The disciples are beginning to feel that they don’t understand Jesus as well as they thought they did. Jesus has just begun to talk about the destiny of suffering that awaits him in Jerusalem. The disciples have been arguing about which of them is the greatest. Jesus has reiterated his teaching about the first being last and the last first in the kingdom and has used a child to demonstrate his point.
The disciples begin to behave in that adult sort of way which we call childish which is really an insult to children. They try to ingratiate themselves with Jesus by drawing his attention to the fact that they wanted to stop someone from casting out demons in Jesus’ name because he wasn’t following us.’ In microcosm it is an example of a community feeling threatened and in reaction trying to define its boundaries more tightly. This is the exclusive church at work.
As Mark tells the story he may well have in mind the occasion on which Moses appoints seventy elders to help him in his task of guiding the Israelites through the wilderness. The spirit of God comes upon them and they begin to prophesy to speak ecstatically of God. Two of the seventy, however, had stayed in the camp rather than come out to the tent of meeting with Moses as ordered. And yet the spirit falls on these two as well. Joshua gets concerned and tells Moses that there are two men acting the prophet in the camp. They ought to be stopped. They haven’t followed orders. Joshua wants them to be stopped, as John wants the maverick exorcist to be stopped. Both Moses and Jesus react in the same way they aren’t so concerned about defining clear boundaries. Moses responds by saying that it would be a good thing if the spirit fell on everyone. Jesus responds by saying that the exorcist shouldn’t be stopped because he is clearly on their side, even though he isn’t an obvious disciple. Whoever is not against us is for us.’ There is no monopoly on doing good in the spirit of Jesus. Indeed if any one helps one of the disciples even by so little an action as giving them something to drink they will be included in the kingdom. Jesus’ understanding of what it means to belong to the kingdom is fluid and inclusive. And yet that is not the whole story. For just as we are beginning to feel comfortable with our kind of Jesus we come on to some of the most difficult teaching in Mark’s gospel all those instructions to get rid of offending hands or feet or eyes. We have seen that the boundaries of the community are not to be exclusively defined but we now find that appropriate behaviour within the community makes tough demands. It is as though Jesus is saying to his disciples don’t be worried about betrayal by outsiders the worst betrayals come from within. Which in the case of the disciples will be all too true in the final week of Jesus’ life.
A broad summary of what Jesus is saying would go something like this. The church is made up of a wide variety of Christians. We must always be aware of how our behaviour might affect our neighbour and make it more difficult for them to hold on to their faith. But then he turns his attention to those who do so cause others to stumble. How are the sinners in the community to be dealt with? The hand, the foot and the eye are representative of particular types of sin. The hand stands for theft and fraud and forgery; the foot for robbery and betrayal (anything which necessitates running away); the eye stands for lust and adultery and sexual misconduct. But what does it mean to deal in what seems such a savage way with the hand, the foot, and the eye? Perhaps the best way to look at it is too see it as an attempt to deal justly with the sinful member of the community. The community has a choice; it could execute the sinner (by stoning for example); it could exclude or excommunicate him; or it could try to deal with the source of the sin and heal it as it were to cut off the sin but not the sinner. When Jesus goes on to say that everyone is salted by fire he is using a medical image; salt and fire were used in ancient medicine to close wounds caused by amputation. It is a stark and disturbing metaphor but it shows how seriously Jesus takes the inner life of the community. Anything which threatens its life must be faced and diagnosed and healed. If we are in his curious phrase to have salt with one another, we must be at peace with one another; salt is a symbol of committed relationship. Salt is always kept on the table as a reminder that a meal is a sharing of fellowship.
So we see a progression through this curious passage; it begins with strife amongst the disciples and conflict with the exorcist on the outside. It moves on to a discussion of scandal on the inside. It ends with the word of peace and committed relationship. If the community is strong in its relationships and at peace with itself then its boundaries can be fluid and inclusive. How much the situation of the modern church is like that of Mark’s church for whom he put together Jesus words in this way I’m not sure. Those words are a challenge to those who want to exclude Christians they disagree with; but they are also a challenge to the holiness of living in more inclusive communities.
Jesus’ concern was always for the kingdom and for all who were on its side in whatever form they came. His concern was to point up behaviour that did not befit the kingdom and that could include being highly critical of his own followers. So today it should always be our concern to be a foretaste of and sign post of that same kingdom. Is this a forgiving, reconciling, generous, inclusive, community? Are we at peace with one another with that deep sense of peace which involves trust and dependence and openness to the goodness in one another? That is the salt that Jesus looks for amongst his disciples. How long might it be before we could in that sense describe ourselves as a bunch of old salts? In the name..