For everyone will be salted with fire. 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.
—Mark 9:49–50
Australian theologian Sally Douglas considers Jesus’ teachings about power:
In Mark 9, we hear about an argument between Jesus’ male disciples. They have been disputing amongst themselves which one of them is the most important (Mark 9:33–34). The author of Mark makes it very clear that they really haven’t been listening to Jesus’ words for some time….
Jesus responds to their power plays by drawing their attention to a child. Jesus brings the child to the centre, a little one, considered entirely unimportant in the patriarchal and hierarchical worldview of the Common Era. Jesus then goes on to proclaim the unthinkable:
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the one who sent me (Mark 9:37).
Here Jesus is effectively saying, “Look, the one you think of as the least important, is where you will find me and where you will find God. Get your heads checked.”…
In response to the male disciples jostling for status and privilege, Jesus does not seek to sooth their insecurities but instead, disrupts their understandings of power … in the place they least expect it, with those considered the least important in society. Jesus then goes on to affirm the centrality of honouring the little ones and being at peace with one another. It is here that living in peace is linked with saltiness.
Jesus connects using our power to honor and protect others with being a transforming presence or “salt” in the world.
When we keep in mind the context of this whole passage in which the disciples have been jostling for power and Jesus gives stark warnings to those who misuse their power (Mark 9:33–48), we discover a piercing challenge. Here, the gathering together of imagery of being “salted with fire,” ideas of sacrifice and the challenge to live peaceably together, may reflect ideas about being purified and refined for peace. That is, in the process of allowing our lives to become a salty offering, no longer driven by power plays, but instead focused upon honouring and protecting others, especially the “little ones,” our ego-driven agendas are burned away. Like the fighting disciples, this will be a costly process of having our assumptions about power deconstructed, so that we may actually be able to embody God’s peace together….
When Jesus communities embody structures in which the last are first and the “little ones” (including children and vulnerable adults) are honoured, safe and included, we become a salty, seasoning gift, sprinkled across our global village. When Christians live in authentic peace, no longer sniping, competing or lording it over one another, we offer a spicy alternative to the dominant models of power in our global village that are commonly shaped by coercion, fear, exclusion, and violence.
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| SEP 9, 2025 Henri Nouwen: Downward Mobility |
 I first encountered the writings of Henri Nouwen as a college student. It was a season when the American evangelical tradition most shaped my vision of the Christian life. This form of Christianity is a popular blend of biblical principles and entrepreneurial ambition in which ever-increasing influence and impact are celebrated. Nouwen entered my world and quietly dismantled many of the assumptions about faith I had inherited. Nouwen was Dutch, not American, he was a Roman Catholic priest, not an evangelical pastor-preneur, and he spoke about intimacy with God more than impacting the world.Beyond his very unfamiliar way—at least to me—of framing the Christian life, I was inspired by Nouwen’s own story. Despite his focus on the inner life of the soul, Nouwen lived with deep insecurities and an insatiable need for approval. He struggled with depression and anxiety, and while his drive for significance landed him a professorship at Harvard University, the cost to his health nearly killed him. At the height of his success and influence, Henri Nouwen decided to leave Harvard to become a pastor and caregiver at L’Arche, a home for mentally disabled adults. By moving from Harvard to L’Arche, Nouwen willingly left everything the world esteems to be counted among those the world ignores. His life of downward mobility not only contradicted the popular American narrative, it also confronted my evangelical assumption that God always calls us to more power and more influence, and never less. It’s appropriate to begin this series with Henri Nouwen’s story because it so obviously parallels Jesus’. The incarnation is also a story of downward mobility, of Jesus exchanging the glories of divinity for the obscurities of humanity, ultimately accepting the indignities of the cross. Henri Nouwen taught me that the way of Jesus is more about what we surrender than what we achieve. DAILY SCRIPTURE PHILIPPIANS 2:1–11 2 CORINTHIANS 8:8–9 LUKE 18:18-30 WEEKLY PRAYER Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) O Lord Jesus Christ, I long to live in your presence, to see your human form and to watch you walking on earth. I do not want to see you through the darkened glass of tradition, nor through the eyes of today’s values and prejudices. I want to see you as you were, as you are, and as you always will be. I want to see you as an offense to human pride, as a man of humility, walking amongst the lowliest of men, and yet as the savior and redeemer of the human race. Amen. |
