Eric Youngblood: Mutton, Planet-Saving, And Being Sick Of Yourself

  • Tuesday, June 21, 2016
  • Eric Youngblood

Ever wonder what it feels like to be a granule of salt?

No sane person likely ever does, but for a moment, let’s!

Imagine being stuffed in a decorated cylindrical dispenser and hurled through the air until landing on a mound of scrambled morning eggs.

Consider the trauma of being stranded inside a 16 ounce tin can surrounded by water and cut green beans. 

Or simply reflect a moment on being ancient salt in a pre-refrigerated world, and ponder the sensation of finding yourself being rigorously rubbed into the fresh mutton chops of the daily slaughtered lamb. 

The Valuable Life of Salt
The life of salt is incredibly valuable, but not always one of dignity and honor.

C.S.

Lewis has suggested that if you were a sentient canvas (a canvas who could feel stuff!) upon which a master artist was creating his magnum opus, it might feel a bit abrasive, unpleasant, and downright onerous to be involved in such a project while it was underway. Of course, you’d be ecstatic upon completion, but the getting there, might make you think your Artist didn’t like you much!

So it seems to me that when Jesus reveals a portion of our kingdom vocation by calling us the “salt of the earth,” he's not only giving us a great sense of our purpose, namely to be a sort of divine preservative against the natural putrefaction that can easily happen in the compost pile of this world prone as it is to the spoiling that comes from turning its back on God, but he's also, if we may be a bit playful with the metaphor, giving us insight into the way it might feel to carry the weight of such a vital vocation.

But I Don’t Feel Privileged
Perhaps as Jesus, like an ancient butcher carefully preserving his wares, rubs us into the places of potential decay in our world-- the construction site, the bank, the hospital, the school, the neighborhood, our home with children-- we won't necessarily feel very privileged even though in all actuality, ours is the sturdy honor of being God’s covert agent for world-saving in the places where we’ve been situated to work, rest, and play.    

It’s just that we tend to think that any efforts at saving the planet should be grandiose, live-tweeted, and endlessly celebrated. Not only does this mistaken hope blind us to opportunity that lurks around every corner for doing good, it also keeps dizzy in a repetitive orbit around our own aspirations for self-magnification.

The Real Work of Planet-Saving
Wendell Berry has imagined the character of our calling a bit more clearly and certainly more modestly:

“The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.”

It’s no wonder that some of our Savior’s pre-world-saving instructions to his disciples were uttered from his knees as he, with towel and wash basin, scrubbed the grimy gunk from their Palestinian toes, and conferred upon them a calling which involved “small, humble, and humbling” work called being a servant characterized by “loving one another as He had loved them.”

To embrace such a vocation of propping ourselves up against the ruin around us, will involve a commitment to shrinking in our own eyes for the benefit of those all around us who need our service, encouragement, steadfastness, generosity, and promise-keeping.

It will require an act of tremendous courage, as JD Salinger perceptively put in the mouth of one of his characters in Franny and Zooey:

"I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s.... I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of splash."

If we are trying to make a splash, we’ll be fussing overmuch with ourselves, and failing to take into account the steely foundation even our daily dependability, acts of generosity, prayers, and competent work can bring about.

But of course, it takes a special God-given courage to refuse to aspire to be somebody of your own making. And it takes faith, that Christ himself promises to make somebody of us as we willingly disadvantage ourselves for the advantage of others. 

My Sins No More Secret Than An Earthquake
Jesus knew with scientific accuracy what Garrison Keillor wisely intuits in the following situation where a businessman contemplates cheating on his wife during a business trip to Chicago with a lady co-worker:

“I sat there in the front yard and thought, so this is what adultery is like: it’s just horse-trading.

As I sat on the lawn, looking down the street, I saw that we all depend on each other.  I saw that although I thought my sins could be secret, that they would be no more secret than an earthquake.  All these houses and all these families, my infidelity will somehow shake them.  It will pollute the drinking water.  It will make noxious gasses come out of the ventilators in the elementary school.

When my wife and I scream in senseless anger, blocks away a little girl we do not know spills a bowl of gravy all over a white tablecloth.

If I go to Chicago with this woman who is not my wife, somehow the school patrol will forget to guard an intersection, and someone’s child may be injured.  A sixth-grade teacher will think, ‘What the hell?’ and eliminate South America from geography.  Our minister will decide, ‘What the hell? I’m not going to give that sermon on the poor.’ Somehow, my adultery will cause the man in the grocery store to say, ‘To hell with the health department, this sausage was good yesterday; it certainly can’t be any worse today.’”

In a moment of sanity on the other side of his grave reflection he determines, “We depend on each other more than we know.”

And of course he’s spot on. 

There’s a pernicious smoggy lie afoot that interferes with the neural pathways in the best of us which makes sinister suggestions like “I can do whatever I like so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.” And such perspective frequently lacks the imagination to seriously consider the myriad anyones we might hurt, and heavy-weights the “whatever I like” part of the equation.

But Christ has given his people a mandate of self-forgetful service to others, and preoccupation with the good of others. 

Only Two Kinds of People
Who knows what God might do through a people who embrace their interdependent vocation of being willing to exist, as lowly salt, so obscurely, humbly and sacrificially, for the sake of the world which our King has died to reclaim? 

Francis Schaefer once insisted that ‘there are no little people and no little places. There are only consecrated people and unconsecrated people.” Or put differently, there are only folks willing to embrace their vocation as God’s salt for the earth, and those unwilling to be so used. 

To channel Jesus’ thoughts on the matter, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

-----

Eric Youngblood is the senior pastor at Rock Creek Fellowship (PCA) on Lookout Mountain. Please feel free to contact him at eric@rockcreekfellowship.org.

Church
"Son, I'll Go All The Way With You" Is Sermon Topic At Middle Valley Church Of God
  • 3/26/2024

Middle Valley Church of God, at 1703 Thrasher Pike in Hixson, announced that Pastor Mitch McClure will be preaching on Sunday, in the 10:30 a.m. service. Mr. McClure will be preaching on the ... more

Refuge Assembly To Host Amazing Bible Discoveries Presentation March 31
Refuge Assembly To Host Amazing Bible Discoveries Presentation March 31
  • 3/25/2024

Refuge Assembly, 194 Depot St. in Soddy Daisy, will host Kevin Fisher, son-in-law of the late explorer Ron Wyatt, with Amazing Bible Discoveries this Sunday from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Lunch will ... more

Bob Tamasy: Taking A Brief Look At Life’s Brevity
Bob Tamasy: Taking A Brief Look At Life’s Brevity
  • 3/25/2024

One of the wonders of the English language is how a single word can take on a variety of meanings. Take the word love for example: We can love a spouse, child, friend, job, sports team, a vacation ... more