The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on September 26, 1982. The title is Salted with Fire, and the scripture reference is Mark chapter 9, verses 38 through 48. 

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark. I'm reading from the ninth chapter beginning at the 38th verse. John came to Jesus and said, Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he was not following us.

But Jesus said, Do not forbid him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us. For truly I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose His reward.

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire.

and if your foot causes you to sin cut it off it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell and if your eye causes you to sin pluck it out it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched for everyone will be salted with fire salt is good but if the salt has lost its saltness how will you season it have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another the gospel of the lord we've seen on previous occasions that one of jesus favorite illustrations seems to have been salt common everyday table salt. He used it to make a variety of points. You may remember in the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, he says, you are the salt of the earth.

And you read that in context, it's quite obvious what he's saying. He's using that as an illustration for flavor, for taste. You are those who are supposed to bring flavor to an otherwise insipid, dull kind of an existence.

you're to add the spice to life would be a fair paraphrase he goes right on to say the very next sentence is you are the light of the world when you shine forth not when you hide it under a bushel but when you shine forth you are the light of the world you're to bring something that is desperately needed that is lacking apart from you and so in that particular instance it's implied he's saying you are the salt of the earth when you are salty. If you are salty, if you're flavorful, then you are the salt of the earth. Christians really ought to be the most fun people around.

I don't know if you see yourself that way, but that's really what he calls us to be. Not in a trivial sense, but we ought to be the folks who really make it worthwhile for everybody else. You are the salt of the earth.

You're to be flavorful. You're to be zesty. people.

Then you turn over to Luke's gospel, you see him saying a similar thing, but the context suggests that it's a little bit different emphasis. He's not just talking about being salty, but continuing to be salty. He compares continuing to be salty to such things as going off to battle.

He says you don't go off to battle, you don't march off to war unless you're pretty sure you can win. You don't just begin the battle, you want to end it. He compares it to putting up a tower.

He says who would be foolish enough to start building a building if he didn't think he could finish it? We'll bear that in mind. And the point is, what good is it to be salty when you go into the salt shaker if when you come out again you've lost your flavor?

It's not just being salt, it's continuing to be salty. Jesus may very well have had in mind the kind of vivid illustration that you would have if you visited the Dead Sea area. It's surrounded literally miles and miles of fossil salt.

It used to be salty. It is absolutely tasteless, worthless, and you could well say, as Jesus himself did, good for nothing but to be trodden underfoot. What good is salt if it's not salty?

So, be salty, go on being salty. That's some of the things he said about it. But when you come to this particular Gospel reading, Mark chapter 9, the words sound familiar, but again, the context suggests that it's a very different point that he's making.

He's not talking about adding flavor. He's not talking about salt as a condiment. He's talking about it, I would suggest, more as a preservative.

Stop and think about it. In the olden days, before we had proper refrigeration and all those lovely chemicals that they put into meat these days, you want to keep a piece of meat for a long time. What do you do?

You rub it down with salt. You rub salt into it. And under proper conditions, you could keep it for quite a long time.

It staves off decay. it's a preservative apart from that the meat is going to spoil it's going to go bad Jesus uses a remarkable phrase here everyone he says get that everyone you're not going to escape everyone will be salted with fire what a strange statement I think I know what he's suggesting in the olden days that I just referred to. If you suffered the amputation of your hand, let's say, do you know what they'd do with the rest of your arm immediately?

They'd stick that bloody stump into a fire. That would add to the pain. That would add to the horror of it.

But as for a very good reason, that fire would cauterize the blood vessels that would begin a healing process that would stop infection from flowing up that arm, gangrene setting in, and your whole body coming under the influence of that and obviously dying. Sticking that stump into the fire does for the rest of your arm and for your body exactly the same thing that rubbing salt into the meat does for it. It staves off infection.

It staves off decay. It staves off destruction. And that's exactly the context in which Jesus makes this remarkable statement.

