A Special Kind of Manure (II of II)

I thought I had covered the topic here, but our story continues...

Luke 17:1-3
Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves.

“If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.

This story is familiar enough to most of us, but something about it jumped out at me during our church service yesterday morning. Here's why. In my last post I shared what I had discovered after researching Jesus' cryptic words about salt in Luke 14. But there were a few nuances that I left out. "Oh, well," I thought to myself, "the post was already too long, so I'll just let that go."

But here I was in church, and the selected text for the sermon was from Luke 17. I'm not there yet in my own reading, but the two passages aren't far apart. What's more, the thoughts our pastor shared were strongly reminiscent of the thought that I had left out of my prior post on salt.

So what did I leave out? This.

When applied properly, salt will kill surface weeds while allowing more deeply rooted plants and grass to thrive.

That phrase (from this same article I quoted in my last post) kept rattling around in my head over the past few days because it hints at a role that goes beyond fertilization. If salt clears weeds, it's also a disinfectant for soil. It roots out bad stuff. That's why I sat up and took note when my pastor, working with this passage in Luke 17, began to say the very same thing with different words.

For starters, the pastor drew our attention to this: "So watch yourselves" is not an instruction to be taken individually.

Whops! I didn't know that!

Jesus meant for these words to be understood as instructions for a group to apply collective. As in, we need to (together!) watch ourselves. I need to watch not only myself, but also my neighbor! The next sentence works well with this new understanding. If during my vigilant watching I see that my neighbor has sinned against me...

Yes, this all made sense. What's more it resonates deeply with the notion that we as a church are to be (in a fuller sense) salt in the earth. That's the notion I had left out of the prior post. Yes, as manure we do help bring forth life, but it's more than that. As a disinfectant in the manure, we also keep the soil free and clear of weeds.

And just as I was sitting there, reflecting on the proximity of these two passages from Luke (coincidence?) and on how the pastor's comments applied so tightly to this notion of the church being salt in the earth, he suddenly and emphatically asserted something that yanked me back into the sanctuary where I sat.

"If we as a church are going to be light and salt, we need to..."

In light of the thoughts running through my mind, his choice of words was so shocking that I actually lost how he finished the sentence! Be that as it may... there it was. Salt had inserted itself directly into this sermon on Luke 17.

And so I resolved myself to do this last insight justice and get it down as an additional reflection. Perhaps these two posts together will prove worth their salt.