disciples are, or that we are for that matter. And the book of Esther tells us that God is at work even when God is unnamed or perhaps even unknown. The disciples’ problem was that they understood God’s work in the world far too narrowly and thought wrongly that God could only work through them. They thought discipleship meant protecting Jesus. That understanding caused them to be competitive and jealous. Jesus calls us to understand discipleship as seeing Jesus at work in all times, places and people, unbound by any notion we have about how God works in the world. Then, with jealousy and competitiveness aside, we can have salt in ourselves and be at peace with one another.
Amen.
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