He's talking about amputation. He's talking about some pretty radical things here. If your hand offends you, He says, chop it off!

If your eye offends you, pluck it out. If your foot is an offense to you, cut it off. Better, better, to enter the kingdom of God maimed, than to go to hell in one piece.

Have you faced up to that? I wonder if we really have. I need to tell you, this is not a really easy sermon to give.

I got done last time around and I just felt very depressed. I like to give the kind of sermon that is full of joy this is not a happy subject. But God confirmed over and over and over again through what folks said to me, this is God's Word to us.

And we need to face up to it. And God gave a prophecy at the end of the last service that just made chills run up and down my spine. And then Bishop Williams said to me, afterward out in the narthex, he said, here in America you have it so easy.

People take it so much for granted we need to hear this Word from Jesus Christ. We need to face up to it. If your hand offends you, chop it off!

Most people, I think, most Christian people say, I don't believe that. I believe in a God of love and mercy and forgiveness. I mean, didn't we just pray that God chiefly shows His almighty power in acts of mercy?

I believe in a God who accepts me just as I am. Don't we sing that? Just as I am without one plea.

That's right. Praise God. He accepts me just as I am, but He doesn't leave me that way.

We're talking about a God who calls us to holiness. Have you wrestled with holiness? Have you wrestled even with the concept of it?

Cheap grace is what America is noted for throughout the rest of the world. Cheap grace. Cavalier grace.

We're talking about a God whose name is holy. Holy, holy, holy. And who calls us to holiness.

A God who calls us to obedience. A God who calls us to discipleship. A God who says, take up your cross.

An instrument of crucifixion. Take up your cross daily. Die to yourself every single day.

If you're not willing to do that, you cannot be called My disciple. I didn't say that. Jesus said that.

He says in Matthew's Gospel, He that continues to the end. He that perseveres to the end. will be saved.

What's the implication of that? The implication is very clear if you dare to look at it that you can start out with great enthusiasm, with great joy, you can respond to the grace of God superficially. Not allow it to penetrate down deep enough to where it's going to make a difference and somewhere along the way you're going to bail out and you're not going to make it to the end.

And what hangs in the balance? your salvation. He who continues to the end is the one that gets saved.

And he who doesn't, doesn't. Jeremiah rebuked the priests of his day. He said, they have healed my people's sin lightly. They have healed my people's woundedness in spirit lightly.

Come back to the illustration of a wound or a cut in your arm. You know, you've got to dig in there. You've got to clean it out.

It hurts. We have the phrase rubbing salt in a wound. Everyone's going to be salted.

You rub salt in a wound, it hurts. It burns. But it does a work of cleansing.

And if you don't do that, you leave some dirt in there, it's going to scab over. New skin is going to grow. It's going to look fine.

But sooner or later, it's going to begin to fester. It's going to produce gangrene. It's going to kill you.

They've healed my people's wound lightly. Lightly. Superficially.

Let me put it to you this way. Sin is what put Jesus Christ to death on the cross. And sin in your life, sin in my life, is going to put us to death.

Unless we put it to death first. I wonder if you believe that. Finally, the choice will be, finally, sooner or later, for every one of us, the choice will be either God or the thing that offends Him.

Not both. Either we'll choose for God or we'll choose the thing that offends Him. And you can't have it both ways.

I'm reminded of the last scene. You remember the movie, The Days of Wine and Roses? The last scene has Jack Lemmon who has gone into the depths of alcoholism and has come back out.

And Lee Remick, his wife, is still there. Totally committed to her alcoholism. But she wants to come back home.

And she gets herself sober enough to come visit him. And she says, please, I want to come home. And he says, I can't tell you how much I want you.

And she says, I'll really cut down. And he says, I've discovered a raft. And there's room enough on the raft for one more, but not for you and the bottle.

You've got to make that choice. And she walks out and walks away. She's not able to leave it.

It's exactly like that with God. Sooner or later, it's either going to be God or the thing that offends Him. There's not room on the raft for both.

