Having Salt Within Ourselves

Jesus tells his listeners in Mark's gospel that they must have salt within themselves in order to live in peace with themselves and with each other.

Salt is used today primarily to season food.  In ancient times is was used primarily in religious ritual.  In Jewish tradition, salt was used most prominently in rituals that emphasized Israel's covenant relationship with God; salt was added to the ritual bread on the Sabbath to season it.  Consequently, salt became associated with the need for Israel to celebrate and cultivate a deep relationship with their creator and covenant God in order to live peacefully with themselves and with each other.

There is enormous violence today.  We are abusive to ourselves, failing to forgive ourselves and punishing ourselves for our perceived failings.  We are abusive to each other, which is often nothing more than a projection of our own self hatred.  The nations of the world are abusive to each other.  All this abuse and violence has its heart in the lack of peace within ourselves.  If there is peace within ourselves, then our relationships will be peaceful, and the world is filled with those who are at peace within themselves, there will be peace on earth.

The key to peace is to have salt within ourselves.  In our hearts, to cultivate a deep relationship with God and to enter into covenant with Him as he was revealed in Christ, living under the Lordship of Christ and following his example. 

Why Jesus Went to Jerusalem

Jesus and Peter have an argument in Mark's gospel when Jesus tells Peter that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and be executed.  Peter tells Jesus not to go.  Jesus rebukes Peter and emphasizes the necessity of his sacrifice in Jerusalem.

Jesus and Peter's dispute, boiled down to its essence, is really a dispute about the relative valuation that they place on life in this world.  Many of those in Jewish culture in Jesus' day did not believe in an afterlife.  If someone held to this belief, this would naturally lead to a relative high valuation of life in this world (i.e. if this life is all that there is, then this life has enormous value and significance).  Similarly, if one believed in the eternity of the soul and that this life was, in contrast, only a fraction of an instant in that eternity, then the way that we perceive the value of this life radically changes.

Today, materialism is fast becoming the prevailing worldview in Western culture; the belief that this physical universe is all that there is, and that we are, literally, our bodies, and that consequently, when our bodies die, that is it.  Materialism, like other ideologies, has a way of finding its way into the belief system of the Church without the Church realizing that it is finding its way in.  For example, we always seem more preoccupied with the state of our physical bodies in Church than our souls; I literally cannot remember the last time that anyone sought prayer for anything besides a physical illness.  In many expressions of Christianity, there is a preoccupation with the accumulation of wealth; even going so far as to suggest that God wants us all to be wealthy.

As always, our example is Jesus.  Seeing through God's eyes, Jesus knew that this life is an instant in our soul's eternity.  Consequently, all that matters in this life is to do what will nurture our souls.  We are eternal spiritual beings having a brief temporary experience in a human vessel.  Our lives should reflect this.