You can't hang on to that which God hates and still have fellowship with God. You can fool yourself into thinking that's what you're doing for a little while, but not for very long. You cannot have fellowship with light and darkness at the same time.

One of three things will happen. Sooner or later, one of three things, and for most of us it's going to be sooner. Not later.

Either you're going to give up the sin. You're going to cut it off because you can't stand the presence of God with that sin in your life, or you're going to get rid of God. Or you're going to go crazy.

And I mean that absolutely literally. If you try to hang on to God with one hand and hang on to the thing which is a stench in His nostrils with the other hand, you will become spiritually schizophrenic. And you'll go crazy.

I remember a man talking to me about his homosexuality a few years ago. he said for me it started as an experiment an experiment became a habit a habit became a lifestyle a lifestyle became a bondage and that man loved Jesus and he went crazy he went stark raving bananas because he couldn't make that choice. He tried to hang on to God and that which God hates.

I remember another man who went from house to house, from wife to wife, from woman to woman, from affair to affair. He said to me, I love Jesus, but I'm going to hell. And you know that's true.

He did love Jesus. And apart from a radical change in his life, he's going to hell. Because his love for Jesus didn't go deep enough to make any difference.

Praise God, we've all known lots and lots and lots of Christians for whom that love has gone deep enough. People who maybe have struggled with a given sin for years, but they've contended against it. I'm not saying Christians don't sin.

Please, get me straight on this. Obviously, I'm not saying Christians don't sin. We struggle against it.

There's warfare against it. We hate it. We say like St. Paul, the thing that I do, I hate.

I cry out to God, who's going to deliver me from this body of sin and death? And the answer is, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The New Testament describes it as a warfare.

It's not that your problems are over when you come to Christ. They really are just beginning. Now you've got a warfare going on in your life.

You used to have no problem with sin. Just sin and enjoy it, right? Now you've got a warfare going on.

But somebody's going to win that war, one way or the other. St. John, in his first letter, says, you don't continue in sin. Again, that doesn't mean you don't ever sin.

It means you don't have fellowship with it. You're not at peace with it. You're not in love with sin anymore.

You hate it. It intrudes into your life. It is an alien force.

You ask God to get you out of it and praise God, when you mean business, He will. And that's victory. But you're going to come to one of those three conclusions.

Either the sin is going to go, or God is going to go, or you're going to go nuts. I want to press this home I don't really want to press it home but I've got to most of you know that we have shepherd groups throughout the parish the parish is organized into neighborhood fellowships neighborhood Bible studies the shepherds report back to us not in a gossipy way but they try to keep the clergy abreast of what's happening in the neighborhood things to rejoice about and things to be concerned about Do you know what I've read in shepherd report after shepherd report after shepherd report after shepherd report? Please pray for the marriages in our flock that are in trouble.

I think we have a super congregation. And yet all through this parish we've got families in deep, deep marital trouble. And let me tell you, it's not unique to us.

It's all over the country. We're talking about Christian marriages in deep trouble. And you want to know why?

90% of the time, that's probably conservative. 90% of the time, it's because the husband, I've got to say it, men, it starts with you. It takes two to tango, but it starts with you.

Because the husband allows himself to get involved in a flirtation that takes him away from his wife, away from his kids, away from his home, away from his responsibility, Finally, away from his job, away from his work, and away from God. Cut off the thing that offends. Get rid of it.

People say the devil is so subtle. The devil is so blatantly obvious. It's that we're so stupid, we fall for anything.

I mean, if you could counsel with two or three or four families that are going through that and see what's involved. See the pain that that inflicts, not only on the couple, on their kids, on the whole family relationship. See the hell that that brings into their lives.

You'd be horrified so deeply. Do you see what's at stake? We're not just talking about that.

As bad as that is. I mean, you can have hell right here and now if you want it. But what's really at stake is hell for all eternity.

You cut off the thing that offends, or you're going where it's going. That's not a pleasant word to give. It doesn't have to be something that kind of gross.

It can be anything that offends God. you cling to that which offends God and it can take you to hell. It's not that there's a sin that's too big for God to forgive.

It's that there's no sin so small that He's going to let it into His heaven. Do you understand what I'm saying? He is holy.

There is no sin so small that He's going to overlook it and welcome it into heaven. You hang on to the sin. You're going where it's going.

that can be adultery that can be homosexuality that can be greed that can be pride that can be arrogance that can be broken relationships that can be anger do you know that you can go to hell for anger? do you know that? do you know that if somebody else is 100% wrong and you are 100% right which is not very likely 100% wrong 100% right and you allow yourself to be bitter about that other person to be unforgiving toward that other person you can go to hell for it do you know that?

that's what Jesus said I didn't say it forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and his own commentary on his own prayer was for if you do not forgive those who trespass against you, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you. That's what it's all about, friends. God accepts us just as we are, but He expects us to become disciples and to begin changing for His sake.

Be salted with fire or else the thing that offends may consume you. A lady in the parish had a vision this week and shared it with me. Really incredible vision.

She saw our chapel. It was very clearly our chapel. And it was absolutely full of people and they were all dressed in white.

She looked at it and said, what does that mean? And she began to understand from the Lord that they were there for the wedding. They were corporately the bride.

That's not to say they were the whole bride of Christ, but there in that place, they were the bride. All of them together, dressed in white, waiting for the bridegroom. You understand what she's seeing?

She's seeing the church in microcosm. And they're waiting for the bridegroom. They're waiting for the Lord Jesus to come for the wedding to begin.

Only He's been delayed. And they're asking, why isn't He coming? And you know what the answer was?

The bridegroom is reluctant to come because underneath their white robes the bride is filthy. What's that say to you? Peter said it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God.

Let's get our act together. I believe this is God's Word for us. would you bow your head with me if you dare to pray this prayer with me you better duck Lord Jesus I invite you to search my life and put your finger on anything that offends you.

Lord, I want to be offended by what offends you. I want to be horrified by what horrifies you. I want to be disgusted by what disgusts you.

Lord, I ask You to come into my life. I've asked You that so many times before, but today I ask You to come into my life more fully and more deeply than I ever have before. come into all the hidden places forgive me my sin but Lord more than that help me turn from it help me to cut off that which offends let me be salted with fire thank you Lord thank you Lord Father speak to us personally and individually Lord I bring myself under this same word I don't find it any more pleasant than anybody else does but Lord we welcome that word because we need it we ask You to do a wonderful work of cleansing.

Lord, cleanse us and make us ready for the bridegroom who comes. Lord, don't just forgive us our sins, but take them away. Cleanse us of the patterns.

Liberate us for Your great namesake. Amen. Following Mr. Howe's sermon at the 9 o'clock service, the following prophecy was received. Mr. Howe mentions it in the sermon recorded on this tape, which was given at the 1115 service. Listen, children. Listen, children of the living God, a word from the heart of God to the heart of men in whom I have put in my life. I chose you before I created the world, before I put the stars in motion of the planets in the heavens.

I chose you and I created you in my heart. I could have taught you to live in the time of Moses, in the time of inundated. I could have chosen your life to live in any day.

But this is the day for which you were chosen. You have to call this in the earth and proclaim my words in this day at this time. The least of you is living in a glory and splendor of God that Moses had to see.

That Elijah was given his very light and breath to see. And he trampled under your feet day by day. You do not balance what I was putting you.

You do not balance what I was giving you. You live in sin, you live in doubt, you live in fear, you live away from me and away from my heart. I excuse you because I love you.

I am the joy of my spirit upon you and I call you to live in joy. In joy and happiness and in truth transcendence. That it's beyond anything you could have imagined.

You have not yet valued it. Don't be like Esau who threw away the first life. But be like Jacob who found what God would give us, who thought that it was a treasure beyond sight.

Take the pearls, give everything you can, and have me. Oh, no.